The good, the bad and the ugly
My last post/rant may have given a wrong impression, and I want to make some things clear.
I still love the EIP. It definitely has a net-positive effect on the platform, and I'm thankful to @kevinwong and @trafalgar for their consistent pushing to get it done. While I stand to my opinion that the curve change was unnecessary and harmful, I have the strong belief that this isn't the end of history, and we will see further improvements in the future. Some of the top witnesses like @blocktrades and @drakos agreeing with my perspective shows that clearly.
Old ideas like diminishing votes for repeatedly voting the same authors or even keeping votes in a closed circle are being refreshed, as a recent brief conversation with @kevinwong showed. SBD being a nice idea which unfortunately doesn't work in practice is another thing people discuss again, and maybe we will see the end of them soon.
And of course there's the option to drop the STEEM reward pool completely with SMT, which doesn't sound too bad to me either.
All in all, we're on a good way - it will take time, sure, but I'm confident we get to the point where I'd like to see the platform. What's important is that people see that change is possible, and keep discussing ideas for improvement.
As a vote of confidence, and to further empower the anti-abuse battle we're fighting with @curangel right now, I decided to convert most of my shitcoin holdings to STEEM over the next weeks and power up substantially. 20k done already, a lot more to go. That's what abusers get for starting a downvote war instead of adapting to the new ways :)
I'm sorry for bystanders who get dragged into those battles, like @m31 who received some downvotes today only because she's excited about curangel and I resteemed her post. I hope the community keeps stepping up against those bullies, who use extortion in the hope to be able to continue their extraction. That doesn't work, and the natural reaction is that they just pull more attention on their schemes.
A big thanks goes out to all the brave people using their power, knowing absolutely well that retaliation will follow. It's the power of the crowd, and if we keep working together we will be successful. They can't downvote everyone!
Seeing people like you regaining trust in STEEM is one of the most positive signs that we are on the right, or let's at least say a good way! :)
agreed
Very well said bro!
Already about two years ago, I wrote the following in a post:
"How about if after each vote on a specific account (including one's own account) each further vote on the same account would lead to significantly less curation reward for the voter and less profit for the upvoted account? Thus, when upvoting an account which I had already upvoted before, my voting power would be smaller than in case I upvote an account which I didn't upvote before."
However, I had the impression that witnesses and bigger stake holders were not interested these days.
Unfortunately mitigation methods like this aren't as simple to implement as it seems at first, because most of the times there's loopholes that render the whole effort moot. Believe me, most if not all of the witnesses would be happy to have a bullet-proof system that just works, but they won't agree to building in hurdles that just affect the honest users in the end. It's part of their job to think these things through and find out how big the probability for it to really work is.
Smooth commented about the idea under this post, and I'm afraid he's completely right with the assertion that it's not a viable solution (as about always when he has something to say :D )
https://steemit.com/newsteem/@smooth/pyx57r
I know that it's not so simple to implement and also not 'perfect' (already these days some replies mentioned the problem of users with multiple accounts), but I do think ideas like this could partly make 'circle jerking' less profitable and less easy to execute.
Good to know that they are seriously discussing these things.
If something is not perfect, and at the same time it hurts honest users, it shouldn't be implemented.
Exactly my point about the curve when I think about it that way :D
I don't see how it would hurt honest users: even my best friends I don't need to upvote several times per day (or even every day) ... :) And I still could do that, if I insisted to, I just had to accept somewhat lower returns.
For example the curation window hurts me much more than diminishing returns ever could, as I never try to upvote any post within the first five minutes after it has been published. I can't find good articles that fast if curating manually (only auto voters can) and even if I did, I couldn't read and evaluate them within five minutes. As a result nearly everybody with a comparable STEEM power earns more curation rewards than I do ... but the good thing is: I don't care that much. :)
Anyway: you prefer the current state to solve the problem by downvoting abusers it seems?
Well no, I don't. But at least it's kinda visible when they stick to the same account and don't constantly switch through several. It's not really a solution, because it would hide the abuse even better when someone decides to do it.
Look folks; I may not be as smart as many of you, but I recognize excitement when I see it. I have seen lot of positive posts/interaction after the HF, which led me to crawl out under my rock.
You are the leaders of this movement. So with great power comes great responsibility( and perhaps humility). We, the users, will look up to you for direction and support. We can provide support too, but we demand your honesty. Now this is not an easy thing to ask, not in today's world anyways.
We like for you to understand and be humble, that collectively Steemit as a whole is not even worth a small start-up company. I am sure you like to change that. But so far in 3 years + time, we have seen little real growth in terms of price, front-end user interface and usage. Please do not get me wrong. There are too many positive changes to list, if we like to list them, but most of them are internal to the system and few outsiders will appreciate it. I am hopeful and I trust you. I know collectively you will make this platform better. Price will follow.
There are people like me out there, if you show the positive direction of a project they will support you, with lot more than you can imagine. But show us what you can. You are already doing it.... just do it more, do it better.
PS. I up-voted for visibility. I am fortunate that I do not need income from steemit.
Hey pharesim, I regretted my snarky comment on your rant.
I'm glad that people are trying to do new things.
Hurray for shit-coin conversions!
Retaliation was always a possibility, but hopefully the majority of the community are now together in thinking the new way is better than the old.
No just the majority that are reaping the benefits of the new way which partly came at the expense of the lower tier. Yes something had to be done about bidbot abuse, guaranteed but taking from the poor and giving it to the middle class wasn't the answer.
I want to add that the concept of being poor is often even more greedy as the concept of being upper class. What I mean by that? If more are creating new accounts for exploiting a system, you see more "poor". And they are, from a perspective of quality. So the idea really is to achieve a true reputation with others and not only with "a system". Add quality, add richness to the community.
And then I want to invite the dolphins and the whales to acknowledge content creators and community supporters individually somehow with three or even more figure delegations instead of trying to "fix the poor". #newsteem
I agree with that, no doubt. It wasn't those of that mindset I was talking about. The HF change was just another example of a few bad apples wrecking it for the rest.
But leave no doubt in your mind that some of those who made it to the top did it in a similar path as those you mention of some on the bottom, by creating alt accounts to their own advantage. Writing, commenting and upvoting their own content.
Instead of hardfolking in disadvantages to the lower tier or forming exclusive circle jerk tribes their focus should be on eliminating alt (sybil) accounts.
One of the reasons they don't is because of the potential that within an unregulated system they fear someone else may be able to easily find a way to steal their bounty. They don't want to put all their eggs in one basket in a wild, wild, west atmosphere. On the other hand they have no problem seeing other people lose their eggs to save their own.
Meaning no more 50/50 rewards option so that 100% SP would be the norm?
No Steem at all I think he's referring to.
No, no more rewards in STEEM/SP at all. Rewards would be in SMT, STEEM would only work as fuel for those tokens.
There of course could be some SMT named, say, STEEEM and inherits all original STEEM setting and even an identical airdrop to all Steemians (excluding Steemit maybe lol) ... Then we will still have a "STEEEM" working ... Well, if people are willing to behave accordingly of course...
So where would the Steem created by inflation go if rewards were no longer in Steem?
Currently it’s 65% to authors/curators, 15% to hodlers of SP, 10% to witnesses, and 10% to the DAO.
Inflation would be reduced accordingly
The 65 would be gone but the 15/10/10 would remain?
Am I the only one who thinks that’s a really, really bad idea? 😅
Details aren't fleshed out, it's just an idea for now.
Why do you think it's bad? What's the continued need for a steem pool when authors and curators receive SMT?
I think keeping Steem rewards is important precisely because it's the token with utility. It has intrinsic value, that SMTs probably won't. If content is important to the platform, I think content producers being rewarded in Steem makes sense. I think Steem, the chain, works better when Steem, the coin, is distributed more widely and evenly across more people. I think Steem in too few hands was really the problem that needed to be addressed, and EIP was the solution that let symptoms be addressed without addressing the root. Like you, I think downvotes and 50/50 are positives, but I think the curve is net negative and in the long run exacerbates the problem.
We'll see.
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What's the utility of a reward token? Where's the intrinsic value in that?
Content is important to attract people. SMT can be a way to bring content. If they wouldn't, we wouldn't need them.
The chain doesn't care how widely distributed the utility token (the one providing RC) is, as long as there's a way to provide the users with the RC they need to interact, which is what RC pools will be for.
The concentration in a few hands is a problem for reward distribution only, and that can be solved better with SMT than by hoping that steem distribution will become better in the future.
What is the continued need for steem if everything converts to smteees!
As gas tokens like eth?
No, thanks.
I get the poetic justice, though.
What's the need for steem now, besides being the source for RC?
The effect would be to rather dramatically reduce the supply of new Steem, not just immediately but long into the future. If Steem Power is the fuel for Resource Credits, what happens if transactions on the Steem blockchain grow by several orders of magnitude?
The needed RC for a transaction are (simplified)
available_sp / available_blockchain_resourcesThe available resources are constant and not dependend on the SP. Less supply means you need more SP to get your share of the resources, which results in more demand for STEEM.
No, you are not alone.
That's why they are advancing it, it's their calling card. lol.
FYI Golos have adopted similar model already. They have abandoned Steem code base completely, under the hood it's an remastered EOS fork.
For posting/voting you earn golos tokens, that would be sort of "SMT".
And the system token cyber is paid to block producers only.
How is it doing? Is the user base growing? Do the tokens retain or gain value?
It's probably too early to draw conclusions after just one or two month.
It was a not-so-happy divorce, accompanied with delisting from Bittrex.
The user base is split between Golos classic, which do maintain the original code ( but "forked out" the CyberFund affiliated accounrs) and the new CyberWay blockchain with the Golos application on top of it.
The CMC seems not to be aware of the fork and just do mix data for both chains together.
Anyway the volumes are tiny and the prices are on bottom.
Afaik there's some big p2p interchanges of cyber tokens for golos classic tokens with the exchange rate 1:1 going on now.
You must be feeling like Downvote king of steemit
If steem price goes more down it will be bad for all of us and our investments
https://steemit.com/@curangel/recent-replies
The PoB concept is vastly flawed, no one will ever have enough resources to police the blockchain if mass adoption comes to happen. It's just so easy to abuse the system, I can't imagine how a sustainable economy can be built on a system with such flaws.
What do you think about having a PoW or PoS for the native coin instead? and keeping the PoB concept for SMTs?
That's the idea of getting rid of the steem reward pool mentioned in the post. I think i like it, but opinions are split as some comments here show.
You, sir, are a godsend.
There are always a hiccup when starting out a new thing, we just need to give it some time and everything will be ok.
Heh. Time alone does nothing, it requires work too. Where "just give it time" led us before the last HF is the best proof for that ;)
just trust the process!