Increasing Curation, Demand for Steem Power and Community Interaction

dana-edwards (74) · 8 years ago (edited)

1 needs modification, 2 is a good idea

Despite some who call 2 an exit fee, I think Steem Power should stop being marketed as an "investment" to "investors". Market it to users of the platform who want to power up their accounts but make powering up or upgrading a lot easier. Make it possible with a gift card, fiat, a credit card, or Paypal. People should never see Bitcoin or blockchain anywhere on the Steemit official marketing.

Use gamification to make people want to upgrade their Steem Power. Market Steem Dollars to crypto investors for the 10% interest.

Steem Power a purchasable upgrade for accounts

reddit gold is our premium membership program. It grants you access to extra features to improve your reddit experience. It also makes you really quite dapper.

And Alice goes to Walgreens with her Visa Card and buys the Steem Card instead of the Netflix card. It's also possible to sell a Steem Power subscription for people who want to buy a little bit at a time, remeber WoW is subscription based and. Second Life has Linden Dollars which are like our Steem Dollars and can be marketed in a similar way.

Do not make the mistake of listening to crypto anarchists or crypto people when it comes to marketing. Crypto people are horrible at marketing and that includes Bitcoin. All of crypto has a bad reputaton and horrible marketing. Look at Pokemon Go or even Reddit Gold to see how to do marketing, or just hire a profesisonal in gamification and marketing guru. Do not listen to Steemit whales and don't even listen to me. Hire people who are from the gaming world, or who marketed popular social networks.

Note: notice games and social networks never use words like "investor" or "speculator", as this would be like trying to market the social network as a gambling site which is something they all avoid.

UPDATE: IF ANYONE CAN GET IN CONTACT WITH Jane McGonigal AND HIRE HER AS A CONSULTANT IT WOULD BE GREAT FOR STEEMIT. SHE IS A THOUGHT LEADER IN "PURPOSE DRIVEN GAMING" AND HAVING HER ASSOCIATED WITH STEEMIT WOULD BRING MOMENTUM.

References

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18 votes

blakemiles84 (67) · 8 years ago

Both @ned and @dan are crypto anarchists (or voluntaryists ?) so the likelihood of them not listening to that approach is slimmer.

I think you're hitting at a root cause here -- pie in the sky ideals only last as long as it takes for reality to step in. Believing that all SP can be essentially redistributed 'fairly' without psychology and market forces wreaking havoc on the ecosystem is foolish and a sure way to lose market share. Greg Maxwell has a similar, but different, problem... all tech, no business.

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dana-edwards (74) · 8 years ago

I know for a fact Dan and Ned aren't currently listening to crypto-anarchists. Some of the solutions they are considering definitely haven't come from crypto-anarchists. Good ideas are good ideas and they can be crypto-anarchists privately but the platform isn't going to survive appealing to a fringe philosophical and political viewpoint.

Data should be collected. An Ideal user should be chosen. And then all effort should be about encouraging that.

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tuck-fheman (74) · 8 years ago

Believing that all SP can be essentially redistributed 'fairly' without psychology and market forces wreaking havoc on the ecosystem is foolish

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liberosist (70) · 8 years ago

That's pretty much it, really. Demand for Steem Power is stalling because there's limited appeal to the platform. In free-to-play games, whales are addicted and have ample motivation to keep leveling up. On Steemit, I'm not seeing the same appeal. There are a lot of great suggestions throughout this thread. But the essence is clear - creating penalties and controls will never create demand. Adding value and appeal to the platform will.

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kooshikoo (55) · 8 years ago

I wholeheartedly agree about making powering up easier. I borrowed a bit of money to power up,but I have not yet used it,because the whole process seems very cumbersome, so I have procrastinated. The thought of it makes me nervous,to be honest, I´m afraid that I will manage to fuck up somehow and lose my money.

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clevecross (59) · 8 years ago

Exactly in line with some thoughts I have had..... not my intent to spam your comment but would love your opinion on this,
https://steemit.com/steemit/@clevecross/if-it-were-mine-to-change-my-answer-to-stellabella-and-why

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liondani (69) · 8 years ago

or just hire a professional in gamification and marketing guru. Do not listen to Steemit whales and don't even listen to me. Hire people who are from the gaming world, or who marketed popular social networks.

THIS^^^

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steemed (64) · 8 years ago

Both proposals will reduce and not increase the demand for steem. First, divesting already has a 2 year time schedule. If you make vests worthless during those two years by taking away their power to earn any curation rewards, then there will be much less incentive to actually own vests. Committing vests for 2 years already places a huge drag on demand. Completely neutering vests for 2 years will do even more damage.

Second, by having a voting pool that includes steemits vests, you reduce the value of all other vests. The incentive will be to power down, lose your voting rewards, then get a real identity and leverage steemit's vests instead.

The combination of these two proposals is to scrap any incentive to own vests becasue (1) they will be worthless as capital while powering down and (2) they will be unable to compete with steemit's vests when not powering down.

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wingz (65) · 8 years ago

That's why it would be a good idea to provide a sliding scale.

There's a mechanism on a macro scale when liquid steem reaches around 10-13%.

Why shouldn't there be one on a micro level? Otherwise powering down just turns exiting into a tragedy of the commons.

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knircky (73) · 8 years ago

Yes, also if you want to make vest or steem more valuable, trying to increase artificial demand is not going to help. What we need to focus on is quality content and growth. So instead of focusing on the investors, focus on the users. Especially winning new users and retaining them.

I have written a proposal yesterday about bounties that i think will help in this regard. Curation also needs to be improved though.

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@steempowerwhale
upvoting your lifetime dreams!

steempowerwhale (59) · 8 years ago (edited)

Yes, a bounty system would work (think of gamification). If new users do not get all the Steem Power at once but in interval, let's say 5 Steem Power for sign up and the next steem power tied to length of stay etc.

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knircky (73) · 8 years ago

Can you please look into my bounty proposal and give me feedback what you think of it: https://steemit.com/steemit/@knircky/the-potential-of-bounties-an-improvement-proposal-for-steem-to-double-its-value

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ltm (57) · 8 years ago

@steemed really good points that someone like me who is just getting caught up to speed with the technical side as opposed to content creation aspect would have never considered. So much to learn. Thanks for the insight.

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anotherjoe (66) · 8 years ago

IMO, losing voting influence by powering down diminishes the value of investing in SP. If someone is flush in SP, then powering down might be gravy. But for others, powering down at some point might involve their week to week sustenance. And they might contribute so much to the platform that they're able to keep moving ahead of the power-down curve.
Some have invested Steem they bought from exchanges in order to move forward on Steemit more quickly, as part of their investment in the platform. It seems like pulling the rug out from under them to take away their voting influence simply because they're cashing in on part of their investment. Their ability to influence through voting is part of their investment. Keep the investment in SP attractive by maintaining all privileges that come with it, including what remains when powering down.

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sethlinson (64) · 8 years ago

Completely agree about powering down. But I think the idea of voting pools (if the whales actually used them) could help to bring more diverse content to the home page by empowering more users' votes to make a difference.

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anotherjoe (66) · 8 years ago (edited)

I think I agree. Honestly, I didn't understand the particulars about that enough to really form a firm opinion. On the surface, however, I like the idea.
lol, someone flagged my comment. It must have been particularly rude and insulting.

smooth (70) · 8 years ago

lol, someone flagged my comment. It must have been particularly rude and insulting.

No there are some trolls who are going around flagging for no good reason. Don't take it personally, and you will get offsetting upvotes from good community members in response, so it doesn't really hurt anything.

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anotherjoe (66) · 8 years ago

Thanks @smooth. Yeah, the "lol" was real.
Apparently we have flag bearing trolls with nothing better to do.
Thanks again!

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nextgencrypto (65) · 8 years ago (edited)

Maybe you should try to find something that would actually encourage users to want to power up and use the platform rather than trying to lock in those who are already here. Also, give your "whales" a reason to not want to power down and some might stop. Right now there is absolutely NO reason to not be powering down and cashing out every week, plain and simple.

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ats-david (74) · 8 years ago

Something that would encourage more users to power up would be not seeing so many of the whales powering down. I think that's one of the largest psychological hurdles. When the early holders and investors into the platform appear to be cashing out of their investment - while still in beta - it doesn't exactly send a signal to future investors and users that there is confidence that the platform will succeed. It doesn't matter what the motivations are for cashing out. It's a perception problem.

But the question is - how can a whale cash out if they don't earn SBD from curating? They must power down to cash out the rewards. Or...they can engage more in posts and post themselves. However, when this happens, the self upvote becomes another problem and potential for abuse - perceived or real.

So, we have several different issues in play, but the proposed solutions never seem to address them. And the largest resistance that the rest of us see actually comes from whales. At some point, there will need to be a compromise - or we can all just watch the value of Steem plummet, in which case, powering up or down will be moot.

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11 votes

smooth (70) · 8 years ago (edited)

The platform was launched with an incredibly high concentration of stake. There were reasons it was done that way with which one can agree or disagree, but that is in the past and can't be changed now.

The only mathematically feasible way for stake to be redistributed without taking many, many years (as it would to do so via rewards, and even then only if the vested SP remains above 90% which is uncertain) is for existing whales to power down and sell. That is absolutely essential to creating a healthier balance of influence and investment, and discouraging it is harmful.

It will play out to where whales have the stake they actually want, instead of what they inherited from the nature of the launch, and then the power downs will slow to an equilibrium, with a wider base of stakeholders. The sooner we get there the better.

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ats-david (74) · 8 years ago (edited)

I don't disagree that it's a way to redistribute influence. My point is that the reasons aren't being communicated well - especially to those outside of the platform. Investors only see that there is a lot of Steem being dumped in the market. Users only know why it's happening if it's communicated here on Steemit. There doesn't appear to be much of an attempt to explain why whales are powering down, what that money is being used for if it's Steemit-related, or how it could actually be beneficial.

More transparency and some explanations would go a long way.

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ned (69) · 8 years ago

Thanks for your response - I believe there's some merit in what you've written but I can't say I fully understand what your suggestions are.

nextgencrypto (65) · 8 years ago

I don't know what the answer is at this point, but I don't think forcing people to either participate (without powering down) or leave (powering down, not able to participate) is it.

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timcliff (73) · 8 years ago

I don't have any specific suggestions, but it sounds like he is saying we need to find more things that add value to SP (kind to like promoted posts gave people more of a reason to have SBD).

Right now voting power, curation rewards, and long term speculation of a price increase are really the main reasons to power up. The fact you need about $50k worth of SP to really make a difference on the first two is a big discouragement for most people.

Can we think / brainstorm about more benefits that we can offer people for buying/ holding SP?

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blocktrades (74) · 8 years ago

Beyond that, let's just add more reasons for people to participate on the platform, regardless of their SP.

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smooth (70) · 8 years ago (edited)

IMO the most important thing is to widen the appeal of the platform beyond blogging. That could be the promised marketplace, it could be adding better support and encouragement for microblogging, picture sharing, link sharing, etc.

Blogging is too narrow a market with little growth potential, and one that naturally concentrates contributions (and therefore rewards, under any rational scheme that rewards according to contribution) with a relatively small group of successful bloggers.

That is why there isn't much demand for SP right now. Introduce more visible growth potential and investors will be more interested.

It is almost as if someone who is a himself a blogger designed and built this system oblivious to the fact that most social media users and most people are not and do not want to be bloggers.

Constant tweaking of the rules, apart from its own harms, is a massive distraction from addressing the key critical issues that need to be addressed in order for this system to be viable at all. Without investors wanting to buy in, it isn't, and without much better visible growth potential investors will not want to buy in. Period.

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helikopterben (60) · 8 years ago

A huge untapped potential still exists with blogging. For instance, zerohedge would be a huge score if they moved to steem. They could get paid for every post (probably $1000s), solve their troll problem, and create a permanent record of their work in case they were attacked. It seems like it would be an easy sell for a marketing department targeting these types of users. The devs should allocate some funds towards this.

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biophil (66) · 8 years ago

But who ever heard of a @dantheman project that didn't involve constant tweaking of the rules?

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tuck-fheman (74) · 8 years ago

I'm starting to think you're a sockpuppet of mine I'm posting with in my sleep.

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chhayll (55) · 8 years ago (edited)

I think trying to widen the appeal of the platform beyond blogging is indeed a great idea. This can attract new investors to join steemit and stabilize the steem price.

Secondly, lowering the interest on steem power should be done asap. People are powering down, simply because they earn more interest than they lose by powering down. The high growth in interest makes everyone want to power down.

This 2 measures combined together will already have a huge impact on the stability of the steem price. Many people will immediately stop powering down.

dennygalindo (59) · 8 years ago

Maybe the powering down rate should be tied to inflation. 1% is fine when there is 90 percent inflation but when inflation is 230 percent power down is 3% per week.

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chhayll (55) · 8 years ago

Yes. That is a possibility. I just think that we need to get our act straight, and start following the white paper. In the white paper the system described seems sustainable.

demotruk (69) · 8 years ago

Secondly, lowering the interest on steem power should be done asap. People are powering down, simply because they earn more interest than they lose by powering down. The high growth in interest makes everyone want to power down.

Can you explain this in more detail? Why would reducing the benefits of holding Steem Power increase demand for Steem Power?

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chhayll (55) · 8 years ago

When reducing the earnings for powering up from 0.6% per day to 0.19% as stated in the white paper, people will have less incentive to power down. While today when powering down, the earnings of steem power is still greater than the conversion from steem power to steems. If your steem power is growing even when you power down, why would you power up?

Secondly when doing this the distribution, which is one of the goals, happens also much faster. It takes only 25 weeks to get rid of 25%. At the rate of today it would take much longer.

strangerarray (63) · 8 years ago (edited)

I agree that the "blogging only" aspect makes steemit unlike the social media it is trying to revolutionize and replace.

Most traditional social media users have a more "consumer" behaviour, rather than "producer" (content creation, i.e. blogging) behaviour; therefore hindering growth and widespread acceptance.

If it remains blogging only, as @bacchist warns we will end up with more spun content.

jsteck (53) · 8 years ago

THIS is exactly what I am grappling with. I'm not a blogger, why am I here?

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beanz (68) · 8 years ago

One word.

Commerce.

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recursive (62) · 8 years ago

Leading by example would be a good start. At the time of writing this comment, both @ned and @dantheman accounts are powering down. This is pretty ironic actually.

chhayll (55) · 8 years ago (edited)

One simple way to give incentive for people to power up is resetting the interest growth of the power up to just as described in the white paper. 0,19 Percent per day when powering up. And when powering down total steem power will be turned into steem in 104 weeks. At the moment no-one wants to power up, as the interest on steem power is higher than what they lose when powering down. Making them even earn more steems even when powering down.

Smooth made a good comment about attracting new investors by trying to make steemit into more than just "blogging". But as Dan described earlier you guys are probably working around the clock to do this.

Really Ned. Resetting the interest growth to what is described in the white paper seems to me the easiest way to quickly distribute steems and give the incentive for people to power up. For the rest, I feel the free market will solve the other issues by itself.

james212 (56) · 8 years ago (edited)

The pervasively negative price effects of the current power downs are, I believe, an effect of having too expensive financing early on.....ie giving away too much to cheaply to early participates/investors. There may not be much to do but ride it out and hope it does not cost the survival of the project.

Edit: maybe a reduction in the 300% inflation rate will help address the issue. Though I understand the initial high inflation rate has its benefits, Steemit may not be able to afford it due to the financing miscalculation stated above.

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recursive (62) · 8 years ago

The only way to convince anyone to want to be a part of Steem is to make Steem's value proposition irresistible. There are many many ways of doing that. Here are a few examples of features that would make Steem a much more attractive platform:

decentralized market place (already discussed, but no clear timelines so far)
crowdfunding plateform
allow user issued assets (tokens, gateway IOUs)
diversify market pegged currencies
develop the internal market to become a full fledged decentralized exchange for #3 and #4

#2 can be implemented easily on top of the existing post reward system, as explained in an earlier comment.

#3, #4 and #5 exist already in Bitshares. A merger should be considered (I am also a Bitshares holder and would be favorable to seeing a merger). If Bitshares community isn't interested by a merger, turning Bitshares into a Steem sidechain would do the trick and be mutually beneficial for both ecosystem. And if all efforts fail to negociate a deal with the Bitshares community, Steem should just move on and replicate what is good in Bitshares.

The above would help Steem to be considered as a serious crypto currency in the crypto space, and not just a flash in the pan. Since speculators are essentially coming from the crypto space, being considered a major crypto alongside Bitcoin, Monero and Ethereum is key to attracting capital.

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ats-david (74) · 8 years ago

RE: crowdfunding

This is exactly how I've been using Steemit already. (You can read on my blog, if interested.) I think there is a lot of potential for this idea and donations don't even have to come out of someone's own pocket, so there's essentially no risk for those wanting to fund a campaign.

I really don't understand why this isn't happening more and why it's not being publicly marketed. (I've mentioned it to other powers on Steemit.) Crowdfunding here would eliminate nearly all of the problems with current crowdfunding platforms. If I had more technical knowledge and experience, I would develop this for Steemit myself. Is there anyone looking into this on the development side?

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abit (70) · 8 years ago

I don't think it's a good idea to copy features from BitShares.

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recursive (62) · 8 years ago

And this is because .. ?

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bacchist (69) · 8 years ago

When I first joined and read the white paper, I hoped whales would be strategic enough to act as a collusive group and avoid dumping recklessly and crush the price of steem. Now I understand that the whales, as a class not necessarily as individuals, are incredibly short sighted, opportunistic, and all too willing to kill the golden goose. I can't see how catering to them to prevent them from dumping without regard for the consequences is good for the platform long term. That basically turns this into a hostage situation.

helikopterben (60) · 8 years ago

Some of us wouldn't mind buying more at cheaper prices.

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blakemiles84 (67) · 8 years ago

"cheap" is a highly subjective term, particularly if the platform offers more value and long term potential.

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smooth (70) · 8 years ago (edited)

What is good for the platform long term is to redistribute stake and be inclusive to new investors so it isn't so absurdly concentrated (with 1% owning 95%, and that is excluding the 'steemit' account). We'll have to agree to disagree on this.

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bacchist (69) · 8 years ago

I agree with you there, absolutely. I just think that there is a better way of going about it than dumping it indiscriminately.

Powering down and holding some STEEM without dumping it all is something that whales could be doing to redistribute stake while preserving the value of all stakes. I don't know what it would mean to be inclusive to new investors in an atmosphere of declining prices due to overselling.

But yeah, I agree with you in principle.

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bacchist (69) · 8 years ago

@smooth I think that's an oversimplification. Investors have to see that there is an upside and not only a downside. The price can't be low enough for an asset that will only decrease in value. The has been no history of a stable price since prior to July 4th. And there has been no history of prices increasing outside of a speculative bubble shortly after July 4th, and a bounce from Poloniex...

The platform will never attract a meaningful quantity of new investors by demonstrating that it is incapable of protecting the investments of existing investors.

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smooth (70) · 8 years ago (edited)

Lower prices are much better for new investors. If I'm looking to invest 10000 USD I would prefer to receive a larger amount of stake for that investment than a smaller. I would also prefer more available upside relative to my fixed (10000 USD) downside. At the earlier 400 million USD market cap the upside was much more limited than it is now (though 100 million USD is still no bargain basement price). That naturally invites more demand from investors who don't want to buy in at an inflated valuation.

smooth (70) · 8 years ago (edited)

@bacchist

The platform will never attract a meaningful quantity of new investors by demonstrating that it is incapable of protecting the investments of existing investors

I agree with you there. The way to do that is to make the platform better and more appealing, not by propping it up so investors enter higher and get dumped on later.

I do not agree that a low price means that it can only decline, nor that at 100 million cap, it is anywhere near that. Plenty of assets decline to a value that is a more attractive entry point then gain more investor interest, particularly if the actual value delivered by the asset is increased.

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ats-david (74) · 8 years ago (edited)

@smooth

But the problem is that the pressure is continually downward due to the power-down timeline. Powering down is a two-year schedule. If the largest stakeholders are powering down and selling their stake and this can be expected to continue for at least two years - while they continue to sell more SP from internal accumulation - does this not become a problem with consistent, large downward pressures?

If whales are indeed redistributing their stake, I would expect to see them no longer accumulating through their curating habits and to see newer users buying the SP on the market. But I don't believe that has been happening, according to the figures that are presented every week. There is selling by whales, but there doesn't appear to be the off-setting investment back into the platform by non-whales. The buying of SP is much lower and whales continue to accumulate more through curating based on their large influence.

Am I missing something? Is there an aspect to this that is just lost on me? I don't see the redistribution of influence occurring because the Steem is being dumped in large amounts on the market and being bought by investors. I see some of it being redistributed internally from curating. The actual external investing is lacking. So, I don't know how dumping on the external markets actually redistributes. So far, the only effect that it has had is driving down prices.

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smooth (70) · 8 years ago (edited)

@ats-david.

The buying of SP is much lower and whales continue to accumulate more through curating based on their large influence.

What you are missing is the increase in the money supply (aka dilution). As long as whales aren't buying back their own sales in a sham trade, it means new investors (or at least smaller investors) are accumulating it and the stake is being distributed. Curation rewards are only a tiny portion of the reward pool (currently well under 25%); it is mathematically impossible for curation rewards to offset dilution from content rewards PLUS selling. Not even close.

Currently there is an accumulation of liquid STEEM on exchanges being held either by speculators or perhaps by whales themselves, who are powering down but in fact not selling (we can't know for sure). That is unsustainable and before long that trend will stop. It is the natural evolution of a process where at one time there was 0% of the supply on exchanges (because there weren't any) and now there in approximately 2-3%.

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brendio (55) · 8 years ago

The price can't be low enough for an asset that will only decrease in value. The has been no history of a stable price since prior to July 4th. And there has been no history of prices increasing outside of a speculative bubble shortly after July 4th, and a bounce from Poloniex...

Lower prices are much better for new investors. If I'm looking to invest 10000 USD I would prefer to receive a larger amount of stake for that investment than a smaller. I would also prefer more available upside relative to my fixed (10000 USD) downside.

I agree with @smooth here. I remember first finding out about bitcoin when it was around $30 and saw it shoot to $45 by the time I could get accounts set up to buy. I had strong FOMO. It was a bit disheartening to see the price eventually fall to $2, but I'm glad I still saw potential in it and had the opportunity to increase my stake at lower prices with a lot higher potential upside.

I've only recently found out about Steem and see its potential. I still think it has a lot of improvement before it gains traction and see the current phase as a reality check on the initial exuberance, just like the long fall of bitcoin to $2 before eventually gaining traction.

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val (57) · 8 years ago

I think one who decided to leave won't do any good in terms of curation and @nextgencrypto probably is a good example of this.

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smooth (70) · 8 years ago (edited)

You are ignorant and should ideally refrain from insulting one of your largest investors who also happens to be (and always has been) heavily involved in initiatives that support and promote Steem. Unlike you, I happen to be aware of his involvement with both sponsoring the Steemcleaners team and the Curie project (which is specifically curation, since you mentioned it). I don't know what else he might be doing. Your comment is entirely off base and inappropriate.

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razvanelulmarin (72) · 8 years ago

props for not flagging, although that might be considered slander...

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val (57) · 8 years ago

@nextgencrypto is powering down for a long time, I don't see how he is investing in Steem. How come he became our largest investor? I can only see how he is monetizing on our work.

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smooth (70) · 8 years ago (edited)

@ned and @dantheman are both powering down. Are they investing in Steam? Have they decided to leave?

I already explained some of the ways he has invested and is investing in Steem. I see him on steemit.chat every single day working with abuse and curation teams that he is both funding and working on directly. The list was not complete. Since you know none of this, you continue to speak out of ignorance, which helps no one, most notably, yourself.

Kindly refrain from inappropriately flagging my comments because they call you out on your ignorance.

val (57) · 8 years ago (edited)

I'm not following political debates closely but as far as I remember nextgen decided to leave back in June not agreeing with dev team on curation rewards, so he started powering down a long be before any other whales.
Anyway calling nexgen largest investor shows your ignorance and this is why I flagged your comment.

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smooth (70) · 8 years ago (edited)

calling nexgen largest investor

Please refrain from misquoting me

"one of your largest investors"

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stoner19 (61) · 8 years ago (edited)

The intent is to reward uses as well as receive rewards for content. I don't see how losing stake weight by powering down helps at all. This means that everyone will either power down and say "forget it, I'm not going to participate anymore because I'm obligated to keep my STEEM POWER up in order to have an influence on voting" or fewer and fewer people will power down (which I don't see happening, as the intent of this is to earn money and still be able to cash out). Users shouldn't be punished for withdrawing their earnings. I think the 104 weeks alone for powering down is fine.

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jademont (68) · 8 years ago

Big whales from dev teams need to stop powering down and selling, that's the only way that gather the confidence of people again. Otherwise, more and more people will leave.

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craig-grant (75) · 8 years ago (edited)

I think both ideas are great, please implement both of them. The loss of voting power for powering down is amazing, and the voting pool is needed very badly to increase interest from new users, and users who have a good reputation but no voting power.

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wingz (65) · 8 years ago

Wait a minute... are more than 80% of big SP holders powering down?

Stop the madness... is this why the price is going down? Noooo, it couldn't be...

Wait.... could we make powering down at this stage less attractive and force those powering down to distribute significantly more to others?

No, no... it sounds too good to be true...

Wait that's exactly what this proposal will solve. Why should people powering down receive the same benefits as those not? If you power down you're out, why should you have any influence on Steemit?

Why would an investor get involved when the amount of liquid Steem released is being increased at a compounded rate per week? If you want out now, go for it, just know that you'll be penalised for it and SP holders will be rewarded.

Tragedy of the commons.

beanz (68) · 8 years ago (edited)

If you power down you are NOT OUT! Not by a 2 year long shot! That's the major and critical difference between steem and the rest of the crypto world! You cannot just pump and dump steem! If you buy it, you are invested in the future for steemit.

The whales are not selling out by powering down! They're getting paid for investing! Why would anybody invest in anything if not to get paid?!

I hope I never have enough money to invest in an initiative that helps people with less money than me because witnessing this entitlement and lack of gratitude is too disheartening. No wonder the wealthiest people in the world only look out for themselves.

$0.39

wingz (65) · 8 years ago (edited)

Entitlement and lack of gratitude? I don't think so....

That wasn't my intention I was merely stating a few fundamentals given the context of a market and new investors wanting to get in. It's a very risky investment when you know that the amount of liquid stock is increasing at a compounded rate.

When we're looking at what was a 3-400 million dollar market cap the investors will need to have institutional size.

They'll look at the structure and immediately flag it in their heads as not having 'liquidity' and question why all the large holders are exiting. It's just common sense.

I may have been a bit theatrical to make a point. However the game theory of the proposals makes a lot of sense in the long run.

$0.00

ats-david (74) · 8 years ago

...and question why all the large holders are exiting. It's just common sense.

It's really shocking to me that nobody here seems to understand this or wants to actually acknowledge it. Nobody is going to invest if the initial investors are dumping Steem before the platform is even out of beta testing and is sustainable. Maybe it isn't common sense?

beanz (68) · 8 years ago (edited)

I apologise @wingz that comment wasn't really directed at you but at everybody on this thread arguing that whales should not be powering down.

If whales are to be "locked in" by any means more than the 2 years they already are, would discourage anybody else who might otherwise wish to participate.

Somebody else here said it already but if the system can't hold itself while whales power down then the system doesn't work.

everittmickey (52) · 8 years ago

If you find that you are in danger of having too much money send it to me.

$0.00

beanz (68) · 8 years ago (edited)

Lol, no problem I'll send you $100 to write something for me and then you can act ungrateful and entitled by trying to lock me into a contract that forces me to pay you $100 every week to participate in a game of I give you money for content.

That makes having money a very attractive idea. I'm damned if I do and I'm damned if I don't.

$0.00

alyssas (60) · 8 years ago (edited)

Is your thinking that given the choice of powering down and voting, the whales would choose to power down instead of vote, and hence whale voting would be eliminated entirely from the eco-system?

Do whales actually make a lot of money from curation? If they don't (and I think the rewards have dropped from the early days), then they'll simply continue to power down, so the selling pressure on steem will remain.

will-zewe (61) · 8 years ago

Depends how they vote right. Smooth made 3000 sp last week, dantheman made 700 and donkeypong made 100 (all estimates). Just some random whales I chose but just check their curation rewards if you're curious.

$0.00

alyssas (60) · 8 years ago

If you are asking a whale to choose between powering down for $20,000 a week, and staying powered up to earn $3000 a week, they'll choose the former.

So there won't be a let up on the selling pressure on steem (and the whole idea behind the proposal was that it would stop them selling - but it won't).

$0.00

donkeypong (75) · 8 years ago

Some are voting to make money while others are not. If you have a lot of SP, then you make money voting anyway. But much of my voting has been upclicking Project Curie's chosen posts and following AFTER whale votes to add a few more dollars for those deserving posters. One can use votes to make money or to help allocate it to others.

$0.00

carlidos (61) · 8 years ago

Damn man.... you hit it right on the head, @craig-grant I do agree with you fine sir! do it @ned before the weekend, you know its a solid move.

$0.00

peacekeeper (58) · 8 years ago

That is his flow..... :)

$0.00

craig-grant (75) · 8 years ago

yes, this is my flow, honesty and transparency is true freedom

$0.00

donkeypong (75) · 8 years ago (edited)

First of all, I want to thank Ned for putting these ideas out for community feedback. One of the reasons I disagreed so strongly with the 5 vote idea (in another recent proposal) was that it was being included already in a pending release. Making us an offer we can't refuse is a shitty way to run a community; asking for community feedback is much better. Kudos to you for that.

However, I find it rather disingenuous for you to mega-upvote the first comment that fully agrees with your ideas in this post, since they are meant to provoke an open discussion. (EDIT: You downsized it, which I think is appropriate.)

I think your first idea may have some merit; I need to learn about it more. Curation seems to be working well, from what I can see. Project Curie is discovering and rescuing many worthy authors from total obscurity. I think the site is trending in the right direction with more intensive efforts to find and reward undiscovered and deserving posters.

Maybe the curation pool you describe would help. If so, I would like to learn more.

I do not like the power down penalty, mostly for the reasons that @smooth has discussed in his responses. Not only would it hurt large accounts' ability to curate, but it also would freeze Steemit's redistribution. As @smooth has described, allowing big whale accounts to sell their Steem is really the most efficient means of redistributing Steem to new holders. I might be OK with some movement in the direction of perhaps some "fee" for Powering Down often (if this was needed to address some problem), but I think that penalizing Powering Down in any severe way will hurt Steemit by making redistribution and curation nearly impossible.

Can't we work on developing these other pillars of the ecosystem to help create more demand for Steem, rather than trying to control its use?

$2.56

9 votes

mscleverclocks (56) · 8 years ago

I think loss of voting influence for powering down is fair!

I'm pretty new so I'm not sure I understand the voting pool idea. Would I transfer SD to @steemit for example and then my would get a boost in voting power? Or how would it work?

$1.59

jrcornel (84) · 8 years ago

I fail to see how this will increase demand for steem... It seems more like it would discourage new users from signing up. SP is already locked for 2 years, which is probably the biggest reason people don't want to be locked in as there is no guarantee steemit will even be around 2 years from now... and now adding more of a drag when you take away curation rewards... makes it likely the move will do the opposite of what it is intended to do

$1.12

wingz (65) · 8 years ago (edited)

I agree there should be a cost to powering down a stake. During the distribution phase I can see why many people are powering down. There should be disincentives to this.

Maybe even a reduction in the % of Vests that accrue SP?

$1.04

15 votes

razvanelulmarin (72) · 8 years ago

a troll got to you, upvoted.

aarontyree (38) · 8 years ago (edited)

If you value the observations of an outsider...

or and are curious what someone with new eyes sees coming in here...

Ive been watching and learning for about a week. I love what is going on here. And its not just because of the potential to make bits of $ here and there. In all honesty the $ is secondary. At least for me. This place is pure. And raw. Its different, and moving in the opposite direction from the increasingly corporate internet.

But is it possible that what you need most right now to raise value and incentive is not found on the block chain, but in the human element? A healthy, vibrant community cant be built by game theory and incentives alone. That takes people who focus on that aspect intentionally. Not block chain developers, social developers.

$1.02

mustafaomar (7) · 8 years ago

sounds like good idea , but i will be left out coz of my reputation score . please note that i have no posts or comments been voted down , used to be (5) before the reputation feature update. something wrong with my account it might be a bug !!! i dont kno.

$0.79

publicworker (59) · 8 years ago

Why no mention about diversifying steem power contract term?
https://github.com/steemit/steem/issues/330

Ppl don't buy steem power because of 104 weeks term.

$0.71

krnel (78) · 8 years ago

Pretty good ideas.

I curate content by going through the "new" section, each day. If I had more SP this would help get people more payouts. But I don't just upvote anything... hehe...

The Power Down is interesting. I Power Down and then Power Up with the STEEM I get. I read a post a week or two ago saying this increases the SP I get... So I do it. I don't cash out with the Steem.

I support the changes either way. It seems like a good way to incentivise people to certain behavior.

Take care. Peace.

$0.67

nippel66 (64) · 8 years ago

Great idea.
With this more peaple would be able to get knownd.
And the Power down idea is also a great idea, so peaple would hold steem and not power down.

razvanelulmarin (72) · 8 years ago

upvoted because you got flagged by a troll

$0.00

nippel66 (64) · 8 years ago

Tanks. Why did this guy downvote this?

$0.00

imag1ne (54) · 8 years ago

Very pleased that the system develops. I express my deep gratitude to people like you!!!

rainchen (61) · 8 years ago

Agree ! Powering down will effect the voting power , this the most brilliant idea so far from you @ned .

15 votes

funnyman (70) · 8 years ago

I completely agree with you ned. But it's not as easy as it seems. It may conflict with other people.

ned (69) · 8 years ago

Hopefully we hear from them if it does.

razvanelulmarin (72) · 8 years ago

look at the interest of the people opposing imho. if you listen to the community, the right answer is right there. you have the hivemind of a ton of GREAT PEOPLE here. It would be a pity to not use it...

funnyman (70) · 8 years ago

I think we should create a Poll to get a quantitative response from the community.

razvanelulmarin (72) · 8 years ago

upvoted because you got flagged by a troll

11 votes

smooth (70) · 8 years ago

Upvoted in recognition of anti-troll patrol

$0.00

funnyman (70) · 8 years ago

Thanks, I got scared for a minute :)

$0.00

jbouchard12 (60) · 8 years ago

How would you find curators and guarantee they wouldn't be trolls?

razvanelulmarin (72) · 8 years ago

upvotes becuase you got flagged by a troll

$0.00

samether (58) · 8 years ago (edited)

The pool can be organized having the follow list as a median....

$0.00

ltm (57) · 8 years ago

I think the voting pool idea makes a lot of sense and seems like a better approach than the current system.

razvanelulmarin (72) · 8 years ago

upvoted because you got flagged by a troll

anns (53) · 8 years ago

Some Good Ideas Here
Keep On Steeming
I Am Still A little New
Learning The ropes
Meeting Nice People Here
Will Stay Tuned

razvanelulmarin (72) · 8 years ago

upvoted because you got flagged by a troll

expedition (47) · 8 years ago

hay @ned... It is a good idea!! :)

razvanelulmarin (72) · 8 years ago

upvoted because you got flagged by a troll

mrgrey (57) · 8 years ago (edited)

Hi Ned I think allowing steem holders to delegate their steem power is a great idea, what would you think about minimizing the number of votes individuals can make so the worth increases ?
edit another thought was to include a star rating system so that users can rate the post quality instead of upvoting then upvotes can be used for really good stuff

15 votes

shenanigator (68) · 8 years ago (edited)

what would you think about minimizing the number of votes individuals can make so the worth increases?

My understanding is the upcoming voting power change has this effect. You will now have the option to make your vote worth 8x as much.

If you can currently place 40 votes worth $0.10 each, with this hardfork, each day you'll be able to place:

40 votes worth $0.10 (at 12.5% slider power).
20 votes worth $0.20 (at 25% power).
10 votes worth $0.40 (at 50% power).
5 votes worth $0.80 (at 100% power).
Almost any other vote combination worth a total of $4.00.

$0.00

sigmajin (65) · 8 years ago

absolutely false.

shenanigator (68) · 8 years ago

That's not an argument. Care to elaborate?

$0.00

https://steemit.com/steem/@sigmajin/what-every-user-should-know-about-the-upcoming-change-in-voting

sigmajin (65) · 8 years ago

patelincho (67) · 8 years ago

And i think somone have to look of the not show coments and finaly make something about ................. spam flags ???

$0.64

kainmarx (53) · 8 years ago

I fully agree with the powering down losing voting influence. That would prevent people who're just here trying to cash out from being able to affect the platform very much if they want their money. If they want to have more influence, they'll have to keep their money invested! :)

As far as the voting pools go, I think it's a great idea too, but you hit the nail on the head. It could be used negatively and people could sell positions or influence.

To be honest though, anything you do to alter the platform will be seen as a double-edged blade by the community, as there will always be some who dislike it altogether as well as the people who love it.

Keep up the great work regardless, it's honestly just nice to see your involvement in things and that you're dedicated to making positive changes or listening to the community!

$0.64

timcliff (73) · 8 years ago (edited)

Similar to a voting pool (but a little different) you could allow users to delegate percentages of their voting power to individual users and split the curation rewards with them.

It would allow users with a lot of SP who may not have the time or ability to curate well to have a good curator do the work for them, and it would allow good curators who may not have a lot of SP to get better rewards for good curation work.

$0.62

treeleaves (57) · 8 years ago

You're right, but lets reward for stake independent of powering down.

svamiva (60) · 8 years ago

That's exactly what I wrote just a few hours ago

Why we just have to observe helplessly what is going on? Why we don't have some sort of "Internal Market for Voting Delegation" ?
One example : mine weekly curation rewards are about 0.3%. Someone can make 3%. Why can't I delegate mine SP to someone for better rewards?
Second example : some group of people suggests - let's create a "yoga- whale".
We can't promise high rewards, we just want every good article about yoga to get some good reward. Why can't I delegate some SP for that project ?
Granted, we don't know, what will happen. Maybe all the people will delegate all the power to just a few Super-Mega-Whales, making power distribution even more uneven that it's now - but that would be people's choice .

dajohns1420 (61) · 8 years ago

I don't see how further limiting authors access to the money they've earned will help incentivize the platform. I'm not as smart as Ned though...

hisnameisolllie (68) · 8 years ago (edited)

I think the idea of Powered Down accounts losing their voting power is a good one. This would have an impact of slowing down distribution, however it would support the price of Steem which would result in many users feeling far more positive about Steemit in the short to medium term...

Commitment should be rewarded.

$0.57

shenanigator (68) · 8 years ago (edited)

Another option to reward commitment would be to give bonus voting power to those not powering down.

The longer you go without powering down, the larger your voting bonus.
Start a power down and you lose all or part of your bonus.

I think this option would do much more to encourage power-ups. Thought I'd throw it out there, it's something to consider.

$11.57

liondani (69) · 8 years ago

I saw it after I posted a similar answer.Of course I like it!

smooth (70) · 8 years ago

This already exists. The longer you participate in a meaningful way, the more SP you earn in the form of rewards and the higher your influence becomes. Rewarding people for time alone effectively penalizes active involvement.

$0.00

shenanigator (68) · 8 years ago (edited)

That's true, but is rewarding meaningful participation enough of an incentive? I don't know.

Also, in this scenario, you wouldn't be effectively penalized for active involvement if you are also holding SP long-term.

$0.00

m4ever (56) · 8 years ago

I like this.

$0.00

razvanelulmarin (72) · 8 years ago

this should be higher!

$0.00

liondani (69) · 8 years ago (edited)

Commitment should be rewarded.

I agree with this statement but right now we are discussing how to penalize no-commitment!
So maybe it would be better to make a proposal that rewards the accounts that don't power-down

What if the steemit account votes equally for ALL NOT POWERED DOWN witnesses ;)

If powering down stake loses voting influence

for the same reason...
"if NOT powering down stake GAIN more voting influence!"

$0.96

hisnameisolllie (68) · 8 years ago

That's a much better way of putting it. Kudos @liodani

razvanelulmarin (72) · 8 years ago

commitment should be rewarded: bingo.
one way to notice is that is in number of "comments" and total posts. When i see someone with thousands in each post but like 200 post total[ that includes comments ] that's not commitment, that's someone with the hand DEEP into the honey pot.

james-show (58) · 8 years ago

It is real nice when both dan and ned down vote each others stupid ideas.
I really think that!!! The ideas of ned presented here, in the form presented are crazy as hell! So they deserve dan's down vote.
So was dan's idea of changes to the S(B)D ... which ned down voted!

$0.46

liondani (69) · 8 years ago

$0.00

mammasitta (70) · 8 years ago (edited)

Nice to read that improvements on the way or at least discussed because the voting system as it is frustrates me. I am collecting my few steem$$ every day and power up and up cent by cent because I believe in this platform on a long term. I also spend it back into steemit (radiosteem, rewards , promotion etc ...) and don't cash out a dime. I collected 420 so far. Never saw a whale, maybe a couple of times. I suggest to spread all your "power" with more fairness . Power down might be a good solution but not sure if you don't want to upset the investors. I like your first proposal. Whatever it is, find something because your loyal believers and members with good reputation but no SP will let you down otherwise very soon, thinking steemit is a scam. You should find ways that more people sign up and happy to stay.

https://steemit.com/steem-ideas/@demotruk/website-perks-for-steem-power

demotruk (69) · 8 years ago

Hi @ned, here's a simple idea to boost the value of Steem Power for smaller stakeholders: website perks such as avatars.

recursive (62) · 8 years ago (edited)

Allow Steem holders to delegate their Steem Power voting rights to a voting pool

That's precisely what I proposed to you 5 months ago, and that you didn't bother reading / reverting about, like the other half a dozen structured proposal I made to avoid name squatting, account farming, spamming, plagiarism etc. You are going to say I should stop acting like I knew everything and pulling the occasional "I told you so" stunt over and over again.

But goddammit @ned, yet again you are coming up with a "new" idea that you could have implemented months ago had you paid more attention to what the early community was warning you about.

Anyway, I'm just jaded I guess. Patiently waiting for you to have "new ideas" about everything else I and other early Steemers told you already including name squatting, account farming (that's still ongoing) and the fact only invite-based referral should be subsidized etc. At least I'm glad you have these great flash of insight eventually, even if somewhat of a deja-vu for everyone else who has been paying attention.

$0.38

blakemiles84 (67) · 8 years ago

I can relate with this... I posted about the voting pools as guilds three weeks ago; no disincentives for powering down four weeks ago; and a variable power up/down function four weeks ago as well.

Am I ahead of the curve or just irrelevant ? :)

$0.00

tuck-fheman (74) · 8 years ago

I think Dan & Ned are inculcated a lot and are too busy to realize the ideas they express may not entirely be their own. ;)

$0.00

hunterisgreat (56) · 8 years ago

I think it will always be like a typical freemium game. Most users (95%) never monetize, and have lower engagement on average. What gives them power and distributes it away from those with great engagement/power/monetization is the collective power of the minnows.

A strong focus on enabling a larger user base I think should be a primary goal, and by enabling I mean:

Marketing, spreading the word
Careful awareness and management of user expectations and incentives to keep in line with game theory & psychology.
Streamlining the user interface. Not that its bad now, but there are always usability improvements that could happen. Small annoyances can kill a product.
Enable third parties to create alternative front ends so users can go to whatever interface they find most palatable.
Focus on great mobile platform support/integration. Curation is easy to do while you're sitting in a Dr.'s office, at lunch, on the toilet. Authoring is hard to do on a phone. If I could post a single photo of something I experience it doesn't mean it is poor content, though such a post would likely do poorly at present as there is a tendency to focus on quality = quantity it seems.
Make it easy to join. I have several friends who can't until the SMS feature is available.

With a user base an order of magnitude larger I think the sum of a ton of minnow votes will collectively provide the incentive it should and the wealth distribution be less of a factor.

Anyway, just spitballing ideas.

$0.35

11 votes

radioactivities (61) · 8 years ago

"Careful awareness and management of user expectations and incentives to keep in line with game theory & psychology."

Exactly...the system is good...there is a PR problem in the Expectations Department

$0.00

complexring (68) · 8 years ago

The only account that can effectively power down to sell steem and not be penalized would be @steemit. What if I wanted to power down to continuously buy SBD but am not leaving the eco-system? I'm not saying that the idea isn't without merit, but I would rather see more incentive to POWER UP as opposed to disincentives for POWERING DOWN.

For instance, one could have discounts on promoted content if paid for in STEEM POWER.

$0.25

blakemiles84 (67) · 8 years ago

A market for Steem tokens that become locked like with the @null account sounds like a solid idea to me.

$0.00

rubenalexander (69) · 8 years ago

Besides this idea for curation pools, have you considered allowing for author groups or guilds?

The guild would be there to allow for proofreading and research from separate parties that would all get a slice of the authors tip reward. This would definitely encourage high quality content.

blakemiles84 (67) · 8 years ago

Guilds! huzzah! https://steemit.com/steemit/@blakemiles84/the-steemit-guild-system

$0.00

rubenalexander (69) · 8 years ago

I love this post. I think it is a great idea. There has to be a way to hack it until it is built into the steem platform.

$0.00

adpipop (44) · 8 years ago (edited)

This is my first day here on Steemit. I've watched steemit in the last 3 weeks. I see one great debate here and I'm trying to undestand how much I can...Please don't tell me that Steemit is about to collapse exactly when I've decided to try it!

thecryptodrive (70) · 8 years ago

Not collapsing my friend :) Steemit is only a few months old, it is still a baby learning to walk, it will fall sometimes but it will learn and grow big one day, beyond everyone's expectations.

$0.00

blakemiles84 (67) · 8 years ago

Growing pains.

But don't be fooled. Existential threats to long term success are always dancing around. Plenty of people would love to see Steem spontaneously combust into a ball of fire, if for no other reason than to gloat over the corpse.

Bitcoin Maximalists like Tone Vays for example.

$0.00

ntomaino (63) · 8 years ago

@ned glad you're thinking about these things, though I generally agree with @smooth (1 could be interesting, 2 is a bad idea).

The big thing that Synereo and others are thinking about to disrupt Steem is more "fairly" distributing rewards to good content creators. If they do this, then they've got a shot. If Steem continually improves at this to the point where the majority of good content creators feel they're adequately rewarded, I don't think Synereo has a shot.

$0.13

wiser (58) · 8 years ago

I like that this is all being thought about. My favorite part is where it would be clear that when you power down, that SP loses its voting power. I also like that you would be able to designate a certain percentage of SP to power down. Right now I think it's an all or nothing deal. When powering down becomes relevant to me, I would like to be able to only power down some of my SP.

$0.13

stellabelle (75) · 8 years ago

I know this might sound simplistic, but I think if you focus on the ingredients of happiness, you will find your answer. Making steemit a place that people don't want to leave is the key. I have some ideas that I'm working on.....

$0.10

beanz (68) · 8 years ago

"don't want to leave"

...but not disincentivised to leave.

$0.00

blakemiles84 (67) · 8 years ago

How about "incentivized to stay" instead ?

beanz (68) · 8 years ago

$0.00

knircky (73) · 8 years ago

Agree. I look forward to what you will share. I also made a proposal to make steem better. Can you please take a look at it. It has a summary so you can make up your mind quickly if you want to read all of it.

$0.00

knircky (73) · 8 years ago (edited)

I don't think these proposal touch the core of the issue.

The issue right now is that curating what people like goes against what is profitable. I think we tried to create curation mechanism that attracts good content. However when I curate I am driving by when I vote for something and also how popular that person is. I.e. i will always vote for your content just because you are popular and it is profitable.

People never should vote for me, because I am not. Even if I create great content voting for me is very very risky and it is much smarter to just wait for someone with a good history and vote his next article exactly 30 minutes after he/she publishes it.

Curating is much more a self-fulfilling prophecy than selecting quality right now.

What you propose above does not deal with that.

I think we need to look again at what can we do to attract great content and reward it. And we also need to make sure that new users do not get pushed away.

I have brought several people to this platform that have written what I think is pretty decent content and have not received any votes, we need to figure out how to give them a little recognition. Otherwise they all go back to Facebook.

I have written about your bounty system and given a way to improve: https://steemit.com/steemit/@knircky/the-potential-of-bounties-an-improvement-proposal-for-steem-to-double-its-value

@Ned Please read and give feedback. I also have some ideas about how to improve retention. Let me know if any of my input is useful and I will keep contributing.

$0.08

snowflake (65) · 8 years ago (edited)

This post should have more upvotes.
Just recently there was a post from @gavvet that received 250 votes in less than an hour with 0 comment, this is completely messed up. How is it that 250 people upvoted him and not one person commented? You guessed it, because not one person actually read his post, they just checked author username to see if they would get a good curation reward and blindly upvoted it. Good content gets a lot of interest ( comment ) I think they should only give curation reward to the first 20 people who upvote or something but they really need to do something about this.

$0.00

smooth (70) · 8 years ago (edited)

Popularity is not that same as "quality". A voting system will always measure popularity (which is something that aggregates across voters) and not quality (which is something people will rarely entirely agree about).

If you want to reward quality the only way to do that is with non-aggregated rewards, meaning you decide what you think is quality and you reward it by tipping with your own money. You are perfectly able to do that now. Do more of it and you will attract more of the quality you seek.

$0.00

ltm (57) · 8 years ago

that would actually be a cool idea to have your own tipping "unit", whatever amount that is for you personally, and then simply transfer it to the writer directly. Particularly once you had enough accumulated that each unit was relatively...insignificant (not the right word but you know what I mean). Might look to experiment and maybe write a piece about it. Thanks for the (now obvious) idea @smooth!

$0.00

knircky (73) · 8 years ago

Agree with your points. Quality is impossible to define.

You say vote for what I think good quality is. The issue is the curation does not work that way. I get rewarded if I vote the way everyone else is voting. SO instead of voting for what I like, I should vote for what I think is popular.

I think this is not optimal and should be looked at. If I could actually vote for what I like and everyone else too, then I think the platform wold be much better.

$0.00

knircky (73) · 8 years ago (edited)

@smooth can you please give me some feedback on the proposal I wrote and referenced above. It has a short summary that should allow you to make a judgment quickly. If you dislike it please let me know what? I am certain it is not a waste of your time.

$0.00

bendjmiller222 (64) · 8 years ago

One thing I've thought about is giving certain privileges to different levels of steem power. On Tinder there is a feature where you can essentially mega upvote a user you like.

Maybe for every x amount of steempower you hold you could receive some sort of special vote you could use that doubles the upvote you normally have. Encouraging people to reach certain levels of steem power.

Also maybe you could receive a one time award for every x amount of steem you power up. (Others could suggest what this may be). Maybe a page similar to promoted feed that will bump users who power up into a higher "trending" spot on that feed.

sigmajin (65) · 8 years ago

I think the first idea is great in its intent, but it has the same problem all the curation schemes have. Its nothing more than a way to manage the real problem. In a way, its not different than whats already going on with gavvet/DS109/etc. WHat you get from it is a kenesyian beauty contest, where the conent that gets upvoted is far removed from what most people want to see.

So on one hand you have what the people really want. 1 step further from that, is what ned, dan, bernie, smooth and the whales think the people want. 1 step further from that is what l2 curators (like the person your giving steem power to in your voting pool) think ned/dan/bernie/smooth think the people want.

The reason steem power is devalued is because buyers are priced out of the market. No one wants to pay ten grand to have a vote worth a 5 cents. The best solution to this is to make investment more attractive by basing it on some non linear system.

I get that there can't be hundreds of neds and bernies. But people making real significant investments have to be rewarded with real, significant influence. If not, what incentive do they have to invest?

Personally, I don't like the second idea. Like i tell all the people who complain about whales dumping, Steem's price problem is on the demand side, not the supply side.
You shouldn't peanlize people for powering down beyond the obvious penalty of losing the voting influence they get cash for. All you accomplish by stripping powering down vests of their voting influence is spreading out the benefit of powering down (the cash) but requiring payment upfront. Especially with the price in a month long slide, this is going to make people not want to power up.

smooth (70) · 8 years ago (edited)

. The reason steem power is devalued is because buyers are priced out of the market. No one wants to pay ten grand to have a vote worth a 5 cents. The best solution to this is to make investment more attractive by basing it on some non linear system.

What you are actually calling for here are lower market prices. You can't expect to buy in for 10 grand to a system with a 100 million USD market cap and have a lot of influence. Mathematically that just doesn't work. Buy in for a million and you can have a 1% stake, which is a significant, though not huge, influence. Expecting a 0.01% stake to have a significant influence is pretty unrealistic.

The main driver for people wanting to buy in has to be expectation of gains. That's even stated in the white paper (speculative demand). The rewards, influence, etc., that's all icing on the cake. We need to bake the cake first.

sigmajin (65) · 8 years ago (edited)

What you are actually calling for here are lower market prices. You can't expect to buy in for 10 grand to a system with a 100 million USD maket cap and have a lot of influence.

A lower market price is certainly one way to solve the problem. And, unfortunately, its the default way, because if nothing changes to increase demand, the market will step in and create a price that reflects what people are willing to pay.

Value comes from utility. Real utility. People who think that something like bitcoin has the marketcap it has today because of speculation don't understand the economics of bitcoin, or where its value really comes from.

If steem had a chance to pick up a significant amount of value from speculation, it was gone weeks ago. Its been sliding too far for too long.

But even if it had picked up more than it did (and i think it could have with just a little luck), the greater fool game has to end at some point. At some point, you simply run out of fools. Especially with a currency that has such a high rate of creation.

You can't expect to buy in for 10 grand to a system with a 100 million USD market cap and have a lot of influence.

This is correct. The problem is that the marketcap is artificially high due to ninja coins. I get that this isnt something people want to discuss, but thats the state of the union. Too few people own too high a percentage of the voting market share that they never had to go into their pocket and buy.

Take all the SP produced in the ninja mine. Now figure out how much its really worth in sweat equity. The matket, sooner or later, will take the price down to a level where its really worth that.

smooth (70) · 8 years ago (edited)

If steem had a chance to pick up a significant amount of value from speculation, it was gone weeks ago. Its been sliding too far for too long.

I'd argue that it did, and it still has a lot of that value. It traded for months at a fraction of the current price, with not really much less utility (if any).

Sliding for a long time (and it hasn't even been that long) is largely irrelevant. Many coins slide for months or years only to gain in speculative value later, including Bitcoin.

I'm still not sure what you think you are going to buy in terms of influence for 10 grand. That just doesn't make you a big shot anywhere. At 1 million market cap that gives you 1%. 1 million market cap is unrealistically low by a pretty wide margin relative to a peer group. I think you're off base here.

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sigmajin (65) · 8 years ago (edited)

I'm still not sure what you think you are going to buy in terms of influence for 10 grand. That just doesn't make you a big shot anywhere.

I don't think it ought to make you a big shot. There's a whole bunch of real estate between five cents and a big shot. I don't know exactly where on that rather large tract I think it ought to be, but somewhere. The reason i use 10 grand as an example its that its typically as high as many people will go on a brand new investment. Off hand, i would guess a fair valuation would be somewhere in the neighborhood of a 10-20 million marketcap.

Bitcoin's gains in value are not speculative, they're based on utility. Specifically, they have been based on the DNM economy (early on) then investments from people in places like china, where money in a bank account isn't really safe (check abits most recent witness report for how we're doing with the Chinese).

There is really not a good example of a crypto (at least not that I know of) that has achieved long-term market cap growth just on the basis of price speculation (of course, there aren't many cryptos that have a long term history to look at).

I'd argue that it did, and it still has a lot of that value. It traded for months at a fraction of the current price, with not really much less utility (if any).

I don't know... the 1000% price increase in early July, I'm sure some of it was pure price speculation. But to my way of thinking, a lot of that was about utility, or at least the perception of future utility. Making first real payout (which was the July 4th I guess) was a really really big deal in terms of the perception of the utility (or future utility) of the coin. I realize that's a sort of speculation, but its not pure price speculation. If speculation about future utility is what fuels an increase in market value, then there has to be a delivery on that promised utility at some point in the future, or the gains will be lost.

incidentally, on some level i think we agree. the following quote from your comment above is 100% on point:

Investors don't want to buy in given they are entirely overshadowed and can be heavily dumped on in the future by one or a few whales even if not now, users complain about voting being too concentrated, etc. Literally everything is harmful and destructive about 1% of the accounts (<1% of the people) owning 95% of the stake and nothing about it is helpful. Wishing that away won't make it so.

Also, i think the new initiatives in the release candidate (besides the 5 vote thing, which is awful) like escrow and multisig are helpful with regard to utility. How helpful will depend largely on how easy they are to use.

smooth (70) · 8 years ago (edited)

@sigmajin I have to disagree with you that there is anything wrong with 5 cents. The whole idea of a system like this is to aggregate the votes from many people. If enough contribute their 5 cent vote, then rewards become very significant (especially after applying any kind of consensus bonus, even if not the current one). If it is just you voting and no one else, I'm not really sure how much that should be worth. $1? At that point after you have used 10000 votes (say 100 votes per day for 100 days) in a linear-weighted system, your entire investment would be consumed by rewards/dilution. This makes no sense.

Agree with you that escrows, etc. are adding potential value. If investors see that translated into actual (even anticipated) use, then it will be rewarded. That is the right direction to go here.

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razvanelulmarin (72) · 8 years ago

POWERING DOWN = LOSING STAKE! WHY NOT ALREADY?!
Forgive my yelling, but that's mandatory, @ned! The message should be clear, you are in IT or you're not. No more double dipping and abuse. Also, if you powerdown you don't receive "interest".
But would you do that? You're one who powered down too, would you sacrifice your influence for money? Or money for influence?

This should happen fast though..the time is running out.

I'd say curators need to be delegated. As I talked about here. Some people are jsut better than others at curation. I read 100+ posts/day for example but I can only help so much, you read one and can take it to heaven. With delegation we could decentralize the power even further even though delegation itself is centralized.
Make it happen, steemit hq! We're counting you!

9 votes

smooth (70) · 8 years ago (edited)

Consider the case of an author who has been a successful part of this platform for a year or more. All that time accumulating SP. Do you think it is unreasonable at some point for such an author to say "I have enough of a concentrated investment in this system by now, I do not need more" and start powering down? That does NOT mean being "out". Should such an author (who is not only be a major participant and contributor of "work" but also a major investor) be stripped of influence and told that their input is not wanted simply because they don't want their stake to grow forever? I don't think so.

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sigmajin (65) · 8 years ago

this. At the end of the day, if the system cannot endure a reasonable level of powerdown without the price tanking, then it simply doesn't work.

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clevecross (59) · 8 years ago

I think it is balanced when they have the option to power down a % of stake as was also suggested.
Perhaps a good compromise to this is the interest SP generates?
When whales are powering down, which I do understand is necessary, they have their voting rights, but the 90% of newly mined SP is distributed amongst those who are not. Would give increased rate of SP gain to those who are not powering down and present a solution as a result

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smooth (70) · 8 years ago (edited)

Powering down a percentage of stake does not mathematically change the cost of the exit fee. This is an illusion. Whether you power down 100% of your stake for a month or 10% of your stake for 10 months, it works out exactly the same. A penalty equivalent to one year of influence and rewards is charged for any stake that is powered down under this proposal.

razvanelulmarin (72) · 8 years ago

I'm not saying strip of ALL influence, but a higher percentage and no "interest" beyond curation/authorship could be a middle ground.
That being said, the solution is not targeting these type of low impact players...

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bacchist (69) · 8 years ago

I think it's a good idea to recognize that the longer a person powers down, the less of a stake they would have unless they are active on the site. And if you're active enough on the site to counter the loss of stake every week from the power down, you are "in it." But people have real world financial needs as well, and we can't all be guaranteed consistently high SBD rewards... some can, it seems... but that's another conversation :D

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9 votes

razvanelulmarin (72) · 8 years ago

i see that's a convo no one is ready to have yet...

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https://steemit.com/steem/@snowflake/there-is-a-big-flaw-in-steemit

snowflake (65) · 8 years ago (edited)

if you powerdown you don't receive "interest"

This is the most important point i wrote about it few days ago.

Obviously the whales are not gonna like it but it is necessary to prevent the value going to nothing. As a whale said above they have no incentive to not power down, so Ned give it to them!

xanoxt (61) · 8 years ago

Seconded! First thing I noticed after joining, that for the system to work, the power needs to be spread between the users, which is currently not the case. Any model that does that is generally a good thing.

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razvanelulmarin (72) · 8 years ago

I'm not for "giving" everyoe who has a lot of SP worked for it one way or another. I know I did.
I don't want to be given anything, i just want a system that encourages my work and rewards my commitment while not throwing in my face how others do much better with less everything. That's what discourages a lot of new users, a concentrated number of users getting most HUGE votes.
A decentralization of those votes will bring a wave of hope, encouragement and change.
And for that, I am ALL IN.

xanoxt (61) · 8 years ago

I am not for "giving" either, and all SP that I have I earned (some of it "given" for services rendered), it is the spread lf the culture of "giving" as SP for whatever reason, in at least part of the payment should be encouraged. I mean you already receive the post reward partially that way. Sometimes SBD are better, but at others SP is.

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justtryme90 (71) · 8 years ago

I actually think that powering down loses the ability to earn curation rewards would be an interesting thing to try. It would be good that those users could still vote and reward others, they would just get no returns unless they stop the power down. Your curation rewards are the result of you being vested in the future of the site. I like how much time, effort and thought you all put into trying to make this the most effective site it can be!

I also think the voting pool idea is interesting, but it could also lead to "whale" voting pools which might further reduce the number of people being voted up. Anything that could encourage only a select few to be rewarded should be implemented with caution. IMO at this stage in steemit's development rewarding the widest variety of contributors as possible (assuming they create good content) will be the best path forward.

beanz (68) · 8 years ago

those users could still vote and reward others, they would just get no returns

But then why would they vote? The largest investors are the most important here and we're all talking like we can change the rules after they put their money in.

Why is everybody acting like a whale shouldn't get paid for their investment?

Imagine being invited to invest in something which you could only take out gradually over the course of 2 years only to find out that if you want to take your money out you won't gain anything for the investment. What was the point? And we'll never get more investors that way.

Jesus we're not just entitled but ungrateful too.

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justtryme90 (71) · 8 years ago

In reading smooth's take on the situation (plus many others have made well reasoned statements as well), I agree with him. I have changedg mind on the powering down portion of the proposal. Since I don't care for the voting pool idea I guess I don't like any of it then.

That said is the only incentive to vote curation rewards?

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beanz (68) · 8 years ago

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quinneaker (74) · 8 years ago (edited)

I really love that you are posting to the Steemit Community to get a discussion started!
To me this is very honorable and valuable. There are so many highly intelligent people in this community and a LOT of really good ideas.
I am here because this platform is already awesome with the potential to be revolutionary! Yet it could get WAY better and this is one of the keys to that. Someone such as your self reaching out to the community to actually discuss ideas/solutions for an IMPROVED platform!
Just that in it self gives me great hope for the future of Steemit. If the founders and developers are willing to have honest dialogue and actually truly consider ideas of the community then improve it WILL!
I would offer up that to me the biggest problem with quality content not getting seen and good authors not getting fairly compensated is the curation system.
I see EVERY day posts that get UPvoted before they even get read. I have talked to MANY people who say they UPvote posts JUST to get the curation rewards and I have even see people COMMENT on posts saying "I didn't like this article but I UPvoted anyways because I wanted the curation reward" This is a MAJOR problem. People who are already "rich" are just going to get richer and the vast majority of people are going to use their LIMITED UPvotes to vote for proven money makers and the people at the bottom even if their articles are good won't get UPvotes because no one can make money on voting their post up....
So I am not going to say what SHOULD be done just simply that this is happening and it is NOT good for encouraging quality content from newbies.
Thank you for starting this dialogue and I hope practical and beneficial solutions present them self!
I Love STEEMIT!
Best Regards~
Steem ON~*~

ausbitbank (73) · 8 years ago (edited)

These are all great ideas imo:

This would be amazing, I would love to see the power of the @steemit account being spread out among lots of undervalued posts and individuals. As it stands a vote from this account is worth $3814 !

As amazing as that would be all in 1 vote, splitting this power up and using it to boost dozens or hundreds a people a day would be a gamechanger.
Another gamechanger, I would love to see this implemented particularly the ability to power down a % of your stake .

The combined effect of those is probably too hard to predict, but I'm excited to see what happens if these ideas become reality.

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steembriefing (51) · 8 years ago

This the right shit right here!

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dennygalindo (59) · 8 years ago

Maybe it should auto vote the first post of every user. A first post of he day bonus. It doesn't have to be 100% vote. This might lift activity rate if you felt like you should post once a day to get the steemit vote.

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ausbitbank (73) · 8 years ago

That would be too easy to abuse imo , voting should be reserved for human curated quality posts preferably going to "known/verified" but previously unrewarded users. Bringing up the little guys and evening the playing field for everyone is what will help steem succeed in the long run, along with smart incentives/disincentives for curation/abuse .

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dennygalindo (59) · 8 years ago (edited)

Comment deleted because it mentioned a competitor's philosophy on rewards and was deemed shilling.

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smooth (70) · 8 years ago (edited)

Flagged for irrelevant shilling of a competitor. Whatever point you have to make can be made without dropping in the name as an unnecessary advertisement.

EDIT: I removed flag after unnecessary shilling was removed.

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snowflake (65) · 8 years ago (edited)

This is something the whales would do if they were smart about their investment..

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laonie (66) · 8 years ago

Maybe change the withdraw channel from 104 weeks to 52 weeks would be a smart move, let the whales withdraw faster, we cann't force anyone to be a long term investor if they don't have confidence of the platform.

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ats-david (74) · 8 years ago (edited)

I think the powered-down influence loss is a great idea. I'm not so sure about voting pools. I think that might just turn into an upvoting club on each other's content, regardless of actual quality.

I think the biggest problem right now is a general uneasiness or outright distrust of the platform overall. There are a lot of negatively-perceived actions happening here. Some of these perceptions are true or likely true. For example:

Whales powering down to quickly cash-out and abandon the paltform. A lot of Steem is being dumped on the market by the early holders. Whether this is a sign of actual abandonment or just a way to redistribute influence, it doesn't look good. If there was more communication and transparency from whales about why this is happening, I think it would go a long way to ease some of the stress over it.
There have been some recent developments regarding sock-puppet accounts and whale voting. We all know that many whales vote together and that a lot of this has to do with bots. We also know that there are certain users who are being followed by multiple whales. Now, we know that there are certain accounts that have been created under questionable circumstances and that instantly trend and continue trending with each new post - and are mostly voted by the same whales every time. This needs to be addressed publicly. At the very least, it's shady and needs to be cleared up if there isn't actually a problem and everything is legitimate. At worst, this can really damage the reputation of the platform, both internally and externally.
Visibility is still pretty bad, despite efforts to bring new users into the spotlight with "featured author" posts. But now, it seems that each new "featured author" post is being auto-upvoted by whales, regardless of content - which in many cases, is poor. There needs to be more manual curation by whales. This is where delegated vote power could come in. But in the meantime, the auto-voting on certain topics is getting out of hand - and this is again perceived quite negatively.

In my opinion, these are the types of issues that make people not want to invest in SP because there just isn't a lot of confidence that these issues can be or will be resolved. And with new competition coming soon, there will be new platforms to invest in and try out. I want Steemit to succeed and I'm doing what I can to make that happen, but it feels like we're being thwarted by the actions of those most invested into the platform - which is mind-boggling. Whether it's happening due to apathy toward the platform or just from not realizing the consequences, it's a problem. And it seems like it's not getting the proper attention that it deserves.

I know there's a lot of work to be done, but if the solutions to the major issues are mostly non-existent and the new ideas are essentially just band-aids, then there will still be a lack of confidence in current and potential users alike. We seem to be treating symptoms rather than trying to find cures. I know it's difficult with a decentralized platform, but many of these problems are self-inflicted by those with the actual power to fix them.

So, voting pools and delegation may work, but if the whales aren't taking an active interest in correcting the problems, then the problems won't be corrected. From what I've recently seen in chats and in voting trends, there are some whales who aren't taking this seriously and would rather denigrate those mentioning the problems than adequately clear up any misunderstandings.

Anyway - that's my rant. It all starts at the top. Good ideas can work if the most powerful among us are on board and want to try them. I guess the largest obstacle is convincing them and us that they really do want the changes.

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xanoxt (61) · 8 years ago

Yep, one thing that Steemit needs more of is transparency. Oh, we've all heard that everything is totaly trnsparent since it is on the blockchain. But more interaction with us the userbase is needed. A lot of people that I know of are working on that, but we need more support from the higher ups, at least in the information department. That would help to get the disillusioned have a change of heart, I hope.

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blakemiles84 (67) · 8 years ago

Transparency != developer updates.

Its a blockchain. Its as transparent as possible.

You're talking about simple communication of technical information.

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richardjuckes (65) · 8 years ago (edited)

A minnow's upvote for:

Now, we know are certain accounts that have been created under questionable circumstances and that instantly trend and continue trending with each new post - and are mostly voted by the same whales every time. This needs to be addressed publicly.

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samether (58) · 8 years ago (edited)

How about a Single transferable vote

a voting system designed to achieve proportional representation through ranked voting. A curator has a single vote initially a fraction allocated to their most preferred content of the day and, as the count proceeds and candidates are either put on the trending page the remaining vote fractions are transferred to other contents according to the voter's stated preferences, in proportion to any surplus or discarded collective votes.

This would encourage actual content digestion by "humans" and gives equal opportunity annonymously to man and machine. A content should be left to be judged by Humans and not bots at least for 24hrs Imho.

+1 on voting power should be increased for retention.

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publicworker (59) · 8 years ago

Its simple!! People don't buy steem power because of 104 weeks term!
Suggested solution: https://github.com/steemit/steem/issues/330

Your idea!?

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ryan-singer (57) · 8 years ago

Delegated SP voting is a very good idea. It's lets SP "investors" employ "curators".

Don't punish powering down, though. The ability to power down is crucial for SP demand.

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me-tarzan (80) · 8 years ago

@ned I have been looking at http://steemwhales.com and I see many large accounts that have been inactive for several months I would like to use their SP to upvote with but I know they would not be willing to give me their keys to be able to do this and I would not blame them . But if some how I would be able to do this without gaining access to their account , I would be able to increase their SP and mine as well and spread the SP to many users and not just the people that the whales are supporting . If these inactive large account holders could have the ability to give their voting power to someone like @me-tarzan to do the upvoting for them and not have to give me access to their keys . I feel this would be a way to diversify the voting into a wider variety of content . Therefore increasing activity and spread the SP .

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thecryptodrive (70) · 8 years ago

The whales could follow your vote on streemian.com, Streemian already has vote trail capabilities which is much like delegated voting. And no access to posting which is great, so the delegator knows his account can't be used to make random unauthorised comments.

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steembriefing (51) · 8 years ago (edited)

It is a good idea ..but you have to make it very easy to get involved in one of these pools ..not having to whore around looking for a club to join.

Getting setup with RobinHoodWhale is a bloody.painful mess.

Love the idea of anyone who is the process of Powering Down losing priviledges .also, .their SP should no longer be earning interest while cashing out

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snowflake (65) · 8 years ago

their SP should no longer be earning interest while cashing out

This.

samether (58) · 8 years ago

You can pool up based on the follow list but allocate a fraction of your vote.

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oumar (57) · 8 years ago (edited)

Hi @ned , I certainly think both are good ideas, specially the first one, cause it would allow a whale to share his voting power to a group of users via a voting pool and this way more content could be curated and there will be more variety of authors and topics being curated. One question comes to mind right away, how would the voting cap work in voting pools?
The second idea also sounds really good, removing the voting power to users that are powering down seems sort of fair but I would consider just removing them 1/104 of their voting power, why? cause at the end the only thing you know for sure is that they are going to withdraw or power down 1/104, for all we know they could stop powering down right after the first payment. Just some thoughts.

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dennygalindo (59) · 8 years ago (edited)

Both the delegated curation ( would this use escrow?) and The variables power down plus loss of voting rights are good ideas. I am glad you are focused here.
Here are a few more.

lowering the exponential on the curve would build make curation more attractive Try from 2 to 1.75 at first. This will put more curation rewards in the earliest voters hands. It makes small account curation more profitable. I think you want 1m vests to get you a steady stream of curation rewards. That will build Steem power demand from minnows that aren't writers.
only reward curation that is better than average post voting for good authors shouldn't be rewarded with curation rewards, it's too easy. Only give curation rewards for voters who vote on something that is better than that posters average. People will still vie for joy and to encourage content from their favorite authors but curation rewards would go to those that find above average post.
make it easier to curate. the U.I does not have a curation view of over 30 minute post. That would be helpful.

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publicworker (59) · 8 years ago

More regulation does not solve problem.
Here is suggested solution. https://github.com/steemit/steem/issues/330

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dennygalindo (59) · 8 years ago

That's interesting. Two classes of Steem power. Maybe one class gets 5 votes a day one class gets 40one is locked up for 1 month one for two years.

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xanoxt (61) · 8 years ago

Problem with 2, is that it is hard to quantify 'average'. How would you do that?

dennygalindo (59) · 8 years ago (edited)

Take last 10 post rewards of the poster and divide by ten.vof you wanted you could adjust for the Steem price ( inflation adjusted)

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matthewtiii (60) · 8 years ago

I think the voting power is all backwards. The more time you spend on curation and comments, the more your power should increase. I see a lot of people getting paid really good dividends and not participating in the community aspect of steemit at all. Hate to call out by name, but @lukewearechange has 60 total posts and thousands of dollars. I came here on his reccomendation and I am well on my way to 400 posts, mostly comments. The people getting rich on steemit seem to be the ones doing the least community building. So the real power should be given to those who do the work all the way around.

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bhavnapatel68 (58) · 8 years ago

Let's know another stack to rise. Only the reputed get to be known. I am losing hopes. O well. Boss can not be always right.

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everittmickey (52) · 8 years ago

If a group of crabs are dumped into a bowl (I've heard) when one crab tries to get OUT of the bowl the other's pull him down.

Are we witnessing the Crab effect here?

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blakemiles84 (67) · 8 years ago

Maybe the bucket is the real world and all of us are already free?

<insert Morpheus voice>

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complexring (68) · 8 years ago

I also like delegated voting to begin bootstrapping communities.

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vetvso (53) · 8 years ago

@ned as an investor and user of block chain technology I am always on the lookout for something new to invest and to diversify my total investments. It is imperative that I can add or sell some of my investment when I feel I need to. Without this kind of ability I for one am always skeptical of the investment, and don't invest nearly as much as I would if I did have this ability. So I am looking for forward looking value, and current value, and the ability to move in or out of the account. It is this level of ability and open visibility that I get excited about.

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virtualgrowth (72) · 8 years ago

Agree with many others I am sure that some combination of power down and voting value probation during the power down time along with some form of voting pools would both be valuable in their own ways. The pools would combine and mix up the value from a bigger more powerful account and smaller accounts while adding and utilizing good curating value from smaller account / users while freeing up the larger accounts time from doing so and all more input into the pool with a variety of user input in the voter curation process.

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kushed (61) · 8 years ago

I like the first proposal, not entirely sold on the second one.

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ssekulji (74) · 8 years ago

nice work.

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ellamaeamor (43) · 8 years ago

I have a reward system proposal, kindly check;
https://steemit.com/steemit/@ellamaeamor/a-reward-system-proposal-that-will-make-everybody-stay-in-the-platform-and-will-invite-more-signups

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radioactivities (61) · 8 years ago

Make some fun and regular contests to win Steem Power and/or dollars.
Focus on community and social incentives; emotional investment. That can be cultivated too.

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rubenalexander (69) · 8 years ago

I like the idea of a voting pool. Would this be designed to prevent voting pools made entirely of bots?

There needs to be a more robust page for bloggers to quickly identify what posts and tags get traction and which ones don't. I wrote a post the other day with charts that I would expect to see in a blog report.

I mention blog reports because the same information would be valuable to voting pools for an accurate measure of curation efforts, to see what time of day posts arrive, and see what tags to lookout for.

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calaber24p (74) · 8 years ago

IMO we need to stop trying to lower the supply and we need to go after raising the demand. We need to work on retaining new users and keeping them in the community. If we continue to grow at a decent rate our demand will grow as well until we hit equilibrium. The market is massive, we just need to perfect bringing people in.

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dana-edwards (74) · 8 years ago

First define the "ideal user"

And I'm sure the ideal user isn't merely a blogger. The ideal user is a blogger who continuously is buying Steem Power via a subscription.

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blakemiles84 (67) · 8 years ago

but without the blogger, the steem power buyer has no purpose. it's has to be a balanced ecosystem.

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blakemiles84 (67) · 8 years ago

I don't see it as trying to lower the supply... its a matter of lowering the velocity of outflows. Supply is what it is.

There are no incentives to remain powered up and powering down has no negative consequences. You still earn more in interest than you do from your power downs!

What rational actor wouldn't be powering down with those parameters in place?

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calaber24p (74) · 8 years ago

I meant the supply on the market, sorry should have specified that. There are incentives, but I think that the incentives in place arent enough at this price point. People are going to cash out because they foresee the price falling short term, which I would agree. Short term doesnt concern me though, long term does and I think that is what we need to focus on.

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onthewayout (59) · 8 years ago (edited)

I Just have one comment...the proposal to lower voting influence when in power down mode is terrible. If you want to increase demand for steem power you have to increase it's utility not decrease it.

The only way to do this is to build an economy around the blogging aspect of the platform (the introduction of the escrow feature is a good example). This cannot be done over-night (it will take years), The only things you can do with the currency right now are:

1-Sell it
2-Use it to speculate.
3-Burn it via promoting posts.

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dana-edwards (74) · 8 years ago

To increase the utility of Steem Power you have to increasethe prestige of those who hold Steem Power. Gamification is how you do that and not enough gamification elements have been added to Steem. I recognize it takes a while for this but in my opinion if you get the gamification right, the psychology right, then even with the "exit fee" no one will want to Power Down more than they need to.

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linkback-bot-v0 (54) · 8 years ago

This post has been linked to from another place on Steem.

@ned: Increasing Curation, Demand for Steem Power and Community Interaction by @achim86

About linkback bot

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lpfaust (66) · 8 years ago

If the end result you are seeking is to increase community interaction and engagement (through content creation, upvoting and sharing of content), I think delegating pools would cause the opposite effect.

The main issue you have right now is the concentration of voting power in a few hands, this would only become a larger problem as the potential for greater rewards from large pools voting for fewer posts would become the norm. The curation rewards would be even greater (for the most part) and large pools would chase large pools for the massive payday.

Reducing influence in a power down scenario may not have the intended effect. If the long term scenario is to encourage a power down to redistribute the voting power over a larger group, penalizing influence would cause the opposite effect, I would think.

If engagement is what we are ultimately looking for, the way to get it is by either penalizing or making it very difficult to dogpile for easy rewards on a single post, riding the coattails of whales and bots. I thought the reduction of the voting period was the first great step towards this. As the voting period shrinks, it forces individuals and bots to place more votes to achieve similar curation reward sizes. In fact, there is an inverse relationship between engagement and voting period.

I have some more thoughts, but that's my $0.02 on the subject, buried in the 227 other comments at the present time.

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dana-edwards (74) · 8 years ago

Delegated voting pools are the a solution, but I don't know about using the Steemit account for that purpose. With modification I think it can work.

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lpfaust (66) · 8 years ago

I would respectfully disagree. If the end result is more community interaction and engagement, I don't see how pooling voting power into fewer votes with larger curation rewards increases user engagement.

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recursive (62) · 8 years ago (edited)

2/ more fluidity in the witness queue

Do you mean that stake that's powering down will have its witness votes disabled too? That's a good thing. But a much better way to create fluidity in the witness queue would be to reduce the ridiculously excessive witness pay that encourages whales to collude to exchange votes with each other to keep a witness slot. Witnesses are a ridiculously overpaid fictitious job that brings very little to the ecosystem, increases at great pace the wealth divide between insiders and outsiders, and is the #1 cause that Steem price is so low since so many witnesses are powering down without even losing influence since they are litterally being showered with free Steem Power. You could cut witness pay 10 folds, and you would still have plenty of reputed community members willing to be witnesses. You should look into that in priority if you are really interested in spreading power more equitably and reducing sell pressure at exchanges.

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chitty (69) · 8 years ago (edited)

I think your first proposal is very interesting, but I wouldnt use steemit account since this would imbalance the total voting pool reward.

Your second idea could bring some benefits, I dont think it would "Stop people" from exiting like some comments claim since you can still exit but your "powering down stake" wont be able to participate in your curation. In a way this will help distribution because what is happening now is that even when whales power down they make so much from curation that they are not really going down on the "richlist".

The problem is that any decision towards a better distribution is gonna have a lot of resistence from large SP holders, we have seen this in the past and will continue to see it in the future.

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smooth (70) · 8 years ago (edited)

even when whales power down they make so much from curation that they are not really going down on the "richlist"

Despite the fact that you seemed to think this is important and bolded it, it is completely wrong. My power down is about 20K per week and I'm currently making 3K per week on curation. I've made more in the past but never even close to 20K. (@berniesanders is making a bit more, at 4K/week, but still nowhere near the rate of power down.) The issue is that the distribution so highly concentrated that it will take a while at 1/104 per week for anything meaningful to happen in terms of richlist.

any decision towards a better distribution is gonna have a lot of resistence from large SP holders

There is actually no resistance at all. Supposedly 95% of the largest accounts are powering down (I did not check that number myself) so the largest SP holders are doing exactly what is needed to move toward a better distribution. The best thing that can be done is to leave things alone and not discourage this ongoing process (and wait, because the power-down rules impose a long timeline on the process).

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bacchist (69) · 8 years ago

Voting pools present some interesting possibilities, but I'd be wary of using @steemit in this manner. That's a lot of weight!

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acidyo (80) · 8 years ago

I like it in the way that it can be used as a patron to certain authors and users from your voting power alone.

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thecryptodrive (70) · 8 years ago (edited)

Hi @ned, I wrote a post about two months back about delegated voting (probably the first post on the subject) https://steemit.com/money/@thecryptodrive/steemit-whales-stockpile-sp-government-spending-analogy-and-the-solution-revealed, @dantheman saw it and voted, have a look and see if anything in there is of use to you. I like the idea of each individual being able to delegate SP to trusted friends, maybe limit it to 5 or so friends per user in a beta test and monitor if any "gaming" happens.

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samupaha (66) · 8 years ago

I wrote a post about my ideas on this topic: How to increase demand for steem and steem power?

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jlufer (75) · 8 years ago

thanks for sharing this material, I like what you posted. Thank you so much

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jackiwanza (28) · 7 years ago

Nice piece of info. Thanks

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minion (56) · 8 years ago

Well Ned, seems that we've been thinking (almost) the same regarding the first proposal, I already have a post ready to be published about that. I have a bit different take on that idea, away from the "pool" logic. I'll share the post tomorrow.

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biophil (66) · 8 years ago

Delegated voting is an interesting idea, but as @smooth said, it needs to be analyzed very skeptically.

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cwbrooch (58) · 8 years ago

@ned , why am I worth so little? I'm such a valuable person and my content's good... :(

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thecryptofiend (74) · 8 years ago

These are excellent ideas.

Allow Steem holders to delegate their Steem Power voting rights to a voting pool

I have been asking for delegated voting for ages and whether it is via a pool or an individual it would really help to improve distribution and diversity of curation rewards. It would also give the appearance of more fairness.

If powering down stake loses voting influence

This is fine but I don't see powering down as a major issue right now. It is necessary to improve distribution. The platform is still int it's early days and this should allow people to power up more easily due to the increased liquidity. However if this does become a problem and leads to a confidence issue this could work to reduce the power down incentive.

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elissahawke (61) · 8 years ago

im so confused

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carlidos (61) · 8 years ago

Why not add SP to users that level up or rank up every time?

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djangothegod (38) · 8 years ago

I wasn't able to add links and or blockquotes. So I posted anyway, and I'm not able to update the post with those features.

Also, I tried two different web browsers.

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kuriko (58) · 8 years ago

The biggest problem and will remain the biggest problem is the curation reward for smaller steem powr holder. Whats the point of having a steem millionaire earn 400 + steem power a day of his steem curation while having minnows earn at most 1 steem power a day. Just doesn't make sens and as long as this is not fixed I dont see how we are going to propagate the steempower among users.

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son-of-satire (69) · 8 years ago

This is certainly not my specialty so this may be an awful idea but, would making a simple e-bay like platform where any products/services could only be purchased using Steem not be very beneficial towards increasing the demand for Steem? Perhaps even a deviantArt style site where users can reward others users in Steem? It may be worth taking a look at what successful sites there are out there and then trying to apply the blockchain philosophy to a newer version of the platform.
As I said, I'm rather new to this whole thing, so my apologies if I have overlooked something and made a silly suggestion.

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t3ran13 (67) · 8 years ago

more profit for users which help system is very good

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dek (62) · 8 years ago

Ned, I've just posted an article with what I consider a solution to the curation problem and was trying to get your attention. I hope you'll read this reply and give it a read: The Flawed Philosophy Behind Steemit Curation + Solution!

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smooth (70) · 8 years ago (edited)

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ned (69) · 8 years ago (edited)

Thank you for your well reasoned response Smooth. Flagging to make sure the rewards pool is less affected as well

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ats-david (74) · 8 years ago

Good points on investing and retroactive application. Being tied up for two years is certainly not a great selling point. I was thinking from the perspective of rewards only and the influence-side of the equation. I can certainly see how it would discourage new investors.

The bigger problem that I see is the powering down of whales - the largest stakeholders and "investors" in the platform appear to be abandoning it (even if that's not what's happening). It does not encourage new investment from users or anyone thinking about potentially joining the platform. It sends the wrong signals about the potential success of the platform when those with the most dollar stake are cashing out, during beta no less.

Whales have the power to correct the downward trend and to encourage other investors to invest in SP. There are many different aspects of their influence that can change the perception of this platform, but there doesn't appear to be any sign that whales are prepared to do what is needed to make this survive and to prosper. I'm not saying it's all of the whales, but there are certainly some who don't seem to have any interest in correcting any of the problems - whether real or perceived. As long as they persist, investment will be lacking and the price will continue downward. So, powering up or down may eventually be irrelevant.

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17 votes

shenanigator (68) · 8 years ago

I have yet to take a side in this debate, but many people think the biggest problem is whales have too much power. I think the best way to decrease their power is for them to power down, lowering the price and allowing other users to buy in at the lower price.

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snowflake (65) · 8 years ago

The price of steem like most crypto is driven by speculation, not by people wanting steem power. When the price keeps dropping continuously for weeks, speculators lose interest and this is reflected in the ever decreasing steem volume.

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dana-edwards (74) · 8 years ago

So make people want Steem Power and make Steem Power easy to buy. I should be able to go to a 711 and buy a Steem Card to power up. The fact that I have to deal with Bitcoin and be a crypto currency expert is exactly why no one is buying Steem Power.

It's easy for people to open Steam accounts and upgrade it. It's hard for people to buy Steem power. Fix that.

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ats-david (74) · 8 years ago

@smooth

Steem needs to attract long-term-minded investors who want to power up.

I don't see how this can happen while the current people who are/were supposed to be long-term investors are powering down and selling their Steem - while this is still in beta.

Why does nobody want to acknowledge this? Investing is just as much - if not more - psychological as it is financial. There is no reason to invest in Steem Power if you don't care about interacting on Steemit. There's no reason to invest in Steem if those who are most invested in the platform are selling off their stake while the platform isn't even out of beta and can't sustain itself through user interest.

The currency pretty much wholly depends on the value of Steemit as a social media platform. And interest in the social media platform almost wholly depends on the potential for rewards. The internal market is not self-sustaining. The platform isn't out of beta testing. The initial stake-holders are already selling off their shares. No investor wants to touch this, without even getting into the technical aspects of built in inflation and 104-week power-downs. The selling is premature. There clearly is not enough demand or interest right now.

But instead of acknowledging this, the selling rages on, full steam ahead. The platform and currency is being smacked down right now - and we have yet to even get into all of the other problems with the actual perception regarding the reputation of Steemit.

There is very little demand for Steem and Steem Power. Speculators don't want it. Long-term investors don't want it. Many users don't even want it. Whales are dumping it. At this point, it's pretty much toxic. I don't know what the right solution is, but I know what it isn't.

Whales powering down and selling Steem on the external markets is killing Steem and signaling a lack of confidence, among many other things. I'm not saying that whales should be trapped in the system, but there should at least be the recognition that they are steering their own ship directly into the iceberg. I want this to be successful. I hope they all feel the same way, but I really can't tell if they do.

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smooth (70) · 8 years ago (edited)

@ats-david

There is very little demand for Steem and Steem Power. Speculators don't want it. Long-term investors don't want it. Many users don't even want it. Whales are dumping it. At this point, it's pretty much toxic. I don't know what the right solution is, but I know what it isn't.

Supposing for a second that this is all correct (I don't agree with all of it -- I think there is a lot of overreaction all around to short term market action), your solution is then that current whales take the bullet?

Sorry, but we signed up for a one year average holding period (two year schedule). That's a hell of a lot longer than the holding periods on most cryptos, where you can sell in an instant at the click of a button.

At some point, it is up to the builders of the platform to actually build it, and create value that attracts and inspires investors to value it, and not up to the current holders to simply hold on to all of it and ride it down without selling, when we are fully entitled to do so under the rules we bought into. The restrictions on powering down give the developers more runway to develop than the typical crypto without the full extent of investor selling, but not unlimited runway.

If you disagree, you are welcome to buy my STEEM off-market as it powers down and hold it for whatever period you think is more appropriate than the 1-2 years that I signed up for when I powered up. I'm available on steemit.chat to arrange the deal.

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smooth (70) · 8 years ago (edited)

Steem is structurally hostile to these speculators given the rapid dilution of STEEM. Steem needs to attract long-term-minded investors who want to power up. Unlike other cryptos with less of a dilution penalty, it can't rely on short-term speculators.

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ats-david (74) · 8 years ago (edited)

I agree on the redistribution of influence. There's only one way (currently) that it can happen. But the problem is that outside investors are only seeing a ton of Steem being dumped on the market. It doesn't exactly instill confidence in the price of Steem or the viability of the platform. More transparency and communication about this is needed, in my opinion.

Powering down is only one aspect of the lack of confidence, though. See my original post for more details. It's a bit longer.

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smooth (70) · 8 years ago (edited)

@snowflake. I'm curious what good news you think the market is ignoring because I haven't seen any. We have a few high profile bloggers join. The most useful of those in terms of platform growth seems to have been @dollarvigilante, and that is clearly visible in web traffic metrics. That was some time ago. Other than that, active users has been flat, web traffic has been flat to slightly growing. Visible platform development (I don't know what is going on behind the scenes) has been incremental, with various tweaks but no major improvements that would drive new markets. Meanwhile competitors continue to get closer and closer to launch. Since @dollarvigilante joined and promoted a bit, bringing along some other bloggers and a burst of new users, I can't think any clear and significant "good news" that one would expect to move the market but hasn't. Can you?

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snowflake (65) · 8 years ago (edited)

I agree, the market is what holds this thing together. A healthy market is much more important than the actual redistribution of power. If you look at the steem market it doesn't even react anymore on news, it is basically on a slow sinking trend regardless of any good news. This is bad because the price of steem basically reflect it's capacity to scale so if the price keeps going down you can bet investors are not coming in.
The redistribution issue should be dealt differently than by killing the market, the delegate voting is a good idea but the first thing should be to encourage diversification in voting ( if votes were better allocated people wouldn't care so much about the power of the whale )

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snowflake (65) · 8 years ago (edited)

@smooth

In the crypto sphere a dev update and improvement on the platform would move the market, the promoted feature which burns steem and the recent update with lots of good stuff like the escrow feature etc..didn't have any effect.

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smooth (70) · 8 years ago

I replied to another of your comments on the issue of whales currently powering down. That is a painful transition process we need to go through but will make us stronger once we do.

ats-david (74) · 8 years ago

Yeah, I saw it. Responded there.

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clevecross (59) · 8 years ago

After reading the post and the comments.
Solution 1 holds promise I agree.
Solution 2, in it's current form is terrible, but what if it were to be tweaked so that accounts when they are powering down do not receive interest on the SP they have? It would in effect also cause a redistribution as the accounts currently trying to power up would receive a larger share of the 90% SP that is generated with the intent of building up stakeholders.

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smooth (70) · 8 years ago

This makes the exit fee I described even larger, further discouraging entry and further encouraging negative PR about Ponzi and pyramid schemes. The way forward is increasing demand to enter, not locking people in beyond what the system requires to avoid voting abuse and such (the current 2 year power down schedule is sufficient).

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clevecross (59) · 8 years ago

Okay, so what are thoughts to that end? I don't see it, there is nothing to de-incentivize a whale account from powering down weekly while upvoting his own list of content or sock-puppet accounts. Replacing what is being powered down through manipulation of this exact same system and doing nothing to draw new users.

How is this attracting new users to enter? I have been here 7 weeks and I truly believed in what the site has the potential to be. My account has a value of about $750 and I put $150 into it of my own. I have seen very little to suggest that any whale vote I have ever received was anything other than a "support the minnows" vote and no reason to suggest it was even read. No comments left or ideas suggested.

I want to be clear, I am very grateful for the site. It connected me to a part of myself I haven't really explored in awhile, the creative side. That is worth every penny I invested at whatever price I invested. That is the reason I have not powered down my stake, and won't going forward. It has very little to do with belief in future of the site at this point.

Changes that are being made are tweaks to what is already in place, and what is already in place is not doing anything to bring in new users. I have made my suggestions and they are based on areas I have working knowledge in, but because I decided early on I want to stand on my merit and accomplishment, they can receive a lot of attention, but nothing that helps implement any change.

You want to attract new users? Make it personal. All I have by way of connecting myself to my account is a user name, a reputation number and a wallet balance. The higher those are, the more I matter.

Here, I put up a post with ideas on what can change this and make an account something a little more personal.... and I get trolled by a guy (I took the bait my bad) because what is looked at, is my wallet.
https://steemit.com/steemit/@clevecross/bounties-for-badges

As founders and large shareholders. I say it honestly doesn't much matter what is done with rewards. Current users aren't going to be happy unless they are given the same edge that whales have to abuse it in the same way whales are perceived to abuse it. That is all that gets talked about though...

Last thought. Want to make a new user understand it might take some time and effort? Give each post a sidebar with the author and their credentials.... joined date... things that show what they have done and earned. Instead we advertise "Blog. Get Paid" and don't understand why people leave after a week of trying for the only finish line they are shown.

liondani (69) · 8 years ago

the way to increase demand for SP is to make it more attractive to enter, not by making it less attractive and costlier to exit.

THIS ^^^ resumes it all!

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16 votes

acidyo (80) · 8 years ago (edited)

Exactly. and Project Newbie is here to help with that. :)

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snowflake (65) · 8 years ago (edited)

I agree generally with your sentiment. I have a question though, why do you cash out 20k steem every week, do you really need so much money? you must be living the dream right now? why not power down and cash out when the time is right ( next bubble ), at what price will you stop selling, 50, 20, 10 , 5, 1 cents? do you feel like in a rush or something? If the whales were slowing down a bit on the cashing out Ned wouldn't have to make these kind of proposals, crashing the price so early on when there is no real support for steem yet shows that most whales don't really care about steemit long term

smooth (70) · 8 years ago (edited)

why do you cash out 20k steem every week, do you really need so much money?

In part because if I did so any more slowly, it would take far longer to achieve any significant reduction in my stake, and I have no desire to be "smooth the whale" forever. Steem can survive and thrive without any of us calling all the shots (indeed perhaps only then). The faster we all get down to a desired stake level with stake having been distributed to new investors, the sooner the power downs will reach an equilibrium and stop.

In actual fact, I have repowered-up tens of thousands of dollars of STEEM multiple times to avoid selling more than the market could support (it is tedious to find these transactions but they are there). The power down rate doesn't tell the whole story. I don't study what other whales do but often there is more going on than is first apparent.

Also, I happen to think "crashing the price" is a bit absurd. Prior to the very brief peak at 400 million market cap (probably excessively exuberant by a significant margin), it traded for months at well under the current prices. 100 million USD market cap for a very immature system is not a "crashed" price at all.

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recursive (62) · 8 years ago

Actually the price of Steem isn't even going down if you adjust it for inflation. Whales are rational actors, and they will keep powering down and selling so long as they perceive that the market price is higher than the real value of Steem after taking into account inflation. Once the contrary is true, you will see a strong support on the market as investors rush in to buy Steem and power up. It is pointless to artificially attempt to prevent a market from reaching equilibrium.

smooth (70) · 8 years ago (edited)

Actually the price of Steem isn't even going down if you adjust it for inflation.

That depends over what period of time. It is down roughly 60-70% from its peak even taking into account inflation. It is certainly the case that the STEEM price charts are deceptive and SP-adjusted (for automatically reinvested anti-dilution payments) charts would be pretty illuminating. Some of the perceived decline is an illusion for SP-holding investors.

It is pointless to artificially attempt to prevent a market from reaching equilibrium.

Agree

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snowflake (65) · 8 years ago (edited)

Like I said above the price of steem is driven by speculation, not by people wanting steem power. When the price keeps dropping continuously for weeks, speculators lose interest and this is reflected in the ever decreasing steem volume.
My opinion is that whales should do everything to keep the market healthy and interesting as it is way more important than redistribution of power. When there is no market action and the price keeps dropping, rewards on the whole platform drops, speculators run away, users run away and the viability of the whole thing is questionned.
So my question to you is do you think redistribution of power is more important than the market at this early stage and if so why?

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dana-edwards (74) · 8 years ago (edited)

Developers need to take the lead. Whales cannot be expected to take a long term rational view. Some will want to power down as quickly as they can because of opportunity cost. Developers on the other hand need to add gamification elements and marketing needs to focus more on attracting buyers of Steem.

First, buying Steem isn't really an investment. It has to be seen as a power up. Selling it as an investment means it's going to only go down because there aren't many crypto investors. If you sell it as a power up then it has to be bought with fiat, possibly as a gift card at Walgreens or 711 and not with Bitcoin.

All mention of Bitcoin and blockchain should be removed from marketing.

Because there is no credibility on anything with power being so concentrated. Investors don't want to buy in given they are entirely overshadowed and can be heavily dumped on in the future by one or a few whales even if not now, users complain about voting being too concentrated, etc. Literally everything is harmful and destructive about 1% of the accounts (<1% of the people) owning 95% of the stake and nothing about it is helpful. Wishing that away won't make it so.

Investors don't care about cryptocurrencies. Investors would rather buy Google or some centralized company and hold real stock. In my opinion, we need to stop targting "crypto investors" who represent a small demographic, smaller than the amount of people who play Second Life and who probably will never buy Steem Power.

I mean look at Bitshares? How many "investors" did Bitshares attract? Steem has a chance to market itself to regular people who don't care about investing but who own Netflix subscriptions and Steam accounts. In fact you can buy gift cards for Netflix but you can't buy a gift card for Steem and thats the problem.

If you target the every day blogger, you need to divorce from Bitcoin style marketing. Steem Power is way too hard for ordinary people to buy.

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smooth (70) · 8 years ago (edited)

As I said elsewhere, expecting people to buy STEEM and not power up, and to build overall value based on that, is a foolish fantasy. It can't work in any kind of sustainable manner with 100% per year dilution, which is even higher now.

Sustainable demand to support the value of this system has to come from investors buying in and powering up. This is described in the white paper and in other discussions, blog posts, interviews, etc. from the team. STEEM is considered as a short-term entry and exit token, traded between people who are powering up and those who are powering down.

So my question to you is do you think redistribution of power is more important than the market at this early stage and if so why?

Because there is no credibility on anything with power being so concentrated. Investors don't want to buy in given they are entirely overshadowed and can be heavily dumped on in the future by one or a few whales even if not now, users complain about voting being too concentrated, etc. Literally everything is harmful and destructive about 1% of the accounts (<1% of the people) owning 95% of the stake and nothing about it is helpful. Wishing that away won't make it so.

ats-david (74) · 8 years ago

Exactly. This site is still in beta, yet the whales are cashing out and claiming that it's for "redistribution."

You don't need to sell Steem on the external markets in order to redistribute influence!

This argument really holds no water. Redistribution can be done internally without selling Steem. So, it's not necessary to actually sell it on the open market. In stock terms, there appears to be a de facto IPO taking place before the platform is even ready for it. The initial investors (those participating in the beta development and testing) aren't really being offered any shares for the curation of the system (the actual work building the company) before those shares are offered to the public. There should be your distribution of A shares to the initial investors - the whales and developers that got everything started - and then there should be the B shares, and then the IPO down the line.

What we have instead is a group of initial investors suddenly finding themselves with a lot of money due to a successful alpha test, then immediately moving into beta and selling their stake of A shares to the public. You're jumping the gun.

You're effectively killing the opportunity to cash out all of your initial investment because there was never any confidence or large stake-holding from all of the 'B-share' investors - your beta testers (content creators and curators). When you skip that stage of development, confidence building, and stake-holding, and the IPO is premature, your price plummets and can ultimately destroy the company altogether. It can be irrecoverable. That's where we're headed, in my opinion, if it isn't corrected soon.

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smooth (70) · 8 years ago (edited)

You don't need to sell Steem on the external markets in order to redistribute influence!

Please elaborate because I strongly disagree.

there appears to be a de facto IPO taking place

Incorrect. Most of us are already public investors. We are not team members (exclusive, of course, of those who are; you may have different issues with them). If you have a gripe about members of the public owning stake too early due to a ill-advised launch plan, take that up with the team, but in reality it is not something that can be changed now. Better to move forward and try to build value.

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smooth (70) · 8 years ago (edited)

@ats-david

There are ways to keep Steem inside the ecosystem without selling it on the open market outside of the platform. The "Promote" button, bounties, internal transfers of any kind really - they can all work to redistribute influence and none of them involve dumping Steem

Okay, in that case I agree with you. Perhaps you are not aware that redistribute in this manner thousands of Steem per week on ongoing and one-time sponsorships, bounties and other initiatives, along with spending within the system on all sorts of things, including hiring people and powering up their accounts every week. As I said elsewhere in this thread, I have also powered up tens of thousands of Steem.

In all seriousness, I think people should focus on trying to improve the fundamenal appeal of the system and demand to investors and less on what whales are doing because first of all you can't control it anyway (even if you have influence over a few involved whales like myself, you have no influence at all over a good number of whales who are not personally involved) and second of all, it is very difficult if not impossible to see the whole picture.

Already we have had one of the core developers ignorantly insulting a whale and stating that his curation is worthless even though that whale is heavily involved with one of the best curation initiatives and also people making claims about how much I am selling "week after week" which are simply false (and not really anyone's business anyway -- I'm an independent investor here making decisions about my own money, not a team insider).

None of this is helpful in any way, and just creates more division and hostility in the community when we can accomplish a whole lot more by working together. Let's put a stop to it.

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ats-david (74) · 8 years ago (edited)

Please elaborate because I strongly disagree.

There are ways to keep Steem inside the ecosystem without selling it on the open market outside of the platform. The "Promote" button, bounties, internal transfers of any kind really - they can all work to redistribute influence and none of them involve dumping Steem. Cashing out isn't necessarily redistributing. It's only redistributed if the buyers want to be stake-holders in the system and actually care about the influence on the platform. Speculators and crypto-currency enthusiasts don't necessarily care about that. They're just looking for profit potential or a somewhat stable currency to hold.

Better to move forward and try to build value.

Well, that's kind of my point. It's hard to build value when there is no confidence in the currency that is supposed to gain value by the viability and expansion of the platform - and for all intents and purposes, that viability and expansion relies on having a rewards system. The confidence is lacking all-around and this is primarily due to the premature selling on the open market of stake-holders before the platform was sufficiently sustainable through investor interest, internal development, and both internal and external confidence in the platform in general.

If the price continues to sink - and there's no indication that it will stop any time soon - then the rewards incentive continues to become less of a factor in the interest of the platform. If there is no interest in the platform, then there is no interest in investing into the platform and the currency that's based on its value.

So, we can move forward and think of new ideas, but we can't ignore what the market is actually telling us: That there is not enough interest in Steem or Steemit and that there are not enough buyers to buy the Steem that is being dumped on the market. Unless there is a way to slow down or stop the wholesale dumping of the currency by the initial investors, there isn't much that can be done to build value.

The selling has been premature. There's no getting around that. The market is telling us this. Despite those signals, the selling continues. I don't know what more I can say. We're getting feedback from both the investor market and the content creator market - neither are positive. We can tweak the rewards system all we want, but it's only half of the equation.

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timcliff (73) · 8 years ago

Curious your thoughts on this if you have a few min. It seems to be in line with your thought that whales powering down and selling to redistribute influence is a good thing.

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recursive (62) · 8 years ago

I would prefer to see these posts marked as ineligible for rewards and would likely upvote for visibility and recognition in that case.

I agree with that. We need a way to volunteer to forego SBD payout, SP payout or both as a mark of good faith. We see way too many "I do this for the community, will pay the SBD to the author / charity / whatever" from authors who claim to be doing things for the common good but are really interested in getting half of the payout as SP. We also see too many witnesses who receive payouts for reporting about what they are already being heftily paid (~1500 SP/day) to do. With the ability to forego payout, people who claim to be desinterested but still stand to receive rewards can be called out and people who are sincere can volunteer to forego payout and hereby prove their good will.

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smooth (70) · 8 years ago

The feature to disable payouts on posts was added 3 months ago. It isn't being used.

There have been many cases where people would like the option of posting without receiving a payout. There is a new operation that allows you to configure the following aspects of a post:

the maximum payout

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recursive (62) · 8 years ago (edited)

So long as it's not being exposed in Steemit or at the very least cli_wallet, that feature won't have any effect. cli_wallet would at least allow witnesses and core devs to forego payout when they communicate about a project they are already being paid to work on.

Edit: just confirmed that post_comment call comes with a metadata field, so it's probably already possible to volunteer to forego payout when posting from cli_wallet. Not the most convenient way of posting though.

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sigmajin (65) · 8 years ago (edited)

In addition, this sort of rule should never be applied retroactively, and doing so further threatens to collapse demand from new investors. This is not a tweak or bug fix, it is a substantial rewriting of the rules of the game after people have already bought in and made a long term commitment under the existing rules.

This. And the same goes for changing the number of votes (which was actually listed in the post as a "bug fix"). And the same goes for witnesses being able to revoke voting privileges. The thing i really don't get is there is constant talk about "redistribution" but every change I actually see implemented or discussed by the people running things seems to support further centralization.

Also, the problem with taking away influence for accounts powering down is the same as the problem with reducing votes to 5 a day -- that it doesnt really effect the biggest players (because they all have like 40 different sock puppets they can use to either get extra votes or power down without losing voting influence)

smooth (70) · 8 years ago (edited)

You are correct overall. There are two things going on.

One is unintended consequences. In a system this complex it is extremely difficult if not impossible to understand the direct and indirect effects of significant rule changes. What happens when these changes are made is the people with most at stake will invest the most in figuring out how to use them to their advantage, and will discover the intended and unintended consequences that work to their advantage, and ways of minimizing the consequences that don't.

The second thing going on is that none of these changes will actually happen if they are strongly opposed by the largest stakeholders. That's a natural outcome of any voting-type system. So you have a filter that separates ideas that make it to implementation and then deployment from the ones that don't. The ones that do are heavily biased toward being more centralizing, even if not necessarily every single one is individually centralizing. As a corollary of this, the more instability and tweaking occurs in the system, the more overall centralization will occur (akin to the value of an option going up as volatility increases). The best way to limit this progressive growth in central power (and the destruction of demand from excluded outsiders that is an inevitable result of that) is with a commitment to stability.

The centralization that exists probably can't be reduced beyond what is already happening at frequency dictated by the power-down low-pass filter, but we can avoid making it worse by putting an end to these proposals.

sigmajin (65) · 8 years ago

Don't have anything to add or argue about this except that its a great analysis.

brendio (55) · 8 years ago

Good to see the healthy debate and that witnesses are prepared not just to tow the party line. I just had the thought, "I need to vote for smooth as witness"; I checked and saw that I already am voting for him, so I'm glad to see my vote is going for someone prepared to think through the consequences of actions and numerous changes.

I feel like the pace of changes being made here and the consequences of the uncertainty it creates in the lack of investment confidence is akin to how I feel about the superannuation system in Australia.

Here, it is government mandated that a certain percentage of our wage is contributed by employers into an investment structure that can't be touched until we reach retirement age. Our "Super" investment is rewarded with a lower rate of taxation than that of the average for the general population. It is actually a good system and I believe Australians have one of the largest retirement investment pools in the world as a result. The trouble I see with it, and which holds me (and I believe many) back from voluntarily contributing more into the system to take advantage of the more favourable tax rate is that the pool of money is too attractive to politicians looking to tweak the system to make it "fairer" for their constituents. The result of the constant changes is loss of faith in the system. Why would I lock money away now that I can't access for decades when I know that the goal posts will be moved and the rules for what I can do with "my money" will change between now and then.

I am beginning to feel the same way about locking up STEEM as SP. I really dislike retrospective changes in all their forms. Two years is a long time scale in the crypto space.

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radioactivities (61) · 8 years ago (edited)

Thanks for the transparency.

Initiatives like Project Curie and RobinHoodWhale are what is helping new users the most. Also increasing the awareness of what users can do to "help themselves", what is in their control here, tends to make a difference in whether users keep steemin' it or if they get frustrated. This is of course based from personal observations as I browse Steemit and read what people's thoughts on the system and check out how much someone is posting.

SteemRocket is great. GeorgeDonelly and Stellabella are doing good work with their videos too.

If there was a lot of visibility for 'The Art of Steemit' it would be good for retention, because at the end of the day, the immediate monetary incentives aren't gonna do keep people around. There's nothing else to do in that regard, aside from keeping the bigger accounts curating. So as Steem claims to be about bringing better value content to people, that is a good focus all around for how Steem can retain users and have satisfied users. I think that encouraging comments and discussion in posts would have a really good ripple effect where pure economics and policy can't. It would make people want to curate, because they have the community incentive. Be more like Reddit than Medium.

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biophil (66) · 8 years ago

Votes are being octupled in strength, not being reduced to 5 a day. You think it's a "reduction" only because the devs don't know how to explain things. Please read this: https://steemit.com/steem-help/@biophil/announcement-all-votes-will-be-up-to-8-times-more-powerful-in-new-hard-fork

You are correct; the voting change won't affect big players at all if they don't want it to. It will affect only little ones, giving them the ability to earn curation rewards.

ats-david (74) · 8 years ago

You think it's a "reduction" only because the devs don't know how to explain things.

More accurately - they don't know how to explain things to non-developers. Some people need translators for their coding and game theory lingo. Not everyone who participates on a social media platform knows or cares about the underlying technical terminology.
Remember: "Keep It Simple, Stupid." That would go a long way to communicating effectively.

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james212 (56) · 8 years ago

Well said. This is where crypto industry get's it all to terribly wrong. They just do not know how to communicate to the public.

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sigmajin (65) · 8 years ago

I minored in econ and was a professional gambler for 8 years. I understand game theory.

Specifically, I understand that in order to have the effect described, the actual number of votes would have to decrease to 1/8th of the former total.

They will not. They won't even come close. Because whales who hit their voting limit can simply use sock puppet accounts. The only effect this change will have is to increase the concentration of influence even further than it already is.

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sigmajin (65) · 8 years ago (edited)

I read it. Its an outright, shameful lie and transparent propaganda, as I indicated in the comments.

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tuck-fheman (74) · 8 years ago

the devs don't know how to explain things

;)

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james-show (58) · 8 years ago

Very good analyses! Totally agree. Proposal 2 is a sure way to destroy any hope for steem demand... with one sweep move. Proposal 1 in its current form is mostly good for nothing. What we need is market based approach, [for which I think I have an idea that will post soon]. And this is without using the steemit account funds for the purpose. If you include steemit [vested] funds in any such pool the results will be similarly bad as the results of proposal #2 . Using (some) of the already powered down Steem from steemit could be OK IF the pool idea is done right.
PS will post a link here after I put the 'market based pools' idea in writing.

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james-show (58) · 8 years ago (edited)

Posted: "A proposal for market based approach to the curation pools"

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carlidos (61) · 8 years ago (edited)

I noticed you like life posts maybe have a look at the regular folk that post on #life and #psychology as well maybe diversify i have noticed you have been liking @lifeisawesome he does write good stuff he is also fairly new, but there are others like him the in the #life and #psychology I have been trying to post my psych 101 posts I know they are good but they have been overlooked many times I have around 15 of them posted and it seems as my hard work in this subject is not welcomed and seen.

Things like these needs to be see. check out some other sections have a higher vote on other tags, trust me they are good reads keep up the great work, just don't forget us little authors that love our work, and continue to post even though they don't get seen, just as your self no services just you going and reading some great words, come out of your trending page and same people posting go check out other tags.

I know reading and liking short poems is great of course they are from great authors but some put hours into research and writing style to show what they have over 700 words compared to 200 words take some time man and breath some fresh air. Maybe some day. I am trying to buy as much steem power as possible to show personally what some of these authors are missed, as it seems there are 10 names that always appear on the trending page and all they have are short poems and images seems kind of a slap in the face for others again that put so much more into their work.

I respect you, but check other tags man and other people, maybe try to not vote for the same people constantly hour after hour.

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carlidos (61) · 8 years ago (edited)

I really like how you put this together, but I would also disagree with you since look at this. My two cents I respect you but at the same time you guys are the bag holders do something to build this place.

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ats-david (74) · 8 years ago

Yeah, it's a bit absurd that a comment on a post can get $338 - but the post was downvoted because:

"I don't support paying for platform updates and discussion from the team out of the reward pool."

THIS is one of the main reasons that users complain about whale abuse. Stop upvoting your own comments at full power, especially if you're going to flag the main post for the reason you stated. It's just not helping matters. Surely, you must know that.

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smooth (70) · 8 years ago (edited)

Stop upvoting your own comments at full power

I upvoted my comment at 10% power. Usually I upvote my own comments, if at all, at 1% power, but this one seemed important (and long), so I used a bit more.

I'm happy to remove the vote altogether now that I have achieved the goal of visibility. If you think my goal in writing it or voting on it was to get a few hundred dollars out of a comment you are very seriously mistaken.

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shenanigator (68) · 8 years ago (edited)

If you think my goal in writing it or voting on it was to get a few hundred dollars out of a comment you are very seriously mistaken.

Seriously. This is the guy who contributes 1,500 SBD per week to steemcleaners. He also contributes 100 SBD per week to the Steemit Food Challenge. That's a total of 83,200 SBD per year and those are just the things I know about. He clearly has the best interest of the platform at heart.

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carlidos (61) · 8 years ago (edited)

you are part of the curie project? if so thanks, love the community support.

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ats-david (74) · 8 years ago

No, I'm not saying that you are upvoting for your own monetary benefit. But as a whole, whales are continually upvoting each other and giving $50, $100, $200 payouts to each other for comments on posts. Do you not see this as an issue when others are constantly pointing it out? I get that you want your comment to be seen, but trust me - it will be seen regardless of your upvote. Everyone knows who you are and will give it attention.

As I've said many times before and on this thread - it's a perception issue. And as I said - surely, this must be known. It isn't a big secret.

I know you're doing good things, smooth. I just don't want the good things to be continually overshadowed.

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carlidos (61) · 8 years ago

No leave it as is but do the same for us content curators who want our work shown.

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smooth (70) · 8 years ago (edited)

@carlidos I'm not part of the Curie project, that is nextgencrypto. I'm a major investor and supporter of @robinhoodwhale, which is similar.

@shenanigator. Thanks for the words of support. Small correction I had to reduce the Steemcleaners sponsorship to 1000 SBD per week for now due to declining market price and also being stretched thin on other sponsorships (yes there are others, but I won't toot my own horn here).

@ats-david. I can probably count on one hand the times I've made more than a few dollars on a comment (even $1 is very rare). I guess what you are describing happens but it isn't something that happens to me regularly, nor do I regularly give high power upvotes on comments at all whether mine or others (usually 1% which is worth like 50 cents). If you have some issue with what others are doing, please take it up with them.

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cryptogee (75) · 8 years ago

I couldn't have put this better myself; I agree about the 2nd idea being terrible; I haven't powered down a penny yet; however when I do, I don't just want to walk away from Steem curation, yet that is what will happen if that proposal goes through and sticks.

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tuck-fheman (74) · 8 years ago

First off, downvoted because I don't support paying for platform updates and discussion from the team out of the reward pool. This is not a vote on merits of the post or proposals. I would prefer to see these posts marked as ineligible for rewards and would likely upvote for visibility and recognition in that case.

Thank you for continuing to press this issue that has gone on for far too long.

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madhatting (52) · 8 years ago

You're account is rocking! Now, I see why... are you affiliated with bittrex? ** =D**

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smooth (70) · 8 years ago

are you affiliated with bittrex? **

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me-tarzan (80) · 8 years ago

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beanz (68) · 8 years ago

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