RE: Proof-of-Brain or Power-of-Bid(bot), that is the question.
This is a really nice piece of work @lostmine27!
I suspect that the BB business is larger than the figures here and in other analysis - vote-selling tough to get a handle on for sure.
Personally, I see the future of steemit.com's trending page as an advertising listing. Those who want to see paid promotion will take a look, and those than don't will be tucked away in their app/community.
So that's trending out of the way, and I guess the other main point is the % of the pool being taken. You mention Proof of Stake - bid-bots are the most effective/easiest way of doing this, and many of the main delegators are early miners. I know for a fact, some don't really want to be in this game, but feel they have to to keep up.
The hope is that there will be alternatives to this business in the future, by way of delegation to dapps for example. Personally, I cant see anything out-earning the result of casting 10 self-votes a day (minus a little to the BB owner), so we will see :)
Thank you for your sincere and wise comments. @abh12345
Currently effective_SP for accounts that have been voted on since 18.12.01 is now 118,649,346.
At the end of last year (in the narrow sense), the SP sum of the bitbots was about 22,334,123, so it seems reasonable that they take over 20% of the curation reward.
But as you say, the actual size of the bitbot business seems to be quite large due to the many bidbots that are not in the list and the existence of vote-selling and bidbot-like schemes.
In particular, it is estimated that the author reward of posts with the help of bidbot will be at least 40-50% of the total. Even if bidbot does not take it all, at first glance, we seem to feel the influence of bidbot more intensely.
From a long-term perspective I agree with your point of view.
In fact, the cost of decentralization is harsh. It takes a lot of time.
I hope that the principle of autonomous ecosystem for commons proposed by Elinor Ostrom will work better gradually in the STEEM chain. Although it can not be perfect.
Be healthy and more happy in 2019. :)
You might try putting out content the community appreciates?
Risk/reward and time.
The poor man like me has done well from your approach. Would I take this route if I had a million invested? Not sure.
I was gonna say, i beat .50stu most every day.
If i had a million sp, i would recognize that bringing in new users benefits me more than driving down the price by abusing self votes.
If my goal was short term, I'm sure i would, too, but i would like to be an early adopter on a successful chain rather than a corporate raider with a trail of destruction behind me.
Its just too egotistic, for me.
I derive my self worth by destroying others?
No.
When do we go back to the n2?
When do responsible stake holders flag abuse?
Speaking of that, @steemflagrewards pays better than delegating to bid bots.
If you don't post you have no retaliation fears, if you do, then only flag little accounts, eh?
I would love to be a whale here and show people how things could be done. I agree, more users = more wealth down the road.
I'm fairly active with @steemflagrewards, in fact, I'll see what's on the menu for today....
Now if we could get the ear of the folks selling to smartsteem and minnowbooster and tell them they make better rewards flagging abuse.