Why Rampant Cheating in Casino Steemit Could Bring Down The House
And how a simple fix to the algorithm will prevent it!
Steemit uses casino psychology to attract users
This is directly stated in the whitepaper.
The fact that everyone “wins something” plays on the same psychology that casinos use to keep people gambling. In other words, small rewards help reinforce the idea that it is possible to earn bigger rewards.
We see the money raining on certain users and want to play until our number is called. This is pure genius and is the #1 reason Steemit has exploded thus far.
But an existential threat is lurking and has begun to rear its ugly head.
We're witnessing regular cheating, not just by stacked decks but by direct handouts
As "gamblers" in the casino we may be crazy, but we're not all stupid and we certainly don't like being shown up. Basically when people see obvious cheating over and over they stop feeling the rush of action and start feeling sick to the stomach.
Unfortunately for Casino Steemit, the pain doesn't stop there. In this casino, the players and dealers actually own the house. So when they get sick - honest dealers (good whales) and players (minnows) alike - they won't just leave. They'll Power Down and sell their STEEM faster than you can say,
I am sitting in a coffee shop and the dude next to me just showed me he made money off Steemit so I'm going to see what this is about. It's hard not to be skeptical.
And we'll have a Black Swan event aka Bank Run aka Market Crash in the price of STEEM
Then we'll have a new name for the whales.
Bag Holders.
One quick fix can save our ship
The days of 1 vote, instant $700 reward need to end. That isn't curation, it's a handout.
That vote needs to be affirmed by other votes -- ie, consensus on the quality of the content -- in order to carry that same $700 weight.
In the absense of consensus, it needs to be worth more like $7, ie orders of magnitude less.
Are you in my slack??? There's a quote up there from it...
This is salient and it's a key thing that the whales have to balance. They can break this whole thing.
It seems like the voting design WILL have to change. It's too top heavy.
I'm not in your slack no. I don't think you're trying to suggest anything untoward but for everyone reading: this is 100% original writing
I'm glad we agree about the thrust of the post. Cheers!
Oh I didn't mean to suggest that at all! I was wondering which person was using @btcwagering as a handle ;). Cheers!
I'd be happy to join your slack... marketing@btcwagering.com
I suggested elsewhere that the curation reward should be divided over all posts within the allotted time frame, i.e 10 likes gets more of the reward than something with 5 likes. Makes a lot more sense to do it that way. The only problem would be people making bots to like their posts 100 times in an hour. If their were ID checks you could stop this and authenticate users. That's my solution.
You make a very good observation. I also think self-voting should not be allowed once you get over a certain level of SP - otherwise you instantly get to dominate the postings if you are a whale which seems to go against the whole idea of posts being curated, since one whale self-vote can propel a post to the top of the trending list.
Or better yet, simply eliminate self-voting entirely. I'm not sure why it is even available as an option.
Could not agree more. Great point about self-voting!
Bear playing Casino with some cats
Keep guessing soon you will get it Right
I do like the idea of a combination of factors contributing to earned value.
Thanks. I predict we'll see this implemented within 3 months or the results could be disastrous.
Look at that, if you want to laugh
https://steemit.com/video/@uwe69/top-10-crazy-pranks
if you weight it based on number of votes bots become an issue if you weight it based on steem power whales can circle jerk. if you weight it based on both whales with bots can circle jerk. the system will never be 100% perfect but what helps is educating the masses and having more users with over 9 dollars in their account. millions of real legitimate users of steemit is what can insure it against any bad actors in the end
People like to hand wave and just say it can't be fixed but this is wrong. If sybil is the problem, then require established accounts or accounts with a certain history to "unlock" the bigger payouts. If certain accounts are always voting in concert, then remove their ability to unlock big rewards as a group. Simple!