How to Save the Whales : Is Delegated Voting (DV) the Answer?

The Problem

It seems everybody these days is either angry with the whales, critical of them or wants a piece of them.  

The problem is that there are only a few whales to go around.  They are also in some cases the very same people who are working on developing Steemit and promoting it which creates a conflict between curating content and development.  

There are only so many hours in the day and with so few of them (whales) there are always going to be limitations as to how much they can curate content themselves.

This creates a dilemma:  

The whales have a lot of voting power but without them using their considerable voting power to upvote posts the amounts raised on the trending page will fall significantly.  

Like it or not those large sums are a big attraction to new members.  

If I'm a new user looking at the trending page - seeing the top posts with a dollar or two is not really going to be a strong pull.  Seeing thousands of dollars is what will pull me in.

Until Steemit gets to the size of a Facebook or Youtube when there are enough minnow votes available to create equivalent sums we need the whales to use their votes as much as possible.

The Solution (or at least one possible solution)

That's why I think there should be a means of delegated voting (DV for short).  

How would delegated voting (DV) work?

Let's take an example of @ned who has one of largest wallets on Steemit with the greatest SP.  He is a busy guy and next week he is going to be spending a week at an international conference talking and spreading the word about Steemit (this is purely hypothetical I don't know his schedule).  

Unfortunately he doesn't have a lot of time as it normally and during this time he probably won't be able to curate any content on Steemit.  

Fortunately @ned knows another user - @notverybusyned whom he know is a good curator, has a good reputation and would be willing and able to vote while @ned is away.  

So @ned delegates his voting power for a set period (in this case a week) to @notverbusyned who is able to vote for that week with all his own voting power and that of @ned combined.  

During this period @ned is not able to vote and when the week is over his voting power returns and he is able to vote as he did before.

There is no reason this could not be applied to all users.  There will likely be many people who are time limited and would rather pass on their voting power to others (at least for limited periods of time).  

The advantages of delegated voting are:

1. Voting power is not wasted due to time poor voters.
2. People who would not normally have very high voting power but are good curators are able to have a greater voice.
3. A more diverse range of content can get high value up-votes.
4. Distribution is accelerated as a consequence of the above points.
5. It reduces (but does not eliminate) accusations or the appearance of favouritism. So people are also happier with whales as shown above.

Other modifications to DV

Some other modifications that could be used in combination with delegated voting to enhance it's use would be:

1. Take account of reputation as part of the delegation.  Limit delegation to certain reputation levels only(to help eliminate bots).
2. In accordance with the above have delegation lotteries - where each month a high reputation member gets delegated a certain SP.  This could be built into the platform with a special "rotating" whale account that is delegated to a new member every week perhaps restricted to the top two reputation levels.

Conclusion

Delegated voting would be a useful tool in helping to make Steemit a fairer and more diverse place.  It would help to accelerate adoption by allowing those who are time poor to delegate their voting power to others.  By way of doing this it would also increase the diversity of content and reduce accusations of favouritism.  

A delegation lottery with an associated "rotating" whale account could act as a further enticement for both new members and the encouragement of good behaviour (by limiting to certain rep levels).

I am not a programmer so I cannot comment on the technical difficulty of actually implementing DV in Steemit so I will rely on other users who have the technical proficiency to discuss it.  

Please give your thoughts in the comments section below:

(All images used are public domain from Wikepedia.  Except for final image which is Creative Commons: Sea World - Orlando FL - Sept 1989 Photo by Alan C. Teeple : link for all images here)