Does anyone else feel like the whales have become a bit too…powerful?
Just wanted to throw out some observations on the current distribution of STEEM. From looking at the richlist and distribution charts, we already have several people holding over $1 million in vesting steem right now (at the current price of 0.0012 BTC/STEEM). That is…pretty crazy. Watching their STEEM Power increase by upwards of 10 STEEM per minute just from sitting there is mind-boggling to think about. It kind of feels like an imbalance is forming, in that the only people able to bring in the big bucks are those with vast caches of capital already in the system, and newcomers at this point have no real hope to catch up. Combine this with the comparatively immense rewards whales receive for curation and the system seems to become a self-fulfilling extension of their dominance.
This also makes the issue that the only posts that are going to be seen are those that are “whale-approved”, so the only way to get into the spotlight is to write articles that appeal to these special few. An interesting post can get 50+ upvotes, but if the whales disapprove and/or just don’t notice it, then the post just kind of goes to the wayside and is quickly forgotten. A vote from a whale can give a post a massive injection of attention and rewards, while the little guy with even a few thousand dollars of vesting STEEM feels he can barely make a dent in the grand scheme of things. We all have a voice and if someone feels they’re not being adequately rewarded for their contributions they will likely look elsewhere. I don’t want to see it come to this.
I’m not sure if there’s any way to correct this imbalance before it gets any deeper than it already has, but I thought it important enough to bring attention to. I love the idea of Steem and have a decent stash myself, which is why I want to see contrarian issues like this brought to the forefront so they can be discussed, dissected, and tackled before it’s too late. I ultimately just don’t want to see STEEM become slave to the almighty whales, an oligopoly of sorts with only a select few deciding what gets rewarded and what shouldn’t be seen. I have hope that this won’t happen, but only time will tell. Either way Steem is truly an amazing experiment all around and I can’t wait to see where it goes.
Thanks, and keep on STEEMing.
Who ever created this space we call reality didn't have equality of outcome in mind. Everything is distributed followed the 80/20 principle. 20% of the leaf on the tree gathers 80% of the sunlight. We wear 20% of our clothes 80% of the time, etc. (it even goes to 95/5 and 99/1 because it's fractal in nature)
So having a 2% to 5% of users that own 80% of the stake is something completely natural and any attempt to remedy that will turn to failure. The good thing is that steemit reshuffles through authors contribution and give great mobility upward to everyone who's willing to play the game. The more users join, the more users will become whales and eventually reach more maturity.
The best to make it more diverse is to increase the amount of users and few will rise to the top via their contribution. (some may also buy that status)
20% of the users of Steem tend to analyze it too much, while the other 80% of us simply enjoy the experience. :)
lol
I've been wrestling a bit with the concepts mentioned in this post as well (thanks @nomoreheroes7!), and I think you just nailed the answer. The 80/20 rule. That makes sense to me.
As for this comment:
Is that possible if the interest rates enjoyed by the whales today completely outpaces what's possible for new users to earn in a reasonable amount of time? What we might consider a whale tomorrow could be massively dwarfed by a super whale built up by interest on a whale's account today.
Man, I just need to pause a second and saw how freaking amazing it is that this community is, in essence, participating in real-time experimentation in free economic systems in open transparency. Anyone can take it over leave it without coercion. That's... amazing. :)
@chitty talked about this abit in his post on the different voting strategies:
I would suggest that whales consider voluntarily avoiding Powering Up once they reach a certain level of Steem Power and instead just hold Steem or Steem Dollars. In this way they still have huge upside potential as the value of Steem grows but their overall share of the pie will be slowly diluted as new Steem are made.
Great idea, Sean. In a way, it would be like cashing out on their investment, just to keep the perception of fairness in play. Another option might be for them to offer bounty programs and rewards (maybe even a faucet?) where they directly contribute STEEM or SBD via transfers to users who are improving the space or building valuable integrations.
I've been discussing the issues raised in this post in the Slack channel a bit, and I think it's an important issue. Many people in the world have funky definitions of "fair" and won't understand why one person is making a lot of money just because they have a lot of money and another person is working hard, day in and day out creating content which earns comparatively little. I understand some of the dynamics here, and I don't fault the system, I just wonder what it will do to perception and how that perception will impact user acquisition.
You could try become really good friends with all the whales and maybe they will look out for you.
will be interesting how the whales will tackle this problem. If you can't fix this, people will stop using steem and walk away.
there are 2 forces.
One that decentralize the power -> Author's reward
One that centralize power -> Curation reward
This way the people who have most to lose by voting on low quality content(whales) have the right incentives to maximize their returns and vote on good content.
While people who are at the bottom of the totem pole gets to climb on their merits by creating good content.
I absolutely agree with Your article
This might help a bit too --> Ongoing List of Steemwhales, $50K to over a $million : https://steemit.com/steem/@oliverb/steemwhale-watching-greater-than-list-of-users-you-need-to-get-upvotes-from-and-watch-for-new-content