RE: The Number One Fix to Improve Steem's Chances for Mainstream Adoption
Meanwhile, down in the three- and four-digit accounts, we're finally developing multiple independent systems where dolphins and minnows are helping each other and driving collective growth. We're developing high-value, externally-appealing content, onboarding a bunch of incredibly-talented new users in non-cryptocurrency topics, and making sure they're financially and socially rewarded enough to stay. The concept of cooperation among an expanding middle class is gaining traction.
Basically everything linear rewards promised is starting to happen. Our share of the rewards pool is small but it's growing and if things stay as they are it will continue to grow. I'm not convinced that's true under your plan.
There's a double economy on Steemit and I appreciate that yours is both much larger and pretty much a mess. But we're making actual progress down here and if you give us time we'll reshape the face of things.
I understand there's this value adding layer that's going on all over. But are they going to provide 600-1000% returns more than if I just self-vote and vote trade all the time? If this layer can inch things closer to just a mere 50-100%, then maybe a revolution will begin.
Basically, come up with something that even the likes of @freedom @trafalgar and @haejin will act for the greater good. To make this happen, voting has to be almost synonymous with acting for direct self-interest as well. Learning from them, I think we can come up with a better kind of money that really flows around. I don't think any "layers" will change the core condition. But for sure I think they'll be massively useful when circumstances are right. Hence this proposal.
Thank you very much for contributing to the platform, although please note that you're funnelling in and maintaining users in a place where the incentives are totally out of whack. You can literally see the most braindead behaviour getting the highest rewards. Steem's economy is now paying people $1000 everytime they take a dump.. and there's really nothing to stop it.
Hopefully the proposal gets taken seriously so that builders like you wouldn't be working against highly unfavourable circumstances in the future. Which projects are you working on by the way?
You seem to think I'm here looking for your support. I'm not. I'm here asking you to leave us alone. Go ahead and have your huge ROI. That's fine. Just don't prevent hundreds of people from helping each other in hopes of forcing a few users you dislike to begrudgingly do something they don't have any interest in.
If you would like to support the building community, I'll offer you something you can do for free: make some curation posts. Find 3-5 posts you like and write about why. Or pick a user you think is doing good work and write about why. Self-vote and vote-trade your post into trending and take your profit. You have a huge audience and you could make a difference without ever passing down a cent.
50% curation and superlinearity of rewards are even-more-highly-unfavorable circumstances for us than the existing ones even if they actually do what you think they will. They raise the minimum effective buyin, which is already way too high. They result in everyone relying on the regular support of ~150 whales who you've forced to show up rather than being able to build a larger community of people who are actively, personally interested in helping each other succeed. Which is the real long-term value here. Under the current circumstance we have enough voting value to drive the growth of that community and inspire more users to participate. Under superlinear everyone trying to do that would need a consistent whale. And there aren't enough whales to do that sustainably, even if you could control them all.
Find a system that allows builders to help other builders and it will be worth thinking about. Hyperbolic rewards would be better than superlinear ones: make it easier to go from 500->5000 and 5000->50,000 than it is to go from 500,000->600,000, instead of the other way around. Find a way to allow more people who aren't crypto millionaires to buy into the system and be effective. That's the support we need. We don't need whale votes, we need to not need whale votes.
I see some promise in the algorithm @t3ran13 uses if you'd like a place to start. (That's not a project I'm involved in, I just thought it was cool. I literally have no idea who that user is.)
thx)
Nope, I wasn't thinking you're here looking for support. I was just replying plainly. Personally, I think your all suggestions would work against the platform, especially hyperbolic curve. But that's only my take on it. I've been supporting various communities the past 2 years and have been losing out on that big ROI, hence my complaint about it recently. Many more will just start selling their votes and do nothing. Thanks for the recommendation about @tran13's algo, by the way, will check it out :)
To be clear, I'm not advocating for a hyperbolic curve. I think it might be better for the platform itself but switching to it would definitely crash the price of Steem, and it probably couldn't be done effectively anyway. I just think superlinear is even worse.
I hope you don't think my suggestion of you making curation posts is bad for the platform. If you listen to any of this I hope it's that paragraph.
It's a good suggestion and I'll consider it, although in general I wouldn't wanna pump out posts like a tv series and would prefer to write my own stuff when I have the time and support through votes. I get that it helps parts of the community though. The problem with the current economy is that it wouldn't help as much as before. I remember a time before linear when good contributions were likely to get more attention, and now it's just too spread out. I think you may be underestimating the side-effects pure linear has. Sure it provides full individual autonomy across the board, but it's at the expense of something else, hence my suggestion for a slight superlinear to have any semblance of collective work.
Is it linear rewards, or making the minnows matter in the math?
That was being accomplished by the whale experiment just as well, except without all the selfvoting/vote selling incentives
As long as the massive accounts make being here unattractive to the newbs, the newbs wont hang out irregardless of any curves.
Linear rewards are making minnows matter in the math.
It's true that if the whales were to sit on their SP and not vote it then things would be a lot better for everyone else. The only problem with this is it's a completely insane thing to do, because staking has a time cost. Why would you stake SP and not use it?
Alternately they could all power down and hold Steem in hopes that it would go up in value as the rewards were distributed without them. That's only slightly less insane, and it has a pretty big Prisoner's Dilemma attached to it, because it drastically increases the self-voting rewards of any whale who chooses to stay. Not to mention we'd see even more volatility and downward movement in the price as they could choose to get out whenever they wanted.
Or they could power down and sell their Steem, which makes more sense for them, and we'd all get a lot more Steem out of the rewards pool but it wouldn't be worth anything.
None of these are good plans.
If enough of the big whales really felt the platform was better under the Whale Experiment and wanted to replicate it I suppose they could just start using their full power to flag other whale votes indiscriminately. I don't think that's a good plan either but it makes more mathematical sense, if not social sense.
In any case going to superlinear rewards is the exact opposite of the Whale Experiment. If you want to replicate that in the code you'd want extreme hyperbolic or even parabolic rewards. (And you'd have to find a way to prevent whales from just making a hundred dolphin accounts.)
So, buying btc, eth, or any other coin and holding is insane?
Yes, steem allows roi by being active, but if whales are destroying the interest of others in playing along by doing so, that is insane.
Mass adoption is the main goal, is it not?
Nobody likes that the massive accounts suck the air out of the room, they dont like the pay to play, nor the people doing it.
Those massive accounts need to wake up to the fact that they are best served by mass adoption even if that means not maximizing roi under the rules.
When tens of thousands of minnows start to buy 20usd a week in stake the whales benefit the most, that isnt going to happen while they are making the game unattractive to those specific players.
Why would small investors invest if it all goes to the massive accounts and they have no hope of making roi, themselves?
Let alone in large numbers.
Making 100 dolphin accounts would be fine if they didnt selfvote or circlejerk, if it spread the rewards farther, that would be a good thing.
I thought spreading sp came with a cost under nonlinear rewards?
Even if the massive accounts sold every last steem, they could only do so to willing buyers who could then start building what steem could be with out the massive accounts greedy grubbing it to the detriment of everybody else.
Committing to holding anything for 13 weeks without receiving anything in return for that commitment would be insane, yes.
The main thing preventing minnows from doing that isn't that whales are circle-jerking, it's that 20 USD doesn't buy them any noticeable amount of effectiveness. That's probably the biggest problem for mass adoption on an influx-of-money level.
This isn't happening. My ROI is ridiculous and I spend a lot of time and money I don't have to on community-building.
The effect of the whale experiment was somewhat close to approximating a linear or mild superlinear curve because it stopped votes that pushed the curve into its wildly superlinear portion.
I was all in on that after i saw what it gave my vote after a few days.
Once i saw that it was the mined stake that was the problem, and not the design, i flip flopped really quick.
I guess delegation put an end run on it?
Delegation has certainly perpetuated the top keeping as much control as possible.
Rather than spread it out, they want to keep up the pyramid.
Can't really blame them, we are playing crapitalism, but it slows down the change that is coming.