Not how I see it...
Granted, I may be wrong, I'm just another voice, another opinion and even though I've been on STEEM for a while, that does not give my opinion more validity necessarily. That being said, I think the discussion against the directing the funds to fund development is lacking a couple of considerations, and I'll attempt to express myself as clearly as I can on this matter.
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I would also like to state, because this conversation can get heated, that I'm fine with someone disagreeing with me, after all, what we are trying to do is to polish these ideas as to arrive to the best path forward, its not about egos, its not about who was right and putting i-told-you-so's under our belt. So, if you think I'm wrong, if you believe that I'm missing something, I do invite you to voice your position, but let's keep this civil.
Growing the Pie
It's hard for me to think about this in any other way than macro economics, simply because anecdotal evidence lacks permanence and relevance for that matter. So, with this in mind, I can't help but to think of this expression that has been used over and over to talk about the desired outcome of free markets.
With the idea of standing on the same definitions, allow me to quote some valuable background on this macro economic expression.
Growing the Pie could be called "more for everyone." This is as opposed to centrally controlled economic theory, where some give up some of their slice of the pie, that others might have more. Growing the Pie refers to a theory that free market economics grow the size of every slice, and thus raises the standard of living for all participants. This theory proposes that growing the pie is better than redistribution of pie through a centrally controlled economy.
Growing the pie is related to the concept of economic liberalism. Economic Liberalism was first fully formulated by Adam Smith, who advocated minimal interference of government in a market economy, as opposed to Keynesian and centrally planned economic views which support taxing and deficit spending to control consumption.
What are the goals?
So how do I see these proposed changes to STEEM, the possibility of us changing how rewards are distributed to authors, witnesses and stake holders? Well, to answer that, let's talk about what the main goals should be, what is it that we are trying to accomplish here, and let's try to do this on a macro sense for consistency. This means, that talking about how the people that love gardening or posting cat pictures would be affected specifically, does not belong to this particular conversation.
To oversimplify the goals, because of course we can break them down to excruciating detail. We should be shooting to achieve the following: (In my opinion)
- Develop a blockchain that is safe, scalable and that lacks single points of failure.
- Attract real investment
- Increase the experiential value for it's users.
- Increase the Token valuation by strengthening the economy.
I think we would be hard pressed to find someone that would disagree with those bullet points, so for now I will continue. In order for us to do any of these things, there is one central component that we urgently need. And yes, I like plenty of you, don't know the perfect answer, but I think we do know what's this blockchain's biggest weakness: it's centralized development.
The ticking Time Bomb
As far as I know, only Steemit Inc has ever been involved in writing any meaning code for the blockchain itself. I'm not talking about condenser, which is what people use on Steemit.com, I'm talking about the engine under the hood, STEEM.
If we see this reality, the fact that only Steemit Inc controls that repository, and that outside of them there is absolutely no development for the blockchain and think that is a good thing, then we disagree on a core issue, and truthfully we have to agree to disagree with little more to talk about.
What I believe to be a lot healthier for the long term growth of this ecosystem and it's economy, is to have a solid system of incentives, so the development continues, even if Steemit Inc decides to disappear tomorrow.
Please note that I'm not saying that Steemit Inc shouldn't do a thing, or that they should disappear, so please don't twist my words. The point I'm trying to make here is that having that single point of failure is myopic and we need to wake up and smell the coffee, the coffee pot is starting to burn.
There is absolutely no way to sugarcoat this, and I have no reason to do so either. We all know how the over-promising and the under-delivering has hurt trust, and without trust, it's quite difficult to build this economy at scale, simple as that.
The outcome we desperately need then, without an inch of doubt, is to have a place that can attract the absolute best developers in the blockchain space, so that they leave ethereum, tron, etc and come here to gift this blockchain their talents. But, to think they are going to do this out of the goodness of their hearts is to still believe in Santa Claus, and I'm sorry to be so blunt.
BUT, MY REWARDS?
This is not that complicated to explain, but I know that the quote above might be too long and some may have skipped it, so here's a simple question that would make a lot of sense.
What would you rather have a 100 STU payout on your post, with STEEM being worth 30 cents or 10 STU payout on your post, with STEEM being worth 10 Dollars?
In other words, 100 tokens that added up equal thirty dollars, or ten tokens that added up equal a full day of work, 100 dollars. What sounds better to you?
We are so stuck on these percentages thing that we are failing to see what the goal is here, increasing the size of the pie. Why would it matter if authors are getting 80% of the rewards, when the tokens are worth a penny? Do you see where I'm going with this?
The conversation continues
But it needs to be grounded in reality too. I really like some of the points @theycallmedan has brought up and as someone who has invested that much into this blockchain, we would be wise to listen to his reasoning for doing so.
I also appreciated @therealwolf's post on this subject today, I believed it to be a very balanced view, and that is precisely what we need more of at the moment. Not more pitchforking, not more "the whales are greedy bastards" chants, that bring absolutely nothing to the table.
Remember the question and the goal/answer: What are we trying to achieve? Making the pie Bigger
Right?
Thank you! This is the best written analysis of the worker proposal I have seen so far. Immediate resteem :)
Many of the people I see complaining feel like they are entitled to their percentage of rewards, love it when the whales vote them but hate it when the whales vote on something they dislike.
We need development and we need funds to finance it.
I'm glad to have people like you in this discussion who can remain calm and give context where it is needed. You wrote what I wanted to write ;)
I'm promoting this post a bit so more people can see it.
Thank you muffin, I'm glad we see eye to eye on this, and listen... I'm a content creator, not a dev, nor a whale, so technically I should oppose any changes.
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I have been behind on my feed but am glad I have taken the time to read this and the engagement it incites as it is a great way to move forward with valuable discussions to increase the size of the pie which is the fundamental aspect of the thought of securing the long term sustainability of the protocol itself.
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Yes! I'm already do tires of the "but my percentages!" cry. Compared to January last year, my vote is worth about 20 times less. Because the price kept steadily dropping.
So, people are already only earing a fraction of what they used to. Increasing it requires changes to and development of the chain. I'd happily reduce my current payout, if that gives a chance that steem survives the following years.
The way it's right now, we'll soon all starve, with 100% of our payout.
I don't dismiss their plea, but I think theyve not looked at it from this angle.
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I'm hesitant to reduce author rewards alone because they are the primary means of spreading the token more widely and evenly across more wallets and more users. And that is true regardless of real dollar value. Yes, if the author pool is cut by 20% but the value of Steem doubles, triples, etc.; people will no longer feel the pain in their post values, but underneath the hood there will be a noticeable drag on the slow and steady trend we've seen of more SP holding wallets and a growing "middle class."
I'm in favor of some percentage being allocated from witness pay, and potentially SP interest. I have nothing against witness earnings, but if the belief is really there that a worker proposal system like this can lead to solid growth, then I think there needs to be some alignment behind that on the witness end. If Steem moves to the $10 in your example, that's roughly 33 times more witness revenue than at current, and that is certain to greatly outpace the growth in node costs, particularly with the recent technological improvements. One of the elements that high witness pay in the past was justified on was what the witnesses were bringing to the table in terms of projects and development beyond reliably running their nodes. Top witnesses earning well when Steem was $3-$8 dollars were almost expected to reinvest some into the ecosystem. I feel in the existence of a worker proposal system this consideration should be removed, leading to slightly lesser witness percentage. Technically savvy witnesses should now be vying to have their development efforts funded through the proposal system rather than having them de facto funded through excess witness rewards as they were in the past. Leaving witness rewards untouched in light of the emergence of a worker proposal system doesn't truly leave them untouched. To my mind, witnesses are the most likely to launch proposals and get them funded due to their own voting weight and the voting support they already have that has made them a witness. If we leave their current funding stream untouched, add a new funding stream, and also believe this synergy will lead to 30x growth or more... that's just an imbalance in the making that leaves me uncomfortable. Especially because the vast majority of these funds are most likely to be heavily allocated just 20 ways. In contrast, we hope that the author rewards pool at scale will be split among tens of millions.
Of course, witnesses are currently hurting in the present market, but just as Blocktrades already pointed out that there can be worker proposals that exist specifically for the point of not spending funding, likewise one of the first proposals launched could be along the lines of a "node cost supplementary funding" proposal. Witnesses could be paid out a basic income for running nodes at times when market conditions make it unfavorable to do so, basically negating the funding percentage taken from witnesses when times are bad (like now) but removing the need to fight it out and try to hardfork a new rewards distribution in the future when times are good and witness pay potentially skyrockets.
Likewise though, a similar mechanism may be available to the community should all funding be obtained from author rewards, so I'm not too worried regardless. I could see larger projects like Curie, Minnow Support, or SBI successfully launch worker proposals of their own and claw back funds that they then funnel right to end users in the name of marketing, recruitment, and retention. Like the hypothetical "node cost supplementary funding" proposal above, this would lessen the impact of the revenue loss on the effected group.
I guess in my mind it comes down to the fact that all the funds diverted into the Worker Proposal system are still within the larger Steem ecosystem and can shift to different groups; authors, witnesses, investors, based on the actual proposals that get approved. So while no decision will be disastrous, I think the most logical is to pull funding in tandem from all of these elements. And this is particularly true in light of my belief that the path of least resistance for these funds most likely flows back to the witnesses.
Excellent points Brian, this is the kind of level headed analysis I like to see.
It is all about growing the value of the blockchain and working to increase the token. That is job #1. Don't ask me how to do that... but I don't think a change in the % matters too much with steem at 30 cents. $10 steem will make way more difference than 10% of the rewards,
It's a complicated issue. I know that many people here on Steem were surprised by the proposed 20% reduction in author rewards. I think if a 10% reduction had been proposed there would still be a lot of arguing, but probably a lot less heated. I can see this issue from both angles, on one hand reducing author rewards (but increasing post values) and preventing further inflation should lead to Steem being worth a lot more which is the goal. But on the other hand if author rewards in Steem are a lot lower it could lead a lot of regular posters here to move on because now they will know they have little chance of moving up in the ranks or having more influence on Steem. It may also lead to certain authors having complete visibility on the platform and other authors posts will possibly become much less visible. Basically some of the witnesses if they do not have great intentions will have twice as much power to abuse the system and possibly still a lot of support. I like having a say in this matter through voting, but there shouldn't be such a division in the matter in my opinion--we all want a more secure Steem which also incentivizes witness to keep their nodes running and we also want to reduce inflation over time while providing a good experience for anyone currently here or joining Steemit/Partiko, etc. for the first time. It's also kinda crazy that sunsetting Steemit was talked about a few months ago, which is starting to look a lot less likely. Steemit or other platforms are still a great place to have a community of users for any new business/Dapp.
Yes, these concerns are quite valid, maybe the answer is to add some inflation to the existing one, and start from that point.... I'm also not saying that we can't test out the donation system, if it doesn't work, and it very well might not, move towards something that relies less on humanity, as weird as that may sound.
Honestly Steem isn't trying to be a Store of Value/Global Unit like Bitcoin is.
We already have inflation and will so.
What wrong with little more if it helps the chain become more decentralized.
We could also take from diff inflation pools which keeps same inflation rate but less...
What I feel is Steem trying to be something it isn't...
Good point Sames, I guess in my view, we have a core idea of what steem is, but it's not static or at least it should not be, and we are attempting to unlock the potential of this blockchain and in that sense all of our goals align.
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how many high stakeholders believe in this chain of events? really believe in it? how much steem would be needed to get the high end coders? if all of them really believe could we do a donation system test, and when it proves that it is working and moves steem up the list and up in the price than we could hardfork it to continue supporting the good work.
in yours 30cents - 10dolars example, if big stakeholders really believe in it, by donating 20.000 steem whales could gather 200k $ for development. in you example what is better for stakeholder with 1.000.000 steem. 980.000 steem worth 10$ or 1.000.000 worth 0.3$?
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Donations may work, I certainly won't sit here and assert they won't, I just think they are less likely to fund something powerful and meaningful.
But I get your point, I guess I would like to think that the world is a little more long term thinking, more altruistic, but it's not the reality I observe. However, this is one of those instances when I would love to be wrong.
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i know that donations would not work in the long run. HardForking 20% from all authors on a guess (can't find a better word) is a bit to much. That system needs to show users that it will make steem progress, then it will have no problem to get support. Now it sounds like "we need to take so we would have money for projects" what are the projects, how will them make steem go up on the list, who will do it. well we don't know but we are sure that some great people will show up when there is 200k $ on the table.
Now thats a great argument and one I definitely agree with. If we can get outside devs, we can actually do something. And with the worker proposal system, this is possible.