Steemit has agreed to fund development of a Steem Proposal System (SPS) that is similar to Bitshares’ Worker Proposal System.
Terms of agreement
After further discussions with Steemit, including an online discussion with the Steem community on a recent “State of Steem” discord session, Steemit and BlockTrades have reached an agreement to have BlockTrades develop an implementation of the Worker Proposal System discussed in our last blog post (now formally named the Steem Proposal System) .
Approximately $55K USD worth of STEEM will be paid from Steemit to Blocktrades for each month of work. The task is projected to require between 1 and 2 months of work and will include scheduling of a hardfork. Steemit considers this funding to be a part of a larger donation to the SPS and wishes that the Steem community will be actively involved in evaluating the development of this proposal.
Overview of Steem Proposal System
For an overview of the motivation for the Steem Proposal System and how it works, see our prior post:
https://steemit.com/blocktrades/@blocktrades/proposing-a-worker-proposal-system-for-steem
Proposal funding to come from author rewards pool
One of the things that came out of the community discussions was a clear preference for paying for proposals by drawing funds from an existing inflation source on the blockchain rather than adding more inflation to the blockchain (proposals can also be funded by donations).
We used https://steemdb.com to analyze the relative magnitude of the existing sources of inflation:
As can be seen from the image above, over 50% of the Steem blockchain’s inflation is paid to author rewards, so this is the most obvious place to look for funding for proposals, especially as a lot of author rewards now go to software development posts that would be able to receive funding more efficiently through a worker proposal. Our plan is to reduce the amount of inflation paid to author rewards from ~52% down to ~41% and redirect this amount to the worker proposal funding account. This should result in ample funds being available to pay for worker proposals.
Next Steps
Our team will begin by cloning the existing github repo into a separate github account where anyone will be able to view the work as it progresses. Once we’ve completed the coding, we’ll launch a testnet where interested parties can test it out.
From talking to people in the community and my personal preference I would first like to see what is done with donated money from Steemit/community then mess with the author rewards. I could be on the minority side here but isn’t this something we can put up for a vote community vote to see where the funds come from?
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Ultimately such decisions are decided by "stake weight" in Steem, since stake weight elects the witnesses and the witnesses choose what version of the code to run.
Now, we could run some kind of poll to get opinion, but any poll counting just the number of votes would easily be gamed by users who have many accounts (one user I believe controls at least thousands of accounts).
Another option would be to create a post with two comments and let users compete by voting up those two comments. This would result in a "stake weighted" vote that would more likely reflect the witness voting that ultimately determines what change is accepted. One comment would be for just taking money from donations and the other would be to do it from author rewards as well.
Getting agreement from Steemit for both options from Steemit would also be important, as they are paying for the work.
https://steemit.com/utopian-io/@emrebeyler/dpoll-development-updates-result-filtering-and-voting-audits
dpoll just added a bunch of new features to help the voting process be as legit as possible. We could run a vote where:
The biggest problem with such a poll is that it won't necessarily reflect the poll that "counts", which is the stake weighted poll that elects witnesses.
I think it's fine to hold such a poll (although I think it can easily be gamed), but I think it would only make sense to do so if a stake weighted pole was also conducted simultaneoulsy. A stake-weighted poll can't be gamed, and it's the poll that really counts, at the end of the day.
Running only a gameable poll that is likely to generate results different from a stake-weighted poll is only likely to lead to dismay when the "poll that counts" yields different results.
I think a stake-weighted poll would work, your idea of doing two comments and the one with the most Steem power behind it wins. Reminds me of how PoW coins figure things out with hash power.
Ok, I'll make up a post after lunch (people are waiting for me now) with the two options. Assuming Steemit is ok with the results, we can let that decide.
I'll stay on with you @Theycallmedan. This issue should be subject to vote and @dpoll could etter handle that, Let me add here that:
Dpoll was made exactly for this sort of thing. This needs to be put to a vote!!
ya i liked dpoll
Oh ok cool we have @dpoll nice is it https://dpoll.io ? lol lemme guess, "get paid to post Polls and ask questions!" lol like @peerquery"
A vote would have been nice. ... I'm a little uncomfortable with the fact that rewards can be unilaterally changed and redirected elsewhere.
What's to stop a malicious actor from redirecting rewards into their own wallet?
I own multiple accounts that fit that qualifications, so others probably do too. I think its best for witnesses to present their thoughts on it, and we vote for witnesses accordingly.
Nope, still not going to work... Plenty of dolphin and even whale account below 50 rep, rep cant be a factor, and also a brand new whale who just powered up recently also deserved to vote, no matter how many posts they have ....
SP should be the only factor we count... otherwise thse 1 person 1 vote shit is gonna get gamed so hard ... its not fair to start changing the rules after 3 years of stake weighted votes... qwe need to keep thinsg stake weighted while voting.,... if peopel wnbat to influence the vote more they HAVE to buy or earn more Steem! This is just ANOTHER BADLY needed incentive to need to buy more steem, dont let the socialists and anarchists around here who are poor ruin this for us... dont listen to all the weak peopel who just dont want anything to ever have a price tag associated with it, theers too many people who think its bad that you can BUY more of youre vote influence and yet thats EXACTLY how steem works and its a system we need to KEEP.
Lets face it, the MAJORITY of the users, if we listsned to them, would rather us give them all the money while they did as little woprk as possible, and the average user thinks they are way more valuable than they are... In reality at any time a hoard oif new users can come in and severely dilute the current user base so much so that anyone influential before is going to appear so small now, that they just wont ever matter again... so we need to stop listsneing to the crowd mob mentality... all these minnows and plankton who think their collective voice is worth just as much as one whale, when its liek... no dude... even 1 million plankston who dont even have 1 steem is worth less than 1 whale with 2 million steem, and that one whale is so much more valuable to us... theres limits to what a bunch of useless content can give us, and the only real luck will come to our platform when we get power users who will come from OTHER platforms to come sprinkle in their talent to steem from Reddit and Youtube and Twitter... I mean i cant wait to see Twitter users using @zappl with its 140 character limit to post very simple one liners and end up getting paid $100s evebn $1000s for them over steem, now thats going to bea game changer.... but the current user base and all the things they want to "vote" on? Its just so lame...i feel like the devil cave hermiut in Red Dead Redemption 2 who longs for the age of kings and despises teh age of democracies.... because honestly theres way too many people out here on steem who think they are SOOO valuable... but in reality we need less hoardes of low quality shit posters and more high quality users, even in smaller numbers, because just 1user on instagram these days can have More followers than all the users on steem... just one instagram post of kanye west or kim kardashian will have many tiems more users than all of our blockchain haha jkust oen comment ofthgeir can have mroe atcivity than our entire chain.... thats something top consider when realizing steem's full growth over theyears.... SO WE CANT listen too seriously to the demandsof a few un important early adopters, and not so early adopters who are simply hanging around with a few hundred steem, hoping that every steem will be worth as much as a bitcoin one day.... these people on steem are goingf to be demanding upvotes for their "cont3enbt" when we should be putting that money away towards a lot of other more useful projects and dapps... so sad how much money has been going to peopel who neevr desreved it and it just inflated their egos... liek welfare... i just hope whales and dolphins become more sriuct with larger upvotes and delegations... ned was just giving out delegatio liek CANDY to all sorts of losers who NEVER deserved it and it makes some of us mad how careless he can be, giving MASSIVE amounst fo delegation to random users out there while AMZINg projects liek dlux.io go un delegated to with ned ignoring the BEST chance for steem to gaiun traction in the VR gaming world... i mean so many great projects for steem which ned , using dedlegation, can FIUND for FREE and what does ned do? he goes years without any updatyes and then FINALLY makes some posts recently now that the priceis low, but still it took the users to rais emoney themselve sto payf or nmerkating.. i just anm SO happy if ned powers down and sells his stake, i just doubt that he is doing that.... but its freaking everyone out and its like haha ned is hnot gonna sell at this low or a price, and we see mysrery accounts liek @ben powering up 2 millipn SPP after ned powers it down haha anyway.... im so high
@blocktrades Is it possible to use the SBD Inflation to pay for worker proposals?
In some sense, that's one of the two proposals being voted on.
Please follow up with this stake voted poll, we need these polls for taking real accurate polls on steem, with comments using decline payout for the different options users can vote on....
Also please dont take more from the authors when were already hurting so badly from low prices, we need you to take that money from curation instead because no one notices curation and they wont hurt. Also Authors arent any less important than witnesse so why not take a few percent from every section? Very strange youd just take it all from authors when too much is taken from that anyway... when authors are the most important part of steem and create all the content that even CREATES the reason for witnesses.... not the other way around... thats why this is called USER SUBMITTED CONTENT... and how reddit got to quarter of a billion users.... its the author rewards which need to go UP not down... Please take the money from curation and a little bit of all the categories, Just take 2 % from each category and no one will really notice the difference!
Dpoll guy is working on implementing an accurate stake-weighted poll, so I guess it will be ready by the time the more controversial aspect of this SPS is voted on (assuming I'm not wrong about the ultimate results of the current poll).
The fact that Steemit has offered to donate funds is great, but those funds will run out relatively quickly, and I am fairly certain that donations from the rest of the community won't come close to funding any real projects, at which point this system will be mostly dead. IMO it must be funded from inflation if it is to be sustainable past Steemit's donation.
Ultimately, rewards are viewed in USD terms, so the "bet" here is that if we put serious funding towards development/marketing/etc it will increase the market price of STEEM such that rewards are increased in USD terms.
I disagree. Here's why. We reward folks for posting, curating, and witnessing. That's what rewards go to. Those rewards are the inflation. Decreasing the rewards paid decreases the incentive to do those things. Author rewards particularly are already too low. Look at retention, and consider that reducing rewards to authors will make retention worse. Creators of content are the spigot from which ALL the value of Steem originates, and we're losing creators.
Further, I agree that donations won't work. @ned's generosity will get us going, but stable funding will be necessary to create value in Steem.
Votes are stake weighted. Capital gains are stake weighted. Increase in the price of Steem as a result of development funded via SPS will produce capital gains, and directly benefit stakeholders. This will not directly inure to those earning rewards, only indirectly when stake holders curate and pass on those gains to creators.
Stake receives the benefits, and should be the source of the funding. Tapping rewards will harm Steem, and put downwards pressure on price by making worse the problems we have with content quality (trending), and witnesses (many of whom barely, or do not, break even now) who we need to keep the blockchain secure. Decreasing incentive to witness is the last thing we should be doing.
I have said it better here. Please have a look and correct me if I'm wrong. If I'm not, let's not decrease rewards, but fund development directly from those that will benefit from it, without reducing incentive to produce other benefits essential to Steem.
Thanks!
Agreed
I agree, plus I would also like to see the needed inflation pulled from other places than only from author rewards. Pull some percentage from author, some from witness, and some from sp inflation.
I agree. While the proposal is great in general, I'm not sure if "Proposal funding to come from author rewards pool" is a good idea, especially if it really only comes from there. After all, this kind of major change should be decided by some votes. @dpoll is an option and I actually hope @blocktrades first build a good voting system on their own.
Please seem my comments to the parent comment you are replying to.
I'm with Dan here, the author pool is the community's life blood, while there are many whales who could easily cover these costs, especially if split among many.
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Yeah.... I dont think you would have a lot of success with the "donation" route. The distribution right now is extremely one sided, the richest accounts getting most of the STEEM, meaning that you can throw away any notion of the "community" donating anything.
Best you can hope for are donations from a extremely small number of, lets call them, charitable whales, like yourself, Blocktrades, Acid, etc.. But even those donations would remain extremely small.
I would rather go with the taking from the reward pool option..
If @blocktrades could maybe answer, how would a reduction of author payed inflation look like in relation to post payouts? The stats presented are overall token distribution.
If I'm not mistaking, what they are suggesting would result in a 20% reduction of post payouts across the board.
That's correct, assuming no resulting increase in Steem price (which is probably too much to hope for in the short term at least).
A 20% reduction in author rewards would devastate retention.
Please reconsider this. See my post here, and school me, or let's move forward without destroying the community we yet retain.
20% reduction. Holy crap! I uuh... wow. I might need to rethink a lot of things regarding Steem.
Wait, an aprox cut of 20% per post on author side?
I would like to suggest this tool to help during the
steemddevelopment process:How to do iterative steemd development on a local testnet
This is welcomed news. Glad you guys could work out an agreement.
I’m also happy to see that there won’t be new inflation. I think that’s the best decision for this. Now if we could only increase curation rewards for invested users, we may be able to get things heading in the right direction.
If author rewards are reduced by 20% wouldn't that massively disincentivize people from creating content? And as a result, wouldn't that also impact curation?
Seems like the only people who lose are the small fish... but that's fairly normal in society I guess - why would Steem be any different?
See my response to valued-customer.
Curation presently is nothing more than rent seeking. It's destroying trending, and trickling downhill to take Steem out as well.
Curation rewards is the reason bidbots exist, and that content quality has practically no relation to author rewards.
Perhaps the best thing we could do would be to replace curation rewards with SPS funding completely. No one needs to be paid to upvote good posts, and we see this on every other social media platform in the world.
Rent seeking is the reason retention is so dismal now, and getting worse. Make it worse yet by increasing curation rewards, and rule over massive piles of tokens no one will value at all.
No. Linear rewards, the delegation protocols, and the reduced daily vote target are the reason bid-bots exist. But as usual, nobody ever wants to acknowledge that. Instead, people would rather whine about how everything is still “unfair” and that invested users shouldn’t be allowed to earn from their investment.
The same is true about posting on social media: it happens on every other social media platform in the world. So why should authors here expect to be paid?
But tell me why users ought to buy/hold STEEM and power it up if there’s no incentive to do so and the tokens are only flowing out of the system to people who want to “get paid for blogging.” What do you suppose would happen to prices if invested users could no longer earn from their investment and how would that affect all of these bloggers who think that they aren’t paid enough for posts that mostly go unnoticed and unread?
Instead of making absurd claims about “rent-seeking,” maybe try understanding economics and investing a bit more. It also wouldn’t hurt to learn about the protocol history and many of the discussions that have taken place here for the past three years. A lot of the things you complain about were predicted...and some of it is directly related to the reduction of curation rewards.
Here...you can find some explanations and discussions dating back to early 2017 in this post and those linked in it:
https://steemit.com/steem/@ats-david/improved-curation-rewards-are-still-a-necessity
I appreciate your substantive reply. I do agree with some of your points, but not your general thesis (if I am grasping it).
Because the legacy model of social media centralizes emuneration of user created content, and creating the Steem model that should handily and rapidly render them utterly obsolete, due to the recognition that it is content created by users that imbues platforms with value, and users choosing to receive that value rather than simply exist for the benefit of overlords. Kinda a simple concept, really.
This actually ignores the previous point: that the value of the content springs from those very users that create it, and emunerating them for it reflects not only that, but creates strong motivation to adopt Steem by those that create the value of social media, the users. If Steem cannot flourish by creating a market that emunerates creators that imbue Steem with value, then the model in place is entirely retarded. I note that Steem seems to be only pretty retarded, as it hasn't perished yet. It sure can do better, and precluding free market exchange by locking up tokens via SP is less necessary as the market grows. There is certainly sound reason to use such gimmicks when establishing a nascent platform, and traditional investing shows that such vesting isn't novel to Steem.
Regarding what would happen to prices if investors were relegated to capital gains to profit from their investments, just as all investments throughout history have done, I note that would depend on the gains generated by the investment. I have made the analogy before, but allowing investors to snipe the vast majority of the products of the vehicle is asinine and completely counterproductive to the goal of generating capital gains. If this was a broom factory instead of a content mill, letting investors take most of the brooms before the company could sell them to generate profits would be easily recognized as insane. Letting investors snag the majority of rewards, which is what is happening, is directly preventing rewards from reaching users, and inhibiting growth which produces capital gains.
As for implying that creators are unrealistic for expecting rewards commensurate to the value of their posts, there is a bit of truth to that, but it's far more realistic to recognize that the creation market is failing to grow and generate capital gains because rewards are being monopolized through rent seeking behaviour, through bidbots, self votes, circle jerks, etc. Instead of sneering at the poor who expect to be compensated for being the market Steem needs to succeed, and who vote with their feet, effecting an extremely poor retention rate for Steem, reasonably attract the actual market with nominal rewards to keep them engaged and creating value in Steem.
Instead of mocking my fair representation of bidbots and curation that only cares about ROI, which is certainly the definition of rent seeking, you could note that trending shows that the extant situation regarding curation is that it could hardly degrade content quality less than it does. There is almost no correlation between content quality and rewards. That is not the fault of creators, but of rent seeking profiteers.
You know it's broken, and getting worse. Retention continues to decrease. Steem price is little more than BTC's tail, only following the general market for crypto rather than generating value through it's use case - which is orders of magnitude more valuable than it's competitors. The reason is that creation is denigrated rather than compensated, and substantial stake holders virtually completely ignore anything except ROI for their stake - the very definition of rentier income.
Curation rewards are the bizarro world mechanism to generate capital gains, the exact opposite of how to create growth, a robust market, and profit.
Pretend that capital gains haven't successfully motivated investors for thousands of years, and that curation rewards diminishing author rewards, which provide direct incentive to create the content that is the only source of value for Steem, will improve it, yet ignore that actual data produced by the actual market for Steem. You do you.
But don't expect Steem to moon when whales are seizing the means of production from actual producers, who are staying away in droves, and then decreasing the incentive for those producers even more by eschewing the model that has been employed to fund development to date (Stinc spent it's stake to fund development) and taxing author rewards to do so. That's just silly.
I would like someone to respond to the following point, because I have felt the same way and need to hear a counter-argument that makes sense if I am to change my mind on it.
Yeah, I have a response to that...
This isn’t a broom factory and there is no “company” selling anything in order to generate profit.
For some reason, he seems to believe that there is an entity taking stuff from one group and selling it to others. The problem is, if this were even happening (which it is not), it would be authors “taking” rewards (tokens) without any investment or risk - and that have monetary value due to investors/speculators - and then indiscriminately selling those tokens at market prices, driving down those prices and any chance at capital appreciation for investors
In other words: the analogy doesn’t actually apply to anything happening here, but if it did, it would apply to the exact opposite group than the one that the commenter continually marginalizes.
Thank-you for the response. That answer seemed to have opened a can of worms, so perhaps you wouldn't mind answering some more questions:
If there IS no company/product, then what the heck are people "investing" in? Generally, there is some form of business taking place that investors feel could grow their money as the business grows.
If the ONLY business taking place is similar to a bond or interest-bearing bank account, where you lend money so that someone else can use it; who is the borrower paying the interest and why would they?
If inflation is the source of all "income" then there really isn't any income, is there? The numbers get bigger, but the value goes down.
Why bother writing anything at all then? Just get 2 accounts and vote for each other on 1-word posts, 10 times per day.
How would that work?.. Replacing curation with SPS funding?
I always found curation to be an extremely flawed concept detrimental to the platform with the current status quo.
With this proposal cutting author rewards we could essentially remove bot influence completely and make proof of brain an actual thing..
When Kevin Wong made his god-awful curation proposal couple months ago that would essentially destroy STEEM as a whole, he called for a increase in curation which would have led to increased bot influence after adjustment..
This could possibly do the opposite... Could change the STEEM philosophy across the board.
Replacing curation with SPS funding sounds good to me. I bet it doesn't sound good to those seeking rent for their stakes by delegating to bidbots though.
It remains true that Stinc has funded development from it's stake heretofore, and I note that complainers weren't donating their stakes to contribute to development. Well, now it's time. Stinc has spent down the stake some, and those as stakes are substantial need to start ponying up - not taxing minnows and redfish for development money.
Wanna kill Steem? Decrease author rewards substantially while we're already losing accounts at a horrible rate. I can understand why they don't want to spend their stakes - they work so hard to grow them - to fund development, but it looks as if they've forced Stinc to allow them to undertake it just the same.
Thanks!
Well if we are changing the distribution of rewards we might as well increase the curation rewards while we're at it.
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I agree. I have been asking for this for two years. Good luck getting all of the beggars, moochers, and socialists to support that.
Hey! Neat news! Looks like you came in on the lower side of 50-100k unless it goes the full 2 months.
It is nice to see STEEMit inc engaging in more constructive and progressive projects with such a great development team. Payment in SBD as a more stable currency is a cool concept. Opening new proposals to the community is a great way of not only having a way of votring in the best projects but leveraging the coding talent of STEEM community as as well.
Awesome stuff! Can't wait to see this come into action.
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pocketsend:10@zekepickleman
Successful Send of 10
Sending Account: ackza
Receiving Account: zekepickleman
New sending account balance: 995773
New receiving account balance: 9
Fee: 1
Steem trxid: 9907d5ffa1916dcb68272387d74774acbfb45900
Thanks for using POCKET! I am running this confirmer code.
Cryptic and interesting!
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Pay up to $110K to build a proposal. That's what has been announced. Not a community effort at finding solutions for incentivizing people to work on Steem. Not even an open bid process... just another decision to be rammed down our throats. This Hail Mary requires a future consensus of Witnesses... which likely won't be hard to acquire because Steem is extremely centralized.
Author rewards is also where beneficiary rewards come from that many app developers have calculated in to their business models. Who other than Steemit is intent to do as little as possible work and is willing to slash the reward pool to shirk their workload on the blockchain? Can't even write your own hard forks now? At least @blocktrades thinks they can deliver in a timely fashion. throws hands in the air
Ur right. 110K for a PROPOSAL, NOT a solution. What a waste!!!!!!!
I think you have misunderstood here. The word 'proposal' refers to the nature of the system being created - it is a system that manages proposals.
@blocktrades unfortunately If author reward drop more we have to power down and leave steemit forever already authors are suffering from much crisis i was owning 30k$ and Steem whales sold steem and my asset value drop hard every author already is in crisis THis decision will crash steem market more Very bad team of steemit i guess
@lays, right, the author reward is already bad. If it gets even less, what incentive should an author have to create new content?
Reducing author rewards by ~20% seems significant. Couldn't this be spread out amongst the various categories?
Since a large portion of the curation and interest rewards go to large-stakeholders (I'm assuming it does... I haven't checked) and the fact that the witness percentage goes to a MUCH smaller pool of individuals, my gut is saying that the more equitable way to find the ~11% share for the SPS would be something more in line with:
Considering that Witnesses and Large stakeholders have the most to gain from improvements to the backend, shouldn't they be investing into the SPS? Taking all of it from the author reward pool seems to be more like 'taxing' the userbase. But I could be way off here.
Either way, I think the SPS is a good idea. But I feel like the request for payment is being directed to the wrong pool of people.
It reminds me a bit of "DCC"s (Development Cost Charges) related to subdivision and municipal infrastructure development that we deal with at work.
Land developers make money by creating houses and communities, but it also requires the City owned infrastructure (water, sewer, etc...) to be developed to service the communities they'd like to build. Since there is a large profit incentive for developers to create these communities, portions of the munipal infrastructure (SPS) is funded by those who benefit the most (large SP holders, witnesses, etc), because it's unfair to place 100% of the funding burden on the tax-base.
Just a thought.
EDIT:
To clarify -- I understand that the ~11% of rewards is for funding the SPS once developed and ready. I think the point still stands, since the projects that will be funded by the SPS are still ultimately building value in to the entire ecosystem (and predominantly, large stakeholders will benefit) -- the SPS pool should be funded, at least in part, by those that have the most to gain.
Taking purely from the author side of things is crazy. There is a 100% pool to pull from, spread out the costs to everyone.
Why decrease rewards at all? Rewards exist to provide incentive to create value that inures to Steem. Decrease rewards, decrease the value of Steem.
SPS will fund development, and that development will be intended to increase the price of Steem, creating capital gains and increasing the value of stake. Funding for SPS should be drawn from stake directly, rather than decreasing incentive to create value in Steem, and this hit's all stakeholders equally, from redfish to whales. It also potentiates capital gains for all equally according to the stake that capital gains will impact.
Retention is a horror show presently, and decreasing author rewards by almost 10%... I don't even... Well, any decrease in author rewards will decrease retention more, and we are not growing now. Many witnesses are barely breaking even, or not at all, now. Witnesses will flee in droves if we drop their rewards almost 5%, leaving the blockchain much less secure. Decreasing witness rewards is the last thing we want to do.
I disagree that SPS should be funded by decreasing rewards at all, but what you propose is at least better than the scorched Earth 20% proposed above.
Let's just eliminate curation rewards completely. It's just rent seeking anyway, and has no relation to content quality. In fact there is an inverse relationship between increased curation rewards and increased content quality. The more profitable curation is, the more is delegated to bidbots, and the more curation is just ROI without any consideration for content quality.
Eliminate curation rewards completely, and the only reason people would vote would be to reward quality content.
I could live with that.
Yes I like this a lot better!
I think some thought should be put towards whatever the split is -- I was just tossing some numbers out there as a starting point. I would imagine that there's some kind of comfortable and sustainable middle ground that everyone could agree on.
Whether or not it ends up being addressed is another story. I wouldn't hold my breath -- at the end of the day, stake tends to win here. And those with stake tend to do what they can to protect and increase their stake.
Everyone always wants to take from someone else's pie, I like that you would have everyone give a piece of their pie to the betterment of steem blockchain.
Agreed!
Could be a great option! Hope that they will put this on the table too!
Now we are going to pull a golos?
It may work, golos is looking a lot better.
We still need to bring back proof of brain, though.
really now? think that golos is gonna still move to eos brother?
I don't know, i cant get golos info in English.
right click your blank briowser screen space, hit "trranslate tpo english" using chrome or i be;lieve firefox... works great
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100K for a code change is to much...Even if it is an excelent ideia!!!That´s more that excelent startup get for an entire year...Taking reward from people who invested, create intelectual content and develop communitys almost for free...To give to these guys you are already whales and receiving a lot of STEEM from their "exchange", witness program, and inflation...It´s a total abuse ask 100K in a bear market and STEEM total marketcap is 90M...Why don´t we do public "auction" for the code changes to see who can make it cheaper? In fact i find the value offensive to the comunity....Remember you are giving 100K to whales at very low prices of STEEM...Centralization is a bad game for price...They as we have interest in this upgrade...Can´t we do it with a lower budget!? I believe we can...
Are you worried about inflation or reduced reward pool?
If anyone here is concerned about inflation of STEEM, there is a perfectly good source of inflation that can be reduced and then the inflation cost savings can pay for the proposals without inflating STEEM. It starts by correcting the SBD overprinting issue. https://steemit.com/steemit/@socky/it-is-time-to-stop-the-overprinting-of-sbd-to-decrease-steem-inflation
Your analysis is flawed. STEEM inflation increases when the STEEM price decreases, and decreases when the STEEM price increases (both as a natural consequence of the up-to-1.1x leverage introduced by SBD). Unless you are going to eliminate all STEEM price increases (no thank you), there is no overall "source of inflation" to be used here. It is a source of inflation in declining STEEM price markets but also a sink for inflation during increasing STEEM price markets.
If STEEM increases more than it decreases over time (a nice long term goal, but who knows) then the inflation will end up being lower than the base rate. If it fluctuates more or less equally up and down then it will be more or less unchanged from the base rate.
Your post showed a chart of STEEM supply with increases in the inflation rate circled. However, the chart only showed a period of price decline and didn't go far enough back to see major STEEM price increases (late 2017 to early 2018 for one), when the inflation rate would have been reduced. This was incomplete and misleading.
@smooth, I respect you. I must however present the data as factual evidence. Don't take this as a personal attack towards you.
One type of STEEM inflation is set by the following mechanism. This is obtained from the STEEM whitepaper and also verified by my data.
Current inflation rate is 8.57% of the total supply not including the SBD conversions. The SBD conversions has a detrimental and lasting affect on inflation. Which brings me to the other type of inflation.
The other type of inflation is caused by conversion of SBD to STEEM. The debt ratio is somewhat high and we shouldn't be printing STEEM when the conversion is high. This could also pose a potential risk to keep STEEM prices suppressed while SBD is still being printed. This could present a challenge for STEEM price to break past the price of SBD creating somewhat of a feedback loop to continue suppressing the price of STEEM below SBD. (I say somewhat because the price is dominated by market pressure). The detrimental printing also suppresses the price of SBD which is a golden goose for economic stimulant when the price is high (over $1).
To prove that you are wrong about your assertion that my data doesn't go back far enough, I went back and added data as far back as June 28, 2017. Lo-and-behold, this is the new chart. The data doesn't lie. The rate of inflation looks the same all throughout the price roller coaster. If you want, I can go back all the way to HF16, but there is no point. It is still going to look the same.
This is the original chart that didn't go that far back
I highly recommend that you find a financial advisor to review the historical STEEM data. Please, we need subject mater experts of economics to weigh in on what is going on.
To put this whole thing in perspective, I am going to leave the community with this statement: You don't flood the economy with money when the economy is bad.
It may not be visible to the naked eye but hold up a straight edge (e.g. piece of paper) to the chart and you can see clearly that the inflation does indeed bend down when the price of STEEM was high and more STEEM was being absorbed into SBD rather than being released from it. For several months fully half of author rewards was not being added to the active supply (it was paid out in SBD instead).
That's the nature of leverage. It works both ways. If you focus on a time period when the entire crypto market is down 90% and STEEM is down 95% then you will see one direction of the leverage effect, but that doesn't mean the other direction does not exist. It surely does.
There is no source of consistent inflation here that can be relied upon to fund budgets.
Again, you are ignoring that conversion of STEEM to SBD (via payouts) and then back to STEEM (via conversions) does not always cause inflation as you claim. It can, and sometimes does, reduce inflation relative to the formula you quoted.
You are missing something important. The golden goose comes from printing. If people do not receive SBD rewards (which is identical to "printing") then they (and the Steem community and stakeholders generally) do not benefit from the overvaluation of SBD. The benefit comes from taking $1 worth of STEEM from the reward pool, printing it as 1 SBD, and then paying out 1 SBD which may be worth $2 if the market is overvaluing it, resulting in $1 worth of "free" aka "golden goose" reward payouts. If you instead pay out STEEM then $1 worth of STEEM from the reward pool generates $1 worth of rewards, instead of $2.
You really need to consult an economic expert.
I'm not saying to stop SBD printing all together. I'm saying return the conservative cut-off to the SBD printing the way it was before HF20. Right now the hair cut is in effect and printing of SBD is reduced to almost nothing. Just recently, the hair-cut temporarily stopped even though the debt ratio was high. This creates too much SBD and soon after causes a conversion of way too much STEEM as the conversion ratio is not 1:1. This creates inflation and pushes us back into hair-cut. It is going to be really difficult to get out of hair-cut. Our economy is going to rely entirely on market pressure to save us just like Steemit Inc relied entirely on market pressure to fund their business. It is not a responsible plan.
I provide you data and you claim that something is wrong with it. If you are not going to believe me no matter what I say, I encourage you to get the data yourself (perhaps from someone you trust like @penguinpablo). Then go to your local college and consult a professor of economics. I'm sure that they would love to entertain an economic discussion. They might even get a student to perform a study on the subject as a project.
I never said there was anything "wrong" with your data. In fact I explained how your data show a reduction in inflation during the period of high STEEM and SBD price (by downward sloping of the supply curve over a period of several months, even if not immediately visible to the naked eye). Your data is fine, your conclusion of SBD conversions as a "source" of inflation is wrong because you ignore SBD printing as a reduction of inflation. In fact you repeat the exact same error in this last reply.
This isn't a question of whether I believe you or not, the mechanism just does not work the way you claim it does.
Finally, the printing cutoff and printing generally has virtually no effect on getting us out of the haircut, or on the debt ratio generally. That's how the numbers work: It takes almost a year to increase the debt ratio by 1% via 100% printing. Close to the 10% cutoff, this is close to the same effect on the debt ratio as a 10% change in the STEEM price, something which happens frequently within one day. Conclusion: Price changes are very nearly the only factor which affect the debt ratio over moderate time periods (days to months), not printing.
Finally, stopping printing SBD means more STEEM paid out as rewards, and likely more STEEM selling pressure as a result. That's possibly counterproductive, but unlikely to ever be any better than a wash in terms of the haircut or debt ratio.
Please don't take away some of the rewards pool for authors.
They won't just take some, but a whooping 20%. Get ready!
Looks like re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Without revenue it is just moving the wealth around from authors to developers.
How does the Steem Proposal System actually generate revenue for the Steem ecosystem so that the Steem token can be worth more over time?
@blocktrades Did you guys ever decide on a winner for the 5 minute video tutorial contest? Haven’t heard or seen anything. Thanks 👍🏻
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@anomadsoul is running the contest and I'm not directly involved, so best to contact him directly.
I wonder, too, about taking the percentage entirely out of author rewards. I'd like to see at least some come out of the category "interest" since that category isn't encouraging interaction on Steem, which is what we want to encourage, right? Or do I misunderstand that category?
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Interest is the amount paid to encourage holding Steem in staked form. The biggest concern in lowering this amount would be that it decreases the advantage of holding Steem, which could result in lowering the price of Steem, which could result in inflation recipients receiving less value.
At the end of the day, it's hard to say for sure as there are many factors in play, but my gut feeling is that lowering the value of interest would result in a decrease in the price of Steem.
It doesn't have to be an all or nothing thing. Pull a little from every category and it has the least dramatic effect on anything.
This^^
The cost needs to be distributed among all categories, including witnesses. Everyone pays!!
I understand the purpose. I worry that decreasing author rewards is, long term, going to decrease engagement which will have a greater impact on the platform. Holders can still get income from curation, right? Or is it an either/or proposition, you either get curation rewards or interest? I just don't see, long term, how incentives for inactivity will drive actual platform value. I think I would support a compromise between taking from theleast active wedge and the largest wedge.
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If you hold powered up Steem, you always get the "interest" (see my other answer for more details about the actual mechanism). If you also vote, you will receive curation rewards.
But it's very important to understand that the only reason authors get rewards is because people place a value on Steem (i.e. the steem holders). If it becomes less attractive to hold Steem, authors get less rewards (all other things being equal). Vice versa, if it becomes more attractive to hold Steem, authors get more rewards.
You neglect that Steem only has value because the content generates it. It is content that has value, and provides that value to Steem. The content on all other social media platforms has immense value, and we'd see higher value for Steem were rent seekers not 'borrowing' it from creators without nominally imbursing them.
That's why our userbase is not growing now. Wanna make that problem worse? Decrease rewards for creating content. Retention is dismal because author rewards are being skimmed by curation. Curation is nothing more than rent seeking, and is the brakes on appreciation of Steem that keeps the token from creating capital gains.
Yes, of course steem is only valuable because people value steem. But I think the selling point of steem is primarily that you can reward your favorite authors and share in their success. That's what makes steem something that lots of people want to be a part of.
Yes, a relatively few people with large accounts are currently holding on to the majority of value, but that's not what mass adoption looks like. If we're looking forward, let's serve the vision that the blockchain promises.
I think compromise is acceptable on this. Some from authors rewards, some from holding rewards.
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Another question, when Steem is delegated, to whom goes the interest?
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The "interest" for powered up Steem goes to the holder of the steem (the person doing the delegating, not the person receiving the delegating). The actual mechanism isn't strictly interest, although it can be viewed as an "effective interest rate".
Here's what really happens: when you power up, your Steem is converted to Vests. There is a ratio of Steem/Vests and it is slowing increasing over time. So when you finally power down, the amount of Steem you get back is more than the amount you originally powered up. It's a bit different from interest, though, since the gain only takes place when you finally power down.
Wow. I'm sure most users don't know this.
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Follow up question: so if I want more sp, I should power down, which will result in more steem, and then I would power up and get more sp than I have now?
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No that is already accounted for. There is no need to power down and power back up (nor any benefit to doing so). What @blocktrades was saying is that you don't actually receive the extra STEEM until you power down, but it nevertheless accumulates in the value of your VESTS/SP. When you do eventually power down you will get the full amount, including any effect from "compound interest".
Thanks for the clarification!
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I am glad you are not removing curation percentage. That one feels most important to me to keep running. I do feel however that some could be taken from the interest inflation pool because this worker proposal will ultimately create more value for the currency and make up for lost interest.
I am a numbers guy, so I can't wait until we can really break down the math.
It's great to see a concrete plan for decentralized development. And I agree that we shouldn't change the inflation schedule.
But plundering the author rewards because it's the biggest share is a thoughtless choice. Maybe there's a reason for rewarding the people who contribute content?
Personally, I think curation should cost money, like it does in the real world. And interest is an insignificant factor for investors compared to the dollar price of Steem.
As a compromise, I suggest the following distribution:
While I don't think SPS should be funded from rewards - at all - I agree with your assessment of curation and author rewards wholeheartedly.
Thanks!
What can I say, let's hope this pans out great for the community.
in my lego brain it means that i have to buy more steem so i can increase rewards for those i support. oh and i may have to self upvote 8 actifit posts a week instead of 7:)
I believe they said it's for a month or two and not a permanent thingy. My main concern is that it works to improve things around here. We can handle the sacrifices that needs to be done for better results.
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I like the plan.
Dont understand why it will take 110 k to set up.
Does not matter to me where the capital comes from.... Its going to preserve our blockchains long term existence RIGHT?
Why it will take 2 months if there is already a working blockchain example you have access to?
Between 1 and 2 months is a big margin of error?
Maybe there needs to be a initial discovery stage of one week paid in advance to iron down what is needed and how long it will take?
Even taking code from an existing blockchain requires integrating and testing. In this case the code bases are significantly diverged and there will likely be modifications needed, if it even makes sense to use the existing code at all (as opposed to using it as a model and developing new code). I'm not a Steem or Bitshares developer but from my experience with developing other software I can't see this being responsibly done with sufficient confidence to not risk breaking a live blockchain in less than 1-2 months.
I thought it seemed like a short time to develop from start to finish. Unless there was a short cut since they know the code?
My concern was that the timeline seemed unrealistic like it was guesstimated and not estimated.
It is why I asked if they needed a week to provide a real timeline and cost analysis.
With my experience of estimating projects you can come close from experience and rough ideas. But until you draw(vision/plan/details) the project and list out all components you cant make an accurate estimate.
Edit: I wasn't thinking they would be able to write test and implement anything in less than 4 months. Todays date Feb/07/2019 I was thinking they are only estimating writing the code?
Good points.
I'm thinking there is a connection to bitshares many are not aware of as well.
Maybe things have already been largely developed. Kinda like how @dan responded to a lot of the fiasco here lately.
As for Bitshares, we are talking about the same players from there that are doing development, etc. on Steem. Can't imagine they don't have a grasp of the stuff already.
Personally I'd take all curation rewards for that purpose instead of dipping into author reward pool. Two birds with one stone - curation rewards are actually damaging, they distort the natural flow of "likes", especially with introduction of bots.
Curation rewards should actually be higher, as curators are usually also stakeholders. If people want a high STEEM price, they should also want stakeholders to keep their STEEM in powered up form; which requires an incentive.
Authors are also important, but keep in mind that authors are usually the ones with the least risk in this system.
Curation rewards are unnecessary, since people will upvote good content without being rewarded. As a bidbot owner, you know that curation rewards create rent seeking behaviour - it's what you do. You enable delegations to seek rent. The higher curation rewards are, the less curation has any damn thing to do with content quality, and the more it becomes rent seeking.
Be honest, please.
SP seems not to be driving price up at all, while negative retention and trash trending - completely caused by rent seeking curation - are killing the goose that lays the golden egg of Steem value.
Want the price to go up? Quit seeking rent and start rewarding good content.
I fully agree
tax vote buying and selling:)
The most important reward for curators is their influence. Bidbot users need curation rewards, but Reddit shows that people will be generous with upvotes without receiving any rewards.
Authors invest a lot of time and effort in the platform, which they will never get back.
I agree.
Agreed
+1
Completely agre with @therealwolf here and would like to add that the top 20 witnesses currently earn to much (even at low Steem prices) and would like to suggest some kind of decrease in the top 20 witness rewards to fund development.
Somewhere in the range of 10-20% .
Yup..
Good food for thought, @andablackwidow… How would you stimulate search for a quality content, then?
Simple answer - I wouldn't. If by quality content you mean what is organically popular, then you have Hot and Active. If you mean quality by some arbitrary judgement, then you have Feed and mechanism of resteem. There would still be problems arising from the fact that money dictates voting power. I'd see reputation revamped and made into deciding factor when it comes to rewarding authors. Since unlike money, reputation is not transferable, there would be no need to limit time when your vote gives reward. After all we put "the best quality content" in libraries and museums where people can pay to see it not for just 7 days after creation, but throughout centuries. Same should be true in Steem. In such setting authors wouldn't need to draw attention immediately, they could focus on lasting quality instead and it would naturally fend for itself.
Elimination of curation rewards is a small step in that direction.
I think that horse left the stall a long time ago...
Author rewards are too lucrative now (personal experience) and this is making people abuse bots. I won't mind receiving less rewards in exchange for a better Steem. But what I can't understand is why 110k dollars for 2 months of development? Are they using a team of how many software engineers working full time? 10? 20? This is a full year budget for most startups!
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Author rewards aren't drivng bots. Curation rewards are. No one would delegate to a bidbot to seek rent without curation rewards.
Author rewards aren't too high, although bidbots pervert author rewards obscenely, we're losing authors because rewards are too low without buying botvotes.
Getting rid of curation rewards fixes both problems.
Competent c++ blockchain devs are very very expensive
I see a lots of blockchain developers doing great things for the open source community. Steem is too much about money, such big expenses just to get developers makes me uncomfortable...
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Please invite these guys to work on Steem. Also, if they are as good as you suggest and work so cheaply, I have little doubt that Steemit will want to hire them. Traditionally the costs they've had to pay have been quite high.
@blocktrades if you really want to get cheap and good developers, you can start by looking at outsourced engineers. You can find great developers willing to work full time and commit by a fraction of that. Look at developers from India, Brazil, maybe Rusia. If you want to save even more ask for help on Github, many people will be happy to commit, maybe not full time, but any help is help.
Of course, this is a suggestion if you want to get the best for the least amount of work. You can great a team of great engineers and developers from countries with lower salaries for a whole year with that cash...
From my experience great developer and cheap don't really go together. I have made the error of outsourcing to cheap devs from the countries you mentioned a few times before and more often than not it resulted in me having to rewrite a lot if not all of their work because it was so poorly done.
@howo did you hire them full time or just to delivery something? I live in Brazil and there are great companies with great devs, if good developers didn't exist here don't you think the software industry would be non existent? you sound like you hire someone to do one job, not to be part of the team, 100k USD is almost 400k in local Brazilian currency. that is a budget of 33k a month in local currency, enough for 1 senior software engineer (15k), 2 good devs(5k) and maybe a few trainees with some experience , you can easily get a team compatible with the agile methodology (around 5 people with hierarchy for the project) for 1 year.
Of course numbers are not everything, but I am curious how many people did they get for that price and what will they delivery in just two months.
This is unbelievable. If SteemIt wants to pay for something, they should pay from their own pocket instead of paying with the money destined for content creators.
What is this now? SteemIt, the Communist Blockchain?
What a nerve.
ideally, a centralized entity like steemit inc would be far more efficient and effective in getting things done but it just hasn't happened here so perhaps these changes are necessary
seems to be a bit of resistance against funding coming from authors, although witness rewards are also dangerously low (i think a higher % of witness rewards should be set in SBD but let's leave that aside) and i believe curation is already far too low to the point it promotes behavior that's detrimental to the entire ecosystem
Who's fighting tooth and nail for the 16.6% going into interest payments? I'm assuming that's the part that goes to paying SP staking interest (maybe sbd in savings too)? I can see the justification for rewarding staking but with how the system currently works, this part is mostly inconsequential, costly and fairly redundant imo. At least personally, I wouldn't miss it if it went away entirely to fund this proposal. What do other stakeholders think?
What behaviour detrimental to the system does curation cause when it's too low?
Defund bidbots? Curation rewards aren't anything other than rent seeking. It's because of obscene curation rewards that curation has no relation whatsoever to content quality. Content is nothing more than a vector for profiteering for curators.
Eliminate curation rewards completely. Circle jerks and masturbatory self votes can be dealt with in different ways.
I say take a little from every category and then nothing is dramatically affected. No reason to take it all from one category, especially authors. I could also support taking a slightly higher amount from SP interest as opposed to authors.
I know it might be counter intuitive but this could actually benefit the authors in a very short time after implementation (if i understood this correctly) due to eliminating bot influence.
While the Kevin Wong curation increase proposal would have most likely destroyed STEEM (as i explained in detail weeks ago) this could possibly change the philosophy present on the STEEM blockchain.
Hello, with my qualities posts and content not getting enough visibility,
I would like to plead in any way whether you can help me out by delegating some amount of steem power to me for me to grow my account and curate more. I will be happy for your helping hand been rendered to me and i promise to make careful use of it and use it also to impact and grow others on steemit.
Thanks.
Dropping from 52% to 41% is too big of drop in my opinion, especially when we don't really know how it will all be spent. If that much is needed I would like to see some pulled from other places, like the static inflation on SP and more specifically on WITNESS INFLATION.
@smooth has addressed this point elsewhere (I think on the previous post I linked in this post). He expressed the opinion that lowering the value of witness payments beyond the current level would endanger the integrity of the blockchain.
I haven't done an analysis of costs and risks myself, but in the absence of such an analysis, I'm willing to defer to his judgement on the matter.
Because one person has an opinion on it, we automatically need to regard it as gospel? And by the way he is a well paid witness, of course he is going to say that! Pulling from multiple places makes sense on a lot of levels as opposed to taking it all from the number one onboarding feature steem has currently, author rewards.
It wasn't so much my opinion as my observation/recollection that the existing budget for witnesses (cut by 80% from the previous budget) was designed by Steemit to achieve a reasonable funding for witnesses even during extreme bear market conditions. It is also on the low end of security budgets for comparable blockchains at 0.85% currently, and already scheduled/programmed to decline to 0.095%. I find the latter to be completely reckless and I believe the decline should be halted within a few years at the most, but given the already-low budget and the preprogrammed decline I don't see a good justification for a another cut now.
Never mind what I'm paid, it is completely immaterial to my Steem holdings alone much less net worth. Top 20 witnesses (not all of whom are as well off as I am) are currently paid, before expenses, about as much as a fast food job. If you want well-qualified people with any real technical skills, and/or the knowledge and experience to make good decisions, that's not "well paid" by any means. It's more like at least 5-10x below what such a skill set commands on the open market. If you want a meaningful security margin to support the model that witnesses "will/won't do ____, because otherwise they would get voted out" then witnesses need to be somewhat overpaid (otherwise who cares about getting voted out?).
I'd rather see that assertion tested against other budget priorities, including other, potentially more effective, forms of marketing. If author rewards were the main thing that Steem needs, it would be a lot more successful by now.
And while we are on the subject, if we lowered witness votes from 30 down to 3 that would also help protect the integrity of the blockchain...
Hands up witnesses if you support or don't support this hardfork...
I have 20 + empty witness spots & 6000 sp ( not much but the vote could help some witness)
How will the 100k + usd be spent @blocktrades?
How many members are on this team?
Is there any contract on the length of time this will take, if it takes 6 months instead of 2 will you be billing 300k instead of 100k?
There'll be 5 primary people on the team, although occasionally others will be consulted.
Ideally, we'll complete the work in a month (in which case it will cost $55K), but there's a chance it will go longer. There's literally no chance it will take 6 months of labor. My outside estimate is 2 months.
Thanks for the reply,
That is a lot of people, good luck with the work. Added you as witness there today
Thanks for the vote!
Regarding your other question, I suppose it's obvious I support the hardfork, as it's my proposal. All of the witnesses I've talked to also support it, but of course, I haven't talked with literally every witness.
Thanks for the reply
why do you say funding from STEEMIT when you plan to take rewards from all STEEM based channels?!
you say "Approximately $55K USD worth of STEEM will be paid from Steemit to Blocktrades for each month of work" will the 10% of the author rewards be adjusted as the price fluctuates up or down to keep at $55k or do you plan to benchmark the amount of STEEM
Being a top 20 witness and running services charging premiums for years surely you are one the most paid out of the STEEM ecosystem why should more funds be allocated?
what if your proposal does not add value?
what is this mention of using 10% of autor pool to fund? also how would using portion of reward pool stop extra inflation tokens are still created
current prices maybe but average price is nearly 10 times the current and by statements from steemt inc cost to run witness nodes is reduced greatly and will only be further lessened
meaning was in context of divertying 10% of author reward
What exactly would be the benefit to decreasing my already low rewards? Sorry, I don't necessarily understand why we're doing it this way and for what purpose will the donations be used for. Examples would be nice, until then, I just think this will just decrease distribution in the system. Only The rich and the devs can still earn while the smaller accounts have to work even harder just to earn 0.001 Steem. I suppose change my mind if you think this is a good way to handle things...
@therealwolf made a post that I hope will answer some of your questions:
https://steemit.com/steem/@therealwolf/thoughts-on-the-worker-proposal-system-for-steem
I do think it is the best way forward.
Hi ,I would first like to see what is done with donated money from Steemit/community then mess with the author rewards. I could be on the minority side here but isn’t this something we can put up for a vote ,and thanks for the post
There is a poll, it's here: https://steemit.com/blocktrades/@blocktrades/stake-weighted-poll-for-two-versions-of-steem-proposal-system
Please do not comment on that post, arguments for and against should be placed here:
https://steemit.com/blocktrades/@blocktrades/pros-and-cons-of-two-versions-of-steem-proposal-system
As a content and community guy, I am a huge fan of this idea of dedicating funds to projects that can hopefully increase the price of steem. When that happens, every single group benefits.
I do have a couple of questions:
Is there any way to fund this from revenue outside of the steem ecosystem? Perhaps ads, donations or outside investment? Or perhaps Steemit Inc directly?
If it is necessary for it to come from the current system, would a different split be more effective? For example, would taking 5.5% from authors and 5.5% from witnesses be more effective?
I realize how important witnesses are and have always valued and appreciated their work, dedication and integrity. As a result, I would never suggest significantly cutting the rewards that they earn for their work. I am just wondering if a shift of where some of those rewards come from would be more effective.
My question is also based on the fact that I believe steemit intends to make changes that would make it far less expensive for witnesses to run their servers. Hopefully this savings will offset some of the reduction in rewards if they were directed to this fund.
In addition, witnesses could still earn rewards from this new fund by working on their projects. Many witnesses already do this for free.
If 5.5% is too aggressive, is there another split that would work?
I do agree that funding from outside Steem should be considered, but feel that SPS will be intended to produce capital gains, which directly inure to stake. The authority to decide which proposals to fund is directly based on stake.
The funding should be therefore also directly based on stake.
Making our retention problem worse, or driving more witnesses away, are both existentially problematic for Steem.
Tapping stake across the board does not decrease incentives rewards are intended to provide for necessary and beneficial provision of value to Steem.
All rewards are funded by a "tax" (i.e. inflation) on stake. I'm not sure where else you think they come from.
Unless you are proposing to further increase the already-high 8.5% inflation (in which case the answer is very likely to be a hard no from nearly all stakeholders), then the only way this can be done is by reallocating existing inflation-funded rewards. For various mathematical reasons starting with the Willie Sutton Rule ("because that's where the money is") most or all of this reallocation has to come from author rewards.
I can respect if people think that author rewards specifically are inherently more important and valuable to Steem then a flexible budget system for funding proposals, though I disagree. Author rewards IMO are one way of adding value to Steem by attracting a user base and supporting engagement, but not even remotely the only way. I'd rather have a budgeting proposal system which can decide among competing priorities in how to spend the budget to best help Steem. That could, conceivably include giving the funds right back to authors, if stakeholders (i.e. the ones paying for ALL of the rewards) really believe that is the very best possible use, or it may include other things (marketing, development, promotions, referral programs, etc.), some or all of which could and likely would directly benefit users, including authors, albeit in different ways than direct monetary payment. I would contend we have been sorely lacking in the latter even while more than generously funding the former.
There is more that needs to be done for Steem to be a success than just paying out most of the inflation budget to authors, otherwise it would already be doing what needs to be done and would be on a clear path to success. But I don't believe that to be the case, and I doubt too many other people believe it either.
Finally I would reiterate what was said in the original post: that a significant portion of "author" rewards are currently being used to reward various ongoing projects, community groups, development work, initiatives, apps, etc. and rightfully so. But to the extent those things can shift over to getting longer-term funding via a proposal system, that removes those costs from the regular reward pool, leaving more for regular "authors". I seriously doubt that the net reduction to these "regular authors" would be anything close to 20%.
I know much of this response was not directed at my question, but I still found it incredibly helpful. The main goal we should focus on is increasing the value of steem. When that happens EVERY group benefits. 40% of a pool based on $10 steem is a hell of a lot better than 50% of .25 steem that is for sure. I agree that author rewards are not even close to the only way to attract and retain people (I happen to be partial to games myself). That is why I am a huge fan of the idea of funding development of projects that can help increase the price.
I understand that this is not actually going to be a 20% reduction in content rewards (provided people don't double dip). I was just wondering if the cost reduction to run servers coupled with a new way to reward witnesses for the projects they are running would have the same effect as the shifting of content rewards. If it did, then perhaps a portion could come from witness rewards. But based on quite a few comments I have read, it seems like that may not be wise. Thanks for taking the time to weigh in.
hm , indeed, it still comes down to external input or loss of energy in a closed system over time is inevitable
i read about the advertising ... and getting advertisers to pay in STEEM to place ads would imo indeed work best
but i didnt read much about it after that small mention ...
without external money it can do nothing but devaluate over time, that should be clear yea ?
and from the first look and as it will to many it DOES look like a system to keep the money floating up top ,effectively cutting into post rewards ... which already are at an all-time low
i'm not sure this will be very popular but usually no one cares about that, right ?
... oh well ...
I think Smooth has made the best argument for maintaining the witness pay at the current level (or possibly even higher if Steem price drops). I suggest reading some of his comments in this post.
Thanks! I read as much as I could and feel far more educated on the matter now.
I would love to see more games and apps that people will pay for using steem. I think this fund will help encourage that.
Cool devaluate steem more and centralize the system further.
As a new user, this was my immediate reaction.
If a small group of people can unilaterally change the rewards structure and centralize it by a whopping 20% ?
This is my initial gut reaction, but it just feels like a bunch of rich people decided that they didn't want to use their own money to develop the ecosystem so they unilaterally decide to tax people to pay for it.
It's not too far off the mark to call this a tax, but with taxes we at least get to elect the people who write the tax law - with Steem it just seems like, the wealthier you are the more governmental power you hold.
Honestly I think I prefer democracy
This is democracy. It's exactly how democracy works IRL. Read the Stanford study from 2014, and this is exactly what democracy does: delivers the authority and wealth of the public to oligarchs and rent seekers.
That's why I say that SPS should be funded by a flat tax on stake. Any benefits will inure directly to stake via capital gains. All votes are directly based on stake, and the responsibility for funding is justly borne by the authority, which is stake weight.
Sucking from rewards decreases the incentives for the essential creation of value that rewards provide. We're losing authors, not growing, already, and decreasing author rewards will be apocalyptic in the present circumstances. Witnesses are also bordering on breaking even, and decreasing their rewards will see an exodus - which will dramatically decrease the security of the blockchain. We don't want that to happen.
The only rewards that are not creating substantial value for Steem are curation rewards, which are nothing more than rent seeking.
Why can't the just fund their own project like a normal person? Couldn't steemconnect just as easily demand a flat tax? How are people even talking this seriously as two choices they have to make instead if just saying NO?
There's not really two choices at all. Having worked in promotions, I know that approximately 90% of funds raised from donors goes to pay promoters, what's left funds the cause.
@blocktrades really only gave us one choice - taxing rewards.
So, I voted for donations only. That's saying no.
Also, this isn't a binding resolution - yet. That's why I'm speaking up now.
Thanks!
We all need to speak up together or further centralize the steem chain.
Also ignore any bullying from witnesses and people who think their stake % equals their voice.
Realistically, stake does equal power, and not just on Steem. It's the way of the world.
But, no bully please!
Thanks!
If I could upvote this 10 times I would. Best comment yet 👌
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Implementing the proposal system is an interesting idea, but I think reducing the author reward by roughly 20% is too much. Considering the significance of this change, I think it would be best to let the community decide by stake-based voting how to fund the proposal system.
That is the plan.
I have put my thoughts on a post of my own, but I'll cut and paste here for visibility:
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I support this 100%
This proposed 11% cut on author rewards are 0.943 % of 8.574% total inflation. Exactly like @blocktrades proposed as 1%.
What this means for the author rewards:
Author rewards are 4.467% of total inflation. It will be 3.515% of total inflation after implementation if approved.
Curation rewards are 1.406% of total inflation, I agree with @ats-david that a balance between author and curation rewards would be a great incentive to keep the social media experience viable into the future.
Awesome 👏🏼
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Maybe I’m out of line, @blocktrades, but I have to ask… will the next hardfork be a chance to improve sign up system as well?
As it stands, the idea is to only introduce this one change in the hardfork. It's possible that someone else may want to introduce a separate change, but combining such changes, especially from two different development groups increases the testing challenges. As far as I know, the only other development group making major changes to Steem code right now is Steemit. I believe their next planned change is implementation of rocksdb, which shouldn't require a hardfork.
I haven't heard of anyone discussing a change to sign up that requires a hardfork, but such a discussion may be going on somewhere.
Wow, huge news!
Reducing author rewards from 52% to 41% is way to much for something that we have no idea about. It may be gamed, have bugs, ect. I recommend starting smaller to make sure that it works and work out any bugs or gaming of the system that arise. Then after some time, say 6 months or so the community can decide if we want to additional funding to this project.
I like @theycallmedan idea of using burned / declined payout money as a good starting point.
Messing with rewards should only be considered AFTER it proves itself.
I disagree. Author rewards are too lucrative now (personal experience) and this is making people abuse bots. I won't mind receiving less rewards in exchange for a better Steem. But what I can't understand is 110k dollars for 2 months of development? Are they using a team of how many software engineers? This is a full year budget for most startups!
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I'm not sure what country you live in, but the only kind of software company I know of with a budget of 110K for a year would be one where the programmer owns the company and does all the programming himself (I started one like this, back in 1992).
Keep in mind that Steemit is paying for this, and they have a pretty good idea of the costs involved, since they employ their own team to do similar work.
BS - Im a cofounder of a successful enterprise SaaS company serving multi-hundred-million dollar revenue scale clients that employs half a dozen devs and our running dev costs are under 8K a month. Nice try though, the noobs will swallow it hook, line and sinker.
The company that never produces, laid everybody off, and burns money faster the feds, "has a pretty good idea of the costs" of colluding again with the same old insider people.
Sigh. This is why all the provable brains have left, except for those of us that enjoy warming ourselves beside the dumpster fire.
I'd love to find out where you're hiring 6 devs for 8K a month (china, maybe?).
But let's get real and just use the results of the first web search I do on programmer salary in the US:
https://www.careerexplorer.com/careers/computer-programmer/salary/
Why does it matter, are ya racist or something?
It matters because the prices you're listing don't make any sense.
I don't see any point in discussing this further, your "rascism" attack is such an obvious ad hominem.
Or how about this one: "Projects are now directly funding those who have an interest in blockchain programming because there is a severe skill shortage in this space. From beginners to experts. Even though the average salary of a blockchain engineer in Silicon Valley is $158,000, programmers who have experience in Solidity (language for creating smart contracts) is in short supply and high demand."
https://www.forbes.com/sites/shermanlee/2018/04/11/the-demand-for-blockchain-engineers-is-skyrocketing-but-blockchain-itself-is-redefining-how-theyre-employed/#49f5a5a96715
Right, use the highest (and only?) bidder, got it. That makes good fiscal sense and visibility.
@igormuba bots aren't the issue here. Most people actually lose money on promoting with them after curation. The real problem with incentives is colluding upvotes. Nevertheless 20% cut in author rewards is way too much.
This isn't a completely new system: it's been tested conceptually already in BitShares. We plan to test it heavily before releasing it to look for any bugs that may be introduced in the port of the algorithm to Steem. "Live" testing shouldn't be relied on to find bugs.
Also, it's not like huge funds will be immediately at risk once it goes live, because the pool fills up gradually from inflation.
Someone else suggest an idea similar to the one you mentioned: create a version of a post that pays to the proposal funding account (instead of redirecting the burned/declined payout post). A more general version of that could be to actually allow users to create posts that payout to another user.
One advantage of using the declined payout posts versus either of the above options would be less code changes (including no real interface changes), but it also has the disadvantage of disallowing users from actually burning the rewards.
Sounds like a pretty good place to start to me. Plus this fund will be able to take donations so funding drives will be easy. I am pretty sure a lot of us would not mind donating an up vote or two per week especially as people see it working to better Steem's eco-system.
People were already donating votes to the burn post every day, why not just have them donate to a development post every day?
Because those quantities would never pay for any serious development.
I am against pulling 20% from the author reward pool. Pull some from every category and there is less of a dramatic effect on any one group.
Hope it works.
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will you pay less to the authors? so who will create contents?
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In previous times, authors used to receive 50% less than they receive now, and contents were still created. With this change, they will still receive a larger percentage than they did then.
Understood.
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@bidesign yes, the cut in author rewards will be around 20% but as @blocktrades mentioned users will surely still create content.
so amazing, good luck @blocktrades. this is my post :
https://steemit.com/blocktrades/@muhammadrizki96/blocktrades-memulai-pengembangan-sistem-proposal-steem
If author reward will decrease from 52% to 41%, it will also be appropriate for the proposals of workers and anyway your understanding is the best we will do whatever you do well.
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thats great news!
will the work also involve a frontend for voting / approving proposals? or is that part out of scope?
imho this is a great step forward. thank you and looking forward to testing phase.
As there are multiple frontends, we decided the implementation of a front end should be left to each frontend team that wants to support the interface.
A basic implementation could be taken almost straight from a witness voting page with minor changes to call the equivalent proposal calls. The biggest change would be a new form to create a proposal.
We will be modifying the cli wallet, to enable proposal creation and proposal voting, as this will be very useful for testing.
cool thx for clarifying.
this is a huge move, it will be interesting to watch where all of this leads us to
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Hi @blocktrades isn't this proposal too costly? I think a breakdown of the cost should be made to justify this high.
No, I don't think it's too costly. I actually consider it pretty cheap and we've charged more for many other contracts. But you're not paying for it, so I don't think you should be concerned about it. The costs have been negotiated with the buyer and they have a good idea of what the breakdown is.
This post has been included in the latest edition of SoS Daily News - a digest of all you need to know about the State of Steem.
Where will Steemit Inc. get the money to pay for, It is kinda much more money to be paid by a company that is still powering down its stake to pay off Dev on SMT project.
Apart from that, can it be run by blocktrade on the other hand?
Will the author rewards drop only be for the time span when the work is being conducted, as in it'll go back to the normal splits when this project is complete?
I support this idea. It make sense to support steem development if we want to continue enjoying the value it's bringing to everyone.
I think the comunity should vote this. The changes are too important.