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RE: Steem experiment: Burn post #1
Proof of burn
Author reward 352.107 SBD, and 74.806 STEEM POWER for smooth/steem-experiment-burn-post-1
Sold 352.107 SBD for 522.854 STEEM on internal market
https://steemd.com/tx/0378dcff18a9689d908d0092f071c5a4dd23c0d2
Total burn of 74.806+522.854 = 597.660 STEEM
https://steemd.com/tx/1ddc2d0ab6407797e93a9b2d12ee4f7d9289c06c
What are your thoughts on the $225 in curation rewards on this post for those who support this project? Does that incentivize people to be involved, even if it ends up being worse in the long run for the platform?
During the witness forum yesterday there was some discussion about the rewards pool and STEEM distribution. Some feel there's a problem with not enough distribution of STEEM and those who have the most of it get too much control around here in terms of flag wars, reward distribution, self-voting, etc. If the rewards pool is decreased via burning, won't that further entrench those who already have a disproportionate amount of STEEM either by increasing the price of STEEM and/or decreasing the rewards pool which might distribute STEEM more broadly?
I guess in the end, anyone can upvote or downvote whatever they want. I currently want my voting power to go towards valuable content and authors I want to support, so downvoting something like this (and with only the Steem Power I have, not even full whale status) doesn't make much sense.
I think curation rewards mostly just incentivize people to participate in voting at all (which may be good or bad, depending on your point of view, but I think mostly good). You can vote on one thing and get curation rewards or vote on another thing and get curation rewards, so with respect to the content itself, they're mostly neutral. It doesn't make a lot of sense to argue that people vote for post A over post B 'for the curation rewards' when curation rewards are available from either (or countless other posts too).
Which is why declined-reward posts, and downvoting, can be disadvantaged: in that case it is not neutral, since they don't pay curation rewards it requires the voter choosing to deploy a vote in that manner to incur an opportunity cost. This is really a poor design choice, though I don't know of a good way to address it for downvotes (in the case of payment-declined posts, I think voters should get the normal curation rewards for their contribution in helping establish the visibility of the post, and also to restore content neutrality to the voting).
First of all, let's make clear that the reward pool is currently inflated by about 3-6x (depending on rapidly-fluctuating market prices) due the actions of SBD speculators (and deficiencies in the SBD pegging mechanism). We would have to reduce rewards through burning by at least 65-85% just to restore the system to its original design parameters on how much stake should be distributed via rewards. That is highly unlikely, and with far less being burned, this is hardly entrenches anything, it just distributes at a less artificially accelerated rate.
Beyond that point on magnitude, it depends how much of the reward pool you believe is currently being allocated in a wasteful manner that doesn't really help the distribution (such as the self voting your mentioned as well as various ways that reward distribution). IMO if that is a large portion then we are better off taking a 'pause' on paying out maximum (inflated) rewards inefficiently and instead return some of that value to the STEEM price (and SBD peg health) until those problems are being better addressed either via the community or platform changes.
As much one might wish for some outcome such as 'better distribution', the mere act of paying rewards doesn't necessarily do that unless it is being done effectively. If a lot is being siphoned off by relatively well off whales and scammers, it is conceivable it could be making the distribution worse, and even if it isn't quite that bad, distribution is only one consideration. If value isn't being added then the rewards are wasteful and making both the platform and its stakeholders worse off.
I liked this post from @transisto on the matter of what rewards are supposed to accomplish: https://steemit.com/steem/@transisto/my-version-of-steem-is-not-content-based-it-is-contribution-based
Let's ask ourselves whether it is even possible, or likely, for the community given its current size and activity level to be making contributions that are adding value of $500K-1M per day, or if the gap between what is being paid out and what is feasible to really effectively use is too large (leading to a proportionately larger share of self-serving schemes and other waste). In that context, a little tapping on the brakes is warranted. I respect that you may disagree and want to vote elsewhere.
While you can vote on one thing or another thing, voting on things you have a pretty good expectation of being valuable does increase the curation reward. In that sense, this experiment does create an incentive for people to participate purely for the curation rewards, but I guess the same can be said for voting up any other popular author with a history of high value posts.
I wonder if the inflated price of SBD is being done specifically to inflate the rewards pool for the advantage of those earning through the rewards pool. In a way, inflating the SBD price may push the opposite experiment of what is happening with this post by giving more value out as a way to fix lopsided initial distribution concerns. I'm personally not too concerned about it because all of that SBD is still only convertible to STEEM at the $1 price and because few would do that now anyway. You make a good point that a larger rewards pool doesn't automatically mean it will be distributed fairly. It could, as you said, cause even more unequal distribution.
Maybe more visibility via tools like this may be helpful: https://steemdb.com/labs/author
Exactly. There is another effect too. The more of these posts there are, the less each one is worth, meaning smaller "windfall" curation rewards to those few voters who are in early, and more opportunities to be early on reliable posts (which in turn tends to spread out curation rewards more widely). There are a lot of zero-sum (in the short term) aspects of the reward pool that end up being self-balancing.
Interesting possibility. I personally doubt it and think it is just speculation on a token that, to the extent it is already well above $1 becomes somewhat free-floating ($1 is too far away to matter). But I don't rule out other possibilities.
You're so nice for commenting on this post. For that, I gave you a vote! I just ask for a Follow in return!
Flagging for comment spam.
You say people have their head in the sand because they won't flag things and then you go on irrational flag retaliations if someone even talks about flagging you. On top of that, you won't even have a civil discussion about it.
This flagging aspect of Steem is very divisive and negative. Look how it ends up with you two fighting each other and making noise which makes Steem look bad to readers.
There’s a much better way which would convert differing perspectives into more degrees-of-freedom rather than force everyone into the same basket where they’re induced to battle. It will be known as algorithmic decentralized curation and my project will be the first to bring that to the market, not Steem and not EOS.