The past several months have brought us a great learning experience in Steem.
It is time for the community to take a hard look at its technology’s underlying economic structure to see if we can improve things to make the community more attractive so that it can fulfill its mission of becoming the largest and most empowering network possible.
Many people have expressed concerns about the inflation rate of STEEM. Steem was designed to encourage people to hold long-term by penalizing those who would hold for shorter periods of time. The vast majority of the inflation in Steem is purely an accounting artifact of the Steem Power, but this accounting artifact has real world psychological impact of continuously falling prices.
There is one class of user which the Steem protocol ruthlessly punishes and that is the short-term speculator. Anyone with a shorter investment horizon than 2-years is unable to participate in the Steem Platform which is discouraging people from bringing capital and increasing liquidity.
The long-term divesting schedule of Steem Power means the network is less efficient when it comes to price discovery.
We would like feedback on upgrading the network to support a new token production model that we believe is more attractive to more people.
Summary of Proposed Changes
This would include the following:
Set a fixed instantaneous annual creation rate of 9.5% from all sources (except Steem Dollars conversion)
- Allocate 75% of the created Steem to the Reward Fund.
- Allocate 15% of the created Steem to the Vesting Fund as interest on Steem Power.
- Allocate 10% of the created Steem to the Witnesses.
Witness rewards would be rebalanced such that the top 19 would earn 1/29th of the witness rewards, the runner up witnesses -would share 5/29th, and the miners would share 5/29th.
Witnesses and miners would be paid in STEEM rather than Steem Power. All votes for witnesses would expire after 3 months, this would remove the incumbent advantage and require people to continuously evaluate and vote for witnesses.
To support more equal opportunity mining the mining algorithm would be updated to use Equihash (similar to zcash).
Reducing the Steem Power holding period to a minimum of three months.
Lastly, under the new inflation rate there is no longer a need to perform a reverse split every 3 years. This would greatly simplify the life of exchanges.
Pro & Cons
All changes to the protocol impact how individuals perceive the value of Steem. Under the proposed changes Steem Power holders may gain significant liquidity and reduce their long-term risk exposure, both of these things could add value to Steem Power. The STEEM token may become much more appealing to hold when the inflation rate is imperceptible impact on the daily volatility. Those who wish to exit the platform would be able to leave faster through powering down than they could by abusing their voting power. Greater liquidity means faster price discovery and greater market confidence in the price and market cap. Steem can now transfer from weak hands to strong hands.
In the short term these changes could cause the market to reprice Steem based upon the relative value of the short term increase in supply relative to the benefits of reduced inflation.
Author/curation rewards in terms of STEEM would be reduced by this change in the short term, but would be much higher in the long term. Witness pay would be reduced in the short-term, but would be the same as the long-term plan. More witnesses would be able to be involved even if they are not in the top 19, this could increase diversity and competition in the witness pool.
Currently Steem Power holders are earning a slight negative inflation adjusted return on investment. Under the new model the market could discover a new equilibrium between holding VESTS vs STEEM which may result in Steem Power having a positive inflation adjusted return on investment.
Please provide your feedback below and reply with your support for or against these changes.
This would serve as a poll of steem holders and give us an idea of where the community stands.
- Ned & Dan
Why is any of this important now? The price of Steem is moving toward its natural price point according to the economic laws of supply and demand.
People with Steem will not just keep selling Steem for lower and lower prices, some bottom number must be close to be revealed as a stable price swing trend soon . . .
Steem was just ridiculously overvalued after the july 2016 payouts and has sold reliably all the way down toward its natural market value price point. Consider this Amazon stock sells for 700 $ a share, if someone values Amazon stock at 1,200 dollars a share the price of amazon stock will auto-correct to the buyer & seller trading price ( = $700 ).
Just because some fool priced Steem at $80 a tonne or whatever price point does not mean that idiot knew the real value of a prototype platform website.
I remind all the price of steem has moved toward its normal buyer and seller exchange rate, it has not fallen at all. Plus you cannot trade stock with a buyer so the whole time someone has been paying real money to buy up steem as the price auto corrected downwards ! ! !
STEEM should also become a currency. In its current form, STEEM is very difficult to bootstrap as a currency.
Why should STEEM become a currency? What advantages will it have over SBD?
STEEM as a currency adds value to the ecosystem even if SBD becomes more effective.
I've heard this from many perspectives - same thing. Nobody wants to hold, even for commerce only, Steem. The promised inflation makes it a hot-potato only good for day-trading.
Its not even good for day trading.
Haha, puts anyone?
I don't know anything about the economics of all of this, but from my limited knowledge, I was under the impression that STEEM was basically a tool necessary to convert its short term value to long term vests. Which is why holding STEEM loses value, but powering up can actually gain interest. Am I wrong in this?
Women are fantastic with currency. Far superior than men in fact, the reason you see so many males as stockbrokers is for their career portfolios. Men are 90 to 95 % failures at making stockmarket profits. Females average 40 % as successful longer term stockbrokers. There are far fewer female stockbrokers and they are all out of sight taking money off the silly men ! ! !
That is not my opinion that is two separate written articles about stockbrokers . .
I would love to read those articles @crok :)
Unfortunately they are written in books in the bookstore. But to summarize, males are full of bluster and noise. Females tend to quieter and more in the background.
Males forget that losing money is bad and get hits of testosterone and lose money. Think about it, the real stock market does not print money, it must take profits off other speculators. Men consider they can just win more money if they make mistakes.
Females view money as safety and security, they take cash deadly seriously. Thus female traders tend to far more systematic at viewing all the data before placing their bets. Women tend to make far fewer trades but ' win ' 40 % of those gambles. Males tend to win 5 or 10 % over timed averages . . .
If you are not trading cryptocurrency maybe you should gamble five dollars : )
Just remember all the hints and tips and books and articles are designed to suck you in and make you lose money. Since i started my new trading strategy i have not lost once out of over 150 completed wins.
My winning average is 99% and you can easily learn it if you think and work out bets for yourself. never follow guesses and never follow advice : )
Consider if anyone truly knew how to make money they would make money for themselves and retire onto a yauct for life ! ! ! Anyone offering you tips or advice is out to hurt you ; )
I don't think it is a question of natural price point but more about the structure and whether hyperinflation is actually useful or just serves to make the platform more complicated and less attractive to a wider range of users and investors. I don't think it serves much if any useful purpose. It was a sincere attempt and a good experiment but now that many of us have experience with the platform and understand it better, we can see that the hyperinflation model should be dropped.
Hyperinflation, or specifically the effects of powering up, kept money off the exchanges, which has proven to be possibly the biggest point of failure in crypto. With the new changes catering to speculators, exchanges will most likely become the single biggest point of failure for steem.
We will need to get the community behind pushing exchanges to use best practices - savings accounts and account recovery partners.
yes. It shows great strengths that Dan and Ned are able to take their idea and agree that it was not the best.
hyperinflation aka steembabwe = no bueno. The worst part is that it makes the oligarchy problem even worse. A flat rate inflation is highly meaningful for the top 100 accounts and means basically nothing for everyone else. Ben Bernake would be proud, but Joe the Plumber gets fucked. The sooner it's gone the better for everyone.
"People with Steem will not just keep selling Steem for lower and lower prices, some bottom number must be close to be revealed as a stable price swing trend soon . . ."
The price has been in steady decline and could find it's bottom near doge if nothing is done.
Steemit is a totally unknown Social Media Blogging platform based automatically around a BlockChain.
The price of Steem cannot be in decline when it was purposefully overvalued in the initial phase.
All Steem has been doing is moving toward its own natural price point according to the economic law of supply and demand.
Just because people are preconditioned toward fear and the herd mentality, they are shown graphs that have no basis in reality (such as a trend line going down) and everyone starts running around like chicken little screaming the sky is falling . . .
Not a big fan of only 15% going to the vesting fund. Under the current system the worse case effective dilution rate on fraction of total VESTS for a passive holder is 6.7% per year (not counting SD conversion effects of course). The proposed changes would make that worst case rate 7.4% per year. My preference would be to have at least 25% of created STEEM go to the vesting fund. With those numbers the worst case effective dilution rate on fraction of total VESTS for a passive holder becomes 6.6% per year. And by the way, the dilution rate for fraction of total STEEM for a passive holder would be 8.68% per year under this new inflation rate of 9.5% per year (again ignoring SD conversion effects), which is a very nice improvement for short-term speculators compared to the current 50% per year number.
By the way, if we are considering these kind of large changes to the economics of the system, I would rather see the hardfork include my proposed change that creates two classes of VESTS (investor class and author/curator class) which I have discussed previously in Slack, but of course that is a much bigger change and actually somewhat independent of the changes being discussed in this proposal. But I mention it because it does have to do with the inflation numbers being discussed. For example, if we were to make such a change, while the investor class VESTS worst case dilution rate would be the same (or at least really close to) that of author/curator class VESTS, the typical dilution rates for investor class VESTS would likely be considerably lower (perhaps even 0%) than that of the author/curator class VESTS (who would be paying that higher rate for the ability to earn curation rewards, have post-voting influence, and possibly other benefits). I have crunched through some of the numbers and I think the following would be a decent configuration: 50% of printed STEEM goes directly to reward fund; 20% of printed STEEM gets budgeted by the top 19 witnesses to pay for the block producers, top 19 witness operations, and other chosen workers that can add value to the community;
(fraction of total virtual STEEM supply that are powered up as author/curator class VESTS) * 30%of printed STEEM goes directly to the author/curator class vesting fund; enough of the remaining printed STEEM goes into investing class vesting fund to completely cover, if possible, the inflation that investor class VESTS holders experience (but no more, i.e. no deflation); and if there are any remaining printed STEEM left, they all go into the author/curator reward fund again. With this configuration, the effective dilution rate for author/curator class VESTS would be a constant 6.16% per year (which would also be the worst-case dilution rate for investor class VESTS, although typically I would expect it to be much less).I also disagree with how the proposed changes would split up witness rewards. @smooth and I discussed this a lot on the Slack and steemit.chat (BTW, I honestly feel like the devs are missing out on really great ideas and useful interactive discussion by completely ignoring the various discussion forums available to this community). At first I was thinking the witnesses should just get paid for block production and other responsibilities should be separated into a different role.
Under that philosophy, a major rebalancing between the top 19 witnesses and the runner-up witnesses and miners would be necessary as this proposal attempts to do. But I am not a huge fan of the way you are proposing to do it here. It could be possible for a witness at rank 20 to earn more than any of the top 19 witnesses (over the long-term) depending on the distribution of votes among witnesses. For example, if the sum of the votes for enabled witnesses other than the top 19 enabled witnesses is less than 5 times the votes for the rank 20 witness, then the rank 20 witness would earn more than any of the top 19 enabled witnesses (to put this into perspective, the one-fifth of the sum of votes for enabled witnesses between ranks 20 and 70 is approximately 70.4% at the moment). What I think would work better is to instead have the pay to the top 19 be determined by the fraction of their votes relative to the total votes
Tfor some large number (say 200) of the top voted enabled witnesses. This would approximately simulate what their pay would be (over a long enough period) if every block producer slot (other than the miner slot) was allocated according to the runner-up witness scheduling algorithm. The miner pay would have to be determined through some other method. If we want to reward the top 19 witnesses more because of their added responsibilities, then some fractionf_mof the witness/miner pay budgetBper round would be allocated for miner pay, some other fractionf_bto block producer pay, and the rest of the witness/miner pay budget would be allocated as supplementary pay to the top 19. Let us denote the votes of witnessithat is one of the top 19 enabled witnesses asv_i, and the total sum of votes of the top 19 enabled witnesses asV(V = v_1 + v_2 + ... + v_19). Then, the amount paid to the miner would beB * f_m. The amount paid to the runner-up witness would beB * f_b * (1 - V/T)(unless there were two runner-up witnesses and no miner scheduled in a round, e.g. because of an empty mining queue, in which case they would each getB * (f_m + f_b * (1 - V/T))/2). The amount paid to top 19 witnessiwould beB * (f_b * (v_i/T) + (1 - f_m - f_b)/19). After each round, the full amount of rewards allocated for witness/miner pay for that round would be distributed; if some witnesses/miners missed their block, their pay would go into the author/curator reward fund instead. I think the top 19 witnesses could vote on the fractionsf_bandf_m, but there could be hardcoded minimum or maximum limits on those fractions.But actually now I disagree with the very philosophy that the pay budgeted by the blockchain to the top 19 should be the same or close to the same (e.g. over a week) as the other witnesses. There are greater expectations placed on the top 19 in terms of reliability and in terms of setting policy with their parameter updates. They are not only acting as block producers but also a committee (to use BitShares 2.0 terminology). Originally I wanted to separate out the committee role from the witnesses and have that be a separate group that was elected, but after some discussion with @smooth I changed my mind and decided that may just be an unnecessary complication. Now technically the implementation described in the previous paragraph allows the top 19 to get paid for more than just block production responsibilities (just make sure
f_m + f_b < 1), but it is not good enough in my opinion to allow for a worker funding mechanism via the witness budget.One thing I knew I wanted and still want is an official worker funding system (taking a cue from BitShares 2.0 again) to avoid the non-ideal ways many witnesses currently use (as delegates used to in BitShares 0.9.x) to pay other people with their witness pay (except the problem is even worse in Steem since witnesses are currently paid in Steem Power which is not liquid). But the worker system I want for Steem is one in which the elected people decide how to distribute the limited funds available to them rather than the stakeholders directly making those deicision as was done with BitShares 2.0. Regular users don't want to think too hard about every little worker funding decision; they rather elect people they trust and let them make those decision on their behalf, and of course they have the ability to vote them out if they don't agree with their decisions. So originally I wanted the elected committee to reach consensus on worker funding decisions, but now, if the committee is just going to be the top 19 witnesses, I was convinced by @smooth that it would be better if the top 19 witnesses should each be given control of some equal budget (taken from the fraction of created STEEM directed toward witnesses) and have the ability to instruct the blockchain to automatically direct that budget each round to the various accounts (workers) they want to fund.
I discussed the details of a possible implementation of this mechanism on steemit.chat, but I will repost it here:
So with this mechanism, each witness would obviously specify a
worker_itemto pay themselves for the role of being a top 19 witness (of course they would only get paid for the round if they are actually in the top 19 for that round and are enabled, i.e. have a valid signing key). They would only be able to pay themselves an amount out of their allocated budget that stakeholders accept (otherwise they wouldn't stay voted in), so effectively the market determines the appropriate pay rate for the top 19 witnesses. But they can also specify otherworker_items to pay other accounts (e.g. the accounts of those working on development of useful services in the ecosystem or working on marketing and advertising to reach a larger audience). The runner-up witnesses and miners are paid out of the backup witness pool which is funded according to the top 19'sbackup_witness_budget_percentageparameters as described in the above quote. Any amount of the top 19's budget not allocated elsewhere would go to the author/curator reward fund acting as extra rewards on top of the minimum amount guaranteed by the hardcoded rules of the blockchain. Because of this, the hardcoded percentage of created STEEM that goes to the author/curator reward fund can be lower since it is only a blockchain-guaranteed minimum; typical values would likely be higher unless stakeholder-elected witnesses have better places to send that extra money (e.g. dedicated workers improving the ecosystem, accounts that use the received STEEM to buy and burn SBD to help with the peg, perhaps directly into the vesting fund to further compensate for the effective inflation experienced by VESTS holders, etc.) rather than letting it go to the general author/curator rewards pool. For that reason, I think it would be acceptable to have only 50% of created STEEM go directly to the author/curator reward fund (remember, that is just the minimum blockchain-enforced percentage), 25% of created STEEM go directly the vesting fund, and the remaining 25% of created STEEM get allocated towards the top 19 witness budgeting mechanism described above.The rest of the proposed changes look fine to me, although I want to know more about the details of how witness vote expiration would be implemented.
Wow, thanks for all your work on this response. I really wish I could understand 2/3 of it. :) Like the adjusted distribution at the end though. I understood that!
I wish I could understand the 2/3 too :D but there is no doubt @arhag made an amazing job explaining his proposition.
Meh
way to go man!
@arhag, you rock. You make me want to learn more math. :)
One change we forgot to add is a reduction on SBD conversion delay from 7 days to 2 days. This should dramatically reduce risks and strengthen the peg, we can probably remove the 10% premium we are currently giving for conversions.
I think two days is too short, and something like 3-3.5 days is better. If there are problems with mulitple feeds (for example due to buggy scripts or failed data sources), which has already happened, it can take hours or longer for them to be fixed (witnesses need to be contacted, scripts may need to be edited, etc.). Likewise for any sort of malicious manipulation (which would likely involve collusion between witnesses, though not necessarily, and not that many). While it may big fixed well before two days, during the time until it is fixed, the feed is still being filled with bad data. To ensure this bad data is not a significant portion of the overall dataset requires that the window be significantly longer than the failure.
The 10%, etc. discount can be reduced and will likely reduce anyway as a consequence of lower inflation, an APR that is more realistic given the risks of storing capital on a risky experimental blockchain without potential for upside (of course we hope this factor can also reduce over time), and not allowing the debt load to grow too large before addressing it. In fact I was already considering a feed discount reduction now that we have a higher APR, once the debt load decreases (which seems to be happening this week). I do think even long term a small discount is probably needed under 'average' market conditions, regardless of feed window (though maybe not in the low-infation model). There is still a time cost to receiving payment 7 days forward vs. trading directly and receiving immediate payment. Under stressed market conditions that cost can be very significant (even for 2-3 days).
I do think that 7 days is a bit of overkill and three days would work pretty well. That means hypothetically 12 hours of bad data would still be only 1/6 of the data set and 24 hours (a more realistic time period to vote out misbehaving witnesses) would be 1/3. That said, 7 days gives a lot of robustness to the system. Despite individual failing feeds, a systemic failure due to the Bitstamp hack, some witnesses failing to update for days on occasion, there has never been a case when the fairness or robustness of the 7 day feed has even been called into question. That says something.
In my opinion, the biggest problem with SBD is not the feed delay and accompanying price volatility (in a well-functioning market even with current high inflation that would still only imply a few percent of discount or less), it is excessive debt load on a still-shaky backing asset with low liquidity making SBD risky and hard to trade (including conversions). Please consider the proposal I have made here. Again, of course hopefully this can improve and indeed this proposal will likely improve liquidity directly and therefore the peg indirectly.
I would propose the change is to three days. I do not believe many will argue for two days over three at this point in time.
Most of us are Bitcoiners or formerly so. We could bike shed this issue for years.
Yes I think this is good. Also the reason for the heavy discount is the constant downtrend and of course the health of steem overall.
Very likely the reduction of money supply increase per year from 100% to 10% will already stabilize the price and therefore also bring SBD closer to the peg.
What about the referral system? It seems like there was an unannounced one put in place, or the structure set up for one soon to come.
^^^THIS!
i hate refferal systems they seem to give the impression of scam...
Would it make sense the conversion delay to be random* from 1 to 3 days for example? (So average conversion delay =2 days) Would it be not more secure with the same end result?
Thank you Dan for Steem! I see its potential to change this world for the better.
Those proposed changes will definitely make Steem better.
Any idea on a timeline as to when those changes could be implemented would be nice be either way I'm very enthused by them.
agreed :)
LOL yup
Not sure if this is a good idea or if it would be open to gamification, but I'm throwing it out there for feedback/consideration:
If we are going to significantly reduce the SP holding time, we may want to exclude SP that is part of a power down from participating in curation/rewards.
Pretty sure Ned suggested this months back. It'll definitely be an incentive to hold SP. There should be plenty more of those - there should be a solid incentive to not power down. And yes, partial power downs should be possible, of course.
Any time you add an incentive to hold something you add a discouragement to buy it. That is largely what this entire proposal is about. By adding a lot of restrictions and demands on how investors are "supposed" to behave, it tells others they are not wanted. I prefer a "big tent" where anyone who wants to invest their capital in this system is welcome and not (more than security requirements dictate) disadvantaged because their particular approach to investing might differ from another person's approach.
IMHO, I feel all friction should be removed for investors, and question making Steem Power liquid. (Though of course that would be a long term goal, for the short term 3 months sounds fine.) 9.5% is a low enough inflation rate to not require a hard lock in period, which will probably psychologically discourage investment much greater than that amount.
Even so, there should be incentive to hold Steem Power, and it could be driven by gamification of the platform. Other cryptocurrencies have thrived without any holding period, while free to play games have thrived through gamification.
Of course, a balance needs to be found between the two...
Makes sense.
What's the benefit? Why complicate it when the SP will be off the market in a week anyway?
not SP from a weekly portion... all SP.
Oh, that would be brutal. I don't think anyone would want to go for that idea.
It would basically be a change to be either "invested" or "cashing out". If you wanted to cash out 20% of your funds, it would be removed from your voting power and dispersed over 3 months. The other 80% that was not being withdrawn would still be vested and count towards your voting + curation rewards.
Basically users would need to decide if their money is in or out.
But what if I want to cash out 20% in three weeks? A full powerdown under the proposal would accomplish that, yet I'd be penalized 100% during that time. IMO, this becomes very over-complicated and cumbersome. There seems no real value to it. Just let people vote on what is in their account, just like you would with votes on stocks. You either have them or you don't. If you sell them, it's done.
I do not see a reason to give a voting power to someone, who are going to leave a platform.
Powering down doesn't mean someone is leaving the platform. While it's possible (over 2 years!), it only necessarily means that they may be selling a portion of their holdings. I'm powering down because I am experimenting with it. I power up as soon as I record my numbers. I've bought Steem and powered it up. So I should be penalized the entire portion if I want to cash some out? Wouldn't that be like telling a stockholder that they no longer have voting rights on 100% of their stock because they're selling 1%?
What you just described in your other comment of cashing out 100% to get 20% in 3 weeks is what this would be trying to discourage.
Yeah, I understand. And it kinda makes sense. But I consider the imposition a far greater concern than the market factor. But I am very active in promoting other people's posts too, so maybe that's a factor in my perspective. The other, of course, is just what seems an overbearing and disproportionate penalty.
It's just an incentive to stay powered up. Curating/Rewards are supposed to be proportional to your vest in the site. If you are powering down, then you are removing those SP from vests. Perhaps this would encourage people to only power down some of their SP rather than all?
Not everyone has that option. And sometimes folks just power down to keep options open. I've been doing it for a few weeks now, simply to try to understand how it works better (Ask 5 people and get 7 opinions). I power back up immediately. And it's a good way to maintain being able to pull a portion out at any time, then just power up what's left. IMO, there should be no penalty simply because someone wants to get some of their Steem out.
Exactly, it doesn't need to be an all or nothing deal... Why not adjust voting weight relative to the power down?
Or just let it fall off as the SP falls off. I'm no programmer, but this seems the most basic and simple. IMO, it's the most intuitive too.
This is also a more than reasonable solution.
I would agree with you on the current 2 year contract... But with this new proposal.. nah...
i don't think its a good idea. locked up SP should be able to vote the rest not.
What was your objective for this proposal?
Your question has largely been addressed in the comments above, but the basic idea would be to add additional incentive to staying vested. If users are cashing out, then that portion of their funds is on it's way out, and would no longer receive the benefits/rewards to being vested.
This is exactly what we don't want. We want people who want in to get in, and people who want out to get out. Adding (unnecessary) friction to either ultimately reduces the value of the platform.
With a 2 year power down, I totally agree. With 90 days though I'm less sure. I see your point though.
@smooth wrote:
Well you'll remember I was one of if not the first at Bitcointalk who was arguing that the speculators couldn't invest and afair you sort of downplayed it or disagreed. So now it is nice for me to see you trumpeting my points here as your own.
You want speculators to be able to get in and out. Yes. But you don't know the other part of my design which deviates from what you just wrote.
So Steem will drop the power down to 3 months, a huge cash out will occur potentially crashing the price further or enabling those who want out to get bought out at good prices by eager fools, whilst the drop from 2 years to 3 months destroys another critically important design point which I am not going to share publicly. But you have a hint in my other comment on this page.
I'm not referencing speculators necessarily with my comments and I noted that elsewhere. If someone is a user or a long term investor and has had a change of heart (even after five years) and no longer supports the platform, I see no value in keeping them around longer just to prop up the market.
As someone else noted in the comments, many if not most speculators don't want to lock up their funds at all and three months is still too long. I don't really view the reduction in lock time as appealing to speculators, I view it as reducing the cost of entry for those who do intend to remain involved and invested indefinitely but aren't comfortable with a two year (one year average) exit lag.
@smooth wrote:
I agree. And you are getting closer to my (somewhat secretive) point of the drop from 2 years to 3 months being contemplated is IMO the worst possible compromise. We'll see...
Yes I see. I guess the more i think about this the more I agree with you sentiment.
Alright, here are my thoughts. They may get buried in the comments, but Ill post it anyways.
-Charlie
When trouble shooting a mechanical problem, especially an intermittent one, it sometimes requires one change at a time until the problem is isolated and repaired.
A witness vote is removable, that is true, but it doesn't mean that they are actually removed with changes in the witness work. Removing the votes after 3 months is good because with infinitely valid votes inactive users' votes are a risk (they don't re-evaluate).
I support these reforms. Until there is more demand for Steem, I think it's necessary to make this change on the supply side. Regarding the reduction of the power down period, it could create some short term selling, but if there is more interest from short term investors who can bring in additional liquidity, then it's the right trade-off to make.
Once things stabilize a bit, we really need to work on increasing the use and demand for Steem, making it very simple for third parties to adopt and use.
:Hold on. Only 30 people really have any. So, you're basically building a tool for 30 people to trade their shit between each other. There is an elephant in the room here with the oligarchs of steem vs the 99.9% that don't have any steem. Until the price drops low enough to grab enough investors to spread out the distribution then there won't be people using those other platforms.
Steemit should start looking for partnership too, that's how a business become legitimate to the eye of investors.
They could integrate login with trezor or ledger, they could use shapeshift API, they could integrate with stripe ,etc..
I totally second this.
Once things start stabilizing we should work on increasing the use and demand of steem.
Nice announcement, just wait for the dumps to come guys.
To be transparent, I also sent over 17k this morning and will be selling gradually.
I started a conversion of 300K SBD (to liquid STEEM) earlier today, hope that I can earn more. ;)
Good, someone needs to try to counteract our greedy leaders. They obviously don't understand how a market works but they're great at taking advantage!
I also recently converted 50K SBD to STEEM.
Yes. We see it in the screenshot.
I'm curious what the largest financial investors think about this proposal. Some have spent tens of thousands of dollars on Steem Power and watched that value drop to fractions of what they invested. How will they feel about these changes?
I spent 400 BTC on SP a few month ago, it's worth about 20 BTC right now, i am the largest financial investor so far, the follow is what i think:
I think the design of Steem Power is flawed, it should be removed completely, a lot of investors don't want to hold SP because of the long withdraw time, and few of them want to hold STEEM because of the hyperinflation , with the new change, the Steem Power holder only have 1.425% (9.5% * 15%) interest yearly, so most of the users would hold STEEM only, few of them would hold SP in order to earn curation rewards, i think this new change would attract a lot of short term and long term investors.
I don't like the idea of rewarding bloggers with stakeholder's money, there are two kinds of bloggers on steemit, write for money, or write for pleasure, the first kind produce low quality contents, it's not worth to pay them, the second kind, usually produce high quality contents, they do care about money, and appreciate and enjoy it, but they would still write without it anyway.if Amazon.com pays for the e-books with shareholder's money and make the ebooks free for everyone, then the price of their stock would drop as shitty as STEEM. We should use stakeholder's money for promotion purpose and for developers. We should develop features like pay per view, tip, trade etc on steemit.com.
We should focus on entertainment purpose on steemit, I don't like to read those original long posts on steemit, they are boring , if i want to learn, i prefer to read books. I think most of the active users here think the same as me, because they are leaving, the bots are voting, few people read and comment the boring posts.
I agree. If steemit only aims at being a kind of medium blogging platform it will lose a lot of potential users. Steemit should aim at being the best social network with many different ways to earn money. I wrote a post about this 2 months ago https://steemit.com/steem/@snowflake/steemit-needs-more-way-to-earn-reward-than-posting
By only rewarding people for writting stories steemit won't appeal to the vast majority of the people.
People should be paid for doing many different things that adds value, predicting the future correctly like augur does on ethereum, or people could be paid to fill survey, or even play games,or answers Q&A
Even a daily steemit lottery could be interesting, we could allocate 500$ to the lottery and make a happy user every day. And there people have one more reason to stick around..
I think the funny part of making money is lacking on steemit, it needs more diversification
@snowflake I believe it is a happening. There is steemsports (plus all the differents accts. under it) and I have recently been seeing different types of games such as guessing numbers, or what a zoomed in picture or @virtualgrowth plays poker with the steem generated by his post and rewards the upvoters and commentators . There are many great artists that draw and paint, there now some musicians posting original music and even some making unique videos here on STEEMIT. I recently posted how a steemit user's pic was used in a news article.
I my investment in steemit pales in comparison to @laonie 's but I was not worried with the recent price. I feel that Steemit has so much potential and not enough time has passed for us to be freaking out, but I understand. I have been averaging down so this price jump does help with my investment and my attitude.
These things are great but the interface is not very organized. All I see every day in the trending page is steemsport everywhere
The gaming/lottery aspect should be seperate from the usual posts.
If I was developing the interface for steem , I would create nice profils pages like any social media and on these pages i would add a section called earn which will show all the different ways to earn ( post,bet,fill questionnaire,etc..)
The way things are displayed to us now is too confusing and it's hard to know what steemit even try to be.
The trending page has definitely changed since I first started here, and it currently does not appear to be "steemsport everywhere." I do not believe Facebook new what it was going to be or how it would look either when it first started. Steemit is the first of its kind and it still says "BETA."
Just wait until it announces itself as Live to the World.
Thank you, @laonie. You were certainly someone I had in mind when I made my comment. I don't agree with everything you've said here (I really like the concept of vested shares which represent a long-term commitment, along with the idea of purchasing influence on the social network side of the ecosystem), but I really, really appreciate your perspective. I really hope, in the long term, your investments turn around, and you are made whole here. In a very real sense, you have been funding Steemit for the past few months and Dan and Ned (IMO) owe you a rather large debt of gratitude.
I'm curious why the change would attract long term investors as you described? To me, Steem Power was a long-term investor's dream. Unfortunately, the liquid steem dumped on the market caused that dream to turn into a nightmare as the price of steem fell through the floor.
That's a really interesting way to put it. If we don't reward them with that money, who's money do we reward them with? Value can't be created from nothing. I don't know what the balance is, but if we're going to continue to have valuable payouts, the money has to come from somewhere (i.e. investors propping up the value of the rewarded token). As you said, though, if other systems did this, their share price would tank.
I agree entertainment should be the key, but I also think different people come here for different things. Some value the long posts more than any other posts anywhere else. I hope there's room for everyone's preferences.
Thanks again for your reply. It means a lot to me.
For long-term investors, if the price increased tenfold in a short time, most of them would want to sell most of the stakes, they don't want to be forced to hold. The long withdraw time is a big turn off for them.
We should treat every investor equally, it's hard to tell who is short-term holder, who is long-term holder.
If you are a reader, you like a post, you can reward the author with your own money, if you reward the author with other's money , that's called corruption or tragedy of common.
Paying users for content is a market differentiation for Steemit and is it's biggest selling feature to gain adoption. The revenue will come from the attention economy and advertising.
Bringing in ad revenues is the real solution that will add value for investors.
This is what I have been saying for a while now too. The content brings viewers, so it should be paid for by those who want exposure. The pool of rewards needs to be neutralised by income somehow, or it destroys the investment potential.
Ads are dying online.
Way better to allow for topical writing prizes, of which steem keeps some fraction. See: Rancher's article bounty system.
@laonie wrote:
Tipping will never be viable.
I understand that perspective of rewarding them with other people's money, but bitcoin rewards miners with investors' money as new bitcoin is created. I see steemit doing the same thing by rewarding those who create the content which give the social media ecosystem value. Other cryptocoins are investments only whereas this one includes author rewards. As long as the price is going up, it works well for everyone. Whenever the price just goes down and investors can't get out, it does seem fraudulent.
@lukestokes
The beauty of PoW is that there's no centralization of power, bitcoin treat every miner and every stakeholder equally , and bitcoin has the first move advantage, but STEEM doesn't , if steemit cann't grow it's user base, it would be dead.
If people don't get paid to post, what exactly is the selling point of steemit.com?
If people are leaving even they get paid to post, what exactly is the point to pay for ?
That's waste of money.
If you want to win a user's heart, money just won't work.
@snowflake Thanks for asking. An update will be released after Steemfest.
How is steemQ doing? Any progress report for the community? :)
@laonie wrote:
You are correct that users won't stay just for money and the site must be enjoyable/meaningful even without remuneration, because it is mathematically impossible to pay users enough for blogging from debasement of investors.
However if users stayed because they are investors, then they could have both their heart and mind vested in it. That was one of my key insights when I realized how to make a better Steem "clone".
Voting is the problem (because as one of my blogs pointed out, it is impossible to avoid Sybil attacks without handing that voting power to the whales which thus centralizes the ranking and reward system).
Btw, remember I responded to one of your blogs in August and warned you that you were throwing your BTC down a rat hole. Maybe next time you listen more carefully to what I have to say.
@laonie wrote:
You are correct that users won't stay just for money and the site must be enjoyable/meaningful even without remuneration, because it is mathematically impossible to pay users enough for blogging from debasement of investors.
However if users stayed because they are investors, then they could have both their heart and mind vested in it. That was one of my key insights when I realized how to make a better Steem "clone".
Voting is the problem (because as one of my blogs pointed out, it is impossible to avoid Sybil attacks without handing that voting power to the whales which thus centralizes the ranking and reward system).
Btw, remember I responded to one of your blogs in August and warned you that you were throwing your BTC down a rat hole. Maybe next time you listen more carefully to what I have to say.
Yes, you did warn me, thanks for the warning, i wasn't thinking clearly at that time, and i learned the lesson.
I invested 40btc... so I totally agree with your position!
@knozaki2015, want to make you aware of banano's insight.
I am developing a social network blockchain project somewhat similar to Steem, but different in very important ways which address all of your points and even points you have not yet thought of. It is also intended to fix all the centralization problems of Bitcoin, so it is to be a major announcement in the Bitcoin ecosystem when I get close to launch. Also the name I have is superior (the domain is already registered), on the caliber of "Twitter".
The DPOS which Steem is based on is less than ideal. I wrote down the issues at least one of which afaik no one else had enumerated. I have also been creating a new programming language to replace JavaScript and Java, and this ties into my plans for the social network. I must keep some of the details secret until I get closer to launch, otherwise other projects would possibly attempt to copy them.
I will be in Singapore in second and third week of January (for a medical trip to deal with my liver & digestive health problem) if anyone wants to meet to talk with me face-to-face. It would probably be best if there was some angel investment now to help hire another top programmer to accelerate my progress. I am a top programmer and only want to work with the very best due to the Mythical Man Month loses of productivity due ridiculous amounts of communication load (or miscommunication outcomes) incurred when working with junior programmers.
I can be contacted at my LinkedIn, which is linked in my first blog post.
I don't think it is in my best interests to apply my design and ideas to changing Steem, because I am not one of the whales who mined the stealth mining. The prior concentration of ownership disincentivizes me from being a full partner in the ecosystem. I had thought about contacting @ned, but then changed my mind when I became aware of how most of the tokens had been minded for Steemit, Inc.
I have appreciated that they did this experiment and demonstrated the potential value of a Steem-like concept and I participated sincerely to see what would come of it (which is a concept I was working on before they launched and before I had heard of Steem). I presume they have profited commensurately. And they can make changes now and see how much they can salvage from the existing design and inertia. I am not claiming they can't make some design improvements. I will be watching intently to see what they do.
@laonie, want to make you aware of banano's insight.
What's the URL of your blog?
https://steemit.com/steem/@anonymint/blog-rewards-can-t-be-widely-distributed
Bloggers aren't being rewarded with stakeholders money. Stakeholders have something worth >$0 because some of us are trying like hell to bring people to the platform and build out infrastructure and ecosystem, and the financial incentives ARE A HUGE PART OF THAT DECISION.
I can no longer stomach the subpar, bottom-dwelling quality on Steemit and I have moved back to Medium for both blogging and reading. At least on that platform my posts won't endure senseless flagging and collapsing when I speak my mind. I have over 1K followers on Medium and people who disagree with me leave comments. They don't have the power to collapse my thoughts. I'll probably write first on Medium then copy my stuff over here, just to keep up appearances. I'm also thinking of setting up a bot to vote as I no longer want to sift through all the junk myself.
The trending page for me has become like a bad dream, a writer's nightmare. I think Steemit suffers from an identity crisis, but the thing is, my attention is not something I'm willing to plunder. Quality writers have pretty much bailed and we're left with yesterday's sandwich crusts. This video pretty much sums up my current feelings about how this ship is going......can you find yourself in it?
Quality has gone down along with the pay rate. I guess when people find out that they can't get paid enough to survive on Steem they go back to blogging on other platforms where their audience is bigger or on Youtube where they at least know they will get paid by views.
Steemit could change this by making it's UI/UX better and make it as good as other platforms but right now Steemit isn't even as good as Reddit and already people act shocked about the low price of the Steem token? Steem token prices go down because we don't even have groups yet.
Developers shouldn't waste time on these useless parameters and should focus on developing utility like groups and subscription. Even a friends list would go a long way, with private messages, but instead we have this debate about changing the economics without even the first 2 years going by?
It looks like the founders aren't confident in their own platform and want out. So who will buy Steem Power now?
I definitely understand how you feel @stellbelle, especially for getting reprimanded for voicing your opinion or trying to create balance. Also the feeling of the people or your group that your used to being connected with leaving.
I understand that all of this is upsetting and hurts you in someway. but at the same time it is unnecessary to attack the people who are still writing on steemit. To make a blanket statement that the majority of quality writer have left and every one else is just "the crust" is hurtful. Especially since a good majority of people here value your opinions and really look up to you. It is even more depressing for the writer who are still learning by expanding their writing and may not actually be "the best quality writers above others" but still wanting to write on steemit.
We all respect your decisions to switch over to medium as your main platform, especially because of the inequality that it sounds like you are feeling. But there is no need to try to burn this bridge and "ship" down as you are leaving too. Especially for all of us 14k+ of us that are still on this ship that fully support you with whatever you do and everything that you have done.
I know your feeling emotional but please try to be aware of what your saying when you speak to "us". Your influence is greater than I think you even realize.
I'm not burning anything. The design of Steemit did that itself.
Everyone should lead themselves. I am a writer and artist first.
If people choose to follow me, then that is their decision. We are all adults here.
When you approach things from a sentimental perspective, that is when your judgment fails you. I write for a living. I read a lot. I did think that writers would start slowing sifting over here, but I was wrong. They tell me that they want nothing to do with a sketchy place. You are all attacking me because I speak my mind without filters. I am providing useful information, if you could just stop being so defensive. Attachment does this to humans, obviously.
I'm not attached to any platform. I'm looking for a digital home that solves my basic issues while at the same time giving me a sense of real value. So far, I have been very lucky because i joined early. I am grateful for that. I consider it a real blessing. I am cautiously optimistic now instead of being over the top enthusiastic. It will take a long time for this place to attract quality people. And it could self-correct, sure, I am open to that possibility. But the main centralization of power issues will take a long time to sort out. That is my main concern.
Flagging is one of the biggest reason that we have so many abandoned accounts. Flagging was designed to get rid of spammers and abusive people. We want them gone, but it should take many flags to even show up as a red mark on someone's opinion.
I suggesst a graduated flagging power - like Steem Power (could even be SP) which could take out abusive posts slowly. I would also suggest that the ability to flag be given to all, and taken away when powering down. And given in perportion to reputation. A new account cannot reward posts (zero impact), their flags should not impact users with higher reputations (zero impact). Solution...
For posts and comments
We also need something to stop people from flagging an entire account! Let's say I join, blog for a month, limited success, but I am growing. I flag someone for good reason, and they come to my home and red mark everything I have written.
Flags are like farts at a party. Too many and nobody wants to stay.
Well then, @stellabelle
Please, define and describe an ideal digital home. I'm serious by the way-- while my other posts may seem to you obnoxious, I'm really curious what you think would be better, because its' clear we've got to hammer on steemit a bit to improve it.
Hate to say it, but this is kind of what I came to expect from @stellabelle. Try not to look up to her so much and you will feel better. It has been made clear to many of us that though she is a good writer she tends to speak from a the vantage point of expertise on issues she really isn't qualified to speak on. Sure free speech is fine, but the simple fact that she believes that steem is a place where she can be censored kind of proves the point that she is looking at everything from the perspective of someone who knows very little about the meaning of beta level software.
There are MANY high quality content creators I consistently see on this platform. And after less than 7 months being alive, this #blockchain has proven it can scale above and beyond all other blockchains that propose to compete.
Medium is fine, but stellabelle has not stopped copying and pasting to steemit. Why? Just to keep up appearances? or maybe because medium doesn't give her even a chance to get paid and she knows it?....Me thinks it is the latter.
Yep, it was really strange reading her. I don't really know what people expect when the join a venture...It's a kind of weird mind set. Why not stay in Medium if it's better. People are posting good content here. I'm reading good content daily and I'm witnessing all the projects going on around the world. That's the value of Steem and please in less than a year.
I think she needs a hug.
I've no idea, but yeah, it was a very...
"wow"
kinda post.
thanks @ballinconscious
Get over it, she's right. I still put up a few things, but with very few exception the remaining posts are either dry as dust technical drivel, or English as a Second Language. It's bad, worse than Wattpad.
how old are the other platforms? right and wrong are subjective man. ;)
@stellabelle U HAVE 2 months ranting and venting about quality of steemit posts, leaving from here and etc. Is this comment ur real farewell? no worries, I have more than 700 friends on facebook, 754 tumblr followers and 547 instagram followers and I am not even a good writer. Social media is supposed to be fun, not to find the next Nobel winner in literature.
Totally agree. Not everyone wants to be an author, and although I enjoy Stellabelle, I feel pretty confident I could find her work with a single google search at any point, no matter where it is posted.
@thebluepanda so this is in fact where you are wrong: Social media is a little bit of both which both?
Social media encompasses the very wide range of human experiences and expressions.
Hi @faddat I couldn't respond to you in the other thread so I came here. Can you please share with my why you think internet advertising is dying? It really isn't. Online advertising is actually growing not dying. Next year online ad spending is predicted to overtake TV spending for the first time.
I think you may be misinterpreting current struggles with ad blocking technology. The industry is adapting and expanding not contracting and dying.
Without some sort of future advertising monetization, steem would be nothing more than a pyramid scheme reliant on an infinite stream of new users paying up to the old ones.
I will bet that we either see some sort of steem, steem power or SBD based advertising system like the promotion tab coming in the next year or we will see steem die.
Where is the value in steem if not in advertising money?
what are you talking about? social media is both of what?
oh please, if i want to find the next Nobel winner, I go to a library.
never miss a chance to victimize yourself :D even if you are right - thrending sucksm you are not helping your case by putting yourself first.
Also, trending ALWAYS sucked but when you were on it it was ok for you.
If you are so sick of the sub-par writing on Steemit, perhaps you should start reading my posts...
Oh.... that was cheeky!!!! hehehe
add me to your steemvoter :)
If Steemit is only a place for professional writers, I wouldn't want to visit.
Didn't you make god damn near a million dollars on Steemit? Fine by me if we only count SBD earnings-- how much was the tally, anyway?
Oh, poor poor you and your writer's nightmare.
Maybe it's time Steemit embrace XXX content and let people purchase Steem Power for greater access. That could create demand for Steem Power without these parameter tweaks to appeal to crypto gamblers.
I really like you comment @laonie and although I don't agree with everything said, finally someone who understand how this all thing can really work long-term from investment PoV. There are some things:
@lanie " I don't like to read those original long posts on steemit, they are boring , if i want to learn, i prefer to read books. " Why didn't you buy Amazon stock then? You knew you were buying a hard to explain - cryptocurrency hedged - "pay for blog" platform and now you don't like it because you think the users are stealing your money.
If you had taken that money and put it into Amazon - you would have received a quarterly prospectus, you could vote for the board of directors AND you would still have most of your money.
But you probably wouldnt understand them either - you see they take shareholder money and buy up ebooks so they can offer them for free. The part you would understand is they also don't turn a profit because of all their "investments" in "entertainment".
Some sites add value with content - some with savings or a reward. Steemit provides both.
I don't think the users are stealing my money, but i do think this platform is like a charity organization , i still remember that we paid a make-up post for $40k , that's insane. That's how a tragedy of common works.
The platform still works that way, everybody is milking the cow, the cow is nearly dead.
Steem needs to implement posting reward max limits
So because your investment is not worth what it was the business model makes no sense? What makes no sense to me is why you didnt do a private deal and make sure you had a say before parting with so much money.. In your analogy you want to kill the dying cow - the currency depends on the platform which depends on the people which depends on the.. Am I the only person who read the white paper?
I want to save the cow, stop milking it or at least be tender, i believe money cann't buy the loyalty of users, maybe i am wrong, time can tell.
@laonie, stakeholders pocket money which time they vote.
Understand that point number three is an entirely subjective opinion and irrelevant.
As to the idea that you should begin to capitalize off my work, without offering to pay me, fuck you. My stuff is stuck here, for better or for worse, from now on. Without the writers, what is this site? You're witnessing it. That's why you must pay. Otherwise, you end up with the same crap other blogging social sites have.
I am sorry my personal opinion might hurted your feelings, but you are acting like a mad dog.
I tend to get like that when someone thinks their simple cash investment is worth more than my art. I'm not acting like a mad dog, I'm acting like someone defending their work. It's an "opinion" not an "option" for the record. but, you go ahead and invest in a platform where only people like you write the content and see what the fuck happens. You think Facebook is huge because of written posts? No, it's huge because it became an avenue for sharing huge amounts of quality content. You don't understand anything about social media, obviously, but because you put in a little cash (not even that much, by the way) you're voice is bigger than mine. Now, you want to steal what I worked hard to share here. So, yeah, fuck you.
It's "your voice" not "you're voice" for the record, i understand why you act like that, you have 8 kids and 3 dogs and a fat wife to raise ( BTW, your kids are cute, but i hope your 3 dogs are not as mad as you ), but the sales of your gabage e-books on amazon is pathetic , if you want to defend your work, barking like a mad dog is useless.
@laonie
I have powered back up tens of thousands of dollars. Most of that was at much higher prices (some probably at least 10x the current price, if not higher, though most at 2-5x).
I have no strong expectation of this proposal being a magic bullet that will suddenly recover all those losses. I do think it is an improvement overall and gives Steem a better chance to succeed assuming other good work continues to be done at a reasonable pace, such as making the platform more compelling and less narrowly targeted as well as better marketing and promotion (actually just having some at all would be good).
My biggest concern is that the focus in this proposal on tweaking coin parameters is seen as a "fix" and takes the pressure off of absolutely essential platform development. The large cuts to witness rewards will withdraw funding (ideally not abruptly) from valuable independent developers and development efforts, making this an even more centralized ecosystem dependent on Steemit for funding and development. More than ever, Steemit needs to step up on creating something with broad appeal and utility. If not then the changes in this proposal will not matter. At best they will buy some time.
Agree. However, I DO like the attempt to make Steem a viable cryptocurrency. IMO, that will be good for the platform overall and remove some of the ponzi stigma (however unjustified).
I agree with your assessment of people seeing this as a "fix". Creating something with "broad appeal" is absolutely a necessity since other platforms are about to be launched that could potentially slow the momentum here.
"About to be launched" is much different from actually launching. They COULD hypothetically compete but dont look for it anytime soon if at all. Dont hold your breath is my point. Just because someone has great marketing and tells you they are going to build a blockchain based social media platform, does not mean their blockchain will support the kind of volume steem does and can today.
For instance, Ethereum has a team of highly intelligent people telling everyone at the final quarter of 2017 (next year) they expect to have Casper completed, which should enable ethereum to scale to be able to reach the kinds of transaction volumes you see on things like bitshares and steem. Meanwhile back at the bat cave....
BitShares and Steem are doing it TODAY--Steem long ago surpassing the transaction volume of both Ethereums combined... It is imperative that when you speak, you know what you are talking about. Otherwise you're misinforming.
Now that I feel like I have had a beatdown session on you, I will say I hope you realize it is not with ill intent that I speak. Rather, it is with a sense of hope that you will recognize that the 73 beside your name does not mean you know everything there is to know about blockchains. Wielding that reputation to spread wrong information as fact will not last forever.
I don't think that even matters. If Steem/it does not move ahead with a successful and effective development process that rolls out compelling improvements to the platform at an accelerated pace, it will not be successful in capturing the attention and interest of users (and therefore not successful at all) regardless of what others do.
I'm beta testing next week.
Why would you make the assumption that I "know everything there is to know about blockchains?"
I have never claimed that. You are guilty of assumption based on opinions not facts when you claim "wrong information". You don't have any idea about this information, but instead choose to use opinions.
I've never criticized the technology, and in fact I am quite impressed with it. I am not impressed with the leadership and communication so far. I know that you are very passionate about this place but it would do you some good not to suffer from tunnel vision. Have a look around and see what others are doing. More importantly, see how leaders operate by asking questions, creating surveys and building their network around what users want. If this was supposed to be a blogger's destination, why have most of them left? By avoiding the elephant in the room, not listening to those who provide the content, it's showing some serious vulnerabilities in the leadership.
I've been in the IT industry for +15 years and launch some venture by myself difficult to move to next level. From day 1, we new competition will come and they haven't launch. Even if they launch, do they have any tested infrastructure.
Always a voice of reason. Thanks @smooth. When I saw this post, I quickly scrolled down to see if you had replied. I agree with everything you've said here (including a more gradual approach to changing the percentages).
This is a complicated economic experiment. I agree, these changes aren't a "fix" because ultimately we can't really create value out of nothing. Bitcoin supports a million dollars+ in new value a day because investors want to buy in. The same can't be said for STEEM... yet. That's the main concern I have with too much tweaking too early on. If we try to "fix" things with adjusting this nob or pulling that lever, are we really any different than the central bankers playing with interest rates? Sometimes things need to work themselves out over time with some winners and some losers, even if that means I'm one of the losers (short term). Some things just take time.
I bought in at 10x some of the lower prices today. Some bought at much, much, higher. The discouraging thing is to think anyone could just show up today, spend much less, and have much more SP. That said, what really has given me value here is the platform and community itself. I'm even working on my first fiction post. Seriously. :) The value of this platform is the relationships and the creativity it brings. Like bitcoin, maybe it just needs a few years for enough people to realize that as well for the value of the token to catch up with it. I'm interested in long term investing here. The high interest rates (I mean in terms of the changing VEST to Steem conversion) are one of the reasons I bought it when I did, knowing they would settle down later on. At the same time, if the fundamental economics are actually flawed, then surely we have to do something. Then again, 10,000 bitcoin for a pizza sounds pretty flawed as well. It's all a matter of perspective and timescale.
I'm looking forward to whatever marketing takes place in the future. I think the social media platforms of the world will eventually have to adapt to the new paradigm Steemit is bringing to the category. Whatever the future of social media looks like, I'm quite proud of being an early adopter here on the blockchain, even if that means I lost out in the beginning. Thankfully, I never invested more than I was willing to lose.
If the price keeps going down, how do you reinvest at higher levels? That is an amazing thing.
well said!
agreed with both stella and smooth that these parameter changes do little to help increase the broader appeal of the platform. If we get some of the things built that I am trying to get done, I suspect you will see this change ^.^
I invested 40 BTC and I would be happy if these changes lead to a higher STEEM price....
Heck yeah to that. I think we'd all like to see higher prices. 40 BTC is quite a bit. In a sense, you were an early angel investor, paying Dan and Ned to do what they did. Unfortunately, it seems the value of your shares have declined significantly (as they have for us all). For what it's worth, thank you for taking a risk, seeing what many of us see, and putting in some real money. I hope, on a long enough timescale, it turns into one of the best investments you've ever made.
I love how we've already arrived at a point in time where we refer to bitcoin as the real money :)
Hell yeah. More real than the currencies many citizens of many countries are trying to get out of right now. :)
lol, YAY!!
You will regain your investment one day. Change is on the way!
I like the idea of taking the interest earned on Steem Power and using it for rewards, because we would actually be investing that STEEM back into great content that continues to better the site, but I think it would be better to make the "Power Down" cycle more like 6 months.. The point is to NOT be able to just pull out :/
People are able to pull out now with a 2 year period. Reducing the lock time period would actually result to less people pulling out, this is just how human psychology works. Throw someone in a cage and ask him how eager he is to get out, now throw someone in a cage with the keys and ask the same question, you will be surprised what their answer is.
No way. Why would anyone want Steem Power if you don't value it? And if we change the smart contract before it even finishes then how does this create confidence in any of the other economic parameters of Steem?
I mean imagine Bitcoin developers debating increasing the cap, or adjusting the inflation rate, or any of the economic promises that people bought into? With Steem we bought into a certain set of rules, and now before the 2 year period is up the developers want to change the rules. Maybe we should set it to change after the period is up?
What's with your spaces ?
it is an old telegram from the past
LOL
Thank you for that laugh!
I think this is a good idea overall.
I would like to see the reduction in reward rate for both witnesses and content to be phased in over time so that there is less of an abrupt (and IMO necessarily so) slashing of rewards. The main value add here is dropping the hyperinflationary model and extremely long lock time that has been unpopular with many investors (and, importantly, not just short term speculators, but also those who may want to invest longer term but without a horrendously-long exit time if and when they do choose to exit). Under the current structure, rewards are gradually being reduced as a consequence of inflation, and I don't see a need to replace that process with an abrupt cut.
The current instantaneous inflation rate for rewards is approximately 16.5%, of which 2/3 or about 11% to the reward fund and 1/3 or about 5.5% for witnesses. This proposal calls for 8% (85% of 9.5%). Both content and witness reward would have a large instantaneous cut. In the case of content rewards, from the current 11% to 7% and for witness rewards from the current 5.5% to 0.95%. This is obviously a massive 80% reduction in witness rewards and will decimate funding for work being done by witnesses and funded by witnesses supporting other projects.
My proposal would be for content rewards to fall by 2/3% per month and witness rewards to fall by 3/4% per month, both for (approximately) six months before reaching the above numbers. This allows for a more gradual and orderly adjustment to the eventual numbers (which are close to what was already going to happen, but somewhat accelerated).
It is also possible to consider a model where only new investments have the shorter lock time, but existing SP/VESTS still have to power down at the existing 2-year schedule (possibly to repower up under the new schedule). That has advantages and disadvantages; I have no strong opinion on it either way. I'm just putting it out there is case others want to comment on it.
I also think, that there should be two "lock periods", old one.. and new one. If suddenly everyone would have a possibility of selling 24-3=21 months earlier, then we can encounter even bigger dump.
In the other hand... with two "lock periods" system will become even more complicated for new investors... and... there will be no reason to no power down all funds, even to just power up one more time, but for shorter period.
So... maybe "2 years period" should be still there.. but there should be higher return from longer lock?
Agree with this. A concern with two "tiers" for SP is that current 2 year locks have entered the arrangement with the understanding that their interest rate is crazy high. To change the game is a pretty tough pill to swallow (and will be greatly affected by market conditions, for good or ill).
As for the shorter time period, there will naturally be a dump. You can count on it. But that's what markets do, and this overall plan would free up the market more, distributing Steem to more hands and, IMO, adding greater long-term stability.
I'm unsure about the gradual part. Other than the large impact on witness projects, I mostly feel that "ripping the band-aid off" might be the best approach.
For the existing SP holders, one possibility would be to support two different power up periods permanently. There could be more incentives for 2 year holding, like a higher interest rate and possibly increased voting weight/curation rewards. You could also offer a one time window to convert from long to short.
I think it is harmful on the blogging side too. While the cut isn't quite as severe, it is still almost 40%. That is enough to accelerate the pace at which people see the site as not worth the effort and quit. A more gradual transition (on both) makes a lot more sense to me.
Again the main thing from my perspective that is clearly positive and almost without any disadvantages is replacing the hyperinflationary model, and I rather see that done as a clean change that does one thing that everyone can get behind rather than introduce large immediate reward cuts that could be good, could be bad, but are less obviously an overall improvement.
I do think the witness projects (and witnesses who are personally involved full time and relying on witness pay) are a big deal. This platform needs continued supporting services (such as anti-abuse work), investment, and development. Cutting that off abruptly without a transition period to develop new models and funding sources will certainly hurt on the platform side, but it is only speculation whether a more immediate cut in rewards would actually help on the investor side. As an investor, I've been skeptical that the rewards (all of them, but especially the high blogging rewards) are bringing the value to the platform that the are supposed to, but I'd also be concerned about disruption of platform investment and potential loss of users really hurting the platform longer term.
If it would flush out all the shitty writers, I'm all for it!
In fact, take away all rewards for writers so we are left with those who do it for survival, out of a sheer desire. Then resume payment after those have been established. Create a real culture.
Why do you feel Steemit should be an unpaid writer's hub? There are plenty of places already for that. The major selling feature of Steem/Steemit is getting paid to use a social network.
Thriving social networks include all calibers of content producers and consumers but the vast, vast majority of user generated content is shit. We just need better tools sift through the shit and personalize it to our tastes so we can wallow in our own shit.
Check out Tumblr, that's where we are most likely headed on the content quality front but it's not a bad thing. More and more crappy content will be the price of success.
oh i like it! very much. Allow to powerUp for 6 month or for 2 years. With 2 times the benefit for the 2 years.
Yeah, something like that :)
Yes this allows the reduction of risk Dan pointed out would discount the price and others to still invest long term.
I very much like this idea
Choice and having options is always wonderful. I would say 3 months or 2 years. 6 months starts getting into long-term territory (ask all my previous relationships)
Likely the drop will not be so big, if we keep the bottom of 1 STEEM per block. Need more details though.
//Edit: format correction.
I agree that changing over time might make sense and abrupt changes might have to be avoided.
Smooth, i think the most important aspect is to think about what is the best distribution of this table:
Do you think the above is a good distribution? It looks kind of good to me. But i think the most important thing is to figure out how this table should look like. Then we can think about transition. The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.
Yes I think overall it is likely quite good. Adjustments may be necessary in the future though. So we will see.
Thinking about custom allocation - then everyone could be happy possibly and more people could be willing to participate https://steemit.com/steem/@jimmco/proposed-changes-and-custom-allocation, WTYT?
With the reduced inflation the price will rise so witness rewards won't be that low compared to now.
If witnesses needs funding they should just make an intro post of their project or why they need funding like everyone else, they will definetely receive some $ since they are popular in the community
I'm going to call bullshit on that. No one can predict the price and if you claim you can you are undermining your credibility. Cryptos are volatile and go through long cold winters. While today the market seems happy with this announcement, in a week or a month or six months it will be old news and the price will be based on what is going on then, which we don't know now. I'm not enthusiastic about a plan that relies on "Because we do ______, the price will go up and then the problems will be solved". I've been around a bit too much to fall for that.
Yeah, we see 50% moves on a shoddily researched op ed.
I would expect Steem to rise from this too. But, IMO, witnesses need to be take care of reasonably. The voting mechanism with the 3 month rolloff helps promote those who are doing the most for the overall project too. It's a new concept to me, but so far I've been impressed.
Supply isn't the only factor determining price, or even inflation.
This will create an environement where users are not equally treated in the system, bad precedent imo.
It will also mean that current users can't take advantage of the new feature ( reduced lock time period)
Also I am not sure why you would want to still lock people for so long, what would be the point of that? A reduced inflation means that we no longer need to prevent people from selling their share because there will be many willing to buy on the other side.
I didn't say I wanted to do this. It has advantages and disadvantages.
As one of the crankiest and most outspoken critics of the steem economy (I have 10 posts about it of my 300+) I support these changes. I support smooth's talk of making some of these changes gradual (those effecting the witnesses).
Priority Uno- We have to kill the inflation to save the price of steem.
Priority Dos- We need more people to be active bloggers and investors to make the system worth more.
After you stop sucking out all the rewards with inflation the next priority is getting the price higher so the rewards are appealing, so people come here to blog and get paid, and then people have steem and SB to buy shit with and support your currency plan. That way steemit can take over the world from the fed and make this planet a better place.
Because price is so important I think you should consider doing the a 10:1 reverse split now as well. This place will function better with rewards based off of $1.7 steem as opposed to $0.17 steem. Basically any time you guys get to $0.50/steem or less you should be doing reverse splits to get it back to $1 to make it appealing to blog here. If it starts getting crazy high then you might consider doing a normal split to keep some parity with the USD.
You also have to deal with the elephant in the room. The rich mofos on the system need to cash some of that out on the cheap. The market cap of this place doesn't call for $185M evaluation so you're not going to get steem/SP anywhere near that.
I am aware dumping steeem by whales and increasing the price seem at odds. That said if you encourage the whales to sell even after a 10:1 reversal you can accomplish both.
I've said from the beginning of my attacks on the economy that people are the value. The changes necessary above and beyond what's included in this post really require a better economic distribution of the SP and Steem, and to have high rewards as an incentive to blog, curate, and invest here.
By all means get the Power Down shorter. Dump and dump some more. Get the price cheap as fuck for a while so people can buy in, and when you have a healthier distribution you'll get a lot healthier of an ecosystem and a better self regulating economy.
Conclusion: Nice post. Support it with a delayed change for witnesses. Get the price of steem down by having whales dump it. Get the price of steem up by doing a reverse split to get us back to $1 as a launch point. Best of luck. It's certainly better than watching this place die a shitty death due to inflation, lack of rewards, and all your daily users that aren't in the top 30 bailing.
Maybe I won' t be so cranky a few months from now.
"You also have to deal with the elephant in the room. The rich mofos on the system need to cash some of that out on the cheap."
"people are the value."
"people are the value."
"people are the value."
I'm maybe the crankiest of all. I'm allergic to shitty writing!
I agree totally with this, there is already too much supply. A low supply is important to create feeling of scarcity.
Doing a one off reverse split is a good idea, it will allow the price per steem to increase a lot in the future which is what this platform needs.
lol, best post. :)
BTW, big thank you for new notifications feature! :)
Could anyone respond to this comment? I would like to test this a little bit more :)
Have a test reply :)
hmm... interesting. I got notification about @amcq comment, but not about yours...
This is fun. Have another comment! :-D
Hey, here is a test for ya
Nice feature indeed ! Hello @noisy !
hello :)
It's working :)
Did you get one for me?
yes :)
Do u got mine @noisy ? Want to tested to... Im out of red numbers ;)
got it!
Nice! works :) thanks
Is there like a telemovie or something that summarizes all this in like a four part mini-series ?
You know like a synopsis of the key in and out changes so we can look at each effect ? ? ?
For a short post, there is a lot to digest and unpack. Personally I'd need to get my head around the implications.
However I'd like to commend you both for recognising an issue with incentivising investors and taking steps to rectify it. Hopefully this will prove the first step to moving Steem in the right direction.
Do you have a rough timeframe for when these changes could be implemented, if they are accepted?
A few weeks, conservatively. We will roll out the code and then leave time for review and discussion before a date on which the witnesses may upgrade the blockchain.
I personally think more of the new created steem should go to steempower holders to promote investment.
Also steempower holders might feel a bit less like their investment is being diluted and distributed to the same content creators week after week.
I see the ability to purchase Steem Power as a future flaw in Steemit if the site and system become popular. Also, so what if investors who don't have the patience to wait two years are put off by the system; that's good because it helps ensure only those who have an interest in the success of the system rather than turning a profit will hold power here. I see Steemit as an important tool to knock down, or at least reduce the power of, mainstream social media sites who are in bed with all manner of "deplorables", from governments to Hollywood. It is also an important tool for the average person who knows nothing about the blockchain to place something into it for safe and accurate documentation. These are just some of the reasons I believe the interest of the system should be promoted over interest of taking profits and walking away.
Although I've not invested anything other than content in Steemit, I have given thought to how the system can be (ab)used and result in nothing more than another social media site/system filled with mindless pop "culture" garbage...primarily from entertainment outlets. One reason I came to Steemit was to get away from all the meaningless, vapid pop garbage pushed at me via marketing and trending on other sites.
The problem is this: Steem Power may be purchased using other currencies, thus leaving the door wide open to Hollywood to come in with their large bank accounts, buy Steem Power, and gain influence without doing anything at all. In turn, this influence would be used not to vote based on content, but on name and to give accounts of famous a foothold and reputation on Steemit.
If the system is going to be changed then make it so SP may only be gained via upvotes on content, or that power ups may only be done in amounts equal to the total Steem earned via content.
In reading some of the responses, I have indeed come across some who want to push entertainment. My above position is supported by something the individual said; that they don't like reading. Well, if you don't like reading and prefer entertainment, perhaps Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and so on are a fit for you. You can find all the vapid entertainment there which will allow you to sit in your recliner with built-in commode, drink from a hose, watch 12 shows at once, and get angry when someone crashes through the wall and interrupts you "baitin".
If people want entertainment on Steemit that's great, but don't make it easy for existing bobbleheaded celebrities to infest it using a chunk of change but little to no effort. If you lean more towards the Jeffery Tucker crowd you may not see a problem with this, but not all of us lean his way.
I may be new here but I don't want to see Steemit ruined in much the same way California and other States were - by people fleeing the messes they created then turning their new homes into the same wrecks they fled from.
So, how does Steemit provide incentive for investors without making it easy for an infestation of "mainstream" entertainment to take root? Rather than trying to combat inflation (which should be done, but that's another subject) and tweak the power down period, make the change to Steem Power I mentioned and improve the site's UI. It's an unfortunate but true thing that if you give them shiny objects to play with they will come.
That is an interesting approach!
I'm happy to see communication and discussion from the founders on the economics of Steem.
Since this is such a drastic change, can you elaborate on the rationale for 90 days specifically? Versus a month, or 6 months.
As for the rest,
I support a reduction in the inflation. Why 9.5%? And how much will it change daily post rewards?
I think these are good changes.
I'm not sure about this one. The payment in SP has so far made witnesses want to stick around. Witness and miner pay in liquid STEEM would create a constant selling pressure on the market.
90 days is about the minimum time period that prevents moving stake between accounts voting again on the same posts for significantly higher payouts. Other ways of preventing this carry a lot of overhead or other undesirable effects. This could be an issue again if the voting period for posts is ever extended beyond 30 days which many authors would like, but in that case other solutions will need to be found.
I agree about rewards in SP/STEEM. I don't think it is necessary with only a 3 month power down period. IMO that change could be dropped to make this simpler. Witnesses/miners would still have much faster access to pay to use for expenses.
Spot on comment - in particular, I would love to see the rational for going immediately from 2 years to 3 months for power down.
Moving to 1 year or 6 months instead of 3 months makes far more intuitive sense to me, particularly as some people may have invested in SP on the premise that the 2 year time frame was designed to ensure long-term support for the project. But I wouldn't be at all opposed to going all the way to 3 months if someone could walk me through the rationale behind it.
I think witnesses are already creating selling pressure because they are forced into a long term positioning / exit strategy right now. This can create panic if you are locked in for an extremely long time, or locked in at all. A liquid payout would surely put miners at ease and make them carefully consider how much they really want to hold and not sell for themselves. Also, miners are the life blood of any cryptocurrency, you have to make them happy before anybody else, period...or you are asking for trouble.
I would prefer have witnesses, which are doing great job not only because it is beneficial and something keeps them close to project, but because they just love steemit as a platform, and they are doing great job for recognition and for good of whole community.
This is a good idea, in theory. However, as any system scales up, various key roles become more professionalized (and expensive) and the economics have to make good sense as a business. You can't rely on altruism and hobbyists at a large scale, especially for something meant to be sustainable over time.
I don't think we should rule out witnesses serving because they are interested in the project, nor is there any real danger of that happening any time soon, but ultimately resources aren't free. The best case are witnesses who are personally committed, but not required to make unrealistic personal sacrifices to keep the system running.
Dissenting vote here. Long term commitment was a primary reason I like Steem and keep powering up. If Steem Power has lower commitment now I hope you bring about a longer commitment token with more voting power.
I also liked the long term investment aspect and it's why I've never powered down. That said, if the economics are actually broken (and I'm not convinced they are), then maybe some changes do need to be made. Drastic changes don't make sense to me, though. I'd prefer a couple small changes instead of huge ones. Reminds me of the voting change from 20 a day to 5 a day that was ultimately rejected. I think it was a good change, it was just too much, IMO. Small changes make more sense to me and communicate more confidence.
I like the long-term aspect too, and have invested accordingly. But I also see it as probably unsustainable, or at least unappealing to possible investors. It appealed to me, but what do I know? :)
I totally understand why a more gradual approach would be preferred, under normal operating conditions. But this isn't normal. It's beta. What better time to really shake things up and see how the chips fall? By moving the sticks dramatically, there will be no denying the effects. If we moved incrementally, there could be valid arguments that changes were caused by external market conditions.
Let's tach this baby out while she's still under warranty. Then if she blows, we're not out in the wild. :)
As a beta tester, I expect major changes - but I've also seen a bunch of startups fail because they left their general users in the dark. So when major changes came, they all freaked the hell out. I'm still learning my way around GitHub, but you can bet that the majority of Steemit users don't have a clue what a pull request or hardfork is. Sadly, there isn't one "safe zone" where newbies/general users can get this information. They forget that they are part of a grand experiment possibly because they're so focused on their wallet that they forget to look up and see what's on the Steemit horizon.
So, yeah... tach it out - but please find a way to let your user base know that changes are coming. Posting it in feeds is too easy to miss.
Well said! After I left my comment I was thinking along the same lines how drastic moves do provide more data. Excellent point. Maybe that's why we're long term investors: we don't care as much about short term risk/fluctuation if it means a more stable future. :)
Ditto! :)
It sounds like a big change but in reality it's not, the inflation that was there only served a psychological purpose it had no practical utility. And the long lock time period was there to prevent the consequences of inflation ( something totally unnecessary). The big change is a psychological one.
I'm wondering the same thing. Will the result be a wash for SP holders on one hand, but a stronger market presence for Steem as a crypto (raising all ships)?
SP holders today are devalued at about 10% per year, this proposal means they will lose only about 8% so it looks less attractive to SP holders but technically it is more attractive.
Right, and not quite. The interest paid today is higher than the 100% inflation (it's around 140%, I think). The 90% long term interest isn't scheduled to kick in until next year. So current SP holders won't get that huge advantage. Still, the increase in Steem's value if it becomes a crypto-contender can make up for that. Looking good this morning.
I think some changes are needed. I have continually power up, never powered down, and don't mind the price of liquid STEEM going down as long as my STEEM POWER increases. In that way, I feel that my "equity" in the platform is not diluted. Can you explain specifically how the proposal fixes the two points you raised, to wit: 1) "...Anyone with a shorter investment horizon than 2-years is unable to participate in the Steem Platform which is discouraging people from bringing capital and increasing liquidity" & 2) "...The long-term divesting schedule of STEEM POWER means the network is less efficient when it comes to price discovery..."
Regarding 1, those who do not power up (commit to two years) cannot gain influence, and they may not be powering up because the two year commitment may be too heavy of an economic and/or cognitive burden. Regarding 2, the long term power down trend, even if the total powered down represents a small % of supply each week, causes price discovery to happen at much slower pace than other markets may see.
I have a question as I have never powered down. I have never had the desire to. One thing I noticed back in July was that if one accumulated enough Steem Power and you hit REFRESH on the browser you gained more steem power over time without doing anything. I then realized that if you reach a certain point that incoming steem power may actually become more than the 1% per week that powering down removes. This means someone could essentially reach a point where they could infinitely power down. I assume (like I said I haven't powered down) that you have something in the system so this steem power interest that is created out of thin air is not given to people powering down. Is this the case? If not then there seems to be a potential exploit there.
I personally don't have any intentions of powering down. What I have in steem power is for me NOT just a financial investment. It is also a steem cultural investment. I am willing to ride out the storms.
Same here. It's tough to wade through the implications and ramifications from a long-term perspective. Like you, I've powered up everything. I've also bought a decent amount that is now powered up. How will this affect it? It's a really tough call. If Steem goes up in value enough, then it's good anyway. But we'll never know what would have happened if we had done the opposite of what is done. Dangit! ;) It's an odd feeling, because I had my thought process based on the crazy interest rate.
I would explain #1 as: STEEM has such a heavy penalty for holding it, that one must essentially choose between SP and "not at all". You have obviously chosen SP, which works for you, but leaves out many people for whom it does not work. One reasonable objection to this proposal would be that Steem works for people who are really committed to it and should not pander to those who are less sure about making a largely irreversible long-term commitment. I don't agree with that (I'd rather offer a "big tent") but I do see the merits of that point of view.
The proposal addresses this with two prongs, one being a shorter power-down period and the second being lower inflation on STEEM (meaning holding it for reasonable periods would no longer have a heavy penalty).
As far as #2, I don't really understand or necessarily agree with it, so I won't comment.
Why would someone who chooses not to power up liquid steem into locked SP simply convert STM into SBD, it is now still liquid and stable and attracts interest payments.
Thus someone feeling the need for 250 liquid Steem for something or some potential reason they are not sure of would not want it sitting in the medium term as steem, would not converting it to SBD protect its stability ?
I hit you with this question @smooth because i liked and gravitated toward your other answers in this post, if your busy or choose not to answer this random spammed ? just /ignore it : )
Thank You for your time and efforts . . .
SBD is great for what it does (stable value, great for payments, earns some interest), but what it doesn't do is allow you to profit as a risk taking investor from the success of the platform over any time horizon. (Actually this is not correct, since SBD has been, and still is to a lesser extent, trading at a discount, so one could buy it and profit if the price gets closer to $1, which it has. However, it will be correct once the witnesses get the peg working properly and SBD at a stable value near $1, which we are in the process of doing.)
People who want to invest in the success of the platform but don't want to be locked in and unable to get out should they so choose will participate if they can buy STEEM, not power up, and not be punished for that. They still won't be able to participate in the extra added benefits of SP (currently voting, curation rewards, and some extra inflation reduction, though more could be added later), but they still get to participate, which I consider a good thing. More participants make Steem bigger and better.
One more thought: someone who quite isn't sure may buy STEEM to hold for some indefinite period, but not want to power it up. After gaining more confidence they might then decide to power up. Getting them in the door even when not ready to make a time-locked commitment is a good thing.
I am so smart; and you have proved it again, I am brilliant in that I chose you to answer my question and your answer is simply ultra easy to follow and understand and inspired. Thank you so much for explaining a few essential key concepts in like 110 words, More STEEM POWER to you as Rewards ! ! !
More Good Karma @ U; thank you . . .
With a 3 month power down period, would it be the same structure? Meaning equal steem payments each week for 3 months?
Yes
I still don't understand why the sudden change from 2 years all the way down to 3 month. Doesn't this break a promise to a lot of long term people invested in the platform? Is this proposed change directly a byproduct of using equihash or is it more of an arbitrary one to try to create more balance.?
Or is it just about keeping up with the competition of the successful Zcash. I'll admit that I don;t know much about how all these algorithms work but I am pretty sure a good majority of people who invested don't understand either and are confused why the new drastic proposal from the long term plan before.
Reaction to price panic, and I think it was becoming clear Steem isn't attracting new investors, and SteemIt, isn't attracting new (real people) bloggers.
Yeah but everything has its ups and downs. Yeah but what about the old investors? weren't they promised two year on SP? 3 months seems like a drastic change. Actually steemit is still consistently growing, not declining.
A very bold move, fully applaud the effort. 100% (+) inflation was already going to be dicy, given it has never worked in an economic system. It was an experiment, but it did not work. 9.5% is much more reasonable.
What resonates with me most is -
3 months is a reasonable period for that to happen. If Steem really is in weak hands, the price is going to fall steeply, but at the end of the 3 months, there'll be a new class of investors (strong hands) who'll take the price up and beyond. If Steem is in strong hands already, then we shouldn't see that decline, but judging by the continued decline in the last few months, I wouldn't bet on that.
Long term, once this transfer has happened, given the drastically low inflation rate, and a far lower contribution of the inflation rate back to SP holders, I wonder if there's a major benefit to the 3 month lock anymore?
Making it totally liquid will be psychologically much more attractive to investors (even if they don't themselves deal in Steem Power), and bring it up to par with pretty much every cryptocurrency today - Bitcoin, Ethereum or Ripple, some of whom have hundreds of millions of dollars market cap. Many of those have very stable prices and market caps, and inflation rates not much lower than 9.5%. The lock was necessary at 100%, but I would like to know what it is required for 9.5%. Of course, I totally agree it should be there till the platform balances itself.
Users of the platform will be incentivized to hold Steem Power in their accounts by earning curation rewards etc. (need more of those incentives)
Perhaps even drop Steem Power - make it whatever Steem held in your account dynamically gives you the incentives. This will also make it much simpler for content creators, many of whom struggle to wrap their heads around the system.
Just thinking aloud.
Lastly, while the witness pay does seem very drastic, being in Steem it's actually going to help continue funding the projects, at least in the short term. In the long term, one would hope the price would rise to a point where it wouldn't matter.
When inflation is reduced to 9.5% the only purpose of the lock period would be to prevent double voting ( so you can't get rid of it completely for security reasons) but you could reduce it a lot more than 3 months.
Keeping a lock time period of 3 months will actually results in less people curating and participating. Think about all these people that want to use their leftover money to curate for a few days but don't want to lock that money because they might need it a week later, well all these people won't be able to participate.
Reducing the SP holding period to three months creates an even more dangerous power down effect across the board. The SP creation rate was the problem, not the holding period. By reducing the holding period you're giving more reason for SP holders to power down and then dump liquid STEEM at a quick price. There's little reason not to dump free rewards for a quick profit.
Trying to convince outside investors that SP is a good hold, is hard to do. It's not liquid and can't be converted instantly. We need some incentive that has share holders holding liquid STEEM or SBD or both. I suggested that we introduce a fee on created rewards which are diverted to a surplus fund and then paid back to share holders annually as form of dividend. The argument there is that SP already gives back to investors, however no investor wants their investment tied up for 3 months.
Another suggestion for increasing investor interest is to create a revenue stream. By creating a revenue stream, liquidity grows and so does the value of STEEM. To do this we have to implement new markets that use both SBD and STEEM. People have suggested that we introduce advertisements, which would work, but have a real effect against what we do and what we don't want to see on our feeds (I suggest solving that by creating a tab for it, such as the promoted tab). We need real world markets, such as the exchange of goods & services, right here on the platform. If you could easily buy/sell goods or services for STEEM/SBD, then you create more reason to buy STEEM/SBD. I know there are already applications that have been developed for this but there should be a place for it right here on Steemit, just as Instagram has tried to do with their recent updates.
So, if we can create incentive for investors to hold STEEM, other than to just power up, we create more liquidity in the long term. Less share holders will sell their STEEM and instead hold it on the platform. I know, I know, that's what SP is for, but as I said no investor wants their investment tied up for a period of time.
I'm glad we're addressing these issues in a timely manner, and when it comes to the reallocation of funds, I'm all for it.
(I'm no economic student, this is merely what I believe)
People have been holding bitcoin for years with zero incentives to do so. The only incentive is the prospect of a higher bitcoin price in the future. Steem by reducing the inflation rate also create this prospect.
The idea that you have to lock people to have them commit long term is wrong.
That's my point. SP locks people in. There should be an incentive for them to keep liquid assets on the platform. A dividends for liquid asset holders creates that incentive.
My point is that reducing steem inflation from 100%-150%( today) to less than 10% is a big incentive to hold liquid steem.
The purpose of the holding period was to prevent people from dumping the hyperinflated steem. If you reduce drastically the inflation of steem you remove the purpose of the holding period, and so the holding period could be 48h it wouldn't be problematic.
Looks like people like it so far. Price is up 50%
Yep, I'd say the markets are indeed already providing feedback for the STEEM team.
In fairness, I think the move up started before this post, but this could definitely be helping.
It is common for a move to start before a release (post). Insiders.
Yes, and I predicted exactly this would be the view if news like this was released when the price was on the way up :-) But, what do you do, wait until the price goes down before you make such an announcement...
Anyone in the stockmarket has no business being there unless they know their money is riding on a random dice roll. If people are gambling in oil stocks, technology research, GBP vs US$; whatever , these people are obligated to understand their money is safer by betting on the roulette wheel at the casino.
If people are buying up on the strength of rumors that is their money to risk and exactly how pump and dumps work. That is how wall street makes money every day, by stealing from the gullible and giving to the super rich . . .
I just invented a cryptocoin and i predict it is going to be more valuable than bitcoin in seven months, come buy some now, only US$900 each !!! If i really did that someone would buy it : )
LOL ah so why bother having voting herein, basically announce changes and the % likihood of implementation and let the stockmarket price tickertape show the voting result . . . .
I partly agree with the 3 months power down. It solves a problem at investors side, but may generates a new one from the end users later.
Maybe we should distinguish somehow the investment SP from the earned SP with different holding time rules, if it is possible.
Financially, the investors' main role is that they bring capital to the system (and realize rewards), authors' one is get paid (realize rewards). Normally, we want to make it easy to bring in capital (which, as we have experienced, requires to take it out easy as well), and slow down that transactions and make them more predictable, which are mainly outgoing.
In short
Would this difference exist only to entice new investment, and reduce their fears?
One point is entice new investment with this advantage for investors, the other point is giving Steem more time for correction before it would vanish in a worst case scenario (which fact would also entice new investment).
Glancing at today's STEEM chart at Poloniex, it appears news of this change leaked to the market several minutes/hours before you hit the POST button. Cute.
Alternatively, someone could have noticed that I powered up this month and Ned stopped his powerdown yesterday (something that's been closely watched).
Or they could have listened to the NED TALK posted by @fyrstikken that was trending yesterday: https://steemit.com/ned/@fyrstikken/ned-talk-inflation
ROFL ; that is how the Stock Market works, tips; hints and insider trading . . .
I have a Chinese friend, he was a computer geek on Wall Street. Since he was foreign and a worker the Stock Brokers never noticed him. For a few years he put all his spare pay into the Stock Market according to the insider trading leaks that he overheard.
This friend of mine has been permanently retired for slightly over ten years slightly after his 35 th birthday . . .
3 months is too drastic make it a year atm.
why? what is your argument?
Changing the payout timeline for SP from 2 years to 3 months is a rather dramatic change, and one I believe would have many heading for the exit sooner. I fail to see how such a change would entice people to stay.
Such a change is not an adjustment or "tweak" and will totally reset the steemit experiment. As someone above mentioned, this significant change to the vesting period does suggest that perhaps the "big" investors might be looking to curtail their losses and exit the platform.
I TOTALLY disagree with eliminating the long term investment incentives associated with SP. Perhaps "the steemit experiment" needed to define better measurement metrics so finer grain adjustments could be made as the experiment progressed. What I've seen proposed here appears to be guesswork and overcompensation.
Why was 2 years chosen for SP powerdown in the first place? Why was 3 months proposed as a "solution"? And while I'm thinking about it, why is "a fixed instantaneous annual creation rate of 9.5%" chosen?
As for features and improvements, I think the biggest "bang for the buck" will be in the area of UI / UX to retain users. From some of the posts @dan made I get the impression he has become bored and has mentally moved on to other backend challenges. We went through a similar shift of focus in BitShares too.
BTW, is there some type of formal schedule or roadmap to serve as a guide and checkpoint on development progress? If so is it being updated to keep it current?
As for changes to the witnesses, some type of vote decay might be an improvement, but 2 things should happen before any such changes are implemented:
I'm a bit surprised that little progress appears to have occurred in defining the witness role since BitShares. Many discussions have taken place in the past about witness monitoring, including automated monitoring of crucial indicators such as missed blocks.
The changes proposed to the ratio of payments made to PoW miners, standby witnesses and the 19 "primary" witnesses do sound good tho. And I think the witness role needs to be better defined, and criteria established about witness partnerships and reporting requirements.
One thing that could encourage writers to stay here would be the ability to receive rewards after the 30 days period. I already wrote about that and got a ton of interesting feedback. The way I see it implemented is:
A few pros:
If some of you, guys, better at math then me, could create some sort of simulation and give me some cons, I would be grateful.
Yes Please!
I'll leave the intricacies of the plan to be discussed by those with greater knowledge, but in this case I believe any action is better than inaction.
Let's do it!
I disagree with these changes. This is why I am now powering down.
Steem Power isn't supposed to be liquid and it loses it's value when you change it from being a long term stake to being just another speculation toy. These changes will make Steem another toy for pump and dump speculators and offer no beneficial change for people who want to be involved with Steem for a period of years.
Steem the token need not be a toy for speculators. Steem Power is not going to have demand no matter what the inflation rate is, as long as it is hard to buy Steem Power by the mainstream user. In my opinion effort should go into UI, UX, ease of purchasing Steem Power, security for Steem Dollar peg, more utility for Steem Dollars, more gamification elements to make people want to hold Steem Power.
But I do not support these changes as I do not think it is in the long term interest of Steem. It might benefit some Steemit developers and founders who want to liquidate their Steem Power faster but it's not going to make Steem Power more attractive or add any utility to Steem. These speculators add no utility to Steem and in the long term it makes Steem Power less attractive. We should be going the opposite and trying to make Steem Power both more attractive and even less liquid. The cash out rate should be dynamic in my opinion based on the market cap of Steem if we are to add a change at all. But there should not be the possibility of founders or people who have a lot of Steem Power (myself included) to dump without waiting at least 2 years, and if the price of Steem goes down we should wait even loner I think as the rate should slow down if the price decreases for Steem.
How are rewards on the platform going to be paid for? Because people using this platform want to earn steem power they don't want to pay for it. Every social media site is free, if you start relying on users powering up to pay for their own rewards it's not going to work. Investors with heavy pocket are the ones who are going to pay for the rewards and today ( as the price shows) these investors are not interested at all in locking their steem for 2 years and losing 10% of their stake every year.
One other thing you fail to recognize is that the hyperinflation puts a downward pressure on the price of steem which means a downward pressure on the rewards of this platform, not to mention that this pressure is exponential the more you print the harder you will be able to get a high steem price.
Steem power's purpose is to be able to curate and participate in the system that's it.
You say that these changes add nothing of value to steem but one obvious thing is the faster distribution of power , I have spoken to many investors and most don't invest in steem because they think the platform is rigged and rightly so.
SP holders loses 10% of their share per year with the current set up with the new set up they will lose only about 8% because a small part of the inflation that was previously used for rewards will be allocated to steem power holders, so this proposal is actually beneficial to steem power holder
Short term liquidity, short term value, and there is no proof or evidence that the crypto community of speculators is enough to make a difference. A customer is better than a speculator for a long term income stream and everyone knows that. A casino might generate some income, but the casino which runs out of gamblers will run out of players. Steemit just isn't fun enough to keep attracting speculators and the crypto community as a whole isn't fun enough to attract enough speculators to have any sustainable growth.
If you believe Steemit can run on speculators then why didn't it work for Bitshares? Bitshares is like heaven for crypto speculators and did everything possible to appeal to speculators, but even at it's best it never had over a $100 million dollar market cap. In my opinion, if you want to appeal to speculators why not tell people to trade Steem Dollars and hold on to them for the 10% interest? We need speculators for some utility in that but then when speculators just leech or come at the cost of long term interest then I have a problem with it.
Appealing to speculators is fine, add a new toy for speculators in addition to Steem Power if you want, such as prediction markets or whatever, but don't reward speculators at a loss to the only real supporters who believe in the long term future. The long term interested player is the most valuable player in the game. Think of it like subscribers? Which subscribers get the most credits, the most benefits, the most rewards? The most loyal subscribers!
In my opinion the rewards should shift to reward loyalty as a way to make the product and platform more attractive. Focusing on quick profits will make Steem nothing but another crypto toy coin to pump and dump. There are many coins just like that so speculators have no reason to care about Steem and I think any pump you see in Steem will ultimately be temporary until something more appealing comes along or until they discover Bitshares which is even more appealing and based on the same technology. I see this as not only a bad strategy, but I see the change in language going in the wrong direction as well.
The developers are changing the narrative into a common crypto-coin narrative. This might be appealing to people who like to trade crypto-coins but the vast majority of mainstream people don't speculate, don't care about crypto, don't care about Bitcoin, don't care about "strong hands" and "weak hands" or use any of this crypto lingo that I'm seeing now. They only care about quality content, and they think in terms of subscription fees which they pay, for Netflix, Amazon Prime, and magazines. Advertisers can be attracted and made to buy Steem Power but instead of putting effort on building the attention economy it seems the developers would rather take the easy way which is just to fiddle with the distributions and fundamentally change the economy.
This is a problem because it reduces confidence long term supporters might have had. Now we can see that there is less developer support for the long term vision and more focus on getting the money out of the platform and appealing to "investors" instead of making the platform more appealing to "players" or "users". Do we see any other social media platform talk about trying to appeal to investors over the users? If the goal is to make it a better experience for users then the price of the Steem token is based on the utility Steemit can offer and if Steemit isn't offering enough utility then build that utility so people have a reason to power up. If people don't have a reason to power up now, they wont later, no matter what the inflation rate happens to be.
I support building out the platform to make it easier to power up and to make people not think about Steem Power as just $$$ or think of Steem tokens as a currency. But if Ned wants Steem to be a currency, then it's his choice, but in my opinion this goes against how Steem was originally sold to long term supporters. The rules of the game can change, but to change it so suddenly before the original contract has run it's course or expired, is like voiding the original contract and leaving people who agree with the original contract left to the will of "democracy" which of course is going to be dominated by people who may have an interest in cashing out as soon as they can. I mean while I hold a bit of Steem Power, some people hold like $100,000 of Steem Power and don't you think a few of them might want to cash that out as quickly as possible so they can buy Bitcoins or a house or whatever?
But then how is the price supposed to go up just because people might think the inflation rate of Steem is lower? All that means is people can dump the price even faster, as it will not encourage people to power up and may in fact encourage everyone down to even the smallest holders to power down immediately before this change happens.
Some parts of it are good ideas and I'm not against every little detail but the point is, I think we should stick to the original contract at least until the 2 years are up. I recognize we can renegotiate a contract but the renegotiation seems to be fear based, and greed based, rather than based on what is in the long term best interest of Steem. It's not just about how much SP holders lose in terms of percentage, it's about increasing the utility and desirability of Steem Power and of Steem, even if it means we may have to see the price of individual Steem tokens decrease. As you know, I haven't started powering down until very recently, and it's only because I see less and less confidence from the people who have the most stake. I took on the attitude that the price of Steem is irrelevant as long as the utility of the platform continues to increase.
I agree a higher price of Steem would mean we bloggers can get paid and blog more often so I'm not saying quality of content isn't correlated with higher Steem price because it is. But I am also saying, adding utility to Steem Power is a way to raise the Steem Price indirectly by making more people hold Steem. Just reducing the inflation rate is not enough if demand isn't increased for Steem Dollars and Steem Power, and for Steem exclusive content and social networks.
I share a lot of these thoughts, but speculators can add value to Steem in the form of market liquidity.
Do you mean lessening the rate of powering down if the market cap is lower? I strongly disagree with that idea, stakeholders shouldn't have to guess what they may or may not be able to power down in the future.
I think stakeholders shouldn't "invest" in Steem Power with the hope of a ROI in the same form they bought in. I think if you buy Steem Power it's because you believe in the long term the utility of Steem Power will increase your actual wealth in the form of "feature access" and attention economy benefits. These benefits aren't clear now because we need a million users or more, and a lot better build out before it makes a lot of sense, but if someone believes Steem could really challenge Reddit then holding Steem Power is like holding Reddit Gold on Steroids.
I also think it's possible to pay people dividends or make advertisers buy Steem Power. I cannot understand the strategy of trying to get money from a very small group of speculators in the crypto community who barely have a billion dollars as a whole and probably wont choose to put it in Steem or Bitshares no matter how hard you try to attract this very tiny demographic.
Advertisers on the other hand are a huge demographic and then you have customers who might subscribe for VIP or premium service which is also a huge demographic, and are both mainstream demographics.
And yes I think it should be dynamic. I think when the price is going down the speed we power down should decrease indefinitely. This would make us all want the price not to go down no matter how much or how little SP we have. When someone has a lot of SP then being able to power down faster is going to be attractive no matter what the market cap is but for someone with very little SP maybe they wont mind if powering down is slower when the market cap is lower. We should at least discuss this idea.
Why should we reward people for an unprofitable platform?
That's setting network rules for heavy handed top-down market manipulation in my eye.
Price is down? The network forces everyone to cut supply. Totally artificial. I don't like the idea.
If you think that is bad then let's keep everything as it was set from the beginning. But if we are going to manipulate then it should be adaptive to market cap and not to transient preferences. There should be a formula which determines things and not public opinion.
Would there still be interest for holding SBD? If so, is that part of the 9.5%?
Yes, SBD would continue to function as is.
interest on steem dollars is controlled by witness price feed.
So remains independent of the proposal above?
Yes
Very important question.
Will someone take some time to update the Steem Whitepaper?
That will need to be handled. There could be more changes proposed later. I will wait to move on the new whitepaper until at least mid-december.
Thank you for everything!
Seems like a valid plan ...it seems like a bit dead here on the platform and something needs to be changed quickly
Agreed, this is great news for the platform.
2017 will see a reversal of Steem to uptrend!
excellent post valuable information thank you very much
I was really happy to read this post! This is in my opinion a great news!
In general I agree wit this plan. Not 100% sure about reducing it to a 3 month wait, perhaps even double that. Glad to see the inflation issue being tackled.
I like the proposed changes regarding the witnesses. I have some issues with this:
although I may just be mistaking the details. I have a few reasons to think this is a risky proposal. However, after some consideration there is a way of doing this that I would see as far less risky.
You use the word "minimum" holding period. I don't know if you used that word intentionally but I hope that you said it because stakeholders will have the option to somehow power-up or "buy in" by 3 month/ 6 month/ 12 / 18 / 24 month contracts... Along with this we could have incentives for locking in more long term. i.e. interest ... Or another longterm token, or just something that values long term investors more than short term.
PS see you at steemfest weeeeeeeeeee
in how many payouts people will have a possibility of withdrawing all SteemPower? Weekly... so that would give 12 weeks?
That would be only for newly allocated SteemPower, or... whether after those changes... all whales will be able to withdraw old SteemPower much quicker (that could cause even bigger dump)?
Bigger dumps are less painful than death by a thousand cuts (as is currently happens).
At least this way, whales that are disenchanted with the platform can put up (sell) or shut up. Rather than feeling trapped. Also I suspect many were powering down feeling they had nothing to lose (as inflation meant they had more STEEM in their accounts regardless if they powered down or not).
These proposals also gives those that may be interested in investing in the platform a chance to establish a good foothold, rather than be put off by the current perpetual dumping.
I liked the sentiment behind people having to hold STEEM long term to accrue the real benefits however the current crypto landscape is dominated by short term speculators (or at least people that want the option to cut and run should they need to). These proposals seem like a pragmatic compromise.
I don't think there are any changes proposed for the weekly power down schedule, just the number of weeks. I'd suggest 13 rather than 12 since it corresponds with one calendar quarter.
I hope this would be the case, but there is the possibility that the abuse could increase because the accounts involved would all be able to power down and exit in a relatively short time frame - or at least power down a significantly higher portion of the rewards. There would need to be some vigilance from other highly influential users that can counteract such abuses. This has mostly been ignored in the past.
I think it's a valid concern, but that the benefits outweigh the concern. Initially, if Steem goes up strongly (it did a little today), some of the larger holders might dump. This will result in a few things:
There will always be the concern of folks dumping in any market. Nothing will fix that short of stringent (and IMO incredibly unwise) controls. Eventually, IMO, the market will bring greater stability than attempting to change the nature of sentiment and profit-taking that is always present in free markets.
It's not the dumping that would concern me. I'm all for a shorter holding time. What concerns me is the potential for abuse. We've already seen the type of abuse that happens with a much longer holding period. If the ability to cash out relatively quickly is realized, then the abusers would certainly have no problem stepping up the abuse and cashing out an even larger percentage of rewards. That's why I said we would need other highly influential users to be vigilant and do what they can to counteract it, rather than ignore it. Ignoring it - even as it continues today - has largely been the preferred method.
Yeah, I get it. It's just that trying to control markets almost always backfires. And I'm not sure if almost needs to be inserted. Markets will always be abused, manipulated, etc. This becomes more readily done the more that they're controlled. If folks want to sell, then they sell. It'll get sorted out in the long-term and the market will eventually mature so that it moves at least someone what intuitively. Right now none of the cryptos really have enough history to peg them to any sense of normality, except maybe BTC. We see how much that's manipulated all the time.
I agree. I'm not asking for market controls, just to be clear. I'm basically asking for more/better involvement with abuse matters on the platform, especially when large stakeholders are involved. But you know what I'm talking about, so I'll leave it at that.
I don't understand how your concept helps with abuse. Abusers even if caught can still continue to power down and eventually cash out 100% (even if it takes two years). In order for this to be a meaningful deterrent there would have to be a mechanism for taking back stake from abusers before they could withdraw it. I haven't seen that even proposed.
Let them take their profits and go. Others will own their stakes and Steem will spread. One step back, two steps forward. More like 200 steps forward.
I agree. If we are going to allow potentially a lot of dumping all at once, is there anything that can be done to help absorb some of that selling pressure so that it is not so catastrophic to the price?
Dan & I will not be powering down during the three month period after this is implemented.
Very nice announcement to make. I would do the same if I'm involved with deploying it (as a witness).
As a minnow, I would also not power down, too.
finally! guys you should have made an announcement long time ago that you are not powering down anymore...
I think that is is good to shorten the vesting period because for many investors 2 years is just too long..
Let's hope that this will finally bring Steem on the right track again!
Ok, thank you! You have my support then! :)
Thank you sir, this should help I think.
This is really great to hear. I asked some tough questions of you and Dan in early October, and I'll take this as a response. Thank you.
and what about the steemit account?
See my comment to @anotherjoe below. It's not the "dumping" that is a concern here. If people want to get out, let them go. I have no problem with that. It's the toxic users that only want to abuse the platform that concern me. I would love nothing more than for them to power down and leave as soon as possible.
What SP inflation is expected after these changes? It isn't clear from the article. Can someone specify range where it can go? Based on my calculations there could be still up-to 8% p.a. inflation on Steem Power, right?
If 100% is powered up, it would be about 8% (the portion of the 9.5% going somewhere other than back to SP holders). With less powered up some of that inflation is borne by STEEM holders so it becomes less, the mechanism same as now (but vastly different in degree).
With these new parameters, the balance is shifted so that, with declining power up percentage, SP does not experience roughly 0% inflation (which currently occurs at 90% powered up) until only about 17% is powered up. With more than that powered up, there would be some SP inflation, but <8%.
I have no actual idea what percentage will end up powered up in this proposal. The lower SP incentive (lower STEEM inflation penalty) suggests less, but the shorter lock up period suggests more. So very difficult to predict (for me).
Thanks for the confirmation and the detailed numbers. Yes, as STEEM will have much lower inflation now it can be estimated that not that much will be held as SP (unless there is some other advantage for holding SP) and so SP inflation should stay at possible quite level.
I don't understand, please explain to me what does this mean?
"Set a fixed instantaneous annual creation rate of 9.5% from all sources (except Steem Dollars conversion)"
Will the changes fix everything? Of course not..and the devs aren't promising that. They will help with one of the main issues which is that hyperinflation stratifies long term and short term investors too much. There are essentially no short term investors. When inflation compounds to 700%+ per year why would anyone buy and hold for a week or two? It's be better for the system to cut inflation rate even if it also meant cutting payouts. That's my opinion anyway. Ad revenue would be fantastic as it would potentially be a positive feedback loop for value in the system. Lowering withdraws of Steem Power from 2 years to a few months also will attract more medium term investors. What is the time line for these proposals assuming they are voted in which I'm confident they will be.
I have invested around 2 BTC into Steemit so far. My first buy was around 70 STEEM for 0.5BTC and my latest buy was 2 days ago. 1500 STEEM for 0.2BTC. All of it converted to Steempower.
Personally, I have no problem with the two-year commitment. Why? Because I use the platform every day. I like being invested in it. I enjoy it here.
Unlike others, I can still find plenty of content I enjoy. Yes maybe it's not Lee Child grade material but I don't mind.
I like seeing bad pictures of somebody's camping trip in Rural China or a post about homemade washing powder. I like it because it's Real. It feels like real people are posting. People I can identify with. Maybe my standards are just too low but I don't see anything wrong with this.
Yes, I support this. I wrote a post about this earlier today and posted it just a few minutes ago, it seems just after this one came out... LOL: Steembabwe - The Inflation-Devaluation Issue
In regards to the 90% redistribution that I saw as a major issue I mention in the post, I said this about the purpose of SP:
It's about voting, curation, rewards, not about getting an interest rate back on it.
I really support these changes.
I hope the amount of Steem created each day is also reduced? I mention that in my post as the major issue. Maybe I missed that in the post? You can take a look at my post for the concerns I have.
I do support these changes, it's in the right direction! Thank you for making them. Please address the amount/quantity of Steem being created that I talk about in my post, as that is still an issue in my eyes.
Thanks. Peace.
I think this addressed your concern: "Set a fixed instantaneous annual creation rate of 9.5% from all sources (except Steem Dollars conversion)"
Thanks. Does that mean 9.5% of what it currently is? So instead of 400 Steem created per minute, it would be 9.5% of that per minute? Is this correct? Or is this annual creation rate different? Thanks for the help.
I'm reasonably sure it means an annual inflation rate of 9.5% (as opposed to current 100%).
It is currently about 16.5%, plus an additional 9 times that (148.5%) is paid to SP (which gets captured by the vesting fund but released as liquid STEEM later when SP holders power down) for a total STEEM inflation rate of about 160% (scheduled to reduce to about 110%). This would be changed to a total of 9.5% of which about 8% corresponds to the rewards included in the 16.5%, and about 1.5% corresponds to the SP payments.
So to answer simply, yes the amount of STEEM produced would be cut dramatically.
The decrease in power down time is important. The positive psychological effect will encourage powering up. Now that the user base has so many smaller share-holders it's good form to make that change. combine it with a stable SDB peg, encouraging people to hold SBD in wallet without concern; there's convenience factor there and it seems less like spending money to power up, further mitigating commitment concerns. That way to optimize the user base (already here!!!) that will not invest from their own pockets, much needed.
If the Steem volatility can be good, the upcycling possibility can build the vests of the average end-user here. It will become easier for people to see that possibility and its value (and become safe to promote to people) It's simple to stick to one crypto economy for most, especially for the average user, people who are introduced to crypto through Steemit.
Taking advantage of their interest in growing the platform, a reasons for staying and wanting to gain influence will bolster the steem economy. These changes will build the middle-range trickle down economy from the current dedicated user base who is already curating frequently, and invested psychologically in this online community. All necessary for growth.
Looks like most people approve the power down change. I hope so!