1% would be a 10% reduction, and 2% would be a 20% reduction. Would these be catastrophic? Perhaps not, but when the current level of witness rewards were set (as part of a previous hard fork which already cut them by 80%), that was done with a goal of maintaining a safety margin in case of realistic but pessimistic scenarios on the Steem price and operational costs. 10% or 20% reduction would be a big hit to that safety margin.
Given:
- Desire to maintain the core blockchain operations at a safe level
- The poor performance of the content reward pool in numerous ways
- The observation that SPS and content rewards do the same fundamental thing (both are proposals to be paid by stakeholders for contributing something of value to Steem) and should therefore be considered on the same "budget line" so to speak.
- The reward pool already funds proposals of various sorts, developers, community projects, marketing, etc. not only "content creators". Post-fork these can shift to SPS which again means that the two pools ought to be viewed as shifting on the same "budget line" (projects using SPS instead also means leaving more for content creators, in rough terms offsetting the shift).
many witnesses and stakeholders, myself included, view the proposed split as the best tradeoff, despite what may seem like "unfairness" when viewed solely from the perspective of this group vs that group. Sometimes perceived "fairness" can and should take a back seat to function and good economics, particularly when you are talking about an arguably failing project which if it continues on its current trajectory is likely going to ultimately result in no one getting anything.
Finally, it may be a hard truth to hear, especially for community members and content creators such as yourself or @meesterboom who absolutely have contributed a lot, but the content reward pool by design is supposed to be an engine which drives Steem's growth, not only with literal "content" but by attracting and retaining a growing community of people who contribute meaningfully to Steem. Sure there are some who do this, but as an overall mechanism, it clearly hasn't worked and on that basis alone is a prime candidate for having a slice of its budget reallocated to better use (or at least different use with the potential for more value add).
Witnesses, by design, are supposed to securely and honestly sign blocks to maintain the integrity of the network, securely and honestly adjust blockchain parameters, and approve hard forks (which in practice includes some consultation with developers on what is included in hard fork proposals). That portion of the system has generally worked, including at low Steem prices, and most if not all of the current witnesses are doing these things well (this hasn't always been the case).
The bottom line is that witnesses are mostly (if not all) doing their job; the content reward pool has not been doing its job. Looking at this from the perspective of what is best for Steem as a whole, the reasons for the proposed adjustment to the budget ought to be pretty clear.
Different adjustments can be made in the future with the benefit of further experience.
Might I suggest we incorporate the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition to our HardFork21 code?
Thanks for taking the time to reply. Your arguments are valid and well expressed.
Honestly my biggger concern is the new voting curve which I think will severely damage my ability to reward commentors on my posts. I've spent most of my 3 years here trying to encourage engagement and incentivising real human activity.
Will changing the reward curve destroy other business models? If the problem is bots aren't there other coding solutions? If the problem is self voting are there not coding solutions to limit that activity?
I've read of others delegating their Steem Power, buying stake in Palnet and moving their activities there.
I'm keeping my eyes open, trying to learn and staying ready to make the needed moves.
The curve is an interesting question for sure. I personally believe there needs to be some curve, but not necessarily this exact one. The Steemit devs have studied things carefully and have their own presumably good reasons for proposing this particular curve. I'm pretty open minded on this particular aspect of it and will be looking to engage with both Steemit devs and the community on the matter going forward.
Not directly, since people can always move stake to different accounts, and generally tiny payouts are a huge burden on people trying to catch milkers/self-voters (who aren't always literally voting for the same account but may be voting for accounts of other friends/collaborators or sock puppets).
I'm sure your own efforts are well-indented and may well contribute a lot of value, but apart from AI (if even then) there is no way for a computer algorithm to tell the difference between your tiny votes and someone working with some friends/sock puppets to milk the pool to death by a thousand cuts, so we need to put some sort of speed bump in there.
Thanks for the raising the issue.
Thanks to you. Seems like a plunge into murky waters. I was wondering if each Dapp couldn't have their own reward algorithms similar to what Palnet.io has done.
That is one way things can work. Individual apps can have their own tokens, algorithms, and eligibility policies. For example they can easily ban anyone they want, which is one way to address some of these problems but is also much harder to do at the core level of a public blockchain.
Well, and that's the big problem. The biggest positives in the communities I'm in is that personal engagement: People reading, responding, and voting on things in comment sections they like. That's the way in which steem most resembles social media. This change is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I'm told there are tremendous abuses of the rewards pool going on. Undoubtedly this is true. But this change has too large of an impact on the best of steem's ecosystem. This change must be struck down. I'm doing everything I can to get the witness votes needed for a different top 20, but it certainly feels like there's a wall of rich people making the decisions for us. I've invested what I can afford into steem. They happen to be richer. That doesn't make it right. They're pulling the rug out from underneath all the target demographic. You want to attract the masses? Make Steem attractive for the masses. Not for the Steem whales. Their incentive to behave well should be that they want the value of steem to go up, because they already have a lot. Changing the system so that they can acquire more steem is not going to make them behave better. They'll just have more power to come out on top while the rest of steem sinks.
Trickle down economics doesn't work. It's been demonstrated time and again that it only leads to greater wealth disparity and an overall lower standard of living. This is that.
Yes yes yes!
interestingly, in case steem price would go up to lets say 10$, all the top witnesses become multi millionaires with high monthly income that should be the incentive for any witness to be ok with some lower $ value monthly income for the work today with the low steem price. as mentioned by some others, it would been the best if everybody would have contributed to pay for SPS.