Introduction
Q: What is the STEEM block chain's most valuable component?
A: Human creativity.
So how can we help human creativity to flourish?
[Image Source: Pixabay.Com License: CC0, Public Domain]
Background
Everyone and their brother - myself included - is full of ideas on how to change the reward distributions (and other things) in order to make STEEM more valuable. Yet, although we've been discussing these proposals for months, proposals have gone nowhere and most topics are as contentious as ever. In this article, I am going to suggest a different way of thinking about the problem. Instead of trying to address it from the top down and bending everyone else to our own will, can we work the problem from the bottom up?
Ever since becoming a parent, I have noticed that my emphatic answer to most questions is, "I don't know." So, my goal here is not to offer any answers, but to kick-start thinking about a decentralized process for finding them. @dantheman wrote Why every Blockchain needs a Constitution. Maybe that's true, but maybe the process has to start with smaller groups creating their own constitutions or bylaws. Maybe a platform Constitution will eventually emerge from the aggregate efforts of numerous groups.
Recently, I have begun reading about so-called "social technologies" for human self-organization, including Holacracy and Sociocracy (pay-wall). I am far from expert on either concept, but in learning about them, they definitely seem like they could be useful to steemizens. When reading comments on a recent post by @dragosroua, some ideas began to gel.
A potential problem with curation rewards and author rewards is that both are constructed in a way that creates tragedies of the commons and therefore, both may suffer from the commons dilemma, where short-term incentives undermine long-term sustainability. In short, losses are socialized in the form of declining STEEM prices, but gains are privatized in the form of rewards. So I have been asking myself, how can we nurture human self-organization to realign individual short-term incentives with the long-term need to protect the commons (represented by the long term value of STEEM).
What I am thinking about now is the possibility to establish groups of people using self-organizing protocols like Holacracy or Sociocracy and have these groups create their own reward structures, external to the blockchain author and curator reward mechanisms. These supplemental reward structures could (for example) be anchored to the price of steem itself.
Social Organization Concepts
[Image Source: Pixabay.Com License: CC0, Public Domain]
While I'm still learning, and consequently light on details, this proposal will make use of some concepts that are shared by both Holacracy and by Sociocracy. These include: circles, double-links, and the concept of consent. I'll describe them briefly here, but we'll probably have to learn as we go.
Circles
Informally, a circle is a group of people who share similar goals, processes, and tools. It is a semi-autonomous entity that is free to act within its own sphere. According to my understanding, in steemit, one circle might be a group of voters and another circle might be a group of authors. In the context of groups, another circle might be a steering circle.
Double-links
When a circle wants to act in a way that will impact another circle, communication has to happen between the two. This is accomplished by double-links between the two circles. Each circle chooses a member to interact with the other circle in order to propose ideas, solicit feedback, offer feedback, and to take information back to their own circle.
Consent
Consent is different from consensus. In Sociocracy, consent is accomplished through use of the "reasoned no." Holacracy seems to have a similar mechanism. The reasoned no means that a stakeholder can only object to a proposal if two conditions hold: first, the stakeholder believes that the proposal will create risk. And second, the stakeholder can enumerate a causal path to describe how the risk will be created. If no stakeholder can offer a "reasoned no" to block an idea, then the idea is permitted.
Importantly, things like "I don't like it," and "I don't think it will work," are not valid objections.
Proposal
So here is a rough sketch of a proposal to create a semi-autonomous group to provide shepherding for the price of STEEM. At this point, it amounts to little more than brainstorming, but perhaps a group of us could develop it into something workable. The idea is to foster decentralized learning and decentralized decision-making in order to discover the best ways to increase STEEM's value.
Guiding principles
- Goal: Create and provide visibility for content that will attract users to the blockchain and thereby make STEEM more valuable (in the long term).
- The group will organize itself according to a decentralized decision making process like Holacracy or Sociocracy.
- Steering and accountability roles will be filled by elections.
- Decisions will be shared and made by consent.
- "Stay in our swim lane." The group will not take positions on issues that are external to the group, including block chain design, politics, and charitable causes (although individual members are, of course, still free to do so). We will work within the constraints imposed by the block chain and web site(s) that are available to us.
- All organizing will be transparent, on the blockchain.
- Governance will be democratic, rewards will be stake-weighted.
- The group will operate exclusively through the use of positive incentives.
- Slow and steady: social networking is supposed to be fun. No group member will be expected to devote inordinate amounts of time or other resources to the project.
- Membership dues and rewards will be paid using STEEM and/or SBD.
- Independence: Whales are welcome to participate, but whale sponsorship will not be sought.
- Everything is subject to change.
Reward mechanism
This is draft version 0 of the proposal, not a final answer. I am simply offering it as a starting point that we can work together to improve. The important thing here is to carve out the ability to collaborate towards a common goal (raising the price of steem) in a semi-autonomous way. At a high level, here's a first pass at a possible reward structure:
Step 1: Collect monthly membership dues.
Step 2: Use the dues to fund the reward mechanism.
Step 3: At the end of the month, evaluate the reward rules.
- An example might be that members are rewarded if the price of steem is higher than the previous month - if the price is lower, the rewards fund is held for future distribution.
- Recipient awards could be determined according to voting activity, commenting activity, posting activity, and/or any other criteria the group chooses. I had voting activity in mind when I first stumbled on the idea.
Step 4: Distribute rewards.*
Step 5: Expire memberships and move on to step 1 for the next month.
* Only current group members are eligible for rewards distribution. Former members become ineligible when their membership lapses.
Organizing
In order to get started, a group of us would need to mine/purchase/procure an account to use for organizing discussions. After that, we would use that account to post discussions for establishing governance roles (Group steering, posting key management, active key management, automation decisions, audit decisions) and all future tasks. We'll also need to choose the initial circles and establish manual or automatic mechanisms for membership tracking and rewards implementation and audit. When all those pieces are in place, we can solicit monthly memberships and go live. We will continue to use decentralized learning and decentralized decision making to continuously improve the governance and implementation.
Open Questions
- What to do with author rewards on discussion posts?
- How/whether to reward members with intermittent membership lapses and renewals during a rewards disbursement window.
- Other ways to fund the supplemental reward pool?
- Does STEEM have a smart contract capability that can be adopted for these purposes?
- How to fund tools development for automation and audit?
- For supplemental rewards, what does "stake-weighted" mean? N2? N log (N)? Linear? log (N)? We get to decide. Different groups can try different experiments.
- How do we maintain long term steering roles when memberships expire monthly?
- #Tons# of other stuff.
Conclusion
One of the things that bothers me about so many of the posts with steemit ideas (my own included) is that they depend on others for execution. "Here's a good idea, will someone else please do it?" This one doesn't. We don't need anyone's permission or agreement. We just need to start. At the beginning, of course things will be rudimentary, but as time progresses a group like this could showcase steem as an unmatched platform for human collaboration and creativity. After that, there is no limit to the groups that can emerge on this block chain using similar techniques to pursue their own goals.
Bonus for Reading to the End
As for me, I'll continue reading about decentralized governance and slowly refining these ideas.
Anyone else interested in joining me on the cutting edge of human self-organization?
@remlaps is an IT professional with three decades of professional experience in data communications and information systems. He holds a bachelor's degree in mathematics, a master's degree in computer science, and a master's degree in information systems and technology management. He has also been awarded 3 US patents.