HF 19 as it stands will either be bad or horrible from my perspective. These hardforks aren't inherently good or bad. It depends on what your goals are. I don't think this hardfork will accomplish my goals of growing the platform or supporting minnows. This is ironic because I think the hardfork is meant to do those things, but this is the story of unintended consequences. Needless to say, in the short term I don't like it.
Perceived HF19 intentions
The hardfork is designed to improve the outgoing rewards pool distribution and that may happen to a small extent in limited areas. It's meant to improve the usage of curation benefits and do a better job of capturing their rewards. It might do that too. However; those benefits will be massively outweighed by clustering of author rewards, which will drain ~60% of the reward pool into just 10-20 accounts (unless there is a massive manual intervention). I see that as bad. Maybe you don't... but I think it's bad.
That said, if it fails like I think it will then the blowback will help. If I'm wrong so be it. I've been wrong before. I got over it then too. If users go to extraordinary efforts to manually unfuck this thing it may appear to have worked, but only because some power users took things into their own hands. Like a lot of things around here it's up to the whales and the Witnesses they upvote to determine how this place works. Excited to see how things turn out about 1-2 months after it's implemented.
What do I want?
I want this place to grow. Pure and simple.
The world is run by immoral banksters that cause harm. Protesting isn't going to change it. Getting on the inside isn't going to change it. We gotta provide an alternative to the shitty economic system they have created and get a mass adoption going. If we can do that, then we can change the world.
I'm personally motivated to do this because the immoral banksters own the pharma companies and the research dollars involved in cancer research. Cures are known. Causes are known. We can end the cancer epidemic tomorrow if leaders stopped promoting cancer studies akin to tobacco science and talk extensively about the Race to the Cause instead of the Race to the Cure. It would be great if they start promoting actual cures instead of high priced medicines that cause further harm.
I'm a PhD scientist, I've done extensive research. I know about the mainstream studies. I've read them. I don't believe them anymore. They're lying and the research is fraudulent, and now I have a dead mother, two dead uncles, and a variety of family members missing their organs and a fat chunk of change because of it. Eventually, I'll probably die from cancer too. I have limited time to fix this place so my kids might have it better. I want this whole system to change, and I think Steemit could do it.
That's where I'm coming from.
Stakeholders
Who are the stakeholders here?
Whales
Merchants
Everyone Else
I'm not anti-whale or anti-merchant. They are important groups. But I'm a populist anyway and want to see this place grow and that means focusing on the needs of new users and lower power users to train, retain, and grow them. If I can do that I have a shot at changing the world. Seems like a worthy effort. This is why I've worked so hard since becoming a Witness 3 weeks ago to get a 500 person Discord channel going, get a 110k SP bot running to get them started, get the Minnow Support Project contests up and running, send a kid and his Dad to Steemfest and wrote a shit ton of Steemit tips articles.
fuck socialism
93% of the steem rests in 1% of the users. That's excluding the @steemit account. If you include @steemit it's basically all the steem in like 100 accounts.
I hate the distribution, but I'm a libertarian/anarchist so the plan shouldn't be to take from whales to give to minnows, but to gently guide a rewards pool distribution that incents helping baby accounts get wealthier.
What the fuck does all that have to do with HF 19
Here are the things that are important about the next Hardfork
Programmed-
Linear Rewards
Voting Pool use per vote
Rewards Pool Distribution Percentage
Current status-
SP distribution
Rewards Pool Distribution and the trending page
Witness settings
Social-
Whale non-voting experiment
The 3 most important aspects of the upcoming HF
Voting pool usage change
Whale experiment
Linear Rewards
Where do we stand today
Distribution Picture-
Rewards Pool Distribution Picture- 72% of future rewards going to authors
Author rewards pool
What will the hardfork do?
Let's start with Linear rewards. Linear Rewards is designed to fix curation. Curation is actually the wrong place to start. It's only 12% of the rewards pool distribution, and this tweak will at best be a 15% change to it. So overall a max of a 1.8% shift to distribution.
We can't talk about linear rewards all by itself because it's not actually the most important question. We have to talk about it in conjunction with the whale non-voting experiment.
I've created a fairly simple model. HF 18 non-voting whales, HF 18 voting whales, HF 19 non-voting whales, and HF 19 voting whales. The problem with simple models is that they aren't quite accurate and mine is no exception. What I've tried to do is think of 4 people voting on a post and trying to figure out what kinds of rewards they are going to get. This isn't an exact science, but I'm pretty comfortable with what I'm looking at in the first pass.
4 curators in a whales voting scenario
A mega Whale with 800,000 SP
A whale with 50,000 SP
A dolphin with 13500 SP
A minnow with 1200 SP
I've also done a whales not voting scenario. I know some whales are currently voting even in the non-voting experiment so it isn't perfect. That's why I bumped my normal whales value up beyond 50k but didn't include my mega whale who likely isn't actually voting all that much.
4 curators in a whales voting scenario
A muted mega Whale with 0 SP
A whale with 80,000 SP
A dolphin with 13500 SP
A minnow with 1200 SP
Then I thought ok. Let's imagine 4 different posts all go up to around $3k. It doesn't matter who authored them. They all vote on the same post around the 30 minute mark. I'm going to ignore the order for a second though I know it matters, but we need a simple model. Now imagine that there's $120 worth of rewards to split just between those 4 curators. Who gets what under the 4 cases?
Here's how it shakes out-
HF 18 No experiment mega whale gets 99.5% of the 120 bucks
HF 18 with experiment whale gets 97.2% of the 120 bucks
HF 19 no experiment whale gets 93%
HF 19 with experiment whale get 84%
The flat out most fair way to do this is HF 19 no experiment, but of these 4 options HF 19 with the experiment will do the most to encourage new users to come here. Through some combination of the benevolance of mega whales and likely increase in user base if whales continue not voting thus leading to a price increase I hope Linear Rewards goes through and the experiment continues. But that's small potatoes....
The future SP distribution is driven by author rewards
Look at how the rewards pool is paid out.
72% to Authors
13% to curators
7% to interest
5% to witnesses
2% to commentors
It shouldn't take a genius to figure out how to make a better overall distribution and grow this place. We tweak those categories.
Commenters... it's not worth dealing with
Witness pay isn't massive compared to what they have to do... maybe trim when the price goes up... but especially if competition goes up for these spots and people fight for the positions then we will actually get our money's worth out of the witness pool.
Interest should be at 0%. Why we're paying 7% of the reward pool to SBD interest is a bit of a mystery to me. I'm worried it's based on legacy policies that haven't been updated for like a year by some top 49 witness accounts that are driving percent interest above 0% and forcing the community to give a bunch of SP to SBD holders where it's really not necessary. Either they change or we vote them down in power and we can recapture a lot if not all of this 7%.
Curators... Linear rewards and the experiment will tweak this... but it's net effect at best is about a 15% change on 12% or at best about 1.8% difference in curation rewards pool distribution... This isn't a holy grail.
Author rewards- This is where it's at baby!!!
How do we point author rewards to growth?
Look at author rewards distribution now.
I can't integrate this data, but if I squint I think I see about 90% of the author rewards going to 8% of the authors. I know that's covered in the white paper, but I think it's too much. I think it's bad for the platform. Should top posters earn more than shit posters yes. Should it be that much? No. Why? Because it sucks for new users. This is subjective, but the current distribution isn't meeting the needs of new users.
I have a unique position running a group for ~500 minnows to know some of what they are struggling with. Yes it's only been 4 days, but I've only been a dolphin for about a month. I've been a minnow recently for about 10 months. So, I'm feeling kinda clued in.
They aren't sitting there talking about how fucked they are that they aren't maximizing their 2 cents a day of curation rewards. They are pissed that they can't get shit for authoring.
Curation has a built in slow growth curve for minnows. If you can't make a big bet on a post you can't get paid out even if it goes pure huge. So, minnow curation is kinda fucked. The most hope a minnow has for money is droppin' memes in whale comment's sections or hoping that 1 post actually catches a whale upvote. But there isn't a growth cap on authoring, so that's the best chance to make mega rewards for minnows and dolphins and seeing that all the rewards are going to the same ~30 authors every week makes that difficult to bear.
What's the 4x change in voting going to do?
It's going to concentrate votes even more on an even slimmer number of authors. If you think the reward pool is getting drained now by the same people over and over it's going to be 4 times worse. Why? because that's how you maximize curation.
I run @minnowsupport bot which is a newly minted whale account. 500 people autovote themselves about 1000 times a day. The curation rewards are shit because the posts don't get big because it's still largely ignored minnows we are talking about.
Instead take for example a recent 1 click $700 payout for a whale curating a big post. If you bet big on the posts that go huge you get a fat fucking stack.
I get why this was put in place. It was an incentive to upvote the best content and the assumption was that if more people upvote it then it's better content. That's not how this works in reality though. The goal for a serious curation maximizer is just to upvote the thing most likely to go huge and there's a steady predictable place to put that vote... then FUCK YEAH. that's guarenteed money! At $700 for 1 click you have way too much incentive to pig pile and not search out good content.
Now, imagine instead of placing a $50 bet on a post I get to place a $200 dollar bet on the post. My gains will get even larger. The posts will get even larger. My curation as a whale could be $2800 on a single post.... as the fucking curator!
The trending page is going to be filled with $12000 posts, but everyone else won't get shit because all the power will be in those 10-20 posts probably by the exact same authors every day. It's because curation is gamed to maximize rewards rather than used as designed to upvote the best content.
What's the takehome
If you're not a top author you're about to get fucked by HF 19, and it's gonna stall growth or shrink this platform. Linear rewards is barely perceptible. If the experiment stops it's gonna be even worse. This is a bad fucking plan. That said. It's good to run this expriment to show it's a bad fucking plan and when the trending page is 12k in a week and a half and everyone starts leaving we can go the opposite direction to tweak distribution to favor growth on the platform.
How do we tweak to grow the platform?
- Get rid of curation bonuses for pig piling.
- Spread out voting power to 80 votes instead of shrinking to 10
- Keep the non-voting whale experiment going
- Implement linear rewards
- Witnesses change SBD percent interest to 0 or you remove your witness vote on them
- Incent whales to upvote minnows by using less power or having a better rewards curve when they do
Help the people running and participating in the Minnow Support Project.
Let's hope I'm wrong. If I'm right let's work collectively to steer the ship on a different tack. If I'm wrong point and laugh and we'll all joke about this a month from now.
I don't think you're right but this a great critique and I look forward to you following and critiquing the effects of the HF as we observe them in real-time. Nice work.
Yeah - it's important to remember that this HF, like all of the ones before it, it part of a greater experiment in which the blockchain collects the data and results.
If it sucks, we'll change it.
Once again, this is not how the Steem curation landscape ever was and ever will be. You're assuming that everyone is voting at the same rate, it was never like this. Out of the Top 1% very few ever vote, and earlier it was only a dozen of them that were dominating 99% of the reward pool using less than 10% of the stake.
Even with your own numbers, minnows gain 50 times more influence with HF19 with no experiment versus HF18 with experiment. That's not a fair comparison, as the experiment is just that. Better compare like for like. Feel free to simulate actual historical voting data on the blockchain for a meaningful comparison. Everything else is irrelevant. (Edit - the experiment is not sustainable as it is important for there to be an incentive for large SP holders. Many of whom have powered down during the experiment, by the way.)
With linear rewards, the piling on effect is no longer there, and the top authors will lose out dramatically. The curation rewards are quadratic which in fact heavily discourages piling on votes. Those who are early gain most of the curation rewards, while late voters fight for scraps. That's why curators are heavily incentivized to find new, undiscovered posts to vote on, instead of posts by top authors.
The lower voting power target will have negative short term consequences, but even that further spreads out rewards far and wide once the platform grows and the Subcommunities feature takes off. The age of power curators are over. The target will of course be need to be adjusted upwards as the platform grows.
As others have pointed out, SBD interest has been 0% for months now.
In short, most of your concerns are misplaced.
Upvoted with 10% strength for visibility as we don't want unnecessary FUD and panic.
Also, dont' get me wrong. This is a policy that we may disagree on, but I think ultimately having you on the platform is great for the platform. I admire what you do, and am grateful for your work. I'm also grateful for your time and consideration on this issue. I've prepared some coffee cake for you this morning. You can share it with @donkeypong if you so choose. I'm honored to have you both come visit my wall.
I saw your earlier post. I read it and it sparked this one. I think you're quite bright, but I think you're wrong here. In your post you were comparing whale A to Whale B and seeing that it shrank. Turns out it doesn't matter. What matters is compairng Whale A to Diver A and Whale B to Diver B. That first ratio is 99:1. The second is about 93:1. It's not going to have the dramatic effect you think it's going to have. That's a ~6% shift.
As for a giant increase... it's kinda like I promise to pay you 20 cents an hour instead of 1 cent. Yes, that's a 20x increase, but you still wouldn't want ot live on it.
I hope I'm wrong. If I'm not we'll see it soon. The Kings of the ring should have a 12k post in record time. If you see that I'd ask you suggest we pull the plug. Maybe this will all be swell. It's really hard to model all the variables, but my back of the envelope calculation says that 40 -> 10 is trading a small gain in curation benefits for a massive clusterfuck in authoring.
For the third time, your assumption that everyone votes at the same rate is wrong. It's well known most whales never or rarely voted, even before the experiment. Besides, @steemit owns 40% of the stake and they never, ever vote. The Steemwhales picture you post accounts for estimated value, where poloniex and bittrex hold large proportions of liquid assets which are irrelevant for voting.
But let's assume that's the case, and I'll use your numbers. We'll compare HF19 no experiment with HF18 no experiment, like for like.
800K SP tier - 99.5824% vs 93%. That's a decrease of 6% as you correctly point out.
50K SP tier - 0.398% vs 6%. That's a 15x gain in influence.
13.5K SP tier - 70x gain in influence.
1.2K SP tier - 500x gain in influence.
Once again, remember that whales vote much less than dolphins and minnows, so these numbers are very flawed too. But even with these numbers it's very easy to see how minnows' influence will grow by orders of magnitudes. (Edit - I don't have the numbers, but a developer can simulate it. My guess is 10% of the stake was previously dominating 90% of the rewards; now they will get 30% or something like that. Minnows will gain 1000x influence, dolphins will gain 100x. Those are just guesses given my understanding of the curation landscape.)
There'll be no 12k post. With linear rewards that'd need 1/4th of all staked votes in a day to vote on a single post. Currently that's possible with 1/16th the votes, but after HF19 it will be much harder. It's really clear how linear rewards work, there's no scope for disagreement or "we'll see it soon". We know how this will turn out.
PS: I guess you didn't read my post beyond the opening image, I clearly compared Whale B vs Diver B.
How do we define the term Whale?
At what point does a Dolphin evolve into a Whale?
Or is it just completely relative?
One thing I noticed about Steem Power, was it is easy to buy some, if you care about curating, and making better payback on your time to post.
Even purchasing 10 SP could make a huge difference in your experience, as far as value for your time.
That is motivational, but ONLY for those that really want to participate.
Looks like most Whales really want to have power on the platform but rarely use it..
and are willing to risk not being able to access it all for a few months, in return for being able to heavily influence the community from time to time.
I HEAVILY QUESTION IF WE WANT a platform that attracts many posters that only want to game the system by posting crap and making money from it.
What shows initiative and creativity is being willing to invest in the platform enough that their content is seen and their curation efforts are paid well.
My experience:
a) Joined up, posted a few things. Nobody saw it, no comments.
b) Purchased some SP.
c) Seeing that my voting power was something that carried weight now, it further MOTIVATED ME to participate in the platform.
You state "One thing I noticed about Steem Power, was it is easy to buy some, if you care about curating, and making better payback on your time to post.
Even purchasing 10 SP could make a huge difference in your experience, as far as value for your time.
That is motivational, but ONLY for those that really want to participate."
No. It's only motivational for those that have the financial wherewithal to participate by buying Steem Power.
You seem utterly unaware that 3 billion people live on less than $3/day. Seeing that chart @aggroed posted and the nearly complete acquisition of all the rewards of posting by a handful of posters should give you pause.
It did me. Why should I invest $10 for zero return? Look at this chart and tell me that's a good investment.
I converted Ethereum to buy SP.
I'm here for the long haul, regardless of the money.
As far as I'm concerned, the biggest advantage to Steemit, irrespective of the shit people always pull, is the fact that here, I don't get saddled with the job of polishing someone else's turds.
I only have to worry about my own.
"There'll be no 12k post" Liberosist, 2017
We can revisit this comment in a couple weeks.
I'm a fan of linear rewards. I'm suggesting we implement it.
I hate the 40-->10 vote thing.
Something really confused me today.
I keep reading, that at present time ( prior HF19) one single upvote worth is EXPONENTIAL, depending on SP. Which in few hours is going to be changed into LINEAR
I just checked the "worth of upvote" values for 8 different whales-dolphins-minnows, from steemdollar.com , starting from the top, and in the decreasing steps of x10 times each. And here is what i got:
This seems quite linear, right?
Ten times more SP = ten times more value in one upvote.
How it can be?
What I am missing?
@aggroed , @ausbitbank , @timcliff - or anyone else can clarify this?
that's teh SP, but in squared rewards you would multiply that by tiself. 71x71 to calculate rewards shares.
Wow, quite in depth there @aggroed. I knew HF 19 was coming but didn't realise quite how much of a big change this will have. You are very right, we get questions every day in the Discord chat about low payouts for very good posts. There is only so much as a minnow that we can do other than resteem their post in the hopes that it will get more exposure and hopefully a small percentage of an upvote from a whale for them.
If you are correct in your assessment then I am worried for a lot of newer members: there just won't be the incentive to keep going for them. I will stick it out regardless - while important the monetary rewards are secondary to the community I have surrounded myself with and the community you introduced me to.
I hope you are wrong, for their sakes.
I encourage you to make a weekly post about underappreciated/underrated posts. I will happily follow you and evaluate your picks myself and vote up the good stuff.
Thank you! Excellent idea! I will keep you appraised
I'll probably upvote your "underappreciated post summary" post too
Wow, thank you. I will get right on it and let you know!
<3
This 'sticking it out' is fine - until a fair competitor comes along. Steemit is only a vibrant community at present because no such competing platform exists. When it does, Steemit will no longer be a vibrant community, because people seek fairness.
It isn't so much the money, as you point out. It's fairness. I'm not here for money, but to post in a community that doesn't censor posts like Youtube, and Facebook, etc., do.
But the unfair distribution has made money an issue for me, when money just wasn't before.
Yes, I was thinking this too. It seems as a great idea of rewarding people for creating content and for interacting with it but what is the point of rewards if it is not distributed correctly/fairly?! I Think a lot of people are looking for new and different concepts than the usual money making giants of Facebook or YouTube and replacing them with fair systems. Maybe Steemit wasn't intended to be like that.
I might get the wrong impression, I'm only new here, I don't even understand all these terms: whales, dolphins, minnows and the rest. So I'm here to learn more and see where it goes.
I've only been here a month, so there is much yet I don't understand, but the terms you mention refer to the size of the bankroll of the account. Minnows have more than $1000 or so, Dolphins ten times that, and Whales more than $50k. Which makes me plankton at <$100 =p.
One thing I can point out is that of the rewards you can see you are getting for the comment I am replying to, my vote is worth less than $.10. A dolphin, or whale with a lower weighted vote, has upvoted your comment.
HF19 really seems to have made things better, but I haven't yet seen the data on author rewards, which is the majority of rewards. Before the fork, 1% of accounts received 99% of author rewards. Even just an order of magnitude greater spread wouldn't completely create a fair playing field, but it would show a dramatic improvement.
There will be some tendency of rewards to be preferentially concentrated, as content is variable in quality, topic, and based on personal and familial relationships. No algorithm will create a perfect 'communist' distribution, because voting should create a meritocracy, and the people voting will differentiate between content based on merit.
I do know things are better now, except that downvotes are still impacting some people whose content is being reward deprived by parties able to do so (whales) for personal reasons, and this issue hasn't been much addressed in the Hard Fork.
While there is a fairness issue, which is magnified in the perceptions of most people, the fact of rewards being distributed at all is a qualitative change from other platforms. This is markedly demonstrated by the scarcity of trolls, because trolls don't get upvoted, and do get downvoted.
Even folks who are generally unconcerned with the pursuit of wealth don't see much point in deliberately avoiding it, which is what trolling effectively is going to achieve on Steemit. One of the things I love most about Steemit is that the quality of discourse is radically different from other platforms, and I think this is the reason.
It is that difference in quality of communications that most inspires hope in me for Steemit to become more than just a yakbox, but a means of political decision making. I feel that all the pieces are available on Steemit, and just waiting for someone to figger out how to assemble them right.
The future's so bright, I gotta wear shades.
Thanks for your reply.
The bad news is, with little analysis, aggroed prediction is more likely leaning towards being right. The change isn't big but what it shows is HF19 isn't a well thought-out upgrade or one with hidden agendas or on lacking vision or does not help the sustainable growth of the platform and its community. please note: My opinion is based on very little knowledge and understanding of how this actually works** It won't be long though before I figure a lot of it out and will then beable to make a more meaningful contribution.
Your post blew me away. I'm really floored.
Someone with a real mind.
You may be wrong about many things with the HF, but I liked this statement, so I will quote you.
"I'm personally motivated to do this because the immoral banksters own the pharma companies and the research dollars involved in cancer research. Cures are known. Causes are known. We can end the cancer epidemic tomorrow if leaders stopped promoting cancer studies akin to tobacco science and talk extensively about the Race to the Cause instead of the Race to the Cure. It would be great if they start promoting actual cures instead of high priced medicines that cause further harm."
I've looked into this myself; health care is so crooked, it's hard for me to even pay for health insurance. I guess I will, but I rarely let a Dr. inform me of anything without finding my own knowledge on the subject and doing almost anything other than take a phara product for it..
Good health is mostly good habits and looking for new ways to keep healthy; not taking pills.
I also was a grower for some period. And I can read well enough to know that over 100 studies show much evidence for MJ being an incredible medicine; and this fact was known to doctors 100 years ago, and taken from them as a medicine by big pharma.
yeah, MJ cured a million things, got demonized as a snakeoil, and banned through pharma and big chem so they could take a plant you could grow in your backyard away and replace it with patented shit they made in a lab.
I absolutely agree with you concerning the "4x change"!
Let's hope it's ok. Nice to meet you. Thanks for coming on my wall. Here, have some tea and come visit.
Sorry, I fear you got me wrong: I should have written "I absolutely agree with you concerning the "4x change"!
If the most successful authors of the platform can put more voting power in a few single votes, I predict that they will use this additional power to upvote each other. Instead I also plead to favor more but smaller votes, especially as the number of users is growing.
And you are completely right: unfortunately many Steemians don't try to find the best articles (concerning quality, informative content and originality) but instead of that they try to pick posts form 'famous' authors because they expect many others to vote after them.
Btw.: how could you know I like tea? :)
Yeah, I thought we're on the same page, which means it will turn out bad for our goals when the thing launches. So, let's hope and work together to make sure it goes ok.
Who doesn't like tea? You seem very thoughtful and I'm glad to have you here sharing your thoughts. I'm grateful to get to work with you to change the world from 1000 miles away.
1 lump or 2?
What if you recruited more dolphins and fellow witnesses in the cause? A healthy debate could be what we need. I'm in complete agreement over the part about socialism. I don't want to redistribute their wealth to me, I just want better than scraps for the minnows who are busting their buns. It starts here.
yep. Takes time. Workin' on it.
Great minds think alike
Thank you very much for elaborating on HF-19. Very interesting read.
Let's hope this will help minnows as I have already had friends leave because of the current situation. Whatever happens I hope we learn and progress after.
From any policy we have set so far, I think we have a people problem, not a system problem.
I don't have any solutions to this quandry, and since I unfortunately don't pay a lot of attention to the hamster wheel turning Steemit, I don't know if what I'm going to suggest has already been proposed and vetted:
Cap the curation reward at a % of Steem power per user per vote; each vote returns the same curation reward regardless of the post value.
It removes the incentive to race for rewards or to "pig pile"
Nicely thought out post, it's got me questioning a recent voting decision I made
You say we should reward large SP holders for their investment. They are rewarded by the increase in value of SP, as the platform becomes worth more, just as any investment in stock is.
We should reward the driver of value in the platform, the authors. Cutting them out is like bailing out banks when people turn upside down in their mortgages. If the authors and curators are rewarded for creating the value of the platform, SP holders are rewarded by the increase in value of their SP, just as banks would be by the ability of people to pay their mortgages.
The current incentivization system on Steemit remarkably resembles TARP, in fact. The little people paying the bills aren't getting a piece of the pie. This kills the pie.
For Steemit to be a Facebook killer, we need a simple system that rewards ordinary people making ordinary posts, because that's what will drive them from Facebook. If Steemit doesn't become a Facebook killer, another platform will, because Facebook needs to be killed.
I'd say that some kind of dividend is necessary to keep folks invested in SP to maintain stability of value.
Participation in the platform is more attractive if Steem is $2 instead of $.14
Then we move to the value of content. Obviously, I think my own content is valuable and should be rewarded...but realistically, my interests and message don't hold value for most people.
Ideally, people who create good content would be fairly rewarded as well, but then we have to think of what the readers value, the existence of vote-exchanging, and the fact that good posts can go unnoticed to begin with due to the now nature of Steemit and the number of posts.
There isn't a foolproof system to do this; it requires human judgement.
Other than the dividend you mention, and I am not dismissive at all of this, I agree completely.
I seek to rectify only the matter of equitable distribution of in platform rewards for creating and curating content. All matters of subjective valuation by people have nothing to do with a dichotomy in wealth creating an unfair system.
Steemit, unless it is perceived as fair by people using it, will suffer no potential to slay giants, and any fair competitor will swiftly replace it, unless it fixes that problem.
Your 100% upvotes on your own posts and comments?
I read that but still don't understand the strategy behind it.
Then again, I don't have a slider bar yet either.
Lately I've been having a difficult time finding quality content to upvote, aside form the usual suspects and they don't post every day.
I'm hoping to build my SP at a faster rate by concentrating my vote on my own work
Please post the results.
Honestly though we can ALL agree that we want to platform to grow. whether the hard fork is going to accomplish this or not will be determined, I believe it will.
lets not forget about the power of word of mouth! tell everyone you talk to about steem. exhaust them with how great steem is.
thanks @aggroed for sharing.
Just in case, I think I'm going to hire some smokin-hot 19 y.o. and create a persona around her and her poetry.
Poetry and naked yoga photos.
Cha-F'ing-Ching
LMAO
You've helped me out a bit and I appreciate that Aggroed, so I voted for you for witness.
Fantastic breakdown. The platform is just over a year old and I think as we go along it will continue to be tweaked as certain problems arise, like pig pilling. Keep speaking up. I for one have your back.
I don't have the juice this guy does so I can't promise to "have your back".
I'm totally irrelevant at this point.
So, I'm just gonna go over here and work on my "poetry".
Hundreds of minnows & dolphins can indeed have a major effect. While my vote may not be worth a lot yet, it will be in time and I will remember how Aggroed helped a lot of us little guys out.
I'll remember him too.
Did you catch the part that "93% of the steem rests in 1% of the users"?
Tell me what "hundreds of minnows and dolphins" are going to do.
Saying "I've got your back" is pandering bullshit, and if I can see that, he probably does too.
@aggroed just has better manners than me.
Witness voting is based per user, so, ya those hundreds of users can have an effect for Aggroed. As for for upvoting & re-steeming and the 93%, like I said our votes will continue to gain power, unless of course you choose to wallow in self pity, bullshit cheap shots, & poetry.
Is it wallowing in self pity to point out that a system is designed to be unfair?
Unless you are going to join the wealthy crowd FIRST and then profit from gaming Steemit, you're delusional. Speaking of cheap shots...
And nothing wrong with wallowing in poetry. Except for those that see no value in anything not cash, and are incapable of seeing actual value in the content of a man's speech.
OK, let's say a bunch of whales start flagging every post he makes.
Tell me, What are you going to do for him (or her, I guess)?
If you had the intellectual honesty to admit you were just sucking up, I could respect that.
Pander, seems to be working just fine.
I used to do a lot of poetry, but stopped. I will check out your work.
I resemble that remark!
What irks me most is that the human race doesn't seem to have any shortage of disingenuous pricks who always seem to collect at the rear of the phalanxes, pushing everyone in front of them into a meat grinder, while proclaiming, "I've got your back."
There seems to be two classes of people that are the enemies of mankind. There is a class that views themselves as superpredators, and ourselves their prey. Our organs conveniently fit in their bodies, and our women can bear their young.
There is another class, that will gladly serve them, that lives in denial this other class feeds on us (or doesn't care, or is perversely glad of it), and by their slavish service, enable their masters to fatten on us all.
It is we, the free men and people of Earth, who are the cattle that bleed the cash they live on.
And when they prick us, we do bleed.
I've gotta say after reading your piece it was both enlightening and depressing at the same time. Not depressing because it was bad writing but in the fact that numbers don't lie. Hopefully, things can shake up a bit otherwise it makes for people having to run a marathon only to be told the race is over and someone else won it some time ago.
Thanks for the support and enlightenment.
Thanks for having the backs of us small minnows. You've worked tirelessly on the Minnow Support Project and it is no wonder that all our members respect and admire you. Good on YOU, Sir....Good on you!!!!
Y'all my peeps. What else am i gonna do?!?s
LOL.. Nice carry through. You've earned my witness vote and in fact, I just gave you my proxy so you can configure the vote to best enhance the Minnow Support Project.
<3
Very interesting. Can't wait to read your next article , continuenthe great Work my friend. Cheers. Stay inspiring. Stay humble , stay hungry , stay shinnin n grinding, stay steemin most importantly stay blessed my friend 💙✌️
Namaste
NAMASTE BUD
Well thought out, @aggroed. Just wanted to say a big "thank you" for everything you're doing for us minnows :)
This post is so good I can't even critique it or add to it.
You've simply said it all and said it perfectly.
Thanks! High praise!
Going Somewhere: Truth about a Life in Science by Andrew A. Marino
If you haven't read it...
I knew I'd find some open minded, balance oriented, educated people on here :)
I have worked making systems for the banksters and also in the pharma arena, before I understood the inherent criminality of it all. Once I realised I dedicated my life to helping fix it all and to that end I created my own social network and post regularly here, there and everywhere.
i have also researched a lot and lost my mother to chemo-therapy last year (despite me having the scientific studies that prove the shittyness of that approach - i was ignored).
i will follow you and it would be great if you'd follow back - maybe we can co-create powerful change. :)
Sure. Come join the discord channel.
ok, great - i'll be there shortly
Articles like this gives new members like me hope that here in steemit, we take care of others and carry people along. Tks for sharing..and thinking of minnows who r starting and likely earning peanuts if any...
The mainstream will never tell you have bad sugar is for you as most of the big food companies make all their profits from it and the drug companies thrive on peoples illness's
Keep up the good work you do
Holy moly you're a PhD scientist? So am I, good to know, fellow brain 🤝
I agree with you, sadly the scientific research has become very biased and in the pockets of corporations. Many treatments (even cures) do exist for some rare forms of cancer, but because of the rarity, it's not profitable for the big pharmas to produce them (it's as if they're not making a shitload of profits already), so they let people die and close the drug's dossier. Disgusting. I will write a post about that, now that I'm all pumped up.
Ping me in Discord when it's done. I might end up shopping it around to some folks.
Will do :)
Good day witness 😁
Having read this and everything else I can find tagged 'hf19', (this is the most honest and with focus on the most important fishes btw), I thought I'd do a short piece on the subject this morning.
I'm hoping it raises a valid point, and maybe gets a few folk to perhaps invest in what they believe in: https://steemit.com/hf19/@abh12345/hf19-pulling-the-ladder-up-or-more-encouragement-for-minnows-to-buy-steem-targeting-500-steem-power
Thanks for all the work you've done for the little guy thus far! 😇
Looks like a shit storm is about to happen hahaha
thanks for the info...my friend... :)
This post received a 9% upvote from @randowhale thanks to @aggroed! For more information, click here!
This is exactly why i follow you. And it's offshoot the best post I've read about how the platform works and how these changes are likely to play out. I'm sure this took quite some time to write out, but i want you to know it was very useful. Keep doing what you're doing (telling the truth, exploring new ideas, and supporting newusers), and i think you'll find the support you need to make these changes in the future. Thank you!
you wrote a lot of stuff that i don't understand, probably will never understand or take the time to understand, however. the fact that you're talking about it in an open and transparent way gives me hope that minds that do will get together and talk it out and their is no better solution than that! - thanks for sharing. kinda blew my mind a little ;)
Wow, your views regarding 4x voting power match mine. I didn't saw ur post earlier, but this is what I have tried to convey in my post, but specifically and only for update #1053.
https://steemit.com/steemit/@siddartha/what-i-am-afraid-of-in-steem-release-0-19-0
Community needs more people like you! I am not capable of judging if you are correct or not, but this kind of voice has been missing for the past 1-2 months! We need someone who has analytical ability and dares to speak up - be they right or wrong or indeterminate, we have a transparent blockchain to make it beneficial to our future here. Thanks and well done!
thanks!
Hey man. Here's something that my interest you...its my take on HF 19...
https://steemit.com/steemit/@alex-icey/thoughts-on-hf-19-steemit-pool-and-steemit-s-future-is-steemit-rigged
Thanks for reading :)
Great article and as a minnow I sincerely appreciate your efforts and pure motivation.
It is a very human behaviour that the ones in power enjoying the most benefits will strive to keep their benefits. I ask myself, if I were a huge whale, to which extent were I willing to share my power and wealth with others? It's a tough question but it is also obvious that real growth and long-term benefit depends very much on the happiness and abundance of new users.
Anyway, please keep it up, you have my support and I voted for you as witness. Wish you a good day!
I am not interested in extracting wealth from whales. Neither am I interested in them extracting from me, and the problem is, this latter is what's happening.
Ask yourself this instead: If I were a big whale, would I feel people were taking my wealth if they were compensated fairly for work they did, that didn't take mine away, and in fact added to the value of my wealth by making the platform more valuable?
I didn't realize commenting was so poorly rewarded.
When I think of reddit, its success is largely from the discussions in the comments, no? The actual post is typically just a conversation starter...
Well, this isn't exactly Reddit. Here people post way, way more quality content.
Anyway yeah the distribution is far from optimal. I would personally prefer something like:
What do you think is a better distribution?
I don't think your distribution is bad, but I don't think the current distribution is bad, except that those distributions virtually all go to the wealthy.
That's what matters, and that's what will make or break Steemit.
I really think you're right about this.
Follow @ herman2141 hai kawan steemit wherever you are and vote on steem okay
I'm fortunate in the fact that while the platform is unique in payouts for content, content isn't the only way to grow. Yes, organic growth with blood, sweat, and tears, is good and all. But My plan is to put my real life BS&T into Steemit. Why should I let a bank earn on my money while they give me piss and call it champagne with interest when I can convert my dollars to Steem and let it grow here with content and whatever I can get. Even if this HF is a complete clusterfuck, I'll STILL be earning more here than in the bank. I'm in for the long haul and don't have a need for a quick payout, so I have time.
Unfortunately, the ones that will be fucked the hardest, are the ones that need it most. We've discussed the inflationary currencies and how some countries can earn more here with a few upvotes than a real 9-5. They're the ones I am concerned with. But with the support system we have building, I think that we'll be able to help.
So much of the difference when it comes to rewards but the reality is still there. Lots of people are not getting good rewards. We are at 200k now and is continuously increasing everyday, that would also mean that more people will be expecting rewards not unless they were referred by a whale friend. Out of these 200k, I dont know who were those active (maybe you do).
With the upcoming HF 19, I think we now already know who will be the beneficiaries.
it is shocking how the money is distributed -- those with the power and money getting all the power and the money for having more Steem to start with. Your ideas are good -there has to be more heading the way of the great majority of posts. From what i see quality has very little to do with reward. Anyway i am very happy here and not complaining i want to see the network grow beyond facebook and want it be riding it all the way. The content posted goes far beyong blogging we have artists, musicians and cook, photographers and many others trying to get a leg up. The rewards seem to head to the bloggers mostly and sure that is all good, but it is hard when you take time to write a significant piece and it goes nowhere. This place is great and lets everyone share what they want and find similiar peoples. Am following you now cause your a deep thinker and i like that -David
Nice
Thank you very much
Upvoted this amazing post :)
nice
"The world is run by immoral banksters that cause harm. Protesting isn't going to change it. Getting on the inside isn't going to change it. We gotta provide an alternative to the shitty economic system they have created and get a mass adoption going. If we can do that, then we can change the world." i get where you are coming from.. We Humans are so short lived... by the time we figure out what's going on we're already old... LOL ..
i tried like hell today to join PAL my OSX is out of date 10.7.5 and i need 10.10 or higher... damn Mac got no customer Loyalty ... PHHHWWW Corporations Suck !!! Can you recommend a good computer? i been an imac guy for the last decade or so ... maybe time to try a different brand...
Try linux, although im still using windows but lots of people here are using linux.
I don't know about comps. I like my mac because the mouse pad has good function. I like my pc because I can multi task better on it.
image source
LEL
That is sooooo true!
great post. you really like a messiah to the minnows
Wow that was thourough. Thanks I hadn't dug into the details of HF 19 like I should have.
As someone who is new to the community and only knows the basics this was a helpful post to let me wrap my head around what is going on. I am always down for the adventure so I am glad to be around for this! Thanks for the well thought out and detailed post.
Goodness!! I am so new here, trying to figure out whats happening here and now, come to find out more changes on the horizon..oh my!! I hope the ship doesn't sink.. but I shall be hanging on to see where the waves take me :)
@aggroed Holy shit the elite screwed with you badly man, sorry to hear that. Anyway that's a whole other big topic, so let's focus on SteemIt which is a project that could truly get us in the right direction. We both seem to be equally passionate about the potential of SteemIt and angry about the implementation of the algorithms.
I totally agree that the biggest problem is curation. I've written many articles about it (for example this recent one). The other big problem i agree with is that about 90% of the rewards go to the top 8%. This is in my opinion the result of the bad curation algorithms and therefore incentive. These are the 2 best solutions I've come up with so far are:
What do you think about my solutions and what other ideas do you have?
1st one only delays the onset of the same problems. The second one maybe... I put 6-7 ideas at the bottom. I don't have a hidden trove beyond those yet :)
I just replied somewhere with my preferable reward distribution:
Would you like a distribution close to this one? And what can be done to achieve this you think? (One thing that is important is to design it into the protocol, we can't rely on people, people are corrupt as hell haha).
Well, I actually like the distribution we have now. I want the whales incentivized to curate. I see a bunch of them doing it well. So, I think the incentive is there. What's bad is the incentive to curate anything likely to trend.
I like that authors get 72%. That seems about right.
It's a shame that commentors get little, but I think that's cultural and a little on the programming side. hard enough to get people to upvote 40 posts. Now you want them to curate all the comments too? I think that's going to meet resistance.
The one I'd change is interest. Witnesses set that unless I'm missing a piece. Just set it to 0 and we have 7% of $50M a year to dole out to non-rich people.
So, I like our current distribution scheme from a overall percentage end. I think we just need to broaden who it goes to.
I dream about a world where talking about whales is irrelevant. The system should just recognize how well a person curates. I have nothing against whales earning more absolute profits than us, as long as we all are treated equally when it comes to our curation skill. Currently there is no variable that keeps track of curation quality, only the shitty reputation variable that is nothing more than a World of Warcraft level AKA quantity (it should be called popularity, not reputation!).
Since SteemIt is still in beta, everything is subject to change. So if author rewards suddenly drop by 50% users will have to get used to it.
Weirdly enough with currently only 2% going to comments i feel i get rewarded appropriately (at least from my experience).
Interest is actually one of the most important ones. If people can only get interest by buying STEEM (POWER), then you have the incentive for investors and the value of STEEM will grow immensly until it's stable (10-20 years into the future probably). But of course this is one more implementation that is currently not optimal. Can we even call it interest BTW? Isn't it just inflation (immunity/compensation)?
How about not playing games with rewards at all? How about basing the curation reward, and the author reward, on the quality of the curators reputations, and number of curators?
These kinds of games only decrease the rewards potential to authors.
Steemit can become an awesome means for people to create a new paradigm in how to base an economy, and since automation is going to take all our jobs, we need a new paradigm.
Instead of playing the same kinds of games banksters do, let's really live up to the rhetoric and reward the authors, commenters, and curators for their actual creation of the value of the platform.
Make it simple, and fair, and people will stay. Don't and they won't. It really is as simple as that.
The SBD interest is currently 0. It is also not part of inflation. The interest that is paid from inflation is SP interest - which goes to all SP holders. THe witnesses have no control over this.
How many users do you think will actually vote on 80 posts per day? How many bots do you think will? Which one of those two groups do you think will be doing more voting on the same authors over and over?
I think it will force the need for mutual fund like trails. Or you can spam votes on the same people. Maybe we wouldn't need 80 votes if the pig pile incentive was gone. But that's why so many people want 1 variable at a time.
I'm not sure what you mean by pig pile incentive. It is actually setup the exact opposite. If you vote on a post that already has high rewards, you get practically no curation - it all goes to the people that already voted. At that point you are basically hoping for more people to pig pile, because that would be the only way to make rewards in that scenario. It is a very misunderstood aspect of curation.
Tim. You're a good author and everyone loves you. I know that when your next post hits it's going to make 1k or more. I'm going to put a lot of my power in there between the 20-30min mark to try to sneak in and get as much of that reward as possible. Lots will follow. yes, I'm only incented by the people that come after me, but I'm gambling on pot odds that since you're adored that folks will follow. If I bet on a minnow it probably dies there. So, my incentive even after a bunch of big votes have been cast on you is to stay the course and pile the pig.
Thanks. I do agree that there is a fundamental problem with curation in that it is more about trying to predict winners than it is trying to identify good content. I've written a few posts on the subject. I don't have a good solution, but I also don't really think that HF 19 is really going to make the problem significantly worse either. There are actually some hypothetical changes in user behavior where it could get better actually. (If you are predicting that I'm going to get 1,000 - what happens when a large portion of my regular voters have already spent their 10 votes for the day..?)
They aren't going to spend their 10 votes for the day. They are going to wait for the 10 highest posters post and gamble on them. Their won't be any power left for a minnow. If you have 300kSP which is like top 100 account or so you can make 2800 on 1 upvote... It's going to be insane. if you have 40 votes or more you can't just upvote the same 10 people all the time. You have to dig to find people to support.
It won't take long to see this Tim. The scoreboard, ie trending page, will reflect it within a week is my guess. A week for payouts, and a week for the start of the exodus from "why the fuck am I bothering to do this"
With the removal of squared rewards and a switch to linear, the upvote of a single whale is no longer going to have as much weight - especially when it gets added to a post that already has lots of votes.
That people need to consider the relative value of their curative reward in their curation debases the value of curation. Posts aren't upvoted because they're good posts, but because it pays better.
This kills good content.
Why in the world is there a reduction in the value of votes for an article that is already showing it has value? This reduces the reward for posts that are of higher value, and reduces the reward of curators that see this value.
Make it simple and fair. Let value be determined by the curators, rather than tricks.
Sorry for the double reply. I am also against having voting trails be the solution. Organic voting where users are actually engaged is really what we should be pushing for IMO. There is nothing wrong with voting trails, and I'm fine that people want to use them - but a voting formula of 80 votes where it is basically required to be able to compete is a no-go for me.
So riddle me this. How will going down to 10 big votes help minnows get more bites? That may not be everybody's primary desire. But that's what I want to see and that's what my 500 Discordians in PALnet want to know. And I'm honored to have you on my wall. So you can replay however and whenever you want :)
The 40 vs. 10 votes is less of a 'whale' vs. 'minnow' change as it is a "casual user" vs. "power user" change. For those of us that are heavily involved in the site (we spend hours a day here, we use tools that let us form curation trails, we are part of guilds, etc.) - it isn't that hard to spend 40 votes per day. For a casual user though (someone who pops in and spends an hour browsing when they get home from work) they probably aren't going to find 40 things to vote on per day. They are going to leave a lot of their voting power on the table 'unspent'. By changing the threshold down to 10, it is basically allowing users who aren't as hardcore to still be able to use their full influence as they see fit.
This is exactly why I call this the unintended consequences HF. You're going to fix a curation problem worth 12% and with the changes will equate to 2% of the rewards pool or less while drastically altering the rewards pool worth 72% and shove a huge majority of that into 15-20 people.
There is a premise in your analysis that all of a sudden a majority of the voting stake is going to start going to a subset of popular authors. I'm not saying it won't happen, but it is a prediction in user behavior that is impossible to know. It could very well go the other way too.
Those casual users that vote fewer times create less value. Limiting the ability to create value to the lowest common denominator kills the ability to create value.
Why limit votes at all? If I spend the time to make 100 votes, didn't I create value with those votes?
I don't see value in funneling wealth to the already wealthy and skipping the content creators. I see value in creating a platform that increases in value, this adding wealth to the wealthy who have invested in the platform.
I do vote on 80 posts per day. Why limit the voting power at all? Why not compensate curators for the actual work they do, instead of artificially trying to limit it when artificially inflating the value of whale's curation?
Eliminate the inapplicable value of wealth in curation, posting, and commenting, and let people add value to the platform by their work doing those things, and reward them fairly for doing so.
You can still vote on 80 posts per day (you can vote with less than 100% power), but you are limited on how much influence you can have on rewards. If users could vote on as many posts as they wanted, and have the same increase on all of them - then users who voted for hundreds or thousands of posts would have more power than people who spent time and found the real gems. There woudl also be ways to abuse the rewards pool and direct a large share to tons of 'sock puppet' accounts. Users are allowed to vote on as many posts as they want - but the amount of influence you have is limited by the amount of SP you have in your account.
I don't see that the present system precludes 'sock puppet' accounts, but rather enables such accounts to avoid the loss in upvote power, by using more accounts. The present reward system incentivizes such practice.
Users that simply blanket the blogosphere with upvotes are clearly not curating well, although if not just selfvoting would increase the breadth of reward distribution, and do certainly pose a thorny issue. Still, I doubt that is so common as to have much of a negative impact on the value of curation overall. Even if it does, is that negative impact even remotely potential of creating unfairness as the present system? Over 90% of rewards go, and will go according to @aggroed, to less than 10% of users solely due to inequity in wealth through mechanisms that devalue quality content, and encourage voting merely to profit.
Perhaps bots might be a problem in this way, but that is a different issue. It may be that using bots to perform curation detracts from that ability of people to discern quality, and should be discouraged institutionally, in addition to posing this hazard.
Those that spend hours and hours reading and commenting high quality content do add value to the platform, yet presently, and as conceived, that value is not rewarded to them, nor to that content they curate, because upvote power dissipates.
There are ways to abuse the reward pool presently, as we are discussing, and I suspect that a broader provision of rewards might result from any particular abuses you might have in mind. I don't ask what those might be, in order to keep them as inobvious as possible.
The idea is that you get more influence by buying more SP, not by voting as many times as you can. I realize that there is a trade off between rewarding power users who find 40 good posts per day and casual users who spend less time on the site. As much as possible we have to try and find the right balance.
meep
Well, there is a simple way to do this that acknowledges that 3 billion people earn less than $3/day.
Those people can't buy influence. This clearly establishes that creating a system that intends for people to buy influence to somehow create a fair distribution is impossible. I would go further and say buying influence is antithetical to fairness.
After all, it's exactly the problem in government and finance today.
The only way to create a fair system is to decouple wealth and speech. Making influence a commodity guarantees that not only wealth will be inequitably distributed, but also speech.
Most new users on Steemit do not understand that this is the case, because they are told that Steemit rewards posters for posting. This is what they come for, and it's a bait and switch. To be honest, tell them what you just told me, Steemit is a place where you can buy influence. See if new users still come.
Those that do will not be taken aback when they discover the truth.
The only fair way to live up to the rhetoric that has driven Steemit growth is to let the value of posts and comments be set by curators that have an influence, an ability to direct reward, weighted only by their reputation.
All the timing tricks, vote spreading schemes, etc. are just veils that may hide the raw fact that the value of speech is able to be co opted by wealth through those methods.
The real value in the platform is that creators create content, and people discuss that content. Creating rewards that incentivize this behavior will grow Steemit and cause the value of Steem to rise.
The influence buying paradigm is antithetical to not only free speech, and just government, but Steemit. No weighting scheme can make it just.
And that we, as I understand it, own the body of content collectively.
Powerful insight!