Steem is decentralized, but a delegated-proof-of-stake system. You must vote for the witnesses to participate in the decisions – people advise you in various posts or in the FAQ. But let’s dig in it a little deeper. Who makes the decisions in reality?

Small shareholders have no weight

I will never forget the moment when a new shareholder of a public stock exchange listed company noticed on the general meeting: the thousands of small investors of the company have practically zero weight. “We are puppets here” – he told me wonderingly. There was some decision large shareholders wanted and small stakeholders were against it.

The result: 98.7 percent, with the “whale’s” votes, accepted the proposal, one percent was against it, some have abstained. The “small fish” had very little weight, almost nothing. But so is capitalism and so are public companies working.

Same as Facebook or Amazon

Steem system is something very similar, the money is voting. By the statistics of @arcange, the 37 whales are controlling 56.7 percent of all voting power. Orcas other 20.2. We can say that the whales don’t need us, they could make all (most?) decisions without us, others. That means proof-of-stake, sorry.

(January 26, 2019., data by @arcange)

(In reality, many users aren’t voting, not even all whales. And small votes can also count, for example when whales don’t agree.)

Please don’t interpret me wrong, I don’t want to say the Steem decision-making system is wrong, nor people shouldn’t vote. I only wanted you to understand what happens. Steem works in big part as the whales are voting because they have the power. Like Facebook, Apple, Amazon or General Electric are also mostly making what mayor shareholders want.

What do whales need?

Sometimes the interests of the whales and minnows are the same, for example, I think both are interested in the increase of Steem price. In other cases, these interests can be different.

But what could be the interest of whales, orcas? For example, lending Steem power, self-upvote, vote selling and make robots work are mostly in the interest of people with more wealth, investment, Steem power – with one word, more money. As they have invested a lot, they are interested redistribution of new, fresh printed Steem proportional to the capital (investment).

What do minnows need?

Like any other money owner on the Earth, whales, orcas may want to have their earnings (interests, dividends, yields, ROI, all the same.) Minnows, other small fishes, people who can’t or don’t want to invest, who doesn’t have much money, are interested in the redistribution of Steem to their posts.

You can buy yourself in or can work in – wrote the Steem white paper. If somebody can’t invest, has the possibility to produce “quality content”, and earn money with it. Working themselves in. But there are problems with this.

Demotivators

human interaction is rare on Steemit. This can be very disappointing and demotivating if you spend hours of work with a very engaging blog post, and you see that almost (or literally) no one cares about it – wrote @xplosive in a comment.

I also wrote earlier that many people come here to make money, by the call “we pay you for your content”, but gets disappointed because they receive only a few cents. _(Here, and poll here That’s why so many people are “deadfish”, leave the system early and don’t come back. (See the table.)

(January 26, 2019. @arcange)

Reset the variables?

That’s why I think a better upvoting and redistribution system would be in the interest of writers, of people without investments, means, for the masses. People with no money but with creative ideas in their heads. “Proof of brain” without “proof of money” (proof of stake, that’s the name officially, I know). Maybe we shouldn’t mix these two cases, or the proportions should be different. Perhaps the redistribution should reward more the brain than the money.

No, I’m not complaining. You can’t blame anybody because he isn’t voting against his proper interest, his money. Money holders will vote for their money, for decisions adequate for their wealth. I think financial interests are mostly stronger than culture or charity. Tell a millionaire he should spend all his money to support culture. Maybe he will spend some, but only a couple of percent of it.

Mass adoption? Adopt the mass first

Or tell a Steemian he should gift his votes to others, curate manually when he can sell these votes, too. Some do it, but many people, not. Some of the selfish people of yesterday are now orcas or whales and have huge voting power. I think if we want mass adoption, we should reward more the masses. Or Steem will stay the game, the business of some thousand wealthy people. Very simple, or not? Please comment.

A poll: Do you think Steem needs a big change?

Update: Poll: Why fell Steem to 7.2 cents?

The best post among dozens I found about the importance of the Steem witnesses here.

(I’m writing about the Steem blockchain with its “delegated proof of stake” system, not about Steemit Inc. nor Steemit.com.)