Is it Broken?
If it is... fix it.
I am not quite sure if it is broken, but I do appreciate the sentiment that we have here on Proof of Brain in trying to make it better. There are a lot of people who care about this tribe and about keeping the quality way up. These are good things and this sentiment, first and foremost, is what is going to continue to grow this tribe.
We don't need to tweak anything without putting a lot of thought and discussion into it, it is working great. That is my 2 cents. That said, if we come to some consensus moving forward that we can make things better, let's do it.
Rewards split
Content creators are a dime a dozen, literally. Look at the "new" page on Hive.blog or peakd and see for yourself. The beauty about this ecosystem is that some content and their creators deserve to be compensated for their work. We, the stakeholders, get to decide this.
Those that hold stake, determined that their hard work and the rewards or money that came from it, belongs here. It could be paying for a car, a boat, a house or a vacation... but we picked to park our money on this platform. We believe in the community and code and how this ecosystem works in real time enough to put our money here.
Part of being invested in this platform is to be rewarded for it. Proof of Brain is not just about making great content, or reading it. It is an advanced ecosystem of creators, curators and investors.
The creator feels that they have something to say that needs to be heard, and feels that they should be compensated something for it. The curator decides where all of the content should land on the rewards scale. The investor is the third party in this ecosystem. They feel that this ecosystem has potential for growth and pump a bunch of money into it on the hopes of making a good return on their investment. We should not forget about them, for if we do... they will forget about you and put their money elsewhere. This means downward pressure on the market, and soon enough, your token is not worth near as much as it was.
In fact, once a few big players got interested in POB, this is when the price really started to climb. If the investor gets snubbed out of the equation, where does that leave to token price at? They list their stake on the market and downward pressure can be hard to fight off. I don't have enough liquid hive to buy a mega-whales share of POB unless the market crashes hard.
The investor
Many investors feel that manually curating is their thing. This is protecting their investment. They get to ensure that the quality of the trending page is top notch. This is the money page. A good trending page means new readers, new writers and new investors... and growth!
I invested a lot of time on this platform. I have written a lot directly about its future and how to grow it. I have been involved in discussions, not as much lately due to my workload off the blockchain, and was another statistic on the active user page. My investment hasn't been monetary, but I could have sold all of my rewards if I chose to. Therefore, I am an investor.
The content creator
I might have spoken a little harshly about content creators earlier. They may be a dime a dozen, but the good ones are worth a lot more. This is why there are investors. The reward the good content creators as they are protecting the investors interest. If there is good content, and the creators of said content are rewarded well, they will make more. They will get subscribers. This will bring readers, curators, investors... growth!
It is fairly simple. Write good content, get rewarded for it. That being said, it is easy for content creators to feel that they deserve more, after all, they are doing most of the work, right?
I tend to write a post or three a week. I tried to do more, and sometimes I can, but I am currently overworked and do not have the time to do too much. Each post I write, takes between 20 minutes to an hour, and some forethought and planning before I sit down. Let's call it 2 hours total. This leads me to...
The Curator
The curator has a tough job. Read. Read. Read. Read some more. Decide who gets how much of a vote. It is a thankless job, and that is why they get a share in the rewards. To read ten good articles a day, you might need to look at 30. This takes a good amount of time. More than the 2 - 6 hours per week that I spend creating content. Many curators are building their stake by curating, getting their share of the vote for their share of the work.
Without the curator, there is no reason for the creator... of course, without any investment, the curation would not reward the author enough to keep them around. All 3 need to be together for this to work.
My Side of the Debate
Right now, curators get 50% of the rewards. Content creators get the other 50%. I think that this is really fair. I don't do as much curation as I don't have the time, and I know that it takes a lot of effort. I feel like I am more of a writer and so I tend to get my say in on posts.
There is talk of changing the ratio. 75/25. 67/33... all in favour of content creators. The curator, is often also the investor. They protect their investment by voting for the good content. They also grow their stake by doing the work. If the curation rewards were dropped down, I am not sure if the investment interest would be as strong. The price would go down, as would the payouts... not growth.
Take this argument seriously. I am a content creator. 85% of my stake is from author rewards. I would benefit greatly from the structure of the payout changing. I think that it would be a mistake.
I welcome your opinion. I read @calumam's take on it, and the comments. I am just one guy and want the best for the platform, and will go with the ship, but need to voice my opinion on it.
Auto-voting
As an investor who does not have time to curate, I lent my vote to 2 very good curators who have the best interest in Proof of Brain in mind. @calumam and @vempromundo.pob. I keep my numbers low and VP high so I don't lose much voting mana and likely don't hit all the votes. I think that they do good work for POB and would like to strengthen their votes while growing my stake.
I see nothing wrong with this. I feel like I am helping grow this platform by providing more incentive for content creators to stick around.
Trails like the 2 that I am involved in, provide investors with a reason to stick around. This is important. This is not only about creators and curators. I do not have time to curate daily. I do what I can, but I have more vote power to share. I also like growing my stake.
Perhaps I will delegate a small amount of POB power to @calumam and @vempromundo.pob so that they can be rewarded some for voting with my stake. That, I believe, will make everything right with the trails.
@felipejoys brought up some good points in his article about trails. But I feel he forgot about the investor. If creators create good content, and curators do good work, the investor will be happy with the project and keep their stake where it is... safe, locked up, and not on the market. This keeps upward pressure on the market... growth!
He obviously cares for POB and this is great. I think there is a big difference between good curation trails with the good of the platform as the main goal and trails such as Back scratcher (anyone remember that one?... It was a covert vote for vote trail).
He also mentioned splinterlands.
"I dare say more projects can learn from Splinterlands' success. You will profit a bit if you simply spend $10k in boosters and let it sit for 2 years, but you will profit so much more if you are active in one way or another in the game. How many non-bot players do you guys think Splinterlands would have if it allowed card owners to earn just as much by being 100% passive?"
The problem with this argument is that the biggest gainers in the game, were the biggest investors who ran bot accounts. They did not sit passive, they made huge gains. I think that I read that @j6969 put in a few hundred thousand, and had doubled it running his @th12 bot army. He would NOT HAVE INVESTED in the game if the chance for gains was taken away.
I dare say that many whales are invested in POB and in curation and put some serious upward pressure on this market because they saw a good investment opportunity. If we take away the reasons to stay invested, we lose the growth. We lose the writers, we lose the value.
Conclusion
If we take away trails, which are good for investors, and cut curation, which is good for investors... we lose investors, which is bad for everyone.
I will say it again. I earn way less allowing a trail to curate for me than by manually curating. From a perfectly selfish perspective, jack up the author rewards (I will earn more this way), kill the trails... I can find 10 posts to 100% upvote a day in 3 minutes. I will make way more, but... the platform suffers.
Intention is everything. If we intend to grow and nourish this platform, it will get better. There is room for trails. There is room for good curation rewards. It hasn't stopped author rewards from being some of the best on Hive. I don't think it is broken, and I am here for the long haul, so let's make sure we do it right. I am just one voice joining the conversation. What do you think.
Since PoB mining is quite straightforward. By creating value, you can get a chance to earn tokens. Curators, creators, and investors are creating value by doing their jobs. Most of us are playing different roles doesn't matter how big or small. Even I think a 50/50 split is fair to everyone. The same creators who are earning these tokens have an incentive to stake them and start curating as well. There is no other reason for people to stake their tokens. If we go ahead with a 75/25 split then it will invite self voting since curation will not be profitable anymore. People will choose to go greedy that way. Also, people will put their favorite authors on auto upvote in order to get maximum rewards from curation. So ultimately it will defeat the purpose.
Also, curation trails are quite important. We cannot expect everyone to curate manually every single day. Even if someone manages to do that, they cannot be online 24/7. Hence implementing several curation groups would solve this problem. Everyone can delegate to them and earn returns as well.
I agree with this 100%
I agree with this 100%
And here I will add one more thing:
with 25% curator's part, there will be zero reasons for me to spend 2-3 hours ( or more) every day for just READING the posts.
I repeat: ZERO reasons
The only choice, if this happens, to me will be: shit-posting, selfvoting, autovoting, getting in circles, etc etc.
Zero reading, Zero curating, Zero commenting.
In other words - all the things STEEM was famous for.
The bottom line then is the question - is this what majority of POB participants want???
I understand! As an investor it doesn't make sense to spend that much time on manual curation. Since curation adds value, it has to be rewarded appropriately.
I don't think majority would want to go for 75/25. If at all we need to experiment, a 60/40 split would be fine with me. ✌️.
I still prefer 50/50 because then I have a good reason to I stake the PoBs and not sell them.
your question is essential...
and it is essential cause you used the word 'majority'
i believe that the majority not only in POB tribe but everywhere wants that ...yes..
i'm not happy about it but unfortunately the majority most of the times destroys everything
i'm trying to follow what you adviced me to do a couple of weeks ago ...'try to upvote new users not only your favorite ones' ... so i 'm always hitting the 'NEW' button to read posts from small accounts and give them my upvote which for them it is worth something..
...well i cannot say i'm happy with what i'm reading....
..and believe me i'm not against quality shitposting.....cause for me , yes, there is quality shitposting and crappy shitposting
Right on.
I think 90-95% of the time I spend in curation - I am in the "NEW" section of posts
That is a good thing sir,keep it up
The key to a good, high paying ecosystem is keeping the balance between curators, creators and investors. If that balance is broken, things can go downhill quick. There is no reason to reward authors more when the investment has made POB one of the best places to be rewarded for writing. The investors need to have a reason to remain invested. If they don't... no boom!
@onealfa.pob I believe the 50/50 is okay,it helps to balance fair rewards between the authors and the curators..
I am with you on all of that.
People joined this community with certain expectations. I dislike the idea of changing rules in the middle of the game. When Justin Sun came there were accounts that voted up the Sun witnesses just enough to have a dread-lock of power between those that would change the protocol in one direction and one that would change it in a different way. I quietly was pleased because finally I thought we could see the Steem experiment as it was at the time to playout without changing again and again as before.
It concerns me if these parameters can be changed on a whim also with Hive Engine tokens. Is this so?
There is also a great deal of self-voting on Proof of Brain. Just browse with Steemfiles. I was doing auto voting too, with the same curators! It effectively gave them a real big stake of Proof of Brain! I removed permission for @steemauto and found I was still voting while I was asleep. I never figured out which of @ewp or @steemauto had been doing it. I have a tool that figures this kind of thing out but I didn't bother to dig it up. I guess with liberty ending in the west I didn't find it too important.
P.S.: I did remove permission from other apps that might have been doing this. That's action taken, but I didn't investigate which did so.
P.S.S.: I now vote 100% manually and check hivestats every morning to see that my account is not voting while I am asleep.
It is good to hear your opinion on these matters. Nobody likes investing in something and then having it change on you. I am pretty sure that we could, with proper governance procedures, make changes to distribution etc. It would be a large procedure (and one I don't think is necessary).
I don't self vote (unless I am voting in my sleep... sigh, not sure if I can even remove it... I have tried before removing votes with mixed results.)
Rhe hive.vote app allows you to disable self voting. So if one of your curators votes on your post there will be no self vote.
Good to know, I will make that change now.
The most important thing is that this platform should give opportunities for everyone to grow. Where authors are rewarded better than other platforms, they will move here. Curators decide which the best content should be trending. It is a fair solution.
Why hive is split into communities? Because hive is too big. Communities are encouraged authors from different interests. POB is for proofofbrain, LEo for leofinance. The creation of the tokens and reward system is a kind of disagreement with the reward system in hive itself. The disagreement turns into a positive benefit. What do you think if the disagreement turns into negative things? ' Hardfork" Yeah there will be hardfork.
I think POB is already the best place to be rewarded for posts. The highest paid LEO post right now is around $54. This post is currently going to pay me $60 (subject to change) and it is not the highest paying POB post. The discussion to change things is always welcome and encouraged. My argument is to keep things as they are, because as they are... POB is killing it.
I think POB is already the best place to be rewarded for posts. The highest paid LEO post right now is around $54. This post is currently going to pay me $60 (subject to change) and it is not the highest paying POB post. The discussion to change things is always welcome and encouraged. My argument is to keep things as they are, because as they are... POB is killing it.
Great situation analysis, man! I liked your point of view, and I generally agree with you. I'm still a little fish here, but I'm dedicating myself to making a stake in order to give good votes to good posts, to honestly be able to give what I have received here! It is very good to see how productive this network is becoming and how it can help people of different levels and situations in the world. I literally paid my heavier bills thanks to Pob and I hope more people can do that, in addition to, of course, understand the platform and help-it to grow, making a conscious stake and delegating and using your vote! Success for us!
It is a great place to be and you have a good attitude to go far!
Just like they say out there: In a winning team, don't move.
Although changes are needed to continue to evolve, I do not see the reason for this type of change.
It will happen exactly what @onealfa.pob mentioned above, many who hold power and who are here spending their time and investment to read and heal and help will end up having zero reasons to continue.
And those who create content will be "easier" to get rewards and the quality of the posts will drop.
I believe and I repeat that the main point of discussion here would be to improve the platform in other aspects and investments, such as the work of @leprechaun, which should be given due attention in order to have a better frontend
100%
I agree that the needs of the investors needs to be balanced with those of the wider community. Moving things too much in either direction would be counterproductive.
On the curation trails bit, I believe the 'proof of brain' is selecting a good curator's trail to join. Besides, I might be wrong but I don't think there's any way to block them.
You are likely right. It is easy to bot the system (if you know how).
I like 50/50.... we should keep it this way. Curators and Investors are just as important as Creators. Maybe it should be 75/25 in favour of Curators and Investors.
It might fly better than the opposite. But I am with you that 50/50 is working good.
I'd like to think that there's a fair number of content creators who could also be seen as "stake builders."
That is, they are creating content in the hopes of getting rewarded, but their purpose in getting rewards isn't to rush out and buy pizza, but to build stake in the platform they are using. Which is ultimately a form of investing. For me, a large part of the attraction in Hive — and subsequently various tribes — was the idea of letting it work as a long-term asset building system.
I guess that might put me in a minority, as so much of the cryptosphere seems like it has been "programmed" to view investing as more of a "wen moon?" lottery than actual long term holding for capital appreciation.
=^..^=
I am one of those content creators. I don't have the money to put into it, and this is why Hive (etc.) is so good. We can see value in our interactions and turn it into real, tangible wealth... especially if treating their account as you mention... building stake.
That is true,i guess that is why it is called proof of brain
Lol. Ya, I guess so.
I like the way things are now unless, of course, someone sees the status quo as hurting the POB platform. What I would personally love to see are some projections given the recommended author/curator distributions.
Given the current postings, engagement, 50/50 awards over the last two weeks:
How do these rewards change with...circle-jerking? Abuse (plagiarism, etc.)? Based on past trends how would it impact the platform? We already know one answer from Mr. @onealpha.pob. Why stake if you can't profit from it? Does the evaluated ratio affect people just starting?
Based upon the estimates, would it be worthwhile to shift the rewards?
@interpretation, @amr008.pob, would the development of such a model be possible? I understand that it would be highly speculative when adding concepts like abuse and investment, but I think we could estimate those values to see an effect.
Edit: What's the value of a model? We can refer to it later, make adjustments, and be more comfortable making an official decision rather than feeling things out. A review of posts related to this topic would be constructive when combining it with this analysis.
I am just one voice, but I want to make sure that it is heard. These things are all important to what things will look like moving forward and I suppose I want to be a cautionary voice. There is good investment right now. The token price is high because of it. Rewards are high because of it. These are all good things that don't need to be meddled with.
All very good points. Thank you for sharing. I feel the same way.
The number one reason why POB shouldn't start a war between investors/curators vs authors by changing the 50/50 split is because of the threat of someone creating an identical tribe to POB. It would be nothing for a whale to do that.
True.
I start to believe that it is better to leave things as they are, it would not be so easy to change the mentality overnight so that it is accepted 75/25, for those who go long term like me it would not be attractive if in this case The percentage for curators is reduced. I feel that it is something that would affect the intermediate ones, would benefit those at the bottom and little would change those who are at the top.
I would likely make more POB with a 75/25 split due to the fact that I don't curate much and my trail vote is not big... the issue I see is that the token price would drop the value of POB would be less even though I would be making more... confusing!
I spend a chunk of my day, everyday, curating content. If the rewards were to drop for curators, then I'd be more likely to autovote or trail. There are negatives to reducing curation rewards, and you are right, if that happens, then I predict content quality will drop.
Ya, it discourages curation and investment in the platform. 2 things that are really good and making POB look very appealing.
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