Steemit Inc are making an attempt to address the issue of fair distribution by delegating SP via misterdelegation.
Delegating doesn't help minnows, it hurts them.
If the 75% of sp that doesn't vote did vote our votes would be worth even less than they are now.
More delegation by any large sp holder disadvantages every sp holder other than those favored by the delegation by making sp that would have otherwise been inactive, active.
If Ned wants to help the little guys he would hodl and let the dolphins chum the waters with $10 votes on the newbs, but instead we get rock star hero worship that is hurting retention.
Giving rewards to content that isn't 'good' harms the platform.
'Good' as defined by the whole ecosystem, not just those with favored status bestowed by those with the power to do so.
I've been stating this consistently since before delegation was a thing, when @curie was the worst of our 'favored status' worries, but nobody wants to hear it because the truth doesn't fit in with their worship of power.
Now we have to deal with dtube taking a haejin level of rewards from the pool in a daily basis with another ~20% of the reward pool going to the other 9 of the top 10 voters.
source
It is just a fact in the math.
No different than when the whale misbehavior with the n2 made it impossible for the minnows to matter in the math, at all.
Now we get to matter in the math, but not as much as we would if the whales took a hands off approach, brought back the n2, and left distribution to the dolphins.
To the delegates – congratulation on the delegation and I hope that your app helps take STEEM to the moon.
Yeah, thanks for making it even harder for the newbs to make a buck on their content,...
(upvoted for visibility)
thanks for for stopping by and this has been a very interesting conversation to read between your self @freebornangel and @lextenebris. Thank you both for adding to this post and discussion.
@freebornangel I would also like to challenge what you have said, in fact I have seen you say this before and I didnt challenge purely down to the rep difference at the time.
The value of a vote is not solely dependent on the rewards pool. There are many factors in the formula, to which I have made my self familiar with.
Steemit at the moment has what 65K+ users a month. The price of steem is 4.25 as I write this and the price of SBD is 5.16. How many users before the price of steem is $100. So yes I hope these app developers bring hundred and thousands of new users because like it or not, this will impact the price.
Now let me prove the math
here is the calculation for my current vote worth
with all the same information but doubling the feed price - look at the change in my vote worth
If you wish i can share this spreadsheet with you and you can play around with the rewards pool drainage, but you will still find this can be offset with increases in the price of steem and sbd
So lets go back to the call out for delegation. Delegation = motivation. I know this because I was in receipt of delegation in the past. The more motivated users, the more they are willing to spread the word, the more people they will attract to steemit - its a snowball thing. The more users the higher the price.
The other option, like I think you are suggesting involves slow growth on steemit many even stagnant. We all keep voting for each other like a nice big family and the payout be high. Mean while the market will see no value in steem or sbd and the price does down till it becomes worthless.
In a sense, it's a race.
Right now by using the platform we are betting that the rate at which steem increases in value will outpace the rate at which the number of votes that we are likely to get on any individual post will decrease in number or value. (Assuming that one's use of this platform is dependent on concern about how much physical reward they receive.)
If the number of users increases such that the dilution of the voting pool by more participants decreases the value of an individual vote faster than the value of a smaller amount of steem increases in worth, we've made a bad bet.
It's certainly possible that Steemit is a bad bet. I'm willing to entertain the idea. Certainly, the overall trend in the value of steem has been largely upward over the last year but like the rest of the cryptocurrency market, it's ludicrously unstable and prone to sudden changes based on actions and behaviors which are not in any way related to those of the investors and stakeholders.
That would be a rational concern to have. But, as you note, it's unrelated to the actions of a few whales in any real sense, because the activity of having significant growth by actual small users is equally dispersive.
And it comes with all the philosophical problems that I pointed out earlier regarding the assumption of authority to tell someone else what they can do with their stake.
Yes, delegation is motivation – one way or another. In some ways we are currently very lucky that there is so much stagnant SP on the blockchain. (That is, accounts which literally do nothing but sit on a pile of vests.) That is all SP which could express the will of the holder to direct the reward pool – which they have a right to do. Should even more of the top 200 become highly active, because of the rate of falloff in the owned vest pool, the actual ability of anyone outside that group to direct any significant portion of the rewards pool would be effectively nil.
I find that kind of interesting. More for the question of "why haven't they done it already?" than anything else.