So I don't think I've ever disclosed this publically...
I along with friends I got onto steemit very early on, own some very prominent keyword names on steem (the names effectively have 100s of millions - billions of followers on Instagram alone) I dont want to disclose the big ones but ie @bless @cars etc. Point being I have a very vested interest in steemit succeeding as quickly as possible.
Right now the fact is that as far as i can tell the top 1% of steemit is making around 80% of the steem.
For reference, Currently, the richest 1% in the United States hold about 38% of all privately held wealth, while the bottom 90% held 73% of all debt.
I would not be surprised if the wealth dispersement on steemit is actually WORSE then Facebook as they are publically traded and they do secretly pay their top pages.
Here is the current distribution via steemwhales.com:
While researching this I found this post from a year ago by @hisnameisolllie with this graph:
https://steemit.com/steemit/@hisnameisolllie/the-top-1-steem-v-the-real-world
That not very much change over 1 year... just in case some ones brings up some charts like this:
This is disingenuous and the numbers are skewed, as the paid voting bots and paid steem power delegating are now distorting those numbers.
Interestingly a few months later you can see @hisnameisolllie powered down 30k SP. Thats one investor down... I wonder how many like him steemit has already lost?
Here are 3 changes that can be started right now for steemit to become a more secure, fair, and true network:
Increase witness numbers and reduce pay
Increase the witness number to 100 top paid witnesses instead of 19 and even dispersement of blocks mined
Its funny I was talking to @crimsonclad in the PALnet discord and she said shes LOSING money to be a witness but wants to help.
Does it make any economic sense to pay around $150k per witness if they already own more then 1/200th of the network and it's in their best interest to secure it anyway? (they are already probably doubling their SP yearly)
Especially when there are plenty people with much less invested willing to do it for free?
I hear these message frequently propagated: "Hey minnows don't vote on yourself that's greedy and dumb spread the wealth around"
But if I'm a whale employing an upvote bot or using say a bug to double my money every 180 days as there was a video about & all the minnows are voting for others...
The minnows are effectively paying the whales money. If im wrong here please enlighten me.
Why is this message of spread the votes and SP around not going on from the top down? Witnesses are a perfect example, selling your delegation power and paid voting bots are others.
Re-establish a working referral system
Start a referal system based off of the individual's blog that was the landing page of a new user. Really rewarding creators for bringing in outside people instead of a one time payment of $50 or $100 when someone makes a video persay.
This will need some thought to make sure its not easily gamed but as so much of the network is established I guarantee you sit me down with a mathematician and I can divise a system much more optimal then the current system. The only ones that would really benefit from gaming this currently anyway are the top 1% and they are already taking 80%... I dont think anyone could do worse.
Disencetivise paid voting bots
Disencetivise the paid voting bots and replace them with bots that upvote any post that receives over 100 views/votes, over 200 views/votes, 300 views/votes etc. This could be done right out of the steemit fund... Yes again this can be gamed and would still be better for the network.
This is much more natural way to curate content anyway...
Or as @matt-a suggested a while ago in steemspeak something along the lines of make bots that upvote posts when people send to @null and Destroy SBD.
Conclusion
In the end its very simple: only so much money can be drained from a system at a time
I'm proposing to get the best returns steemit's goal should be to pay as many content creators enough money to be able to live comfortably as full time steemit content creators ($1k-$4k-$10k a month depending on country and content) and then keep multiplying that number...
THAT is how steemit becomes the most predominant social network in the world and holds it's position for years to come.
Instead, what seems to be going on from what I can tell:
A bunch of medium and lower VERY good content creators overly invested, quite a few to the point of heavy debt basically living off the money they make off posting.
Creating a network full of debt instead of wealth.
Which if steem were to drop and stay below 10x for any real amount of time...
Well, you know how that could go.
They say nothing lasts for ever, how long steemit lasts really depends on the changes made in the coming months I would say...
@ned @firepower I was advised to tag you, I would love to work together on this...
-Bless
Thanks for the post. I think healthy, data driven criticism is great.
If steemit wants to distribute the wealth, it needs to increase discovery capabilities for good content, regardless of steem power. It needs to deprioritize certain factors that cause whales to dominate the trending page.
The bots are just a quick, dirty, and in my opinion, bad solution to a discovery problem. Steemit has the ability to open up the long tail for bloggers. A small audience can support the content they like. Unfortunately, today, it just rewards the few "hits" which are the whales and investors in the platform.
I have had conversations like that with myself, and it can be easy for me t get down when I see that hardly anybody notices what I have to say but in good conscience I would write for free.
vote me please man I will vote all you post
The thing that I missing is the two factor authentication! If a person keep a lot of money in steemit acount, i think it should be more secure!
Definitely.
Agreed. There should be a whole lot of options especially considering that Steemit is intending those less savvy and contentious to come on board. People need to feel secure not only that Steemit will make them money, not lose value, but their own money is safe in the first place. You don't want people used to facebook and reddit to lose money due to lack of clarity and ease of use to keep their account safe. That will quickly leave a bad taste in the mouth and a sour air for anyone thinking about it
And I say it again, there should be an official token bot whale filled with Steem that can exchange bitcoin (or whatever) for Steem that delivers market rate prices. In addition it should allow someone to get BETTER than market rate/discount the more Steem you buy in Steem Power. This makes larger investments for the long term far more attractive and makes it far more stable.
I'm real new here and I'm not sure what you mean by "losing money by lack of clarity"...? I'm reading this here and there and it seems like this is more than a security issue. Could someone explain this to me (and other noobs)?
I suggest that you read more about blockchains and 2FA to understand why such a suggestion is meaningless in the context of a cryptocurrency.
This post received a 4.3% upvote from @randowhale thanks to @bless! For more information, click here!
interesting post, i'm new and just fumbling around, but the numbers you present raise some questions and suggest possible new directions, peace
I think it takes away from your message slightly to use a paid voting bot to upvote your content when you are talking about such a thing being a negative aspect.
I'm not entirely convinced that having automated bots that push content for X amount of votes is a great thing either.
Perhaps lowering the value of a vote if it is repeatedly directed towards the same user over and over again, obvious botnetting should be located and diminished in effectiveness, weighting a vote towards original content could also be a thing, but it is very hard to gauge effort put into a post especially if it contains video or audio, but you can certainly curate based on words.
A referral system is not advised considering that even just recently there was a huge bandwith issue and new/small users were not even able to interact with the platform, throwing more users at this would just make that problem worse.
Spreading the rewards from witnessing would be a great thing, even out to the top 200 or on a work completed basis or work capable basis, rewarding the witnesses with the most possible transactions per second and bandwith proportionally to one another, incentivizing growth of capability instead of just pushing more votes at it.
Dropping off nodes that are not updated over time, say if you don't update within a week the votes that are pushed towards you start to diminish in effectiveness and so over a duration you will naturally slide out of the paid area and into the unpaid one, this would incentivize maintaining your witness node.
Also a reward system in terms of people who constantly power up / do not withdraw get a higher weighted vote than people who withdraw constantly, supporting the platform should give you a bigger stake when interacting with it IMO.
I can't really thing of anything else right now, but thanks for sharing and I hope you found some of what I put here helpful. :)
Much love, many peaches. <3
I dont think it does. Bringing this to public attention was the important part.
Agree i think lower voting power for a same user could work but something else like # of random users should apply.
Or maybe something like if you vote with 10 other people on 10 of the same posts in a row your voting power goes down, but i also like the idea of trails in some aspects. So maybe if there are X amount of random users along with you it doesnt go down? This would take some thought
Steemit is going to add more users eventually or it will die so why would you not reward the person that actually brought them to the network?
The rest sounds good to me...
Referral system is easily game-able, and will just enable people to create 100,000 accounts and profit from it. The only way a ref system could work is to pay it out over time and from a share of say the curation/author rewards from the new comers posts. This will force at least some level of interaction on the new accounts.
Plus there is already a ref system to an extent in place, you get a portion of steem delegated to you upon sign up, and if the new comers like your content and are willing to support you they can click a button and show that support. Or follow you on steemian / steemvoter or something.
I don't know how it will die if new users are not added however, throwing more users at it when things are not set up just so seems like a bandaid solution to the issues of poor distributions and top heavy voting power.
I disagree. They can be divised.
I see 2 options for steem over time: it grows to critical mass and brings in real advertisers and investors or it dies...
In case you havent read -
Amazon Lures Publishers to New Social Network by Paying Them to Post
https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-lures-publishers-to-new-social-network-by-paying-them-to-post-1500482959
Only amazon though right? Lul
Wonder where they got that idea from. :D
Thoughtful ideas. What about a downvote button?
There already is a downvote button, it's called flagging.
Good to know. Looks like I've got some work to do.
I have some ideas on better means to an end for downvoting but steemit isn't ready for them yet.
I would be very interested to hear your thoughts on that. I think steemit may be more ready for it than you realize.
So THAT is what people mean when they say downvote here?
To me flagging and downvoting are kind of different
They are the same thing on steem it.
I just read a post and I found something I found interesting I wonder if it could work, here is the link to the post:
https://steemit.com/introduceyourself/@scottsantens/hi-steemit-scott-santens-here-if-you-ve-ever-googled-basic-income-you-may-have-read-something-i-ve-written
And this is what I found interesting:
Instead of 75% going to the poster and 25% going to the upvoters, it could be something like 70% to the poster, 20% to the upvoters, and 10% divided between all accounts on Steemit
This is one of the best ideas to improve steemit reward system. The problem with that a person can have multiple accounts since verification is through phone numbers since a person can have several phone numbers or can use phone numbers from friends and relatives. However, upcoming finger/iris sensor in smartphone can solve this problem in the long run.
Great post. Thanks for putting forth some ideas. I totally agree with you on the problem. I'm a little skeptical that the referral program you suggest my just further concentrate the wealth in the 1%. A lot of the whales have other media presences outside Steemit that likely contribute to their success on Steemit already, and the referral system may just further reward them, but I suspect there's a way to do it right.
Thanks again!
Steemit says not to write thinking of money in mind but once money comes in picture it can not be kept aside.
Everyone is filling the place up with shit just for the sake of money and those who did it at very early stage are rich now.
Have you read the post from @scottsantens about how to implement a basic income into Steemit by taking a percentage of the payouts and hand it over to the entire community as kind of hive payout. Your suggestion with the bonuses for upvotes could be a solution to implement that in a relatively fair way.
Resteemed.
No i havent seen it yet ill check it out thanks. Ive been trying to reach @scottsantens on twitter
Really? What a coincidence. I guess it is good then that I gave you the link. :)
.
It is very true what you say, it would have to be quality articles to make the site of quality.
It can only happen if the rest 99% are allowed an opinion.
Maybe not the whole 99% equally. The world isnt ready for that, but certainly a much higher % and anyone who has put the time and energy into understanding the system should have some say.
Interesting numbers . Are they sustainable ? If not then change must be .
I also want to say thank you for writing the article. Some of the stuff that you were talking about was over my head, but it seemed to me that you were trying to raise awareness that there are "little guys" out there that are trying to produce good content. Something that I have noticed on steemit is the more popular users get noticed for content that sometimes seems like not a lot of thought went into it (but not all popular users publish hap-hazardly)
good job
Interesting ideas. Thanks for sharing.
THank you @bless this post is very interesting and also very educative for most of us. It is sure that the wealth on Steemit must be distributed in a better way. For now, from your statistics, it is a reflection of what's happening in the real world with the richest get richer and the little fish get chunks of peanut. The thing with Steemit is very difficult to get seen by other. Some change had to be implemented in the future. But also the top one must not really be affected because they already get their place in the sun. Your post is full of really good ideas. Thanks
It's all fucked up...so that's ok. We know this can't last forever.
It 's possible it can, to be honest I'm pretty hopeful with the platform after getting to know more about the community. There is a lot of value on this network.
Credible and good source of information.. Thank you for this!
Interesting research. So the top 1% is running things and you want to equal things out a bit by reducing pay to witnesses? Thanks for sharing.
Great post. I am new here and it is difficult to get started. I am going to keep working but hopefully the platform keeps improving and can become more stable and inviting to new users.
I agree it can be very hard to get started and to grow if you a brand new user to steemit. It's easy to slip through the cracks even if your making very good content..
The number one thing I would suggest is google and read as much as you can.
Next is checking out the various discords and building community with the people you have similar values to. Make sure to read the rules and be respectful, many people come in, spam links and get banned.
These are probably the best 2 for newer users.
PALnet discord https://discord.gg/hGWapY
MinnowBooster - https://discord.gg/UFEr2
(These links last 1 day but you can find new invites by google searching)
I was inspired by your post and wrote my own version: https://steemit.com/steemit/@emble/will-steem-succeed-or-commit-suicide
I am a speck of algae or I guess a minnow, so I probably lack the time to have as much perspective, but from what I have seen so far, a lot of what you say resonates. I think the overall goal of making it a (realistic) possibility for people to live off of the same type of input (quality and quantity of content) produced by most early adopters on here is how Steemit will gain real traction. I don't think people should be able to game the system or expect easy money just by posting air, but anyone who is able to use this platform, without impediments should be able to succeed. Thanks for opening the discussion @bless and good call on tagging @firepower and @ned. Cheers @ecoknowme.
Just posted this article that talks about EOS as the 4th generation blockchain challenge for Steem.
Analysis of Steem's Economy - A Social Scientist's First Impressions - Part 3/4 in the series.
https://steemit.com/steemit/@cyberspace/analysis-of-steem-s-economy-a-social-scientist-s-first-impressions-part-3-4
Do we really need more witnesses? The number of them should be dictated how much we actually need decentralization in block producing.
The bigger question is the whole governance process of the Steem blockchain. If the governance process is weak, it can't become self-aware of the ecosystem and adjust it accordingly. The reason why economic incentives are not optimal and the distribution of new steem is quite bad, is that we don't actually have a governance system that could easily do something about it.
I think the biggest mistake is to combine political power and block producing. Witnesses should be only witnesses and only make blocks. The adjustment of blockchain parameters should be done by other people so there wouldn't be so much conflicts of interests.
Great insights! I think upgrading the witness can be made gradually, adding more 20 a year, or according new users reach, for example. The Idea of distribution bots could be a business, maybe a programmer could be inspired and launch It, and make profit too. Thanks and good luck again!
I personally think that exploiting the names of the website is wrong. You are manipulating the website for personal gain and it is technically allowed but I think it should be frowned upon. You are just taking names from people who actually want them. This is the behavior of a scalper.
"The minnows are effectively paying the whales money. If im wrong here please enlighten me."
The minnows aren't paying anything. Most of them are a drain on the platform. It costs money to setup their accounts and delegate bandwidth and Steem to them. The vast majority probably never invest any money at all.
The only people bringing value to this platform are investors, quality content creators, and the actual developers. Minnows are usually none of these.