I think pretty much everyone agrees that the current concentration of power is not workable for Steemit to go mainstream. The million dollar question though is how to actually address it in a way that is fair to the original stakeholders (who earned their share based on the defined rules of the blockchain) and also cannot be exploited by "bad whales" just dividing their stake into lots of smaller accounts. Are there any workable proposals on the table that can address this?
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No solution can be perfect - what about...
Ask all whales to accept a freeze on all their rewards so there is no further accumulation of SP. Instead they will be working to raise the value of Steem and allow others (whose efforts they appreciate) to catch up.
Ask witnesses to burn or recycle excess Steem earned as a witness....is there is any....into minnow / new account reward initiatives.
Identify all the accounts that are still active and have contributed to the Steemchain (content, comments or curation) and reward all of them with SP from the Steemit account. Again ask really big holders to pass on this bonus. Also, ask the active accounts to freely identify additional accounts and not accounts if they are willing and make a best effort where the are not.
Announce a date in the future where new proven individual accounts that join Steemit and actively contribute to a threshold level and receive a threshold level of votes will receive a bonus in Steem from the Steemit account.
Do the above for existing accounts and yet again ask the whales to pass on the bonus.
I think you get the idea. I accept this is not perfect and I do not own the Steem in the Steemit account! ;) The objective would be to supercharge the distribution of Steem and create a much larger number of dolphins, incentivise a lot of growth, raise the price of Steem, show everyone that the whales can work in everyone's interests.
(The whales were their front and centre into an experiment. All of them have tried their best...even those who have exploited certain unintended realities of the system.)
If we can work together to pull this off....imperfect though it is....what a remarkable expression of the effectiveness of this community. What a magnanimous act it would be for all the whales to agree. What an incredible example and what a story.
Now because I have faith in the whales, I think Steem can give us all a better future and because I'm putting forward an idea that requires sacrifice, if something like this is implemented and the whales all agree to not accept additional rewards, I'll do the same.
There is no need to fracture this community, it may not seem like it and it's a bit of an effort, but if we stick this out and solve these problems for ourselves, we'll be that much stronger in the end. We can give up any time, that easy.
Way to be constructive :)
I think continuing to discuss ideas and solutions to the problem is really good. As I said above, I think most people (at least the ones I talk to) all seem to agree that the disproportionate stake is one of the largest things affecting user retention in a negative way.
Isnt it worth asking the question and finding out who is and is not willing and what their reasons are?
I think we are talking about either the top 25 or top 50 accounts and in the main, they are very well connected. The only reason I'm suggesting this is kind of action is because it has the potential to give them more in the end. Why squabble over scraps when if we set an example to everyone looking on and make moves that address the most important reason for steem being held back, they'll have so much in return, they may struggle to know what to do with it (bit like now ;))
We could be on our way to bitcoin's market cap if it were not for the present distribution of Steem. It is the fundamental issue. At the moment we have the edge in tech and community. The time to act is now on this particular issue.
All the whales have to get their heads around is that instead of occupying a pinnacle, sitting on between 50 and 600k relatively alone, they can be occupying a nice plateau sitting on a hundred million with thousands of others.
We need to minimise risk of failure by dealing with the distribution issue asap, even though the present redistribution rate is impressive....it's still too slow given the effects on our core community.
Agreed. Getting consensus from all the whales and devs is not a simple task though.
A lot of people are waiting to see how the upcoming HF changes play out, since they will be flattening the rewards formula. If it is still an issue in a month or so (which I assume it will be) I'll write a new post on it.
Not getting all of them makes it much more difficult, but not impossible to implement. Good idea....let's give the HF a chance then when it fails to address the primary issue, which is quite likely, we can try to get (what is seemingly) a great act of sacrifice off the ground! :)
Of course you are absolutely right about the witnesses!
Moving to another blockchain is probably the best solution for those not yet fully invested in the STEEM blockchain. Then the current stakeholders can have their share. A full share of nothing potentially.
Perhaps they might consider coming to a more affordable compromise if they consider that, not unlikely, scenario?
They may claim it is not probable, but I think that most outside investors would agree with the reality that there is no purpose in filling the pockets of those who have taken the lions share of the pie for themselves in the mining phase at the beginning. Especially when, in doing so, they empower those same early speculators, to have authority over the direction of the platform, and ultimately control the destiny of their investment.
The current whales have demonstrated considerable ineptitude in their conduct on the platform. Smart money won't follow dumb money.
It is not possible to create a new blockchain based on the Steem blockchain, without explicit written permission from Steemit, Inc.
That I hadn't realized. I just read the license on the steem main source and these are the relevant conditions:
So while technically possible it could land some people in court 😓
Not necessarily. You could start a new, nested blockchain inside the current one and still adhere to all the conditions listed.
It wouldn't even be that hard. Im sure i havent thought of everything, but here's a basic model.
You post a genesis block. Make a whole different coin. Call it Meets or something. Meets transactions can just be specially formatted replies to the block post.
The next block is a new post that includes all the transactions. The one who gets to produce it is the first one to achieve a signature that is less than some predetermined base 58 number (i guess it would be variable like BTC mining difficulty).
The cool thing about meets is you could use it on the steem blockchain... you could have (if you wanted) your own meets reward pool. And vote on posts on the steem blockchain with it. this is the way golos would have done it if they were smart.
Seem like it could be technically possible to do that. I'd love to read a more detailed proposal of it, even just as a "what if" scenario. Get some debate going from the more technically savvy than I because I have a niggling feeling there's a catch there.
Interesting idea, thanks! 😁
Kind of off topic, but do you know the licensing status of steemit.com / condenser? There's no usual license file there
Sorry, I don't. I believe it is open source / OK to replicate, but I am not 100% sure. If you contact @sneak (email: sneak at Steemit.com) he should be able to tell you.
Thanks for the reply
Mr @timcliff, I have now replied to you twice. On both occasions, I have replied to your reference to the 'Rules'. You seem to be something of an honest cop. I had a message from one of the founders yesterday. He was nothing short of rude. So, sod him.
'Rules' are there for the betterment of the situation(s) in which they are applied, whether it be Rugby, Traffic or Government. These rules, when they become obsolete or they cause a trend which is contrary to the intent of the rules as a whole, get changed.
It seems amply evident from the current 'Rules' of steemit.com that they are obsolete and require a complete overhaul.
I am currently looking into a post I saw this morning which lists the actual investors into steem and, hence, steemit. I notice that there is not one financial investor in the top 25 accounts, yet it is these 25 accounts which have brought steemit to its knees. Meanwhile the investors have lost an average of 72% of their money.
Gaining leverage through mining has given the whole of steemit.com a smell of Greed. These miners have also decided that the well-being of all others, investors included is of absolutely no concern. I can hear Marie Antoinette (though she did not say it): "Let them eat cake." The problem is that the top 25 accounts have all the cake, Marie!
If the early miners did not sacrifice their time, knowledge/expertise, and resources at the time when the platform was just getting started - there would be no Steemit.
Ah, the nice policeman ... thank you. Yes, I hear what you say, they do deserve acknowledgement - very much agreed with your viewpoint. There is, unfortunately, the ledger of performance which has cost investors a lot of money - in the millions of dollars. The responsibility for this can only be placed at the feet of these people who have acted like school children.
So, a realignment of power and responsibility is needed and that can only be done from the Company it seems. It would be helpful if all the miners acknowledged their performance as being lacking in any substance. I called it immoral and it certainly appears to be the case that investors have been treated like dirt.
Give it a few days, you've already got more than many have in weeks, dan has said nothing btw, he just whizzed by :| It's a interesting point on the investors, I wonder how they are doing indeed, many stats are needed
Just posted the start of it - not pretty!
Thank you @j3dy - By the way, I am a bit late for the money, I am studying the organism. It is fascinating.
Correct. This fact does not preclude what I described from occurring. Steem is not the only blockchain to choose from, and as I have already described and you alluded to, it is unworkable in its current state.
It could even be possible for Steemit to fork to a new Steem blockchain (minus problematic stakeholders), but I wouldn't expect that to be a discussion carried out in public. That discussion would probably happen behind closed doors.
Well, I can't say that I agree with it, but destroying the entire blockchain and screwing over everyone that has bought or earned stake up until this point is one solution.
They are doing it to themselves now. There is little difference really.
There are many solutions who have been discussed at lenght in the past couple weeks.
I proposed the user/moderator thing, dan atstarlite proposed to create 2 type of steem power ( steem stake and steem power), smooth proposed a system where users who vote would be penalized by receiving less inflation and I've seen others like you proposed modified version of my proposal . Those are all workable, the million dollar question is do people care enough to want any of them?
Another thing that could be done is to remove curation reward so that whales have more incentives to delegate their voting power. I think many won't even bother voting if there was no curation reward, this and removing the curve will probably improve power concentration. Whales understand that if they give up their power the retention will be much better but most are too greedy so if we remove curation many will probably refrain from voting.
Address it in a way that is fair to the original stakeholders? But the original stakeholders have not been fair and taking advantage of the community.
That is a very unhealthy narrative and I disagree. How has there been any taking advantage of? Everybody that is here is here of their own free will, and has participated based on the rules of the blockchain.
They still keep all their STEEM, and can keep earning more. It's about shifting from a primary focus of a corporate mindset, towards including more decentralization to empower the individuals who build the community and are the community (shareholders, and everyone included, but money doesn't make one have more power to decide things in the community). The investors invest to make money. Put the power to direct the community in the actual community's hands of everyone, not the concentrated power of 50 accounts. Steemit Inc is heading towards non-profit organization, that's away from purely corporate model. The community that builds Steemit.com needs that same shift, with the decentralization and community becoming the primary focus, not the corporate mindset.
Hi @krnel - thanks for your reply. How do you convince the whales to give up their voting power / influence, and along with that their curation rewards?
Why curation rewards? Where does that come in to need to remove them? Check this out:
https://steemit.com/witness-category/@fyrstikken/voting-power-to-the-people-and-curation-rewards-to-the-investors-please-bookmark-and-read-later-if-you-are-busy
Like I said, they still keep doing the same, but with fyrsts idea, I think it's better. They can still vote, its voluntary, buts its the best for platform. Negative incentive can be introduced to promote delegating power to community like picokernel posted about:
https://steemit.com/steemit/@picokernel/a-brief-note-on-community-building-and-the-role-of-government-interference
Sorry, as a developer I have a hard time translating these ideas into concrete changes. I'm not saying they are bad, I just can't completely wrap my head around what changes they actually are proposing.
Is the main idea behind @fyrstikken's suggestion that users could delegate their SP to another user but retain a portion or all of the curation rewards?
To resolve the imbalance in reawrds allocation being concnetrated int he hands of a few, delegate the power to the whole community that has certain metric met that indicate a real human to filter bots and users who haven't proved themselves yet. Then all votes have a global delegate key applied at the same time in addition to their own keys. Whales can also vote for posts on their own, but possibly with a negative incentive to avoid doing that and promote the power remain int he majority of the userbase. Curation from users goes to users for their SP applied, and then curation for whales go to them. If a globally divided curation pool for whales isn't acceptable, maybe delegate to several communities so that specific curation can go back to specific whales that delegate for those certain communities to curate.
Investors then would not have to do anything. They invest to grow their money. The user base would grow the money for them all equally like a real corporation dividends as well, since it would be a global curation pool for the global delegation key all users use.
Users who invest their time and develop the platform and community will be empowered with intrinsic motivation to be involved, as the voting power isn't concentrated, and this can apply to everything. This will create a decentralized empowered community that will self-direct and self-govern, not be directed by a small pool of power players. This is where things need to head for people to really want to be here. The power imbalance needs to be corrected and this idea allows investors to get what they want, money. Just because someone has more money/wealth/stocks, doesn't give them more power in human relations. To build community people want to run towards, make it empowered this way, Steemit will blow everything away!