Is vote buying and collusion an issue?

flipstar (71) · 6 years ago

Thq question is if true decentralization of wealth will ever work imo.

If/when BTC becomes the store of value for the masses the people with just 1 BTC will be super rich and even people with I believe 0.28 BTC will be in the 1%.

In steemit many people have a sense of exclution as they think they deserve big upvotes from the whales. While the truth is in not many other chains you get rewarded for taking part without putting money upfront.

If I want to mine BTC/XMR/ETH I need equipment which I dont get for free.

Yes it is up to the whales and orcas to include smaller accounts but of course they want to earn as well afterall arent they who put money/BTC into the system who put a $/satoshi price on the steemtoken?

Here we are many and while collusion is not optimal it is not as hurtful as in a smaller circle.

If 2 players collude in a 180 sng it is not as bad for the other indivdiuals as if 2 players do it in a 6 max sng.
If more do it in a small circle the worse it gets for the indivdual who is not taking part

$3.24

freiheit50 (70) · 6 years ago (edited)

When I hear someone the word "collusion" crying out loud, I instantly have to think about "Russia collusion". But there s not only Robert Muller, there is also the FISA Memo. Vitalik seems to be searching of arguments against EOS. In German language we could say he's crying "Haltet den Dieb!".

Centralisation of many coins in the hands of a few whales may be a problem, but this not quite annother thing than in the economy in general. In Bitcoin there a whales as well in copanies listed on stock exchanges.

If many many people would buy small amounts of shares and coins the distribution of power could be improved.

So let's buy some steem and power up :-)

$3.19

3 votes

geekgirl (72) · 6 years ago

I don't know much about EOS, but vote buying/selling when it comes to block producers and upvotes are two separate subjects.

In my opinion, Steem is semi-decentralized. While votes for block producers can be seen as a political instrument that can decide the course of the blockchain, upvotes, delegations, and actions that affect the reward pool distribution carry economic aspects of the blockchain.

Theoretically, a single largest stakeholder or few top stakeholders can determine who the top block producers will be, and blockchain can be completely centralized. Is that good or bad thing? I don't know. But I believe, such possibility may keep larger outside investors away. At the same time, other investors may be interested in more centralized blockchains.

When I first learned about Steem, my simple assumption of economic incentives would be that larger stakeholders would be more interested in longer term increase of value of their holdings, rather than short term gains from reward pool. With that they would/could empower smaller to medium stakeholders to accelerate the growth of the platform in social media space, empower developers to create new apps, etc. Win-win scenario for everybody, everybody would grow as a community. However, I came to realize that was a naive thinking. Reality of the the dpos economics seems to be much more complex than that.

But I wouldn't call it broken. I works, just needs some improvements, which is just part of the process.

$3.13

4 votes

prince121 (60) · 6 years ago

Basically a came to a conclusion that every user has to choose a battle that he can win and proceed with flags. It’s pointless to have someone like bernie flagging puny spamming accounts (that can be flagged by us), instead the whales have to counter the abuse of whales...if that won’t happen Steem is bound to lose value as long as haejin and sweet (and their likes) will continue to rape the reward pool. All the whales that are IGNORING the matter are SUPPORTING the matter, because there are only handful of them that can counter abuse of such a scale.

My humble opinion is that the whales are underestimating the matter. They feel like Steem is prospering so there really isn’t anything too wrong with it. I on the other hand think that we currently are in Altcoin bubble (slowly popping at the moment) and that Steem will soon be at around 1 dollar again...maybe even lower. This conclusion is based on the premise that users do search around the platform before investing heavily and as soon as they spot those worthless trending "celebrities" they will realize that it’s really not that much about quality of the content for now.

$3.03

jasonshick (65) · 6 years ago

It is part of the nature of this system. When there is a disproportionate amount of steem spread out through the community, some people will have more power than others. It is not inherently wrong, its a mechanism of the system. Vote buying also is not inherently wrong, its a business at the end of the day and people are concerned with turning a profit. This comes down to a philosophical principle I think and I'm not sure there is an easy solution. Good to ponder though

$1.61

3 votes

roki112 (53) · 6 years ago

Voting Collusion While cooperation to distribute funds to the best work is the desired goal, collusion that undermines this objective should be minimized. There are two kinds of collusion , the most straightforward is when one user simply buys a larger stake than others, and the other involves coordinating a large number of smaller stakeholders to work together.
Larger stakeholders can have the voting influence of 100 or even 1000 smaller stakeholders which means they have even greater incentive to defect by voting for themselves than they had under a linear distribution. Regardless of how much money any one individual has, there are always many other individuals with similar wealth. Even the wealthiest individual rarely has much more than the next couple wealthiest combined. Furthermore, those who have a large investment in a community also have the most to lose by attempting to game the voting system for themselves.

$1.20

markkujantunen (74) · 6 years ago

I don't think vote buying is a serious issue. And inflation is slowly eroding whale power here because it puts STEEM in the hands of new people.

$1.00

zorank (60) · 6 years ago

The wealth distribution here on steem blockchain is just as in "normal, regular" life. Very few rich, some middle class and many poor poeple. I agree that at the moment you hardly can get what you pay for the vote. There are not enough bots to profitably reward all users, who are paying for votes.

$0.79

denmarkguy (77) · 6 years ago

Is our ecosystem broken? I don't believe it has anything to do with blockchains or centralization... and everything to do with the thing called "Human Nature."

I remember thinking that same thing when I started out here on Steemit... the people at the top being too naive about an assumption that people would exhibit "good and just" behavior.

Sadly, most humans could care less, even in a "good" system. They just exhibit self-serving behavior. The idea of people simply using a planned system for general good? Maybe we're just not ready to accept our share as "enough;" we still greedily scramble for MORE, even when we have enough.

Tough question to answer.

$0.56

frdem3dot0 (58) · 6 years ago

Dont think that there is really a problem. On the contrary I prefer systems such as stellar XLM, where every vote is openly bought, to EOS where there is a constitution stating votes 'should' not be bought. And then there are some non-public deals made in the dark. Because people will do them, the question is just if you can see them.

But I also agree with Vitalik. If you use POW this whole issue does not exists in the first place. POS or dPOS does have some potential especially in scaling, but it also has some serious disadvantages compared to POW.

$0.56

4 votes

maxi01 (56) · 6 years ago

It is a very complex problem, because first of all I don't believe the people who do this think it is wrong, they have a large stake and getting money from it is what they think should happen, so the simple answer would be to make them realize what they are doing is wrong, but actually I don't think this would work. Second flagging doesn't seem to be working, and also its scope is limited not only the two people you mention do this, so you would have to have a huge VP for the flags to mean anything, and that would also be wasting VP. Third you could implement a ban on people who do this, but they could just make a new account and it would be an endless chain of the same event.

So the solution is also far from easy, I know I don't have it, but at least I can visualize the problem.

$0.55

hedge-x (57) · 6 years ago

There is a website https://arewedecentralizedyet.com/ for your reference.

Steem & EOS is not listed but to no surprise Ripple & Steller are the most centralized.

Dash is the most decentralized according to top distribution and number of nodes.

Bitcoin ranks 2nd

Ethereum ranks well. 3rd I believe.

Bircoin Cash ranks well also.

I believe with Steem SMTs will help a lot b/c Steemians can earn other tokens that nothing to do with how much SP they hold.

For example, Dtube may have it’s own distribution and reward system Dtubers can transfer back into Steem to sell or power up.

Similar to how @partiko app is already building it’s own rewards system.

All these Steem apps with their own token rewards system would only fuel Steems value, since that should fuel a rapidly growing user base creating demand for Steem.

Posted using Partiko iOS

$0.55

partiko (66) · 6 years ago

Thanks for mentioning us!

Posted using Partiko Android

$0.06

toymax7 (42) · 6 years ago

My thoughts are, if we know we are going to limited the amount of reward going out to these big users, then why all the $900 on their post?, I believe this is a problem from the genesis, milking a whole lot of people to get to those large amount is preposterous, I guess even no body wants to risk their delegation to support, maybe a flagging bot.

However the future of steemit is at stake, we must all know that sharing the reward pool unequally will make done people drain the system, it's too much the future of some people lies here on steemit and the guys are draining it.

It maybe hard but I think reward pool sharing should cease to be unequally, that way the community can survive

$0.55

https://steemit.com/contest/@diana.feuerberg/contribution-to-question-contest-of-jmhb85

diana.feuerberg (56) · 6 years ago (edited)

Well, it's always the same discussion about crypto currencies: Decentralisation (security) versus performance. Or, in general, in other words: My potatoes are more tasty than yours. Or, as I am a little stupid girly, my shoes are more fashionate than yours (O, are you male, sorry).

For me as a simple user the DPoS is secure enough. Especially on Steemit there is nothing to lose for me (perhaps exept time ...). I can post, communicate, bulid up relationsships to the whole world and have fun.
And all for free. What else more can I wish???

I don't wonder whether Vitalik doesn't like EOS. Nobody is forced to use EOS instead of ETHEREUM. The market finally will show us the best solution. I can watch this in patience.

P.S: Here is my contribution to the contest:

If you like it, feel free to participate. bye the way, it's the first time I used steem bounty ...

$0.33

3 votes

libert (63) · 6 years ago

That's how it works. If you look at any cryptocurrency, most of its share is owned by top users.

Those who got in early in steem, Bitcoin or any other crypto are now reaping the rewards.

Posted using Partiko Android

$0.00

nathanmars (71) · 6 years ago

EOS will moon!!!

$0.00

dnis123 (25) · 6 years ago

excelente informacion mi herma sigue asi .... felicidades por todo lo que estas haciendo !

$0.00

khaled02 (50) · 6 years ago

I am on Steemit little more than a month. My SP is still small, but already has attained a reputation of 50. I think it's not bad for a month. During this time I have seen a lot of users and lot of posts. What struck me, everyone says, write quality posts and you will be happy. So what? I see a lot of really good posts that don't get anything. And then post with one photo and place text and wow, he cleans up. When the eyes of a beginner see this picture, he concludes. And he rarely comes to the conclusion, that it is necessary to continue to work hard, to write interesting posts. He will think, that he can buy the voices of the bots. Yes, you can make money here. But first of all, it is a platform for exchanging information and expressing opinions. Those who have power can influence it. First of all, these are flags. After all, a lot of spam, not only in posts but also in comments. People are not afraid to write outright nonsense, because they will not be anything for it. I really want this platform to develop, I think that each post has its own audience, but it should not be spam. I will continue to do my job here and hope for attention.

$0.00