Hello Steemians, I’m @vandeberg, Senior Blockchain Developer at Steemit and today I want to do a more technical deep dive in to the rewards system of Steem and shed some light on the nuances of changing a reward curve. We recently proposed changing the reward curve to a "convergent linear rewards curve" as part of the effort to improve the economics of Steem. What does that mean?
To read more about how the Steemit team believes the economics of Steem can be improved, check out this post on @steemitblog.
ELI5
When Steem was first created, rewards were distributed based on a “superlinear” rewards curve. That meant that accounts with a lot of Steem Power had more innate influence on a per-Steem-basis than smaller accounts. That curve was very effective at encouraging people to consolidate their Steem into one account, which made it easy for other users to find and respond to bad actors. But a side effect of this curve was that the “rich got richer” at a rate which made the ecosystem feel extremely unfair.
Switching to a linear rewards curve meant that every account had the same degree of influence (on a per-Steem-basis) on the rewards pool regardless of the total amount of Steem they had in their accounts. At the time most felt that this dramatically improved the fairness of the ecosystem, and since that change was put into place, we have seen a reduction in the income inequality in Steem. One problem with this change was that it reduced the incentive to consolidate one’s stake in a single account, which made it easier for bad actors to divide up their stake and hide their activities.
Reward Mechanics
To gain a deeper understanding of how these different curves function, let’s look at a few hypothetical scenarios and see how they play out based on how much stake the users have, and the type of curve that is in place.
When a comment is 7 days old, it is rewarded based on the number of reward shares (or rshares) it has, modified by some function called a rewards curve. Steem currently has a linear rewards curve, which means the rshares are modified by the curve f(x) = mx + b. Specifically Steem uses the curve f(x) = x where the rshares are not changed at all. This is compared to a moving total of rshares recently paid out. Let's work through a simple example.
Let's say that Alice authored a post that received 10 rshares. The pool of recent rshares contains 1000 rshares, and the reward fund holds 100.000 STEEM. The reward curve is applied to Alice's 10 rshares, giving us 10 rshares and those are added to the total recent rshares, giving us 1010 rshares. Then Alice is rewarded with 10/1010 of the reward fund, or 9.900 STEEM. The actual values on the blockchain are much different than this, but the math is the same. In addition, the recent rshares are decayed slightly each block. Over time it reaches a pseudo-equilibrium which normalizes rewards over time.
With the same constraints, what if Bob had a comment rewarded at the same time, but he only had 5 rshares. Both of their rshares would be added to the total recent rshares for a value of 1015. Alice would be rewarded with 10/1015 of the reward fund for 9.985 STEEM and Bob would be rewarded with 5/1015 of the reward fund for 4.926 STEEM. As you can see, Alice's comment had twice as many rshares voting for it and she received twice as much STEEM as Bob. We might also call this a proportional rewards curve because the rewards are proportional to the number of rshares voting for a piece of content.
The Different Curves
When Steem was first launched we had an n^3 reward curve, which was changed to n^2 before the first payouts began on July 4th, 2016. Let's run the example again but with a rewards curve of n^2. To make the values somewhat close, we also need to increase the size of the recent rshares to 5000. We have to add an extra step in the calculation that was implicit before, the application of the rewards curve. Alice's comment has 10 rshares, but when we apply that to f(n) = n^2 we get an actual value of 100. Doing the same to Bob's comment gives us a value of 25, for a new total recent rshares of 5125.
Now, Alice is rewarded with 100/5125 of the reward pool, or 19.512 STEEM, whereas Bob is rewarded 25/5125 of the reward pool, or 4.878 STEEM, four times less than Alice! We call this a superlinear reward curve. Certainly this is not fair. Steemit and the witnesses agree, which is why we changed the rewards curve to linear on June 20, 2017 in Hardfork 19.
Superlinearity
However, there is a really nice property of a super linear reward curve. It encourages consolidating stake in order to maximize rewards. In the Steem Whitepaper we refer to this as "anti-sybil". The scenario that it seeks to combat is a single entity spreading their stake over many small accounts in order to hide their actions in noise. A single entity doing this can hide their intentions and siphon off small rewards over time and be difficult to detect. Superlinear rewards incentivizes consolidating stake or at least having the smaller accounts act together, which makes the behavior much more difficult to hide if the entity wants to act in an optimal manner.
Best of Both Worlds?
Is there a way for us to capture the fairness of linear rewards and keep the anti-sybil benefits of superlinearity? We believe so with what we have termed the convergent linear rewards curve. This curve is of the form n^2 / (n + 1).
Let's look at the example above again, but add in Charlie who has a comment with 20 rshares. We will go back to a recent rshare value of 1000. We will also be using the specific reward curve of n^2 / (n/5 + 1) for this example.
Alice has 10 rshares which are augmented by the rewards curve to be 33 rshares.
Bob has 5 rshares which are augmented by the rewards curve to be 12 rshares.
Charlie has 20 rshares which are augmented by the rewards curve to be 80 rshares.
The payouts then for Alice would be 29.333 STEEM. Bob would be 10.666 STEEM. Charlie would be 71.111 STEEM.
Looking at Alice and Bob, Alice only has twice as many rshares as Bob, but was rewarded with 2.75 times as much STEEM, an increase of 37.5% STEEM per rshare.
However, while Charle also has twice as many rshares as Alice, he was only rewarded with 2.42 times as much STEEM, an increase of 21% STEEM per rshare.
That is the beauty of this curve! As more rshares are awarded to comments, the marginal gain (percent STEEM per rshare) decreases. However, the actual STEEM reward per rshare still increases. If it did not, we would see Charlie rewarded with less than 2 times as much STEEM as Alice, resulting in a negative percent STEEM per rshare.
We have decided to call this a convergent linear rewards curve, because as the number of rshares increases, this curve converges on linearity and behaves more and more like a linear rewards curve. The specific curve it behaves like can be derived by calculating the limit at infinity. In the case of this curve, it behaves like the curve f(n) = 10n. We can tune how quickly the curve converges to the equivalent linear rewards curve by changing the coefficient of the denominator term.
We can graph the derivatives of the reward curves to visualize their "fairness" over time. The red line is n^2, the blue line is n, green is n^2 / (n + 1), and pink is n log( n ). The pink line was added as another point of comparison because it is a common function that grows faster than n but slower than n^2 and is a reasonable candidate for a superlinear curve. This graph confirms what our intuition is regarding these curves from the previous examples. n^2 continues to get more and more unfair as rshares increase and n is fair regardless of rshares. The green curve for n^2/(n+1) is cool because you can see it start unfair with n^2 and end fair with n. n log(n) continues to grow forever. While it is not as unfair as n^2 it does continue to grow in unbounded unfairness, while n^2 / (n+1) does not.
The goal of this post was to deep dive into one of the critical pieces of the Economic Improvement Proposal. Let me know if you have any questions in the comments section below, or what part of the proposal I should “deep dive” into next.
Vandeberg
Interesting!
My own idea, which I formulated about a year ago, is a reward curve which started as a*n^2 (thus flat at the very beginning and then getting steeper), and then later changed into linear which would work against self-voting as well as against the excessive rewards of pure n^2. I see your curve would end even flatter which I think is reasonable.
@clayop had a similar idea.
The curve in my mentioned post could be made more 'beautiful' (without a 'knee') by using spline interpolation, but it was about the idea (the mathematics would be your part then :-):
I also take the opportunity to present my other idea of implementing diminishing returns when upvoting the same accounts (including one's own) again and again to make it more attractive to upvote many different accounts instead of always the same 'best friends'.
Spline Interpolation is a technique that tries to approximate to a high degree of certainty more complex curves using simpler piecewise curves. Using it in this case would be a step backwards because the curve we would be approximating is not actually that complicated.
Diminishing returns on upvotes is an interesting idea but I don't think it would work. Even with superlinear rewards, I put all of my stake in to one account and then post comments with n+1 accounts, where n is the number of unique accounts I need to vote on to avoid such diminishing returns. The large account spreads out votes and avoids the diminishing returns.
You could also implement this is as an account to account time based diminishing return. Despite being expensive in the database to maintain, it would hurt content creators in the long term. Repeat customers are hugely important in media. YouTube, for example, puts new videos from channels you have watched in the past hoping that you will watch more of their videos. Punishing the author for creating a following will not help grow Steem.
I would like to add something:
Of course. However, I think it also increases social interaction on the platform if people benefit from trying so seek, read and upvote great posts also (not only!) from unknown authors as well. Then new users would have a better chance to get noticed and rewarded.
The current system can easily get exploited by people (like for example haejin) with at least two accounts, who write 10 posts per day just to upvote them all with their other account(s) without 'diminishing returns'.
Thanks for your reply!
I only mentioned spline interpolation because of my 'ugly' curve with that 'knee'. :)
However, anyway my curve only served as an example to show my idea: to start flat to make self-upvoting less attractive and to end also flatter than n^2 to avoid huge rewards for single posts.
There are much better curves (for example sigmoid function like curves could be interesting) to serve the same purpose ... but ... I was just too lazy to seek a suitable curve. :)
Yes, unfortunately, concerning 'diminishing returns' you are probably right: with enough accounts one can circumvent their effect ... but at least the 'traditional' circle voting would be somewhat more dificult.
I have nothing against building a following (I also like to upvote my friends and receive their upvotes), therefore I had suggested that the 'diminishing returns' only should have an effect for a certain time span (there could be a similar reloading mechanism like voting power anyway has).
Anyway, just consider my thoughts as 'food for (further) thoughts' - it's well possible that there are better ideas and solutions.
Don't think there is actually anything wrong with 'ugly and ugly could be of use if it aligns with the users mindframe (such as the redfish/minnow threshold). I would propose ugly in such a way is a desireable trade for user experience purposes.
Something like:
'My curve' is 'ugly' because I just mixed two curves together into one single graph to demonstrate my idea. I mean, if one used one single curve (maybe a sigmoid one?) instead, which also starts flat and ends not so steep, then it would have the same effect, but just looked much better. :)
You are right, in general there is no problem with looking 'ugly' of course.
Your example curve looks more or less linear ... :)
The example curve would give an 'ugly jump' 2.5% bonus at each of the fish-size thresholds used by Steemitboard because of the use of the floor function. Basically switching to a slightly steeper linear line at every power of ten thresholds for the vesting shares. Not sure if its the best function to use, but I do think that fish-size thresholds make a lot of sense for incentivizing the use of few large over many small accounts in a way everyone can understand. Give minnows a slightly better deal than redfish. Dolphins a slightly better deal than minnows, etc.
What may be ugly algebraically may well be quite simple as the interaction of two algorithms - just look at the curation rewards during the reverse auction to see what I mean.
Just an idea.
Now that type of reward function makes sense, tie it to something tangible that almost every Steemit user can grasp. I'm not sure that I agree with the chosen "bonus" (I think keeping it to something smaller like 1% is a bit fairer), but that's a whole other topic.
I imagine that type of function would add more of a gamification element into the Steem ecosystem, the real sense of "powering-up" each time that we move from one level to the next, which could drive more engagement within the community. It's also intuitive that the users who put up the most risk (power up the most Steem) get some extra perks for doing so.
It's certainly not as easy to power up 100K Steem as it is to do it for 100 (from the risk/reward perspective), having this type of bonus would certainly incentivize taking on a bit more risk and perhaps cause some who'd decide against it within the current linear function to reconsider their position.
Just did this post on the subject for those that are interested.
For clarity, here is an example of what the account size correction factor for both types of function could basically end up looking like.
The steps in the blue line show the different fish sizes. I hope these two together in one graph show the difference in impact on the handicap for new accounts.
Thank you for yoru work on steem and for coming into talk to everyone on the PAl discord today https://discord.gg/QBsa8fd
It was really cool to hear all the acknowledgement of steem-engine by steemit inc employees. Let's hope @aggroed and @yabapmatt help to push your team to work a little faster so we can have something before EOS and Block.one launches their MEOS wallet with Universal basic Income eclipsing Stem later this year, we really need to adress this comment by @dan Steem and Steemit FOunder, we need more people like you to actually tell us about the upgrades to steem we will need to compete with EOS since @ned has no plans on actuyally working together with block.one which is a shame after hearing this from @dan Steem/steemit founder
I still havent seen @nmed or anyone at STeemit inc actually answer this and tell us why steem shouldnt be reimagined by EOS and how steemit inc isnt running out of time? I mean thats the CREATOR of steem saying that.... Id really love to hear some actual answers from steemit inc about this like a roadmap to explain how they can even possibly think about competing with EOS
I like hearing from @aggroed today about plans to COOPERATE with EOS instead of trying to compete. also @stellabelle working at @pixeos has also made on chain comments here on steem expressing a wish to work together. Aggroed is adding EOS to Steem-engine so that will let peopel buya nd sell steem ro eos or eos for steem, and hes adding regular stocks from the stock market... see its THESE sorts of things that keeps steem relevanta nd I just havent seen anything come out of steemit inc anywhere near as big of a deal as the progress Aggroed and his team has made with Steem-Engine.com yabapmatt's keychain (Like our metamask) and SteemMonsters too, I wonder why isnt @ned funding Steem projects teh way EOS is with theiur 100 Million dollar EOS VC Venture Capital Fund? And forgive me for talking about this here, but there is literaly nowhere else to discuss this and @ned doesn't post so yeah, you're teh closest i can get.
Im glad people like you are working hard but seems like its not enough if @ned isnt going to do his mark and risk a little of his money on buying ads and marketing for steem like I myself have done, which is way more than i should have done considering my stake, if Ned had done a proportional amount of work to promote steem as I have done, theres no doubtr steem would be $10 by now with all the reddit bitcoin users and crypto twitter masses I would have won over with upvote contests and sponsoring of reddit and twitter Steem Tip Bots to promote steem and steem-engine tokens....
and Im glad to hear from @elipowel that she would like to ship SMTYs by Fall as she said today, we will try to hold her to that ;)
I would agree why not cooperate? I'm all for cooperation especially since Facebook is in the background waiting to compete.
Ned and Dan should work together and could. Why not simply port Steem and all accounts over to EOS? It's not impossible.
Steem-Engine will shortly need to accede to regulatory demands and require KYC and other mechanisms as necessary to comply with legal requirements. @blocktrades today posted that they were immediately implementing such operational changes for that reason.
I do not see this as beneficial to the community, for several reasons, despite that both need to comply in order to continue operations.
yeah theres no way steem engine will get way with out KYX for long, wether or not its legally necessary or not, its more about bullying and giving into men with guns nothing else.... this shit will all get taxes and regulated as soon as it makes any money of course....
we can hope that we stay under radar but of course @ned will give in to the first phoen call he gets from the feds and make everyone signing up to Steemit give up th3eir ID to steemit inc, who will then sell our data to advertisers and probly some criminals since ned is that bad at busines,s hahaha i can see it happening now... ned trying to act like hes facebook all teh sudden as soon as he realizes he wont eb able to pay the bills for steemit inc with advertising alone... especially when no one is using steemit.com like they used to..... BTW funny u got flagged lol proves your point
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Thank you for breaking this down in understandable language!
Great explanation, thanks for taking the time to do it.
I think the only flaw is:
I'm not convinced any curve will dissuade an entity that doesn't want to act in an optimal manner. And I'm not convinced that the people we're talking about adhere to the description of "optimal."
Meaning, there are plenty of people who will act out no matter what the curve is. I was happy with whatever curve was in play. I'm happy with the current "curve." I'll be happy with whatever replaces it now. I do not see the curve as a magic bullet to get bad actors in line.
It doesn't have to change behavior to have benefit. If people still want to create a zillion little bot accounts and carry out hidden spam for the purpose of milking rewards, they can, but they will earn less and the rest of the community will earn more. That's still a win.
Well, limited benefit is a like a base hit when bases are loaded. What we'd all prefer would be a home run. It takes the same time to swing either way. Let's target more productive mechanisms and decrease the possibility of only getting a base hit.
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Yes, that is the aim. The tricky question is how much less will they earn so that it does not significantly disrupt the system - or even lead it down towards an unwanted attractor.
The rest of the community earns a whopping 4¢ per day spread out to the whole community. It’s effectively a no-upside change. So why do it?
It's bad but where do you get that number? I think it's more like $1 a day or perhaps $2 a day, which is bad for people in developed countries but not as bad as you think for people in developing countries. You can make some posts on Steem and in theory do okay if you're in certain parts of the world.
That said, the problem is vote buying and selling, and the fact that quality content gets the same $1-2 as a low quality content. There is no incentive for content quality to improve over time.
Where does the number come from?
Also, I didn't say that I believed it won't change behavior (in fact I believe it will). My comment was explaining that there is still a benefit even if (however unlikely) behavior doesn't change.
Exactly this. A code change doesn't make people suddenly feel an incentive to curate up or down.
Chances are if you are interested in doing those things you are already doing them.
If you are interested in staking as many coins as you can you are probably doing that.
Both things are fine, but they don't change.
While rewards curve changes don't change those basic motivations, changes I propose below in reply to the OP do. It is the ability to extract rewards that drives financial manipulation, and there is no mechanism extant to encourage funding or delegation to development of Steem and the ecosystem. I propose mechanisms to all but eliminate voting for profit rather than curation, and also to encourage investment in development.
Code is like gravity, and changing gravity to discourage profiteering while encouraging productive investment in development is possible - and highly desirable IMHO.
Thanks!
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It makes it less profitable to spam micro votes
In addition to other changes like curation increases, spamming votes below a certain point could very well be less profitable than curating, which is an economic incentive to adapt behavior
And finally and this part is important, but the reasoning to buy Steem? If buying Steem doesn't result in buying influence in some way (if the whales don't actually get more voting power) then how do you convince people to actually buy Steem?
Currently the price of Steem to BTC has been falling off a cliff for some time. I'm not saying it's the fault of the reward curve but if you're going to focus on economics shouldn't you also put some discussion into how you will increase demand for the actual customer (the Steem buyer/Steem investor)?
Fairness for the poster is nice and all but at the end of the day it's the sentiment of the Steem holder which is being neglected the most. Whales are whales because they either bought a lot of Steem or they earned it. I do think yes in 2016 you had a lot of whales who lucked out by being miners or whatever but there are whales who actually bought or earned their Steem only to watch it fall off a cliff.
What do these whales who bought or earned their Steem, and who held, get in return for their investment in the community, the ecosystem, etc? If the answer is nothing then this explains the price of Steem.
Agreed. We are having trouble keeping people with a 30% ROI on their Steem Power, how do we expect to keep them with much less than that going forward?
They get the benefit of a rising price with mass adoption if they can delay their greed long enough to let the math attract the masses?
Certainly, some of them won't do this, they will need downvotes to prevent their harming of the game.
bs
Go on,...
First, I'm excited to see how this will go because I've wanted to see how something other than pure linear would work in real-time (wasn't around back in the early days of superlinear.)
However, regarding the curve "converging" on linear at the top, won't this just encourage people to split their stakes into whatever quantity is optimal return (before it starts to flatten) or am I conceptualizing this incorrectly?
There is always some loss from splitting here (since it only converges to linear but never quite gets there) but the idea is that qualitatively the switch over happens at a point that the rewards are reasonably obvious and can't be hidden in thousands or millions of micro-rewarded comments. Since they are visible, if abusive they can be downvoted (part of the EIP is also to reduce the cost of downvotes).
Therefore splitting: a) still has at least some cost, and b) can't be done to the point where the rewards are hidden in many very small payouts, or the cost is large.
Great explanation, thank you @smooth.
In reply to the OP I propose mechanisms I think preferable to manipulations of rewards curves. Given your competence, I'd appreciate you proving my proposal would not work, and is stupid. If you can't, well, you know what to do.
Thanks in advance.
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thanks, I was wondering the same thing.
Actually, if one looks at the rshares generated during voting, they are very large numbers, so I suspect the convergence happens very rapidly.
I also wonder if the code will use some approximating function for such large numbers, as happens with the square-root function in curation rewards calculations.
So we can have more comments that are relevant to the discussion greyed out by individuals like @ Iflagtrash? Rewarding bad behavior is not the way to go. I have seen many of @valued-customer's comments in this thread greyed out by iflagtrash, so those downvotes of his comments really add to the value of steemit and the steem blockchain? A downvote pool is a very very bad idea and will only aid the bad actors.
What is grayed out or not is a function of the UI and not the blockchain. Steemit.com chooses to gray out some content under certain conditions as is their prerogative; other UIs may do it differently or not at all.
That's a completely different matter from granting rewards, which needs a balancing mechanism against self-voting (where people can just reward themselves regardless of what anyone else thinks of it, which undermines the entire premise of the system).
If and when there are cheaper downvotes (and if there are not, social rewarding will continue to work poorly if at all), UIs might make different decisions about hiding. For example, they might require even more downvotes before hiding something, on the theory that downvotes being cheap and something getting only a small degree of downvoting means it isn't actually that bad.
Getting these systems to work well is always an exercise in balance and compromises, not absolutes. To understand how such a system operates, one must consider not only immediate effects but also resulting adjustments and counteradjustments. If this were all easy we'd have a splendidly working system by now. If it is impossible we should give up and turn off rewards (and stop paying the price of repelling investors with high inflation, resulting in a low and declining Steem price). It seems exploring the middle ground is more reasonable and closer to consensus at this point.
That's all well and good, and I have in previous comments mentioned that it is steemit, and I only use steemit. This is a post from steemit, not busy, not esteem, not partiko, but from steemit, and it is not a post about correcting a UI issue, but a steem blockchain issue.
>Hello Steemians, I’m @vandeberg, Senior Blockchain Developer at Steemit
Consensus, when it comes to anything from the company and relating to changes is 35 people being the mass majority on a poll that was only valid for a few hours before it was decided that there was overwhelming support for the previous change. There is no such thing as consensus on the steem blockchain, so I really do not understand why people pretend there is.
I know, and the vast majority of the people responding against the downvote pool all know it is a done deal so just get on with it, and let the serial flaggers have there way and have an ability to flag and still collect rewards and not only virtually rape users and rake them over the coals but also allow them to rape the reward pool they claim to be protecting.
There is consensus on the blockchain as demonstrated when a hard fork is enabled or (as has occasionally happened in the past), not enabled, the latter indicating lack of consensus.
Other than hard forks we haven't up until this point had an objective way to measure consensus, but the SPS will do so, since it will be voted in a verifiable public way by Steem stakeholders. Previous efforts at "polls" and such things have never been objective or particularly meaningful.
I don't actually know what point you are trying to make by bringing up Steemit vs busy or esteem, but there is only one Steem blockchain, and when you are looking at things like the reward pool being paid out, it is only the blockchain that matters, not the UI. When looking at things like what is hidden or grayed out, that is UI. The issues affecting one or the other are very different.
A downvote pool is not a UI issue. It is a blockchain issue, currently to downvote a post it cost the downvoter mana, it does not matter what UI they are using. If it was a UI issue then people using busy or esteem or another UI could downvote at will if their UI did not charge a mana fee so to speak for downvotes.
There is two sides to the downvote issue if not more. At what point does needless downvoting stop? Enabling a cheaper downvote is enabling bad actors. By lowering the cost of downvoting that does nothing to curb downvote abuse as is currently happening. The vast majority of downvotes appear to be going out to comments not plagiarism, not excessive reward, but to normal everyday comments.
People talk about wanting to stop the self vote and self vote from alt accounts, start with the first issue, the self vote. Do away with it. Then see if people continue to vote themselves with alt accounts. People will see a trend pretty quickly, then the downvote for reward abuse will work.
By eventually allowing people to get paid or to pay themselves because of their downvote actions is only going to exacerbate the issue. Because getting a downvote curation reward is where this is all heading, that is pretty obvious with the desire to have a separated downvote pool.
For the last 22 months on steemit, every time the self vote is bought up, it has never been simply stopped, removed from the system. Either it is good for the blockchain, or it is bad for the blockchain. Before creating new problems fix the problem everyone keeps saying is the reason for the downvote pool and that is to stop the abusive self voters. Just do away with the self vote and be done with it.
Should the steem account be used to fight abuse?
Wouldn't this reduce the burden on the rest of us, and make possible stopping the largest abusers?
No, and if you do that you are making Steem into an illegal security, even more than it already is (essential functions and therefore investment returns depend on the efforts of a central party).
The right way to address this is to improve the underlying economics so that it works as a decentralized system, or if we can't, recognize that it doesn't work and pivot.
How does a blockchain defending itself from attacks on it's value become prosecutable by the sec?
Steem is open source, not owned by any one entity.
What does it care about the rules of violent criminal gangs that force others to pay and obey?
Steem is a meme that cannot be put back in the bottle.
It is viral technology that cannot be stopped, except by the witnesses.
Not all of which are in the united snakes.
(I hear there may be a satellite that might let us rent space on it's servers.)
How do we open source the access to the keys?
Hard code a 85% witness, and 90% community, consensus mechanism that opens the keys to the code to allow changes?
By hard coding a mv influence cap, one that slowly rises over time, it takes the choice from any central parties.
There is no central party, only code.
They can try to punish coin holders, but c'mon, that isn't working for btc.
Maybe I misunderstood but when you said 'the steem account' I assumed you meant @steem which is owned by Steemit. If the critical functions of the blockchain are depending on one company (which also happens to be the company that developed it and launched it) going on four years in then it isn't a decentralized system.
I think probably anything is better than pure linear at this point because pure linear is proven not to work at all. But I also think that even if we make these changes, too little thought has gone into the question of "whale creation".
We shouldn't demonize whales. We should want people on the platform to want to become whales. We should think of "whale status" as the product which Steem sells to investors. And so far most of these economic changes attack the honest whales while rewarding the dishonest whales.
I declare the honest whales to be the whales who earned their status by the rules of the platform or who invested in the platform. I totally understand certain whales are grandfathered in and this has created most of the controversy but then what about the whales who earned or and invested their way to their status?
The problem? Being a whale doesn't actually improve the UX for those who are whales. As a result there isn't as much demand to want to become a whale. As a result the investment in Steem is lower. This is bad.
Yes some whales might have had too much power but as I see it if they invested into the community they purchased their power fair and square according to the original rules. If we are concerned with content discovery how does this fix the main issue most of us have which is the vote buying issue?
Yeah, I completely agree that I'd like to try ANYTHING other than pure linear. If I had to sum up what it feels like in one word it would be: STAGNANT. It doesn't feel like anything dynamic is going on. More like currency is just being mined irrespective of any "proof-of-brain" concept.
I also agree about whales. "Blame the rich" mentality is quick and easy, but rarely leads to productive discussions about optimal wealth distribution. You're spot on that there are few incentives to become a whale outside of altruism and perhaps a company combining many individuals' stakes to gain visibility on the platform.
Altruism, when it impoverishes oneself, tends to be draining and imbalanced. Of course some will always complain about "ninja-mined" stakes and who deserves what, but that is subjective and again, rarely leads to productive discussions.
I'm also very curious how these changes will affect vote-buying and bid-bots. At the very least, it should shake things up and force some adaptations which will hopefully make the platform feel less stagnant.
The thing about being rich, we want rich people to join our community to make our community much richer. I am definitely against the "blame the rich" ideology because we want the rich and the poor to both get richer. Everyone should feel like they have opportunities to get richer while having fun.
The issue I think with Steem is merely there was never enough opportunities. SMTs were promised, Oracles, communities, etc, which may have given people more ways to earn Steem and become whales (rich) in the correct way.
But to go pure linear and then also not have anything going on? To be honest playing DrugWars is more fun than posting on Steem at this time which is why I don't post as much. DrugWars might not be earning me anything at all but at least it's fun and feels like I'm earning something (gamification works!).
Vote buying made the whole thing pointless. Imagine if society were set up where you essentially have to buy your job. And the jobs are offered by a computer which takes digital currency and then hands out the jobs to all the people. In this we'd have the worst of communism and crony capitalism combined. In my opinion that is what we currently have on Steem.
The votes are essentially rigged by bots which sell rewards. How can it possibly get more broken than that?
nice! but imho, ad-revenue sharing with authors is much more important, and i'm not sure if steemit is even considering this. decentralized PoB is (almost) impossible (by the simple prisoner's dilemma). Nothing changes for people who use alts A and B to vote each other no matter which reward curve or author:curation ratio are used.
of course, i like the idea to try new things including this and reward ratio. but i sincerely hope that Steemit also admits that without ad-revenue sharing and centralized curation (e.g., utopian), PoB is impossible.
Google gets more than 100bn, facebook gets 50bn from ads, how Steemit can properly reward really good authors without ad-revenue sharing? impossible.
Thanks.
Ad-sharing is not a blockchain feature. The blockchain has no idea what ads are shown nor what the revenue from those ads are. These are entirely different efforts (@vendeberg is the head of blockchain development).
Hi @smooth, I didn't say ad-sharing is a blockchain feature. But it's so important to emphasize even in this post.
Actually it's so important to be considered as a part of blockchain feature. not ad itself but supporting ads, as many functions for steemit (post, voting, etc) is already part of steem blockchain.
Hope this clarifies my intention. (I also left a few comments on the current efforts, so my comment isn't irrelevant at all.)
ps. I contributed several across steem projects including the chain mentioned here, so I definitely know vendeberg is the head of blockchain dev (also know that you're an important person here). I also worked for ads team as an economist at Facebook. That's why I know and believe ad is very very very important. e.g., the main ad shouldn't be sold that way (by individual contract). ad-auction is needed. Of course, with the current resource of Steemit Inc, building own ad-auction is almost impossible. I understand that the current status is testing this and that. But eventually ad should be sold by auctions. (just using google's might be better than now eventually) Otherwise, it's very difficult to determine what's a good price to begin with. I believe that's one reason why the main ad's still almost vacant (I only saw some casino ad so far in the main ads).
Of course, I'm not saying that I'm right. Who knows? But I'm trying to help as a huge fan of Steem and Steemit.
They are very much related though. Reducing the initial growing potential of new users with what @vendeberg proposes could hinder growth of the platform with new users that could provide great content, that could increase the value of the platform. This hindrance of growth could be attenuated or even reversed by providing top content providers with insentive to move their blog/vlog to STEEM without having to miss out on their current ad revenues while they try to grow their platform revenues.
I'dd argue that rolling out the first without rolling out the second at the same time could hurt the platform, while rolling them out both at the same time could be highly beneficial to the platform in more than one way, given a well thought out formula (probably not a smooth curve if you ask me, but that is a different issue).
I agree that ad revenue sharing will be an important part of the next generation social networks.
thanks for agreeing :)
There is a lot which Steem can do. Steem can also learn from the BAT model as well. Attention economy can be built using certain mechanisms. Decentralized oracles can be used too. I just think first fix the economics so the active posters don't leave.
Agreeeeeeed ! ♥
that's why we should finally go to the UBI !
and increase more Curation Rewards !
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ads revenue is not really a lot. I dont think much can be gain from there.
I guess you're talking about the current ad revenue. I'm talking about different thing, as I provided examples of Google and Facebook. If you still say it's small, then it's just like chicken or the egg. Because there is no ad-revenue sharing, there are not many fantastic authors.
Surely you could estimate per user ad revenue that would provide useful comparisons to Youtube and Facebook. We're not very comparable to either platform in user numbers.
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The current advertising models are non-sustainable in many aspects of their deployment. Large data tracking, data sales, and the future consumer privacy expectations have to be taken into account. I'm saying i agree with @d-pend here. The ad revenue sharing will be important. I believe it can be done inside the blockchain, bringing investment into steem, with our beautiful "smart contracts" (aka just custom json) features.
After reading this I will never ever dare to comment on this issue.
Keep doing a good job, I'll crawl back to my little cave and put some wood to keep my fire alive.
Complicated stuff to be sure! People that have built businesses based on existing parameters could have issues with changes.
Changing the reward curve is very risky. Some businesses on the chain may suddenly become less profitable or even not profitable.
All moves need to be made with caution. What benefits Steemit.com may not benefit the other front ends.
Some businesses are not beneficial to the ecosystem or the community. I note that all business enterprises on Steem presently are highly agile, and would be likely to be able to respond to nominal changes. Frankly, most of the community I interact with would prefer all bidbots die.
I would.
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It's really not difficult to understand at a conceptual level
It's basically a superlinear head (to get rid of the profitable micro vote spam) with a linear tail (to retain fairness between large and small stakeholders). That's pretty much all there is to it :)
I would like to see, that the Coin "Steem" and its "Reward Pool" will be designed more towards an infrastructure Coin instead of using it primary for POB content discovery. The reason for that is, that with the introduction of communities and SMT the Steem Ecosystem is not only more about "Content creation" and discovery.
No, we have a bunch of financial dapps, gaming dapps, services etc... which don't have anything to do with content discovery. All those Dapps should have more or less "equal" chances to receive Support from the underlying Steem Reward Pool mechanism to earn and empower their communities.
I think Steem is good with Steempower for Voting on Witnesses and Proposals (plus a new feature in the future Voting for Communities and Dapps) and as a source of Ressource Credits. For me that should be enough, on the level what Steem is doing to support its Ecosystem and for the use of the POB mechanism...only vote for Witnesses, Proposals and SMT or Communities.
No, more voting and abusing the reward pool by creating and discovering or gaming the content creation part.
All this POB content creation and discovery mechanism should be happening on the level of SMTs, and its communities, because these groups will have Admins who are able to set in rules how each community handles its users and the way they value content creation.
If Steem gets understood as a infrastructure Token and SMTs are understood as a empowering Community Token, than we have a clear Vision for all participants Investors, Users and Creators alike.
I don't like the idea that we are aiming for a SMT Ecosystem where all these project fight for attention but the real mining of Steem only happens on the content side of things...somehow that doesn't make sense.
Why should other Dapps or Communities suffer from miss management of the Steem Reward Pool which is only used for content creation and discovery?
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This was my point in the last article I wrote on this topic - link is in this latest post. I used different words but an "infrastructure coin" is the same as a "central banking coin" - the point being that the social apps sit on top of this and may employ a mixture of native steem protocols and their own. Unless the core economic code is changed so that it truly aligns with its original social aims, our vision is the future - the near future.
Hi @rycharde thanks for your thoughts. I just checked {your post}( https://steemit.com/steem/@rycharde/we-are-all-bankers-here) you showed some interesting points about the "coin flow" and economics of the current Steem system. Your view is very focused on the financial incentive side of Steem.
I don't agree, that my view of an "infrastructure Steem coin" and your view of "central banking coin" are the same. But I think my suggestion would bring more clarity about the purpose of Steem as a Coin, that enables you to perform transaction on the Blockchain, and Vote for Witnesses and Communities, that keeps this place thriving. Without having the confusing discussion about POB mechanism to discover and create content.
Rather than having Steem as a "Bank Account" where you earn "interest" and earn "rewards for low quality content". The incentive would be more like, to hold Steempower because your Community is thriving with new users, and therefore you need more Ressource Credits for your Dapp to perform transactions on the Blockchain. Another aspect is that if Dapps hold large amounts of Steempower they will still get some portion of the Reward Pool and generate an income stream to empower their SMT Token and Users.
Hi, once you describe it, it looks even more like my idea! Maybe we may disagree on the methods, in that I can see a Dapp making rewards to back up their tokens but those reward-creating algorithms may not have anything to do with the Dapp itself. This is something for any finance officer of the Dapp to figure out.
That's forward thinking, and while I haven't deeply considered it yet, I think I completely agree.
That being said, I'd appreciate your thoughts on my reply to the OP below where I propose mechanisms I think relevant.
Thanks!
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And this was the key mistake I think. I think yes we had the problem of whales before, and no system is going to be perfectly fair, but now we have a much worse problem of "buy your votes" replacing "earn your votes".
In other words now only the rich can earn at all because you essentially have to buy your votes.
This may work but more things needs to be added.
This is a suggestion i wrote on steemit blog post...
What if we limit a person to 1 upvote to an particular account for 48-72 hours. This may spread many people to upvoting and curating better content/accounts.
There are other platforms that are currently doing that and it’s making the curator vote for others as they can’t keep voting the same person all the time with a three day period time limit 🤔
This will tame the bidbots, selfvoting, and circle dick suckin' action LOL
Someone looking to mine the reward pool would simply create many small accounts to vote on to get around this restriction.
You literally just explained how your own system would get broken.
All accounts would be financially incentivized to capitalize on parabolic rewards and avoid big payouts. In effect, users would be getting charged even more money to pay rent to the trending tab for increased visibility.
Proof of unique identity would solve that type of issue, right? But is it possible, or feasible to implement?
True, but are you satisfied with that state of affairs? is there anybody looking at how to break that symmetry? The "upvote" is not an exchange as would occur in real life, although there are two parties, it is not a trade - because the reverse "upvote" has the same effect.
There must be a function (somewhere) that can act as an asymmetry to the upvote function.
Any "vote decreasing" function will have a nuisance-effect on many but, as you say, will ultimately lead to more complex self-voting structures.
BTW thanks for the article and thanks for answering some valid technical questions in the same tech fashion.
Not really, they are currently already doing it regardless.
With the voting power back in the hands of people instead of delegating to bitbots with less people using them. It will be regulated by the dolphins and whales like they use to. It would be easy to track the culprits.
This strategy will kill three birds with one stone. 🤷🏼♂️
Those that are already doing would not be affected. Those that aren't would start.
Folks that upvote creators they find of high quality regularly would be penalized for actually curating.
It's a bad idea, and would not put VP back in the hands of the general community in any way I can envision.
That's the way it looks, punishing the few for the crimes of a lot of others.
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100% right, would be nice to have vote diversification rewarded im some way but whatever is tried, the rapers will find a way around it :-(
Nice to see/hear you on Steem, this kind of post is mostly appreciated!!! Your name sounds 100% dutch by the way....
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that is a great idea, sometimes great solutions are simple.
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Simple is always good but people love to complaint things so that average joes gets confused like the tax system 😂
a limit for account curation would end up in creators self-regulating their posts; If I create 1 post on politics, another on TV, and a third on fitness on a normal basis (I don't ;>), then I would feel it would be a waste of time to add that content to the platform all on the same day
Not really, it will make you curate other individuals spreading the wealth. That’s the number 1 complaint of steem... people just vote the same people all the time or just bidbots while they sell off steem everyday.
Or we can just keep it the same and nothing gets solved
This is actually anticuration, as the content organically preferred would not be curatable any longer by accounts with preferences. It would increase distribution, but not based on subjective judgment of quality. Manipulations of curation rewards inevitably fail to promote curation, but always create incentive to curate for financial return, and ignore content quality.
There are other options, and not only keeping things the same. I propose some below in reply to the OP.
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I don't have enough SP to make my curation matter. I've made my SP from creation. Throttling those that would curate me only prevents me from accruing more SP.
We all make sp from creating, don’t we? Wonder why your not getting more upvotes from others right now.
Maybe it’s because most people are not going to curate you anyway with how it is.
Wouldn’t you like new people start upvoting you? That won’t happen as no one is curating at all now unless there circle jerkin each other or just selling to bots.
I guess people are happy with there Penny votes from the same people. Too each his own.
I think there are three ways to make SP
So I am doing all three modes now...but...I'll be the first to admit I write in areas that most people aren't interested, and conversely, I'm not interested in most of what interests other people. I won't complain about that, because that is what is ;>
So the proposal to throttle curation to 1 vote per account /day affects more more than it would the general population.
Also, I have an aversion to mechanics that limit SP holders from using their SP as they see fit in general...I've never even complained about some of the whaleflagging I've seen here.
And lastly, Some of that investment-curation is done by people passievely. They don't want to put in the time investment of curation, but then they (some of them; got some HODLERS too) have no reason to value holding STEEM.
Makes no sense, yeah... the investors are selling tens of thousands of steem daily anyways, no users are using steem because there not getting upvotes because the “investors” sell there votes.
People need to know what’s “really” going behind the scenes but 99% don’t care.
Ok just keep it the same, nothing will change and make that $1 a post a day from the minnows. 😂
No, we don't. None of the whales do, and neither do many lesser accounts. Most of them make SP from bidbots. That's the reality today.
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Can I just note that those are two different things.
people who earn rewards through the existing algorithms without social content
and
people who keep selling their steem.
I've seen bloggers receive good earnings also selling such rewards rather than powering up.
Is there some other, more fundamental reason, why neither of the above examples is compounding their rewards?
Give a reason to power up? IT's hard to find a good reason when the content discovery is broken and the incentives for becoming a whale are being diminished on the other side.
Nowadays if Alice, Bob and Charlie do want to experiment with just any possible rewards curve all they have to do is to publish their posts making the @IloveSuperLinear account 100% beneficiary.
Then the off-chain calculations could be made to redistribute rewards between Alice, Bob and Charlie using any desired curve or just using the winner takes it all principle for that matter.
However it looks like Alice, Bob and Charlie when they're pushing for superlinear rewards curve do not want to redistribute rewards between themselves, instead they do hope to be able to redistribute rewards from Joe into their own pockets, while Joe might be quite satisfied with the current situation.
LOL seriously:
Every single 'amazing idea' these people have to 'fix' the system will end up making the rich richer and the poor poorer.
This is because the talented, the lucky, the wealthy, always get wealthier if they merely develop what they already have. We can't blame Steem for "rich getting richer" because this happens in nature in general. The best Steem can do in my opinion is provide opportunities for everyone to get richer, whether by talent, luck, or consistency.
The main issue which no one is bringing up is the fact that there is no reason to actually invest in Steem to become a whale if there is nothing you can actually buy. In the past you were buying influence so there was a clear product being sold. What is it that I'm buying if I power up my Steem account? I don't earn more from my posts, I don't get more powerful upvotes, so what exactly is the point?
If you can answer that then maybe I can see your side. Give me a reason to buy Steem, to Power Up, and to actively curate, if my votes no matter how much Steem I have, are the same weight as the complete newbie?
We don't really need whales here.
It's nice to have 10 people eager to buy 1 million Steem each.
But 1 million people eager to buy 10 Steem each would do the same job right as well.
But you don't have the marketing capability to get 1 million people to buy anything let alone some crypto. It's hard enough to get 1 million people to buy Bitcoin even. And even if you could somehow convince 1 million people to want to buy Steem it is not easy enough in terms of go to Robinhood or Coinbase for this to scale in that way.
Yes, I agree, my exemplification was too extreme.
Still I think for someone considering developing some blockchain application there's some good intensity to buy 100k Steem now to distribute to his 10k customers later.
And when I do put this persons hat on, last thing I want is "to compete for rewards", instead I would prefere pure PoS
A 500mv vote cap on the n2 gives btc investors a reason to park some of their profits in our altcoin.
More than that is pure speculation on price rise.
They can give the keys to their confidant and let them play the game, or play to get their own roi.
As it is, we are a shitcoin with free transactions, endless inflation, and with a bad reputation of those that benefit the most from buying suckers.
Until we get that rep up off of us, what we have is what we get, imo.
This should have been used in the @steemitblog post. Especially the graph part.
Add this to the featured posts ASAP.
I think the idea was to not over complicate it with technicality. But yes, the graphs might have helped illustrate what convergent linear meant. Basically a small superlinear head with a linear tail. This reduces the profits of micro vote spam while keeping the influence relatively equal between small and larger stakeholders at the high end.
I am deeply concerned that this community thinks the problem is that the system isn't complex enough. Complicate payouts and who wins? The people with the most stake, because they have the highest incentive to figure out the new system and game it while everyone else gets fleeced.
No one seems to bring up the fact that Steem's learning curve is already too high for new users. Doesn't seem to stop anyone from wanting to change everything.
The curve you've proposed takes money from the poor and gives it to the rich. It incentivizes Sybil attack. Anyone with 1000 accounts can upvote each account a tiny bit and they'll receive even better rewards than linear.
Was the goal "income equality"? I think income equality doesn't create an incentive to make increasingly better content. That said even if there was some level of income equality it would only make sense if the income were substantial enough and with the chance of a great post being discovered, going viral, and getting dramatic income.
Currently just about any post gets around $1-5 no matter how good it is, or what it's about. So now we have no ranking of content quality and no correlation of the size of the reward with the quality of the post.
Fairness might feel nice, but it's never going to be perfect equality. In this case trying to achieve fairness broke the economics for everyone.
The only way it can be fair is to be able to guarantee that people can't simply buy votes from bots. You have to be able to guarantee that the curation (proof of brain) is functional.
And since you can't clearly guarantee that part why would we be confident that it's going to be fair if every account has equal weight when the majority of votes come from bots etc? How do you change the situation to where posters are encourage to earn votes rather than buy them?
Who is hiding their activity? This is such a non argument that it makes the whole post look silly.
There is no one hiding anything.
What delusional parallel universe are you people living in?
Everyone knows who everyone is and what and why they are doing what they are doing.
The onchain action delivers information and reveals motivation.
You overly complicated the text but if read carefully the context is extremely simplistic. It all returns to the original quoted sentence that contains an argument that is extremely unimportant and doesnt justify any change even in the slightest.
Jesus Christ, high stake holders will do whatever they want when ever they want to do it and you cant do anything about it. No one will do anything about it.
Talking about stake divide and someone "hiding their activity" is a discussion for the deluded or the ignorant that have no clue what steem interactions look like.
That's not been true at all. Many, many socks exist on Steem, and @sherlockholmes discovered numerous well concealed botnets circle jerking one another using delegated stake from Steemit. Have a look at that account.
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Sure. But so what? What kind of impact do those have on the platform?
What makes you think they would not be doing the same thing under new conditions..
Those that counter this kind of behavior generally dont have a lot of SP and those that do have a lot of SP are the ones that have the greatest negative impact.
Consolidation into one account means little.
Right now one of the worst offenders is Bernie.
Having him consolidate into one account would mean jack. He would actually wield more power and be even more a menace on the platform.
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What we need is a community lead repressive aparatus.
I know folks here are anti government but you can never have a fair system unless you can effectively counter abuse.
Right now the question is:
"Do i try and counter abuse and potentially get crushed or ignore it and focus on myself."
That will always be the case.
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Very true. All the game theory analysis shows that "bad behaviour" can only be slowed down if the penalties are greater than the rewards.
The point, however, needs careful analysis: what is bad behaviour if the blockchain allows it? We know when we see it but how does an algorithm "see it"?
Sure. But so what? What kind of impact do those have on the platform?
What makes you think they would not be doing the same thing under new conditions..
Those that counter this kind of behavior generally dont have a lot of SP and those that do have a lot of SP are the ones that have the greatest negative impact.
Consolidation into one account means little.
Right now one of the worst offenders is Bernie.
Having him consolidate into one account would mean jack. He would actually wild more power and be even more a menace on the platform.
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Dorsnt justify the change and it would do nothing for content or content placement..
You can always put it just enough amount of work... Which isnt much to justify self vote. Many orcas are doing it.
This adds nothing or makes anything better at the cost of so much.
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Yes. It would do absolutely nothing and make so many other things many times worse.
Those that want to max will max and hide under the statement "quality is subjective" and you just gave them more power.
A 5 year old could understand this.
There is nothing you can do to the economy of steem that will fix it.
Thinking otherwise is deluded.
Either introduce a platform wide repressive aparatus or go into mechanical marginalization of bots on front ends.
Thx for your input.
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You can say that again.
I greatly appreciate your cogent discussion of rewards curve, as this is not well understood by many. However, I don't think any rewards curve solves a basic problem that prevents rewards from inuring more to higher quality posts. While non-linear rewards curves may reduce Sybilline issues, they do not discourage extractive profiteering, simply varying how profitable it is. Non-linear reward curves so far discussed all increase the potential rewards for self-voting, delegating to bidbots, and other essentially fraudulent mechanisms to extract rewards that are intended to be delivered by curation, which is intended to best reward the best content and thereby create incentive to create content of high quality which in turn attracts eyeballs to the Steem blockchain and investment by new users, thus producing upwards price pressure on Steem and creating capital gains for stakeholders.
I joined just prior to HF19, and since then Steem has dropped about 30 positions in market cap ranking to around 60th today. I believe the reason Steem underperforms the market is because of the incentive rewards create to extract rewards from the pool, rather than curate good content, as this is clearly profiteering (extracting operational resources) and the opposite of investment (which seeks to generate capital gains). I don't see how altering rewards curves, or increasing curation rewards - which are just additive to author rewards as mechanisms for profiteering, and essentially ignored by folks without substantial stake - can change these incentives.
However, there are mechanisms that can. There is no mechanism that encourages delegation or direct funding of development, and recently the @steemalliance has officially elected a structure by which to operate means of choosing development operations. Also the SPS was completed by @blocktrades to provide mechanisms to deliver that funding recently. Were dividends potential to stakeholders for delegating to or funding directly via SPS the development intended to increase the value of Steem, and thus create capital gains, real investment would be encouraged. I strongly recommend some mechanism be provided that creates financial incentive to invest in Steem, rather than extract rewards better intended to market Steem to potential investors.
Additionally, rewards are currently unlimited and this creates a vector for profiteering. I propose an algorithm be applied to author rewards that confined rewards to no less than 3% nor more than 300% of the median reward, and eliminating curation rewards altogether. Curation rewards don't create incentive to choose high quality content, but instead are simply gamed by substantial stakeholders to maximize rewards. This is not curation at all, but merely additional extraction of operational resources, and only of import to folks with substantial stake.
By limiting curation rewards to a multiple of the median, most profiteering would be eliminated, as the potential returns would be insubstantial for profiteers seeking large returns on large sums. However, by leaving two orders of magnitude available to differentially reward content of lesser or greater quality, significant incentive to produce higher quality content is preserved, albeit not unlimited. Coupling this with a dividend mechanism that potentiates substantial returns from substantial funding or delegation to development restores the utility of rewards as a mechanism to market Steem, as well as introduces another to drive capital gains, and eliminates the negative pressure profiteering exerts on Steem price.
I am not particularly wedded to these ratios, nor specific mechanisms to create these healthy incentives, but reckon these will do the job of attracting investors rather than profiteers to Steem and create capital gains. Real investors will respond to appropriate incentives and the high quality of the Steem blockchain, use case, and community has very real value that has heretofore not produced nominal capital gains. Nominal incentives is how to change that, IMHO.
I'd appreciate your thoughts on these matters, as you are clearly of agile mind and competent to consider how these changes would affect Steem, Steemit, and capital flows (although that may not be your particular area of expertise).
Thanks!
I think it could work, but until people understand that the current curation issue really has nothing to do with curation, and is nothing more than a smoke screen so a few larger accounts can get more rewards, and the same with the call for a downvote pool, I think people like you and I are just whistling in the wind and no one will really hear or care.
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Hi @vandeberg, asking as a steem developer, it would be fantastic if you could provide us with an algorithm to calculate an account's upvote value with this new curve as the linear equation is now way, way off.
Thank you so much for being receptive to my ideas of economic reform. I had always been inquiring about whether a superlinear curve with a linear tail was possible and the n^2/(n/c+1) you've posited seems to do the trick very well.
Not to be too pedantic but
If you were referring to your example of n^2 / (n/5 + 1), did you mean f(n) = 5n? As that's where I believe it converges
Now as an alternative, is it possible to simply apply a x% 'spam tax' up until a certain point then allow it to receive full rewards beyond that point? So for example, anything under 1 Steem is taxed at 50%.
Assuming we increase curation to 50% and that indeed becomes the dominant form of staking rewards, it would mean micro votes are earning no more than mean curation and they're probably at least as well off doing something that actually adds value.
A solution such as a tax avoids overly punishing genuine interactions at low levels of rewards such as organic comments while still providing a very clear disincentive for profit based micro vote farming.
Of course overall I'm quite receptive to this curve and think it's pretty neat. I'd like to hear your views
That is fine, and it may fix peoples idea of entitlement, but it really honestly has absolutely nothing to do with curation. This will not fix curation. It will not help the good content to rise to the top. All this does is fix the greed of entitlement.
Curation is about selecting post a person thinks is of high quality in their eyes and thus they vote for it. They do not time their vote, they vote when they read and see it. The above does nothing to curb vote bots, or vote buying, or vote trail activity. It changes nothing, and fixes nothing other than the greedy feeling they deserve more rewards for their votes.
If you want to cure what ails the curation issue, perhaps looking into randomizing the start time for the curation reward pay out. Yes it ends on day seven, but you can fix the formula to where the payout schedule starts at any point along that 7 day window, not just at the start of when the post was posted.
That would negate most of the bot activity and selling of votes, because someone with a smaller account may get more curation rewards than someone with a larger account, so it is not likely to happen.
You are absolutely correct. In reply to the OP below I propose mechanisms I think you would approve. Have a look if you're willing and let me know what you really think.
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I'll copy a comment of mine I posted to a blog post of @whatsup's that discussed this proposal. The quote is @whatsup talking.
This.
I agree on any tinkering with the reward distribution math almost certainly not helping if the goal is to improve content discovery or stake distribution. Projects like @ocdb are much better at stake distribution. It all comes down to finding an acceptable compromise between rewarding stakeholders and helping newbies grow in order to make the DPoS consensus mechanism more secure. Judging by the 4.1 million SP delegated to @ocdb, a lot of stakeholders think getting 90% as much as by self-voting is enough and giving up for 10% to altruistically further the common good is ok.
By the way, does this new way means that small authors will receive less payouts?
Recipients of smaller votes will receive less SP. Larger votes will deliver relatively greater SP. That's my understanding.
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Thank you for the illustration of the derivative work in the rewards pool. I am not sure that changing the formula however would get the results we want: the growth of the block chain, more users, more ad revenue, and a higher value for steem.
I would like to see a better balance between rewarding those who do the creative and supportive work for the block chain and those who invest but mainly reward themselves.
I would like to see a minimum vote power instituted for those steemians in good standing. For example, everyone gets say 10 one cent votes a day to use but they cannot use it on themselves. This would encourage users to network, use the block chain more, and make newbies feel they have more impact on the platform. Now that we are an ad-revenue based platform/block chain, we need this.
Some of that ad-revenue, once running costs are met, could be used to reward those steemians that perhaps are not as heavily invested in steem but have invested considerable time and intellectual property building the block chain. Better still if they happen to be both invested intellectually and monetarily.
We really need to have our view counts back. Right now the only reliable evidence of proof of brain visits is the comments section. We need to encourage the use of our platforms and reward those who use it as intended. More eyes of the page will drive up the value of steem and rewards for everyone, no matter how we divvy it up.
it will be hard to do it because the way you pay content creator will affect the type of content they create as well.
Let's face the truth , not all good content can do with low cost . How do we judge is the content value?
Take my channel for example . I learn it is hard to do it here cause the return is low. All the video i upload at Dtube never really help me cover the cost .
See that RM1000 banknote? even at face value is 250USD.
Some people say i did not engage much . I use to engage a lot but let's face it. People want to watch for free rather than paying anything or giving me an upvote.
A good content survive the test of time. My youtube highest earning video is mostly my old video.
youtube ads revenue type is suitable for video that can survive the test of time.
steemit 7 day payout is only suitable for viral video or short term value video.
The ads revenue on steemit won't be much if steemit is going to fill with all this short term value video.
You make a very valid criticism of the payout period, and are not the first to observe the value of evergreen content.
I also would like to see content be rewardable more easily indefinitely. There are ways to do it presently, but they are not obvious nor as simple as upvoting. Personally, when I am on an old post I just comment and await reply, which I can then upvote instead of the OP. It's a hack, but it gets votes to creators for old content.
Also, the pics you post are useful - but they're huge! Perhaps smaller pics might be less imposing.
Thanks!
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I strongly agree with your sentiments here, excepting I don't reckon ad revenue either necessary or beneficial given changes similar to your thoughts here I propose below in reply to the OP. I'd appreciate your thoughts if you can spare a look.
Thanks!
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You know what would be cool? If you guys would create a tool that would allow normal users to compare payouts using both (current/new proposed) methods :)
Thanks for this post. It's great to get some examples and explanations of their pros and cons.
I can't possibly see how these changes will attract more people to steemit.com and think they are more likely to run what few users we have left away.
I am against these changes as I would much rather get SMTs and communities done first and let them each have their own economic systems.
I'm definitely not saying this is not good, but isn't this rather promoting capitalism ahead of the communal aspect which made the blockchain thrive in the first place?
You mean the 'From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs' blockchain?
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It's not so important now. Better to make RC delegation system. Steem already very popular platform but we need free registration system and good scalability.
RC Delegations are coming before this. We wanted to start a discussion now so that when the Blockchain team has bandwidth to work on something new (after SMTs) we will have reached consensus as a community as to the best path forward.
Could it be possible to make two different separated reward pools for users to choose what pool to sign up?
While one of the two could implement just any rat-race superlinear principle, the other would be more or less PoS ?
Personally I would sign up for the second one.
To be fair, I don't super amazingly understand it all, but the green curve does seem preferable.
Bad actors are always going to find a way to be bad... and everyone has their own agenda so getting consensus on these types of things is potentially impossible... especially something that may improve things for smaller accounts but not benefit larger accounts like the witnesses.
For the most part though, I think whatever curve helps newer accounts feel at home is probably preferred. It's classic game theory, if newer people can get rewards then they'll come back... and basically maxing out the rewards larger accounts can get from the reward pool and redistributing that to the smaller, newer accounts, the better for the platform.
However the new folks generally aren't substantial investors raising the price of Steem, and they're cumulative impact is discounted by folks with substantial stake. So far the tendency has been to pay the whales, rather than newbs.
I propose some mechanisms below in reply to the OP. I'd like to know if you think they're good ideas.
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I hope the next post will be on the proposal for 50% curation rewards. Hopefully with illustrations of how it will affect the bidbot economies from the POV of both delegators and bidders. Also, how this will affect curation rewards for upvoters.
BTW it is fairly obvious that something such as the bidbot/vote-buying market will drop in turnover because of the self-vote drop from 75% to 50%. This may, in itself, be the primary reason for implementing this, however, it will not affect the profitability calculation of the individual as it is based on the difference between self-vote and vote-buying.
I look forward to seeing a good reason for why you think this is a good idea.
This explanation is very accurate, thank you very much to let us know how things changed and all the dynamic behind it.
Thank you for explaining this to us. Unfortunately, stake -based voting has not worked. Making some tweaks will change and perhaps improve the dynamic slightly, but in the end it will reach the same point: people will adapt and find ways to honor their own self-interest. Most people do not want to curate or use their downvote power responsibly; they want to make money. Even the most idealistic and long term thinkers eventually realize that they can do a lot more of those things with their own money than they can by struggling to get the system to fit those ends.
Rather than guessing as to what might work in our one giant petri dish, it's probably better to acknowledge that Steem has become the reward layer for investors. Let SMTs create a second layer where much more experimentation can occur. I suspect the models that ultimately succeed will be those that do not try to combine investor incentives with content voting based upon stake, as the objectives tug in different directions.
I'm glad to see a few more people coming to this conclusion: the STEEM layer is the coin creation layer and then some social dapps will exist on top of this with different internal rules. One thing, however, is that those social dapps need to dip into the economic first layer in order to give their tokens some value. How they do so will be interesting to see.
I think revenue sharing would be an important step forward for the Steem Economics and it would encourage people to power up even more.
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Thanks for taking the time to put this out there and share the info. Kudos
Let's not get side tracked now and push SMTs out the door first.
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Are developers really good at anticipating human behavior? Not the ones I know!
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steemit is not paying already a good reward to investors only 1% per month on their holding which is very low on other hard the value down and down and people here instead of making money lossing more so this new system if it decrease the reward they discourage investors more and they will power down and leave steem forever
I hope I am not the only one left super confused about this
I hope I am not
The only one left super
Confused about this
- tsnaks
I'm a bot. I detect haiku.
I do not think this can help solve PoB. 50/50 curation and a separate downvote pool might.
Also, we should maybe add some centralization on steem, demanding from bidbots to burn 10-20% or the steem they earn. This will still allow investors to earn a good return while helping the price of steem.
Eyeballs will help the steem price raise. Advertising through bidbots is an amazing sink for the coin.
Excellent explanation and for the first time I'm totally OK with a non-linear curve. Thank you for your hard work and explanations.
Maybe consider an alternative more easy to understand for regular users.
We have the redfish/minnow/dolphin/orca/whale scale.
Just do something like this:
You could easily turn this into a curve,
vs
, where V denotes the accounts vesting power, but that would defeat the purpose of being easy to communicate. You could just sell it as 2.5% fish size bonuses and everyone will understand.
Thx for the great explanation, I always advocated that n^2 is extremely unfair and preferred linear, also because of its simplicity and transparency. "convergent linear" would be interesting to test, if it really solves some of the mentioned problems. If it doesn't then I would prefer to revert back to linear after some test period.
The people with more Rep should have a bigger say in the community
Simply put, as your rshares increases, your piece of the pie increases that it reaches to certain point of equality or close to equilibrium of your rshares.
With this experimental reward curve, everyone will have their piece of the pie. This will also encourage users to be frugal with their upvotes, the less yet active you are in the platform, the more rewards you reap and more rewarding to contributors.
Congratulations @vandeberg!
Your post was mentioned in the Steem Hit Parade in the following category:
Thank you for walking through this explanation in a way my little pea-brain can understand, I appreciate it & feel like I might be a tiny bit smarter now! :^)
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Hi @vanderberg. Thanks for your explanation and applied examples. It certainly makes the theory a lot easier to understand. I have not played with the formula n^2/(n/c+1) before. I think I probably should.
I have 2 concerns based on my early observations.
First is one getting the value of 'c' correct. The low values do not appear to make much of a difference. As 'c' increases to infinity we end back at n^2.
My second concern is regarding rewards posts at the low end. The posts that get the least rshares will take a heavy hit and the posts that get the most rshares will gain very little percentage wise. I am concerned new users will have a hard time getting off the ground.