Hello Steemians, as of now, the proposal to lower the power down period to 4 weeks has 20 million Steem Power backing it, while the proposal not to lower the power down period has around 17 million Steem Power behind it.
Go Steem.DAO!
Before we get into the nitty gritty let’s take a moment to appreciate this cool use for the Steem.DAO. We think one of the best indicators of good design is when a tool doesn’t just serve the intended purpose well, but also serves unforeseen use cases. That’s also why we want to thank @thecryptodrive yet again for his innovative use of the Steem.DAO.
What these proposals demonstrate is that while there is clearly a lot of interest in modifying the power down aspect of Steem, there is no clear consensus on the nature of that change or the urgency, which is not say that this is a topic which should be ignored.
Alternative Approach
That’s why in today’s post we’d like to propose an alternative approach to this problem which we believe would satisfy those who support the proposed changes, while providing a more comprehensive, customizable, and long-term solution to the problem.
What we propose is giving account holders the ability to determine for themselves how long they would like to time lock their funds. The longer the user chooses to lock their funds, the more funds they get to claim from the token inflation which is allocated to Steem Power holders. While this might sound like an escalation from the relatively simple proposed change, we believe it is a superior and worthwhile solution.
Competing Goals
Community members will never agree on what the power down time should be because there are two competing design goals within it. Those that want a shorter power down time want to lower the barrier to entry to Steem, and those that want a longer power down time want to incentivize long term commitment to the ecosystem. Addressing both of these issues would significantly improve Steem’s ability to grow, but the current system cannot satisfy both requirements. Therefore a new system is required.
A Simple Proposal
The system we propose would enable the user to determine for themselves exactly how long they are willing to lock up their STEEM, and would reward them in direct proportion to that length of time. The longer the user chooses to lock up their Steem, the larger the percentage of the inflation they get.
Not a Design Proposal
This is not a comprehensive design proposal, and many questions still need to be answered. What should the minimum possible time lock be? The current economics of Voting Mana dictate that the shortest possible Steem Power time lock would be 5 days.
That means that a user who chooses this option could lose all of their stake in 5 days if hacked. Is that an acceptable risk? This also does not address what the bonus incentivize should be for those who time lock for longer periods of time or whether there should be a maximum time lock.
Post SMT Hardfork
While we believe this would be a superior change, it is sufficiently complex that in order to incorporate it into the SMT hardfork we would have to delay that project. For that reason, we would recommend waiting until after the SMT hardfork to begin work on this change.
Let us know in the comment section below what you think of our proposal!