Hardfork 21 - Steem Proposal System (SPS) + Economic Improvement Proposal (EIP)
There have been a lot of posts over the past year talking about various ideas and proposals for the next hardfork. We seem to be getting close to a point where the changes for the next HF are relatively finalized, so I wanted to share my views.
Overview
The first part of this post will provide a high level overview of the changes that are currently in the proposed HF, for anyone who is not familiar with them.
Steem Proposal System (SPS)
The SPS will work similarily to the current rewards pool, except instead of providing an unknown amount of rewards "after the fact" (once you create a post), it will allow users to get paid a predetermined amount for proposed work.
The key benefit to this is that it will allow entities (other than Steemit, Inc.) to make proposals for various things that will improve the value of Steem - such as development projects, marketing, etc. Since I joined Steem back in 2016, one thing that I have heard people say over and over again is "Steemit is not doing this" and "Steemit is not doing that". With a funding source that stakeholders can allocate towards various projects, we will now have the opportunity to pay for some of these things ourselves.
Whether it will be successful remains to be seen, but if participants and stakeholders take it seriously and use it well - there is a lot of potential to add a lot of value to the platform - for both stakeholders and users.
One of the big sticking points on this proposal is how to fund it. From what I have heard, Steemit, Inc. is planning to provide some level of "seed" money to get it going. This would be a finite amount of funds though, so there has been a lot of discussion on how to sustain the SPS fund long-term. The main idea on the table is to divert a portion (likely somewhere around 10%) of the inflation currently going into the rewards pool to the SPS fund. I realize there is a lot of controversy surrounding this - which I will touch on later on in the post.
Economic Improvement Proposal (EIP)
The EIP is the second part of HF21 that is being discussed. This is a collection of three main changes that stakeholders and witnesses have been proposing as ways to improve the economics behind Steem.
The three changes included in the EIP are explained in detail in this post from @steemitblog.
The TLDR version of the changes is:
- Moving from a linear rewards curve to a convergent linear rewards curve.
- Increasing the percentage of rewards that are distributed to curators.
- Create a separate “downvote pool.”
Opinions on HF21
Thought process behind the changes
I suspect it is going to be hard for most users to see how these changes are going to make things better for them (especially when viewed in isolation). I suspect most users will translate the changes into:
- More power for whales
- More money for whales
- Less money for authors
- More downvote abuse
Before you go down that path though, I suggest you ask yourself: Does it really seem like Steem is working well the way it is today? I feel that pretty much everyone that has been here for long enough knows that the system we have in place today is not working.
- Bid bots pretty much rule the platform.
- Very few stakeholders are spending time looking for quality contributions to reward.
- Many users who contribute a lot to the platform struggle to get any decent rewards.
- Little to no marketing is being done.
- Very few changes that users have been asking for are actually getting done.
- The STEEM price has fallen significantly from the all-time-high, and there is not much optimism for it going much higher than it is today. In fact, a lot of people are worried that it will just continue to go lower.
A lot of users, stakeholders, and witnesses have been talking about the issues surrounding Steem for years now. There have been tons of proposals and plans, but very little has been done to improve the situation since the last economic hardfork (HF16).
One thing a lot of users likely don't understand is how difficult it is to go from an "idea" to a successful hardfork. I have seen and discussed hundreds (possibly even thousands) of ideas during my time as a witness. Getting enough people to support an idea, then getting someone to actually develop + test code for it, and then getting a super-majority of witnesses go agree to adopt it is REALLY HARD.
The EIP (combined with the SPS) is not a perfect / ideal solution that is going to magically solve all of our problems. It is a culmination of several years worth of discussions among a lot of very smart users, stakeholders, witnesses, and people at Steemit, Inc though - who have all been trying to come up with a way to fix this place and make it better. It represents a consensus on items that we believe will improve the platform and that we can actually get to the finish line.
The Goal
The goal of HF21 (whether you believe it will actually work or not) is to try and make this place better for all of us. Making it better means encouraging more of the behavior that we want, and discouraging the behavior we don't want. It means more money going into the hands of users who are contributing to the value of Steem, and less money going into the hands of the users who are just here to leach. Hopefully, this leads to more value being generated - which can potentially lead to a higher STEEM price.
My Thoughts
HF21 in it's current form is not what I personally view as the best path forward. If it were 100% up to me, there are a lot of things I would do differently. Despite my objections over individual items in the proposal however, I do see the "package" of changes as a significant improvement from where we currently are.
The outcome of HF21 is impossible to predict. While we have had a lot of very smart minds talking about these changes for a very long time, the big unknown is how all of this will affect user behavior. Will we shift users into more of a mindset where the goal is to reward what we want to encourage, and penalize what we want to discourage? Or will we just end up with more of the same - users trying to maximize short-term personal gain at the expense of everyone else? I really hope that it is the former, but unless/until the changes are live - there is really no way to know.
Authors will likely complain over what appears to be a more than 50% reduction in their rewards. While I fully understand the concern, and it is 100% legitimate - I am looking at it from a much different angle. Instead about worrying about how cutting the rewards of a quality member from $10 to $5 is going to hurt retention - I want to figure out how we get to a point where that user is earning $100 or even $1000.
Will we get to that point? I don't know.
What I do know though, is we need some major changes to the system in order to even have a chance of getting there. It is not guaranteed to work by any means, but in my mind - SPS + EIP is the first step.
Speaking of "leaches", you're one of the biggest on the platform. Sitting in the top 20 witnesses doing ABSOLUTELY FUCKING NOTHING but writing this bullshit posts that says ABSOLUTELY FUCKING NOTHING and earning for it. Where's your bullshit node list nobody fucking cares about?
Go fuck yourself already Tim, worthless LEACH.
Responded on your post, since it seems like a better place to have the discussion.
where do you find the energy to keep on with this?
did I teach enough lessons for the next to go better?
We will see.
Posts like yours and the direction of where Steem is heading are PRECISELY why I am 100% powering down.
"Increasing the percentage of rewards that are distributed to curators." 25% isn't enough? If you change it to 50% there will be more people who buy Steem just to use their upvoting power to make 50% on upvoting anything. Already as it stands we know that bidbots have that exact same problem. Giving more money back to people who hold SP doesn't solve any of it. You provide no math, no facts, no proof of how arbitrarily changing it to 50% makes a difference. I don't care what your "opinion" on it is, that is worthless. Data. Facts. Metrics. I see NONE of that in your post.
"Create a separate “downvote pool.” Why? Data. Facts. Metrics. I see none of that showing why a downvote pool would help solve a problm. In fact, YOU HAVEN'T EVEN NAMED THE PROBLEM. What is the problem? Is it that your "opinion" is that there isn't enough downvotes? Lets just give MORE power to the people who regularly downvote abuse becauase they were here for the ninjamine and had millions of SP. Yeah, that will totally solve something....
Good grief. Steem is going to die by a thousand cuts of non-fact based thoughtleaders taking Steem over a cliff.
I like your style. All good counter points...
... then you kinda go on saying stuff like, "You provide no math!"
But read this again: "If you change it to 50% there will be more people who buy Steem just to use their upvoting power to make 50% on upvoting anything."
Think about that. Think long and hard.
More people buying steem. I'm thinking that's probably a... good thing? Yes. Yes, it is a good thing. No math needed there.
"Using their upvoting power to vote.." OH... MY... GOD! Not that! Why would thousands of content producers want people actually voting for their work?!?!?!
This is an outrage!
...oh... wait. No. That's actually EXACTLY what content producers want.
This place needs more content consumers. More content consumers means more money to the content producer. You do not need math for this. Picture a comedy show. Will the comedian earn more if the the chairs are empty, or full?
You entirely miss the point. The trending and hot tab is already filled with bid bottled posts. The bid bots will just make more money with more curation. Causing more power to be given to them. I dont need to show any math for that, go look.
There will be more shitposts and people buying steem to make money from voting is a ponzi scheme that cant last long term. When quality goes down due to shitposts how much will steem be worth.
Like I said I'm powering down because after 2 years I done
That's twice now, in one thread, where you said, your account here is dead... and you're leaving. Therefore, there's no point in speaking to you anymore. Don't let the door hit you on the way out.
You've made it clear, you're leaving. Goodbye. This is not a response to you, because technically, you're not here.
To anyone else. If you bought $100 worth of votes, would you be foolish enough to do it twice if on payday you realized 50% of that $100 went to someone else? "Hello ma'am. Will you please give me two quarters for this dollar bill?" Brief pause. "Why are you looking at me like that, ma'am?"
Are you going to be the sucker who purchases votes from a handful of accounts, when thousands of accounts would be willing to do it for free?
Then this character who is no longer with us goes on about shit posts, all while not being able to factor in the downvote portion of the plan... but it is me who is missing the point, somehow.
Huh...
I said I am powering down 100% and selling my Steem. I never said I was going to stop using busy.org or give up the group I run @informationwar.
I have been here for 2 years and basically not much has happend that is good. The signs all point to negative things happening. Steem laid off a bunch of people because they didn't sell their stake into USD responsibly every so often like they should have(cryptocurrency is a speculative assest with high risk). Steem generally is seen as a scam if you look where people talk about it on major crypto forums/reddit/twitter(I know Steem isn't a scam, just saying the perception is that it is by most).
Putting information onto the blockchain so that it cannot be censored is a valuable thing, that is why I am here. I have been in the cryptocurrency space since almost the very beginning of Bitcoin. I sold my Bitcoin for the same reason I am selling my Steem and buying more ETH/OMG/LOOM/BCH.
I criticize the problems with Steem because I want them to get better, not make things worse. Linear rewards suck. Current bidbot status quo sucks, but changing to 50% curation will just attract more people looking to blindly upvote anything to make profit.
If it changes to 50% curation rewards from the current 12% I may need to examine how well that does and possibly re-consider keeping SOME Steem, just so I can constantly make money from upvoting. 50% is nothing to sneeze at, the current 12% is something to sneeze at because it also has a 13 week powerdown period(which is also stupid now that we have Resource Credits).
I am pretty well versed on this entire thing from the beginning to the end. Just telling me to go away and stop talking is a weird response.
I didn't tell you to go away or stop talking. You said you're done. When someone with the name Truth says that, you take it seriously. Also, if you're in management or business and an employee consistently threatens to quit, you hold the door open for them. They're not a strong asset if all they do is crack under pressure and threaten to quit every time something goes wrong.
Why not just keep your SP around knowing full well you'll get more SP in return for helping out the things you support? Be the change you want to see. The more you support what you support, the more you'll be able to support what you support because what you support, supports you.
There's no point in focusing only on what the next scammy type character will be doing under a new set of rules when the fact is: Thousands of people want to see some positive change around here. They've wanted it for a long time. Nobody planned for the shit to hit the fan around here when previous changes were made. Nobody plans to fuck this place over. Nearly everyone wants this place to be successful, and we don't know what needs to be done to make it successful. If we did, we'd probably just do that. Doing absolutely nothing though? Not changing a damn thing? That just leaves us here.
Have a good day.
However, i did power down these same reasons.
Dear @nonameslefttouse
I actually agree with @truthforce on this one.
Those who self-upvote will not stop. They will receive less as an authors but more as curators. So it won't stop them.
At the same time bidbots will be growing twice as fast as they are growing now (after all their curation rewards will double).
Yours
Piotr
Yes you are write.
Until you can just open free account if you have 5,000 Steempower and this always again after your resource credits was refilled you just make different accounts and vote with one the other account.
For the bid bots it's even a good deal, because they get more curation reward for their votes.
"Write" or "right"? :)
right … das nächste Mal beauftrage ich das jaki01-Übersetzungsbüro bevor ich einen Kommentar schreibe :-)
Here is the weird thing. @steemhunt actually has solved virtually every single perceived problem mentioned above and nobody is talking about it. I think I'll b writing a post on this. I made this poll and you can take a look at the responses: https://dpoll.xyz/detail/@vimukthi/are-you-more-of-a-content-creator-or-an-investorgamercurator-how-do-your-perceive-hf-21/
oof
Dear @truthforce
I hate to say that, but I see it exactly the same way. Those who self-upvote will not stop. They will receive less as an authors but more as curators. So it won't stop them.
At the same time bidbots will be growing twice as fast as they are growing now (after all their curation rewards will double).
Yours
Piotr
Buying votes for 'promotional purposes' is a farce. People buy votes because the vote seller offers a potential ROI but no guarantee. Explain to me who would buy a vote if the seller was to get more and the buyer nothing? For what purpose would someone buy a vote?
Dear @nonameslefttouse
I absolutely agree. It'a a farce. However upvoting published content to trending page gives people hope to get some exposure and traffic.
That's obviously my own opinion.
Yours
Piotr
Which is why people should be curating and voting quality up to the trending page, instead of all the crap paid programming we see there today. Thousands left because they had no hope of ever making it here. If I can go out and buy the trophy that says I'm the best golfer in the world, I don't even need to learn how to golf.
I do think that everybody starts with the same mindset, just like politicians. They start with the idea writing good quality posts (or at least the best they can) and curating good posts! But when there account grows, their mindset changes and do find a more effective way to increase their steem power. As a result they will be manual voting less often.
The lesser SP an account has, the more they will do manual upvoting.
I do also forsee that voting bots will change their business case into curation bots! Probably they will vote on the posts from people who do delegate SP to them. In that case the users don't need to buy votes directly but them will get them because they delegate. The profit the bot makes with curating will be shared under the delegators.
I did start around 1.5 years ago. And still I am not earning much. I do feel that they bigger accounts, besides a few exception, aren't manually curating, which brought us in this situation!
Personally I do think that the 50/50 split will discourage a lot of authors to write posts. In HF20, they would earn for instance 1 steem, while after HF21 this would be dropped to 0.5 steem. Most of us do have probably a limit which they do find it worth it to post, so lot's of them will dropp out. The bigger account won't do the manual curating, they will probably keep on using tools like smartsteem or delegate to curating bots.
In this scenario, one can think that more people will vote on more different post from more different authors but I doubt it.
I myself haven't been discovered by lots of whales or Orca's. So in my case value of my posting will stay the same, but they return 25% Steem, SP or SBD. While I do want to look at the bigger picture, because a strong steem is good for all of us, I will keep on writing, but lot's will just stop!
Cheers,
Peter
me too, powering down. You fucking people SUCK.
From one artist to another, I just want to suggest you give it more thought and some time. You need eyes on your work and by the sounds of things, this plan could help with that. Right now, many potential curators choose to be paid to look away. The proposed changes offer incentives to get paid to look.
In the arts and entertainment world, these changes are much like offering a standup comedian a smaller cut on a slow night because the venue is offering consumers drink specials. The drink specials are there to fill the house, the performer ends up earning more by accepting a smaller percentage because the seats are full. Had the venue not offered the drink specials as an incentive for people to show up, the performer would have taken home far less money, even if offered the full cut, because the seats were empty.
We have too many empty seats here at the moment. Too many performers, not enough content consumers. Everyone is in the back, waiting to go on stage, to perform in front of an empty house. Back room is packed. Something needs to be done to change that, or we go out of business. I've been saying this now for a very, very long time. If it works, it works. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work. Personally, I prefer to see people succeed. Standing room only. People hanging from the rafters.
I guess the downvotes are there because every venue needs a bouncer to handle the drunken riffraff.
You hit the bulls eye
interesting. The hard forks have always reduced the value of my account. I am sick of it. I see you have been on here about as long as I have. I don't see where they have ever done any good. It's pathetic. I already actually powered down a while ago and had done nothing - that's why I am plankton instead of a minnow 3 - which I could never get beyond - but even powered down, I am making more money now than I ever have on a regular basis - but it's more to do with having found my community in eco-train than these idiots antics which have basically drowned us... and the google ads make it even worse.
I used to ask why, rather than purchasing votes, why don't these folks just flag my work into oblivion, for free, because the end result is the same.
Me publishing a post that includes art is much like putting up a display behind my shop windows. People are to walk by and notice it, then maybe step into my blog and browse around. Unfortunately, since they started selling votes, I put my work up behind the windows, and some asshole comes along and plasters shit posters and advertisements all over the glass, meaning people can no longer see what I've done.
I went from working my ass off, starting with nothing, working up to having the odd organic trending post from time to time... to nearly losing it all. That was all due to the people being paid to look away, and those offering the incentive to earn by looking away. What is any form of art and entertainment without the eyes and ears looking and listening? The views come first, then the money. That's the only way this business works, and thousands of years of history prove that, but somehow these folks who don't really know much about the arts and entertainment or its potential to generate billions yearly concluded it would be better to earn a few hundred or maybe a few thousands measly dollars selling votes. Blame the platform, blame those in charge... but let's not forget about the actions of the people as well. I'm looking at a lot of those folks who are getting paid to look away, and they're not even here to see me staring at them. An attention economy.. LOL! And these folks pay people to look away. Common sense says that's sabotage.
You are making a lot of sense. I won't lie I just passed my first year on steem. I have grown my account with the use of bots and vote services due to the clear fact that they looked like they worked. But only once a week so I go around looking at posts. I spend all my time running my blog and working with bots cause it was the best way to grow it. I talk to the people that enter my stuff but that is about it. This change would cause me to want to pull back my delegated steem. To start to look for content I like to vote for. The only issue I see is moving it to 50% won't work well with the rule that the biggest account to vote for it first gets the biggest cut. I really wish they would address that to just the biggest cut of the pie, not no one who votes after gets any of my pie. I never really understood why that was here.
I don't agree with such a drastic drop in author rewards. But that was a very nicely point argument.
LMAO!
As someone who spent the better part of two years as a curator on steem, the curator system is broken. 25% of curation rewards goes to who ever gives the quickest biggest vote. Curators don't get paid enough, it's possible that his proposed solution isn't good enough, but it's for sure that good curators make very little for their time.
Yes, and that could be solved if we had a system that was similar to how Witnesses work. A Curator Council type thing, where people vote for curators. Curators would get extra rewards depending on how many votes they had, bad curators would lose votes.
I think the fact that bad witnesses get voted out and good witnesses voted in proves that type of system largely works already. It could do with some adjustments of course.
That's actually what we're trying to do with the HoboDAO. But it will be specialized for decentralized journalism. However, nothing prevents any communities from copying our design and doing it for art, music or whatever.
Good stuff! Good luck in that endeavor!
Thank you for this post Tim, at least someone is being a leader... I think you should run with this post Tim and try to rally people behind you as a brand, you can for sure be the face of steem right now if no one else is, like you could inspire so much confidence with a 10 min weekly video post, explaining this plan for HF21
Hf21 could be what saves steem price and gets us users marketing, so many things could be built into steem to market from inside the chain using its own users to post across legacy social media in return for steem-engine tokens etc ,
glad your offering solutions...
nice
We all need to look at the reality that which is staring us in the face and remember the golden rule -- "THOSE WHO OWN THE GOLD... MAKE THE RULES".
Why do I mention this?
Because Steemit doesnt have an Economic System Problem... it has a Cash flow MONEY problem. We have been debating bit bots, curation rewards, author rewards ect for years... Trying to implement some new changes to this system is not solving the problem. We need to solve the problem at a whole new paradigm.... which is Get More Money into STEEM ASAP. Why? Because if Steem was at $10 curators could afford to give more upvotes... authors could afford to spend more time at posts and not complain about the $3 the are earning because now they are earning $30... Ask yourself if Steem was at $10 TODAY would you be whining about all of the above? Maybe... but not nearly as much as when the price is at .42 cents
PS- I am not trying to start an argument and I am 100% behind this community and all of those who work incredibly hard to keep this place going.
You're not behind this community. Your advice to newcomers at one point was to basically show up, purchase STEEM, then hand that STEEM over to you and other vote sellers. You lied in your videos and said this would help and lead to their success here on this platform. Thousands of people were duped into taking part in this mess. They don't have any STEEM, they don't have successful blogs, as a matter of fact, once many realized it was all BS, they left... and they probably left for good feeling embarrassed that they fell for your bullshit. Now, I'm not trying to start an argument because at this point, there is no argument left. STEEM isn't $10 today but it nearly was before this mess you helped create. Yes, you. Deal with your reality. If it bothers you that much that you might have to actually lift a finger to HELP someone around here, for free or simply because you enjoy what they do... leave. It's not that hard to replace you with someone better, someone who actually gives a crap.
P.S. We're not all blinded by dollar signs around here.
First of all, seeing a problem, or attempting to solve a problem... that's not whining. Especially at this point in time, once we can literally see the results, writing off these grievances as simple petty whining is only putting your ignorance out on display, for all to see. I was one of the many from way back in the day, when the price of STEEM was at its all time high, sitting here, poking and prodding at the potential problems I was seeing. Here's an example, and I didn't stop there. So what if I made over $100 for the post because the value was high. That didn't mean the problems I saw suddenly went away. We're not children here and you can't just dangle a lollipop in front of our faces to make it all better.
One true comment in a sea of bollocks! How they love to insert their heads up their own arses...
great guidelines
The two real reasons why people leave Steemit. 1) no money 2) hateful comments/downvotes. Instead of bashing everything I say why don’t you invest in more Steem if you’re so behind the community... I have 6X more Steem power than you...
I didn't bash everything you said, I simply put you in your place. Now you want to challenge me to a pissing competition? Are we twelve years old? I can play that game.
Here's you:
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Nobody gives a shit about you, Mr Community.
Here's me:
I win again. Go buy some candles and build me a shrine, bitch. ;)
Yep!
nice
Anyway, that was pretty low. Pretending to be a man of the people, then crapping on anyone with 25600SP or less; treating us as if we're not worthy enough to be here.
Didn't your parents teach you not to play with fire?
AWESOME, now I remember what Steemit was like when there were real people posting and commenting, before a bunch of geeks fully took over and it all turned to shit - those were the days!
It's great to see you still have testicles and things - geeks don't have those...
Those were the days, my friend. I thought they'd never end.
That whole line about people leaving... because of hateful comments? What planet are you on? This is Earth, correct? Have you ever ventured into the comment section under ANY Youtube video? Are those content producers bitching and moaning about the MILLIONS upon MILLIONS of screwed up feedback they receive?
Is playing the victim card like that all you have left in your deck? Are you so accustomed to only making attempts to appeal to the naive newcomer that you've forgotten what industry you're in. What kind of role model are you? You want to be doing this kind of thing, grow a pair. Anyone who's anyone in this industry is someone partially due to the fact their skin is like armor. Thick. Your thick skull will get you nowhere in life, Joe. If those folks leave because of words written by some random they'll never meet, this wasn't for them to begin with.
You're so full of shit that your eyes are brown. Up there you say:
Years! It's probably time to take action, no? Maybe do something about it, be proactive, be honest, see where we screwed up, attempt to fix it? You're not even willing to acknowledge the issues. Walking around with blinders on. How are we all supposed to fix this, or anything, if an investor such as yourself isn't willing to make improvements? The best people in this world have failed more times than you've even TRIED, Joe. Are you afraid of failure? We made mistakes here! There, I said it! I don't feel like less of a man for saying that. We grow from here. Hit rock bottom and there's only one direction left to go, Joe. Up. Are you telling me you can't get it up, man? Come on. Take your pills and lets fix this place... maybe make a new shiny baby we can all love.
Yeah... that's about it.
Add to that 3) mostly totally crap content 4) their friends have all quit 5) "featured" posts at the top of their feed 6) bots from end to end doing many of the comments as well as nearly all the voting 7) watching a platform being trashed is a bit of a downer 8) and listening to geeks going on about their back ends all the time and watching them pay themselves with money they have essentially stolen from the work of the actual content creators really grates a bit too...
Way to lose your last ounce of dignity with that comment.
lol
We can see where your version of this game leads us, here.
Bring back the whale experiment.
If Steem was at $10 would you retire your shitty bid bot? Everybody who doesn’t own a bid bot agrees they are destroying the community.
?
When the price goes up more people will come and the same problems will remain.
Joe I think you have to consider how the votes you sell are used. I see a lot of shitposts who have bought them. Others operate blacklists and I would hope you could too. The short-term profits for you may not be worth it. Of course there are other vote sellers who give even bigger votes and do not blacklist.
My bot has blacklist protection... if it doesn’t please msg Matt as he runs my bot - I’m sure he can help
You contradicted yourself in less than 7 words.
Does your bot have a blacklist, or not.
Clearly you don't know.
Join us, stop farming us, eh?
Do you really need money bad enough to take food out of the mouths of our Venezuelan users just so that you can appear popular?
I feel bad doing it, and i live in a tin box.
Smdh.
Nice
How can an account with one post get reputation 39? ;-)
Quality vs. quantity?
Reputation system is based on total upvote value received and the reputations of those that granted the upvotes. Getting more than $1 in votes on that one comment propels my reputation upward.
Lets boost it further ☕️
Posted using Partiko iOS
Rich friends,...
Thank you very much tim, for a balanced thoughtful presentation of the ideas.
The amount of funding if the SPS is funded by inflation is also an important part.
While I am not strongly opposed to the bucket of changes, and can't support them until I hear how some of the details are worked out.
I much appreciate and honest break down of the issues.
Very dangerous ground in my opinion to drop them both at once and try to figure out which changes are having which impact.
Also, no one outside cares about this.
Edited to add:
Please tell me how other chains you are invested in handle their specific inflation POS or POW. (It's not the point, the point is most people don't know and don't care enough to have them memorized.
For sure. These changes are scorched earth and way too much at once. There might be some good aspects in there, but as a basket, this is pure poison. The more I've learned this week, I've gone from a soft and uncomfortable "yes" to a firm "no". Not only will the changes kill content; they also eliminate any remaining reason to own SP.
Actually, quiet the opposite IMHO.
Currently those without SP can easily upvote whatever with bid bots.
They earn (see: negative cost of promotion which itself is riddiculous).
Bit bots earn. Content, thus authors are irrelevant.
Even great posts earn very little if you look at organic vote values, because SP holders can easily profit on a behavior we don't want to see here. We want them to profit on a desired behavior. Pretty much this:
It's not that ridiculous,
Bidbots were a pain to use for normal people until not long ago
The current profit of about 5% has to be considered in the context of sending liquid and receiving vests.
No downvote mean that risking 95% for a 5% gain isn't even being countered on bad content.
@whatsup , @donkeypong , @gtg, true true and true , : too early to really have a conclusive opinion , too much at once and indeed, a picture of a steak gets about the same as a metafysical treaty on time or how to see anarchy lol ... in the end however, as systems and humans go, it does stand to reason that those in power will not vote for anything that damages themselves . . . bidbots and profit ? heh ... if you did that math, i did that for a while, its very dependen on the price over seven days, you get curation which isnt a set percentage, if you get 1% on top you're probably voting with small bots, who don't really make a dent in the pool with their value, if you go to the higher up actual profit from the vote itself becomes unlikely as their margins are lower.
I don't consider them evil things, they're just part of the system because the system has it in it. If any of the new rules are prone to anything that can be used, it will be done, thats just how it goes. If you make a bet on tipu or the bigger one for 50 dollar or more you're unlikely to get your 50 dollar back unless , as done with hitsingles since the beatles your position in the top ten shouts * -> popular <-* , musthave :p
If you look at steemit as a social media platform then the importance of bulk here seems to be highly underrated due to some elder rules instated at the start when it all came for free and the top witness could basically rake it in by sleeping. You can not expect 99% of posts to be world-changing, thats not how things are, but you need the bulk or you're left with a platform with a few 1000 posts a day because no one bothers and you get better money from youtube or something. it IS about the money after all, right thats what it says on the frontpage ... i doubt you reach much of the 'general populace' if i may be so bold as to call it that, considering the number of reactions you get here i'd say it's safe to say most do indeed not care to be engaged.
Halving author rewards in order to promote bigger entities ... that does sound indeed close to sponsoring the big five with money from the little billion (million in this case)
but until it's implemented and tested it's gonna be really hard to say. Any externsice plan, the more its planned ahead and the more complicated it gets gains also by that more chance at flaws and failures, purely statistical, so ...
here's hoping it goes gradually, not over one single fork and seriously considered with an option to rollback in a very short time the moment ugly beetles and backdoors no one thought of (which is normal) start popping up. It's better to go steady than to go fast, if steem stays around a dollar than so be it, it's not limited amount anyway
AND (lol)
It's not the smallfry who will bottom out the price, if all the plankton with steem accounts would sell of everything by tomorrow i doubt it would make much of a dent.
It needs to stay attractive for the general user, that's a fact but as for the rest i havent read nearly enough of the included links and im probably five posts behind on steemitblog itself, so im not gonna start making suggestions or anything, and beside i'm nobody anyway but thanks @timcliff , i think you're one of the first witnesses i voted on here, you're pretty level, i can appreciate that :D
the thing where it says separated downvote pool sounds scary but i havent read up on it, i personally have been a hudge fan of removing negative voteweight but havent studied the whitepaper either so i dont even know if that's possible : my point being if you succeed in onboarding huge brandnames that compete ... coca/pepsi, to name two, you can't have that ...
gud, and here i was not going to talk ... im gonna continue a bit on my brand lol, eta due 2050 i think, if by then it's still worth the time hahah
(sick sense of humour, j/k, we'll see, i just seriously hope they take it easy and one step at a time and don't get caught up in some dopamine-rush, that could end with a serious hangover)
el Gato out :p
Not only do they not work on SMTs, but the things they are working on will destroy this chain...
don't forget... "We think, mostly hope". :)
Exactly.... sp owners will be loosers... even the whales like steemit inc will be loosers even though they hold many... as the price of steem will collapse after everyone went to MEOS...
Didnt expect such a strong stance from you. 😁
Im still trying to form an opinion. Some people close to me hate this but i think that those people that are proposing this like Kevin will start curating more.
Maybe that helps make it better for everyone?
Im starting to do really well again on steem so i hope i wont lose it all with this change. ☺
Exactly. And if earlier Hard Forks are any indication, very hard to get such implementation reversed once it’s in place.
From what I've gathered, it seems the most likely long-term funding source for the SPS will be 10% of the total inflation. This would be "paid for" by reducing the amount of inflation that goes into the rewards pool from 75% to 65%.
With this change, the inflation would be:
Again, this gets into "my way" vs. "consensus" way. I'd prefer to see them split up too, but there are also some valid reasons to justify combining them.
could you explain the valid reasons for combining these changes, please?
I would prefer to separate out SPS and EIP, but that gets into what I said about the change not being 100% done the way I want it to be.
The main two reasons that I see are:
-We are trying to change the culture of behavior. This is more difficult than just tweaking math. When the changes are bundled together, then the package as a whole is more likely to cause users to think and act differently than if we did them one at a time.
Okay, thanks.
So effectively, we’d really be changing from 75/25 to 45/45 rather than 50/50, i.e., author rewards would be falling even more than most people realize?
That is a disaster for smaller accounts, as they can´t get out much of curation either!
Did nobody consider, that Steem´s future is dependent on the - now - small accounts?
The math works out a little bit differently, but basically yes. As I said in the post, a "more than 50% reduction".
You’re right.
Currently, 0.75x0.75 (authors) and 0.75x0.25 (curators) of inflation.
Post-HF21, 0.65x0.50 and 0.65x0.50
So author rewards would be going from the current 56.25% of inflation to 32.5% of inflation, and curation rewards would change from the current 18.75% of inflation to 32.5% of inflation.
That is closer :) It technically gets even more complicated because 100% of the curation does not go to curators (if votes are placed within the first 15 minutes). But it is the correct line of thought.
Change from 56.25% to 32.5% is only 42.22% reduction.
#sbi-skip
I'm not tech minded before I continue, and thanks for all this info in the post by the way, but has anyone ever thought about having not just one reward pool? Just something that popped to mind, could it be possible to somehow have multiple reward pools and so all the users are not all dependent on just one that can get drained too easy?
The reward pool never drains - its made of a special kind of magic called inflation. This inflation fills it everyday and then using another special power, this one called division, distributes it perfectly to all the sources. It literally can never be drained!
Oh yes! Of course! The 60k daily steem? I wonder though if somehow to have a graded system of different reward pools from the fresh tokens produced somehow separately allocated to accounts based on something like ...... ? I get lost at this point :)
Yes but we have to wait for SMTs to get that. Each coin will have its reward pool.
I might be wrong in this but from what i gather for steem to work as intended, people need to power up as much steem as possible and people need an incentive to do this. The result is liquid steem comes off the exchanges, and incentivises curators which are the source of all the pay outs and so encourages content creators. The price of steem should then rise as it becomes less available in liquid form.
In theory, yes. You're not that far off here. This hasn't happened as much as people would like, but you have the core concept down.
I'm very much opposed to the move to increase curation at the expense of the authors. The curation is nothing more than a race to vote, not actual consuming content and moving the better content to more visibility.
I've already witnessed at least one larger stakeholder flat out saying that if the move is made, he will buy more Steem and run more curation BOTS. So how exactly is that getting more eyes on content? He's at least being honest about his intentions while pushing for the split.
The bidbots will continue to flourish and earn even more. So much for changing that behaviour.
Content creators see that cut in their share of rewards and will re-evaluate if their efforts are worthwhile on this platform. Some of the better ones will move on to other venues.
IF those proposing the changes are all that sure they are correct on the outcome, then move in smaller increments, like 65/35.
IF, and that is a huge IF, there is a corresponding increase in curation and upvoting of decent content, then the content creators will welcome a future change.
IF the projected changes don't happen, then the hit the content creators have taken is not as large.
A lot of content creators (especially the better ones) hold their earnings on the platform as an investment. If you hit those earnings hard enough for them to leave or cut back, that is stake not held.
Curation bots will try to find good content so that people upvote the same content. If they upvoted it first, they will get even more rewards. So, this will make curation bots prop up good content instead of bidbots upvoting any content.
There is no way bots can find good content. How they can evaluate a great photo made by steemian? They will upvote the users that consistently make posts with hight payouts (thanks to bidbots).
lol, how could you actually believe this? Curation bots vote on accounts that have a lot of Steem or which use bidbots. Humans curate.
How will the bots find good content?
ML?
AI?
And who trains the bot?
Where’s the training data from?
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Price of STEEM has nothing to do with who gets paid and everything to do with how STEEM functions as a currency. There is a growing number of exchanges trading cryptocurrency that don't trade STEEM. Until an effort is put into place to increase STEEM dominance as a currency on exchanges, it will continue to drop. All the hare forks in the world will not make a difference. Go ahead and have your hard fork. You will see.
Myself and others have put a lot of work into trying to get Steem listed on more exchanges.
I recognize that, but you are aware that relating the hard fork proposal to an increase in STEEM price is misleading. Hell, even the name EIP implies improvement in price.
I’m not sure what specifically you are referring to. I’m not the one who came up with the name. In terms of hoping that improving the economics of the blockchain will potentially increase the STEEM price - I’m pretty sure everyone involved wants that and is hoping for that. Whether it will actually happen is out of our control.
Bad idea. Whales becomes much stronger.
Bad idea. I can sell my upvotes if I need get more money. Curation rewards and bidbots is bad combination.
Not so bad. Flag wars is problem.
On current moment we necessary Resource Credit delegation tool for mass adoption.
(On current moment we necessary Resource Credit delegation tool for mass adoption.)
Great point, I think that one gets forgotten!
This proposal is a steeming pile of hot garbage. You're tinkering around with rewards incentives that pull rewards away from authors to the tune of 25% without addressing the biggest problem Steem has.
EASE OF USE.
You want to make Steem better, make it easier for newbies. Every one I've signed up has given up within two days of using the platform because they get confused and frustrated! They don't get enough initial SP to vote enough to explore and they leave!
Meanwhile, you're proposing taking more rewards away from me and fellow authors. I spend HOURS creating thoughtful content. Researching, writing, photo editing, video creation, et al and you want to make it even harder for me to earn my small rewards?!
This "big picture" mentality truly misses the point. Without authors, you have NOTHING. Absolutely nothing and if you make it less desirable to create, authors will leave. Coupled with a lack of focus on end user experience and you've got a poison pill and then it's bye-bye, Steem.
Not disagreeing with you that this is super important. I've done a lot myself to try and improve this, but fully acknowledging there is a long ways to go.
It is not really my goal. I actually want authors such as yourself who are contributing value to the platform to be rewarded more. The biggest problem that you face (from my point of view) is there are very few users with enough stake for their votes to count spending time to find your content and vote on it. There is little economic incentive for them to do so. Instead, they mostly delegate their stake to bid bots, and authors who are working hard to make this place better are for the most part getting ignored.
The goal of these changes is not to take money away from authors, but to try and update the incentives structure so that more stakeholders actually upvote your content.
It is hard to see how this will work when the changes are looked at in isolation, and it is also possible that things may not work out as intend. I fully acknowledge that the end result of all this may end up being worse off than things are today - but I assure you my intent behind this is not for that to happen.
... and in future they will join automated curation trails which are upovting stuff from popular users who are earning anyway.
Who isn't curating manually now, won't do that if he gets 50 % curation rewards.
A real curator loves what he is reading and will curate anyway, he doesn't care if curation rewards are 50 or 25 %.
When I upvote stuff I upvote it because I like it. I don't care when I upvote (if for example after exactly 15 minutes), and how many other users have already uptoved that post.
I intentionally seek posts from new and/or unknown authors to give them a dollar or two.
With 50 % curation rewards I can't give them the same amount in future, because then I myself will get a big part of my own upvote back (as curation) instead of being able to support the authors! Sounds ironic anyhow: then I want but cannot anymore support people ...
Why do 'stake holders' care so much about their ROI? What does it help to get a bigger part of a cake which is getting smaller and smaller? I prefer to have a smaller part of a huge cake. :)
If I knew it would let the STEEM price increase significantly, I would accept not to earn one single STEEM from now on. :)
Any why would it increase the STEEM price to seek and upvote posts from new and unknown authors manually? Because a rich pool of satisfied users would also make STEEM much more interesting for larger investors in the long run than it still is today, interesting to place advertisements read by many, to market products, to disseminate information. The value of a (social) network is measured among others by the number of its users.
More thoughts are to be found here.
That is where we are trying to go with the package of changes.
Unfortunately, one of the big disconnects with the economics of the platform is that more users does not directly translate to more demand for STEEM. Even with things such as advertisements, it is the companies who are running them (such as Steemit, Inc.) who are getting all the revenue. Stakeholders don’t see a dime of profit/revenue from advertisements.
Hm ... but imagine that @aggroed (as an example for a company owner) is posting about Steem Monsters, and not 50 people are reading it (where 5 start playing Steem Monsters) but 5000 (where 500 start playing Steem Monsters and buying cards) ...
Or imagine a news paper is considering to open a STEEM account to find new ways to monetize its content ... There have to be enough readers of the articles then ...!
So normally for every business owner and investor the amount of users on a potentially used platform should play a role.
What do you think about the automated way of upvoting ... do you believe a significant number of stake holders would really start to seek, read and upvote posts manually?
As I stated elsewhere, I am not completely against EIP - I hope the best together with you - but maybe I am just skeptical by nature (and by the experience I made here) ... :)
I am skeptical too. I’m not going to sit here and try to promise that this will fix all our problems. The best I can do is explain what the changes are and what our desired (and hopefully expected) results will be.
You are doing that very well. And in addition you listen and answer to the people who are commenting your article.
Last thing (for now): what do you think about retaliation flags?
For example the comment directly on top under your article - I guess normally you would flag it: a self-upvoted, insulting comment, but you know very well what would happen then ... and if in future downvotes will be really cheap (or better to say: give you some rewards), what do you think some whales are going to do then? :)
I think there should be an elected committee with lots of delegated SP (for example from Steemit, Inc.) to be able to discuss, decide about and counter abusive whale flags if necessary. Only then a downvote pool made sense in my opinion.
I don't intend to criticize anybody, but just would like to give some input and hope some of these ideas may become object of witness discussions in future.
They will always be a problem to some extent, and they might get worse under the new proposal.
This is a good idea, and something I would support. The SPS could potentially fund such an organization if stakeholders viewed it as important enough to fund.
Tim,
I fully believe your intentions and goals are good, but the literal outcome, both big and small picture, will be to reduce the rewards that are allocated towards creators, and put Curators on the same compensatory playing field with Creators, full stop. This is an unacceptable reorientation of the rewards system.
Ask yourself: why is it that people go on doing this curation function for free on Facebook and Twitter - and every other free social network before them - and yet for some reason we have to financially incentivize the same behavior on Steem? It's not because of rewards allocations are misaligned, but because the system is idiot proof and shareable in the former and not on Steem. That's it! If the top 20 witnesses pooled their efforts to fix that singular problem, things would dramatically change on this platform. Instead, you're wringing your hands about figuring out how to pay people for the same damn thing people do on other platforms because the refuse to do it here. Does that make any sense to you at all? Because it doesn't make sense for 100% of everyone I've ever gotten to get an account who have quit. They all give the same reason. They love the idea, but hate the execution of Steem. It's confusing and they aren't allowed to vote and share enough upon their initial exploration of the platform. They don't have time to learn it and get frustrated by the most basic of functions.
For the love of all that is good on the platform, stop thinking in economic terms for a moment and consider what regular folks want out of a platform. They want it to be easy. They want it to be fun. They want to be able to choose their own experience. They don't have time to learn what hardcore enthusiasts like ourselves take the time to learn and what the ins and outs of their economic rewards are going to be. You need to invert your priorities.
As an anecdotal point of evidence, consider what I do for a living. I make movies and TV. I regularly screen my work and we regularly take feedback from fans of the TV show I'm on to better their experience. Sometimes you have to know when to say that the audience is wrong, but they often aren't. When someone tells me that the end of my film made them feel confused, I know that something is WRONG and I do my best to fix it within reason. When the audience of my TV show say, "we hate this" we do our best to address what they want within reason.
The same goes for social media. People regularly tell me what they HATE about Steem and what they love. I've raised this issue before with others, but what you're proposing here is literally missing the target as derived from real feedback from real people who can't execute because of the way the user experience is designed. Your solution to this "lack of curation problem", is to diminish creator rewards? Now you're fucking with MY user experience... and my money... and the principle of the matter. I can't tell you how infuriating this proposal is.
Focus on user experience, and user experience alone, and stop fucking with the rewards system. Make the experience effortless for newbies and the curation will come, just like on the platforms where people spend hours a day for free.
I’m not really going to try and argue with you, because I think we have a fundamentally different view on the situation..
This is one of the main reasons why Steem is such a different animal. With the distribution of stake that we have, it doesn’t really matter much what most users are doing. What matters (in terms of rewards) is what the large stakeholders do. They are looking at this more from an investment perspective, and what we have found in practice is that the “average” investor does not care about discovering content, and instead are more concerned over ROI.
I’m not disagreeing that ease of use is not (also) a major issue. From my perspective though, the ability to earn rewards for their contributions is even bigger of an issue for a large portion of users. It is a problem that I believe is necessary to solve in order for our community to substantially grow.
You’re not going to argue with me because you’re incapable of providing evidence to support any of the claims you - and others like you - make for this rewards change. You supposedly have talks with other witnesses and stakeholders. I don’t see any logs of these chats or videos of the chats or who was party to them. Whether there was a consensus or not. I don’t see any outreach on Reddit or Twitter from you. I don’t see any scientific polling or studies. You claim self-voting is a problem when only 6.4% of total votes are self-voted, a tiny problem by my estimation. You claim the price of Steem is somehow related to these rewards distribution without evidence. You claim that what really matters are large stakeholders. You just claim these things.
I have invested what capital I can in Steem and the rest I earn by posting and you are trying to make it harder for people like me to earn my way.
You just can’t see it because your paycheck depends on not seeing it.
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I am not presenting evidence because I don’t have any. I’m not trying to argue with you and say you are wrong and I am right. I am basing my decision on my own observations and understanding of how the stakeholders are behaving under the current incentives structure. My hope is that the new incentives structure will change stakeholder behavior.
Where have I ever said this?
I don’t think I said this either.. The price of STEEM is 100% based on the supply and demand for STEEM. All I can do is speculate on what forces drive demand.
Again, where did I say this?
I have told you already - I am not. My goal is actually to try and increase the amount of money that authors (who are contributing and adding value) make.
I don’t know what you are implying, but I am free to vote on this hardfork however I would like. I am 1000 times more concerned about my paycheck going down due to the price of STEEM going down than I am of loosing witness votes for voting a certain way on this hardfork. You are correct that I am voting a certain way because my paycheck depends on it - just not in the way you think. I want the price of STEEM to go up (not down) which is why I am planning to vote yes.
Numerically speaking, changing the split from 75/25 to 50/50 is a 33% reduction to the author portion and if one factors in the budget redirection to SPS, it is a bit more, but still less than 50%.
To be more specific 75% of 75% is 56% of total inflation going to authors now (ignoring reverse auction, which increases this a bit). 50% of 65% is 32.5% (again ignoring reverse auction). So the net reduction is 42%.
This ignores changes in the economy and behavior and significantly overstates what authors are receiving now. Rewards from votes that the author pays for don't count.
Thanks for mentioning the real numbers. I guess over time the significant increase in number of daily downvotes will (at least for most authors) lead to nearly the same rewards as we now have. If all works out as intended, even to more.
That plus the increased curation rewards looks like a big step in the right direction. Time will tell, but overall I think we are headed in the right one with HF21.
The problem is that most people don't dare to downvote, anyway, because of fear of retaliation. (In the post My STEEM Vision. I wrote more about the problem.)
If downvotes will generate (additional) curation rewards in future I may create a new (peaceful, not retaliating) account just to downvote it regularly. :-)
Yes, that's true, especially for smaller SP holders, but I guess larger accounts will build/use kind of automatic downvote services (maybe targeted at 'overpaid' authors on the trending page) to maximize their own rewards.
Maybe some people will even create an extra (unrelated) account for not having to risk their main account being targeted.
Actually, I had such an extra account just for flagging whales ... but it had not enough STEEM power to make any difference. :)
It could. As noted, this is a baseline estimate ignoring changes to behavior and a very large portion of the pool now goes to paid votes and self-voting, meaning not much left for actual rewards to authors in practice.
However, no guarantees.
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