My take on HF21

in witness •  6 years ago  (edited)



The word that best sums it up is "Wow!", so much stuff happening in one hit. We have the Steem Proposal system (SPS), which is my favourite, other successful chains such as Dash, Ethereum and Ripple have foundations and worker proposal systems, currently Steem is operating like a country without a budget and relies 100% on the private sector (Steemit Inc) and smaller app developers to build on and advertise Steem, the latter having very little resources to make a difference.

The SPS was initially to be funded by a Steemit donation, which seems to now be around 200K STEEM once off, some people recall a higher figure (6 Mil) being thrown around but I personally don't know where to reference that, which is another reason why a forum would be good to document and archive such things.

From the outset I have said that donation-based funding will not be sustainable long term and only emissions based inflation funding will always ensure a steady budget for growth. Most stakeholders and witnesses agree on this, but what they don't agree in is where the funds should come from, some stakeholders think that only author/curator rewards should be used as a funding source because that is where the largest drain on the economy is.

Others think that stakeholder interest stake should not be touched as this makes Steem a less attractive investment vehicle.

My take on this is that all sources should be taxed fairly equally to avoid finger-pointing and conspiracy theories that witnesses and stakeholders are trying to screw the authors, basically we are all in this together and should all shoulder the funding tax, the current split is 75% Rewards, 15% SP Interest, 10% Witness. My suggestion is 70% Rewards 14% SP Interest 9% Witness and 7% to the DAO.

There are a few others who support the above proposed split but seems majority are pushing for 65% Rewards and 10% DAO, with witness and interest untouched.

I understand the reasoning that if witness rewards are reduced, many backup witnesses may drop off and reduce the security of the chain, also consensus witnesses won't have the resources they need to run price feed servers and several backups and may cut corners which could be bad for chain performance and security, I personally run 4 servers in total. My suggestion is that then witness rewards be adjusted to shift more away from the top 20 consensus witnesses to the backup witnesses and I am totally fine with that.

To me taking from the SP interest inflation is fine also, psychological test...put your hand up if you even knew you were earning cira 2% APR on your staked Steem Power? Steemitwallet.com doesn't give any indication of this and I argue that the interest has any bearing on outsiders wanting to invest in Steem, because how would they know about it? I also argue that if investors want a decent APR they can just delegate on https://dlease.io where every day there is about 75K of Steem Power orders between 16 and 20% APR and would encourage more people to rent if their lease orders get filled timeously, this is the investment vehicle right there, 2% is a joke and you will get more on margin lending and on most masternodes so I don't buy that it makes a difference, maybe it stops some stakeholders from dumping more, I don't know. I personally don't even feel it and won't if it gets reduced.




(No mention at all about interest inflation in the wallet)

Regarding the Economic Improvement Proposal (EIP), I think the free downvote pool is a good idea, this will give 25% free downvotes without affecting your voting power, this means we can really clean up this place of trash and spam, I hope this can be delegated because I would rather give that responsibility to people who are more in touch with what content is considered inappropriate as my focus is on business on the Steem blockchain.

The Convergent Linear Rewards curve ... say what now? Ok I don't have a PhD in mathematics, but from what I understand this to be is that the rewards start off as sublinear, meaning that rewards are less as the first few votes come in, once the content is proven by consensus to be vote-worthy then it converges to linear as it gets more traction, linear is what we have now. I don't think this is much of an issue and is worth a try so I'll approve this.

Now for the contentious part, the shift from 75% Author/ 25% Curator rewards to 50/50! The idea behind this is to encourage more curation and less self-voting, I don't hate the idea but I really think it is too much for one Hardfork, especially since author rewards are already going to be reduced in the SPS, content is the inventory and lifeblood of the ecosystem, on one hand, paying less for content creation could mean that we get lower quality and fewer posts, however there is an argument that with improved curation, good posts may actually get voted on more and not have to buy votes from bots as much or at all.

There is another benefit, this means that 12.5% is shifted from liquid author rewards to staked curation SP rewards, basically reducing circulating supply which means less dumping! Great, the Steem price may go up a bit with reduced selling pressure, there is always a silver lining to every dark cloud.

This will encourage people working together and curating as teams rather than solo self voters and could bring about a refreshing change and new business prospects. Services like @steemvoter (Guilds and autovoting) and @dlease (Steem Power leasing) will continue to be in demand, while bot services like @minnowbooster will decline in use.

At the end of the day, radical change is needed as Steem slowly loses ground on the Coinmarketcap top 100, these changes can always be tweaked in a future HF anyway. I would have liked to have seen the SPS done first and gain good traction and community support and think the EIP might give the SPS a muted landing and the distract from its short term effectiveness and community embrace, I am also however sensitive to the fact that more HF's mean more exchange node upgrades and downtime for exchanges and potential delisting of Steem so makes sense to push it all into one from a technical perspective.

Please be assured that I will remain a faithful consensus witness on the chain and as CEO of BuildTeam will continue to strive to make Steem great again.



If you like what I do, vote for thecryptodrive witness with this vote link: https://steemit.com/~witnesses

Or use the quick SteemConnect link: https://app.steemconnect.com/sign/account-witness-vote?witness=thecryptodrive&approve=1



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When is the HF set to take place?

June sometime.

thanks.

I believe the witness percentage of the inflation should be reduced to fund the SPS for one simple reason. Witnesses, and their supporters will obviously have the most influence over the direction of funds within the SPS system. When Steem price has been high, Witnesses have justified the pay on the basis that they are funding other projects and developments or supporting the community with some of the Steem received that is in excess of their costs. These projects funds should now be requested and voted on through the SPS instead. It would also be trivial to build a SPS proposal that supplements witness pay during times of low Steem value, but there will be no way to claw back the inbuilt inflation to witnesses without a Hardfork battle. If Steem price rises, node costs fall, and the SPS is used as a witness piggy bank... I just know I won't be happy about it.

The big fear for me with convergent linear is the crippling of small interactions. Like everything on Steem, number of votes doesn't matter... just stake and vests. One whale vote achieves the "consensus" that it would take many smaller users to achieve. Meanwhile, if these smaller users don't band together en masse, their votes are totally lost. Small accounts lose virtually all of their voting power unless piling on to a "popular" post. This is the exact opposite of organic curation. I think you're correct in that we'll see a resurgence of voting trails and curation guilds, but I don't see that as a good thing. That's not organic curation or good content discovery. That's just a bunch of people communally choosing one post to vote on so they can all make money together without enjoying it or even viewing it. The landscape will also look a lot more like it did under the superlinear curve. Many weren't here or don't remember, but I know that my feed was 90+% posts with zero payout and a few posts with big payouts. As I take a moment to scroll through my feed right now, every post has a payout... some are only 15 cents... but it's a payout. I also choose to spend some of my power voting on comments, usually dropping a 4 to 6 cent payout with my vote so it's above dust threshold and provides a payout. All of these micro transactions will cease under convergent linear. We are actually seeing a gradual broadening of the "middle class" and a greater diversification of stake. Convergent linear and 50/50 are going to slow this process enormously i fear.

I also see 50/50 as a negative against developing business models like Steemhunt and Oracle-D. These are businesses and initiatives that function on the premise of businesses and brands utilizing their stake to reward users for performing tasks, writing reviews, talking about their products, etc. Businesses are incentivized to acquire SP because their voting power is their marketing spend. It's already an amazing system because these brands can reward their followers and ambassadors without ever touching their original SP principal, that may in fact still grow over time with price appreciation, 25% curation rewards, etc. Under 50/50 the "marketing spend" of these projects is effectively reduced by a third. The same goes for all philanthropic curation projects that actually want to reward their vote recipients as much as possible and don't honestly care much about the curation rewards coming back.

I also foresee the large whale accounts whose voting behavior this is supposed to change being completely ambivalent. One large vote from a whale will automatically propel them to the point in the rewards curve that converges on linear, so they won't benefit nearly as much from votes following after their own. Plus, since they're voting with a ton of power, they need an equivalent amount of power coming in behind them to make the 50/50 pay off as much as just self voting themselves. This will only happen if whales collude to trade votes and pile on certain authors. No organic curation or content discovery. The only way these whales can see significant rewards under the new 50/50 convergent linear system is to break their votes up into many smaller votes... probably voting at 5% strength or less. I don't believe for one second that an account holder who currently is delegating to a bidbot, or autovoting their own spam posts and receiving completely passive rewards... is going to shift to evaluating hundreds of pieces of content daily, and delivering 200+ reasoned and authentic upvotes that assist in curation and content discovery. Traf's post wasn't heartening in this regard. A whale who is engaging in the unwanted self voting behavior, and is one of the main architects and proponents of this new EIP, could only say that he would "likely" change his behavior if it passed.

I think you make some excellent points here, no time to really comment in depth as I really SHOULD be working on something else, but very three valid and coherently made criticisms of the HF I think.

Very fair point about how it may not be beneficial for businesses, it would be interesting to hear @starkerz views on this particular point.

Although I'm ambivalent about whether killing off rewarded micro interactions is a good or bad thing - I enjoy giving out those 2-5 cent tips on comments myself, and receiving them back, but is a cheeky comment on a post by a 5-30K account (the level of SP of most of my 'Steem friends') really worth even 0.02 cents, that's 20 cents if Steem 10* like we all hope.

The short answer to that is obviously no, so maybe getting rid of rewards on those isn't such a bad thing!

I see the micro rewards as much more valid and potentially a huge draw to the platform in the future. Going forward it’s obvious that the vast majority of accounts will earn very little, regardless of what changes. Steem is just too scarce at any semblance of scale. And your average social media users account really shouldn’t be making hundreds or thousands of dollars a year for some selfies and food pictures. These casual users won’t bother to link a Steem wallet to a bank account, cash out for fiat, etc. all for the sake of $5-$10... but they will spend Steem back. That’s easy & free.

As a comic artist, I can interact with folks in my comment sections and over time they’re easily going to get a few bucks worth of upvotes from me. Then I will gladly sell them a comic for $3 worth of Steem. Through that experience, they’ll probably be a loyal fan, a promoter, and possibly reach into their fiat pocket to buy more merchandise too. Even at its base layer, without SMTs and overcomplication, Steem can be a great loyalty rewards & marketing system. That’s even how I’ve begun pitching Steem. Not as “come blog and earn money!” but as “come hang out and get a few free comics!” (Valid for my target audience of course!)

So I may be speaking selfishly out of my own use case scenario, but it’s one I see working for lots of businesses and brands. I want my vote value to go to my target, not boomerang back to me in curation. I want my lone vote to matter. An inciteful comment from a reader remarking on page 7 panel 2 of a comic isn’t going to achieve consensus or go viral, but it’s a perfect place for that one on one relationship building and value reward.

  ·  6 years ago (edited)

Unfortunately taking the rewards down to 65% to fund the sps will seriously affect client relationships which we have worked hard to set up. Inflation for funding the sps must be taken equally from all parties. If the witnesses don’t like it, they can leave. I know we at oracle-d will continue to be a witness regardless. Funding the sps from rewards and splitting post rewards 50/50 will affect many business models on the steem blockchain significantly, and not for the better. It will give delegators less reason to delegate since they can no longer reward as much as they could before and there fore the whole reason for delegation is gone, that reason being the ability to have a trusted third party manage your ability to influence others.

In my view the whole problem here is that you can sit and earn 15% from bots and various other schemes on Steem for doing nothing. This is truly crazy. The Idea that large holders (or anyone) is able to earn 15% pa for adding zero physical value to the chain is socialism for the rich. This 15% pa is backed by the value created by the community so in order for the Steem price to hold value the community needs to create more value than this 15% per year before it can break even. How can we possibly expect this to work? The Steem price will go up once the amount of fiat brought in through investors surpasses the value of the inflation distributed. At the moment much of this value transfers to the pockets of people who just delegate to make a passive return in exchange for not actively engaging with the network. This is unsustainable.

The true fix is here; Not anywhere else. If large stake holders are rewarded more than 5% per year for doing very little value added activity, we are finished.if it stays at 15% pa we are finished. If people don’t like it, they can leave and go find another unsustainable model to leach off where they can get their 15% for doing nothing. If they want more than 5% pa then get if from the fiat they can charge users or clients for accessing their projects or services. Large stake holders should be rewarded no more than 5% inflation from the chain and they should only get that 5% based on the value they create for the community, how successful the projects they help set up are and how they often they interact with them positively. If our hard forks do not move us towards this model, we are unsustainable, and will continue to get poor together as we give away our precious token to people who do not add value to the ecosystem.

Initially, when I heard about the 50/50 proposal I thought, hey that's a bit drastic but at the same time saw how little engagement is left on Steem so a part of me figured no harm in trying and shaking things up cause the current path is going nowhere. I did feel it was too much of a change, 65/35 or 60/40 would have been more prudent, but some feel it isn't enough to make a significant difference to user behaviour, fair enough but as I'm discussing this in public and am receiving feedback from you and others I am realising more and more that steemit.com and other frontends aren't the only game in town, there are many other business models, 50/50 kills fundraising models like fundition and many other business models like yours, so yes I agree with you but I think my voice is in the minority.

Also great to hear that you as a backup witness who has the most to lose are happy to take an inflation cut to save on the content rewards being reduced on its own.

  ·  6 years ago (edited)

It would be good to run 50-50 on a test net somewhere for 2 months or so and see what happens. Then make a decision based on that. Any professional team with millions of dollars of market cap on the line would run a test first before going to the real thing. (I would think that by definition, upward mobility becomes very difficult with 50/50.) it maybe that we should propose several curation models and let the community choose here. I know this might not be in ur interests, but another incentive to get people curating and encourage more organic content creation would be to penalise users who use bid bots and users who delegate to them, thereby removing enough Steem form each vote to make them uneconomic (we use bid bots all the time by the way - but this is to keep up with the Joneses) in an ideal world, promoted content should result in burned Steem, and not add a selling pressure to the Steem price by redistributing Steem to token holders who do not do anything to add value to the chain.

What ever we decide to do, I propose we test 3-5 options first. That is what any team would do in order to minimise risk to the community and obtain the most clear view. For example, we could run a 25/75 split between author and curator as well. If we could get the content sponsored externally, the best authors could earn rewards additional to Steem rewards and content consumers and whales would be incentivised to review content. This would bring back organic discovery again. But really none of us know what will happen and this puts a lot of risk on a change like this. So I would advise running several test cases for a few months and then let the community decide what it likes before deciding on one particular solution. This will also give businesses adequate time to adjust their models before the change happens. Either way, the community must get organic content discovery going again at the same time we must disincentivise larhe holders from earning rewards unless they are adding value to the chain via supporting projects or setting up large, manual curation teams to properly distribute the wealth to the highest quality content.

I don't think a testnet would be a true representation of what would happen, only a small subset of users would use the testnet and since rewards aren't real on the testnet you can't simulate real human behaviour. I have no issue if bots are no longer the flavour, we have many services, bots however do democratise visibility where anyone can purchase visibility and does not discriminate, I would hate to go back to the days where u have to kiss ass of whales and go cap in hand to try get their vote so you can get your content promoted, I think that is very humiliating.

Yes, this is also tough. One thing is for sure, these days u have to pay a whale for exposure. It just means organic content discovery has gone. There should be voting guilds with many curators and large delegations to solve this issue. But, you are right, every scenario has its down sides, it just depends on which type of down side will result in the most active whales and organic content discovery.

I said I was ambivalent! Thanks for the detailed reply - you make a very valid case for micro rewards - I hadn't really considered in that way TBH but it certainly seems like a strong argument FOR linear.

Although... this scenario isn't most people on social media and I think SMTs cld be another way of giving out loyalty rewards.

But there is still something appealing about the simplicity of linearity.

Posted using Partiko Android

Thanks for your thoughtful engagement, we need people like you to be party to such proposals early on and bring up concerns such us micro interactions and how the convergent linear curve threatens that. Community voices like yours aren’t heard as much as they should be which is why in a separate post I have proposed a @tokenbb forum for things like hardfork discussions rather than them happening in slack channels which are not accessible to most.

I also like the simplicity of linear as mentioned by @revisesociology and convergent will make it harder for apps to calculate returns etc that users will receive. I also agree that 50/50 kills certain business models and it is part of the proposal I don’t really like. I also agree that whales don’t have time to curate and likely won’t change their behaviour, they will just code a bot that picks up when a post is starting to get traction and then gang vote with their trail.

The problem is these reward splits are being discussed in the context of steemit.com and little thought given to the fact that the landscape has evolved and there are many other apps in the ecosystem now that use rewards in different ways and now will be disrupted and have to retool, slowing down development on new things.

I however don’t agree that witness pay should be impacted solely, witnesses need incentives to run good servers and have backup servers etc, to be on call 24/7 incase the chain halts due to a malformed json error like happened once before, witnesses were running on 3 hours or less sleep on that day and one even drove back home from hospital to attend to his servers, we also have lots of discussions on important matters such as this. Lowering pay to witnesses is the same as lowering pay to bitcoin miners, soon after no one would want to mine and process transactions. I also don’t agree that witnesses will get preference on the SPS proposals, some might but the community is bigger now and many big stakeholders and alliances exist that can sway the proposals towards their members, the PAL community for example or the Steem Business Alliance to name a few that could have strong enough membership.

Agreed on your witness counterpoints. I really wasn’t clear enough, but I agree the SPS should not fund solely from Witness pay, but that it should be a contributor in the mix, as well as SP interest, to have a much lesser impact on the rewards portion.
I’ll be interested to see how the SPS plays out exactly, but top witnesses by nature only hold their position by gathering voting support, so through their existing contact network and infrastructure alone they’ll be in a much stronger position to leverage the SPS from the outset.
I’m very interested in the forum. I did see your post and thank you for taking that initiative!

Thanks for the discussion @bryan-imhoff, I am with you 100% that the SPS should be funded from all sources, the split I proposed is fairly equal across all, basically reducing all by 10% and rounding to the nearest round number so we don't deal with decimals. If the forum goes ahead I hope to have you engaging on it.

Dear @bryan-imhoff

That's just a bunch of people communally choosing one post to vote on so they can all make money together without enjoying it or even viewing it.

You nailed it!

I've been supporting number of curators by upvoting their valuable comments and right now it seem that it will not make sense any more.

Any idea when HF21 will take place?

We are actually seeing a gradual broadening of the "middle class" and a greater diversification of stake. Convergent linear and 50/50 are going to slow this process enormously i fear.

I'm afraid I see it the very same way :(

I also see 50/50 as a negative against developing business models like Steemhunt and Oracle-D.

To some degree I believe you're right. However they may simply use extra curation rewards for steem-bounty and that way promote their content and reward authors.

Yours,
Piotr

Now for the contentious part, the shift from 75% Author/ 25% Curator rewards to 50/50

I am not sure if I am happy with this... When will it start?? Then Smartsteem has to adopt :-/

Followed - Thanks for sharing your impressions and thoughts!

I’m not really sold on that one point myself, think it will start sometime in June if it gets approved.

Is this point already 100% sure???

Isnt there something like a democratic voting on that?

Dear @thecryptodrive

Excellent take on HF21, I feel SPS will be vital in the success of Steem however on the fly after its implementation it will be that we see the results little by little.

Friend @thecryptodrive, I just voted for you as a witness. Great work that you do.

Thanks for the witness vote and for supporting my post, I really appreciate it.

  ·  6 years ago (edited)

i like the idea of delegated downvotes. maybe a bit of both.

Yeah it’s very practical I’m not a professional curator but wouldn’t want my downvotes to go to waste either.

You have explained it more. I don't really support that 50/50 proposal to me and also we should be mindful and concern about the witnesses. The cost they spent to run. So I also will support the witness reward remains untouched

That’s really nice of you to consider witnesses, the backup witness especially need the consideration, I don’t think many would think the way you do and be upset if only content rewards were reduced.

Great take on HF21, I feel SPS will be vital in the success of Steem @thecryptodrive

Hey old timer! ;0) I like your reasoned take on things!

Heya, look who's talking, your account is almost as old as mine hehe! I'm glad you liked my insights, don't forget to vote my witness, surprised you aren't hehe. ;)

Haha, I thought I was!! I shall investigate the matter!

loool, escalate the matter to the proper channels! :)

Hahaha, I have alerted the authorities!! :0D

They coming to put you in jail for vote fraud, ahahahaha!

Oh noes, I shall remove it!!!! :0p

Nooo u were committing fraud by not voting for me :)

Thanks for the vote my man! Boom!!! :)

I think the idea of 50/50 rewards impacting self-votes and circle jerking is delusional.

Be whale.
Have 2 accounts.
Use one to upvote the other.
Keep both sides of the spread regardless of the splits.

A circle jerking arrangement will be sightly more complicated, but it follows the same principle.

Changing the rewards split will impact the bid bots and the curation trails.

Yeah the problem with curation abuse is it is harder to detect, post abuse is easy to spot cause it goes up on trending and the author is blamed for selfvoting, with curation it's harder to point fingers and detect, and yeah they just vote with several accounts and gain the required rewards, I mean I could make a post with one account and split my stake to 10 accounts and upvote my post with it. Luckily I run a business on Steem and have no time or interest in doing such things.

I could never understand why it have to be ether 25/75 or 50/50, but not the calculated mediane of vitnesses voted parameters.
The same principle could be applied to the size of the downvote pool and in fact to just any parameter.

Yes a witness parameter or a SPS proposal would be good.

  ·  6 years ago (edited)

Yes, I thought that maybe witnesses don't like to be under attack of not-content content creators on day-by-day basis.
A SPS proposal looks like palatable substitute.

Just for clarify a doubt i have. When you say that Steemit Inc (private) is investing "his" money. We are talking about the premined steem? Or they bought more to increase that initial SP. Of course, premine it was necessary to start running the network, and also to "control" in some how the functionallity of the ecosystem. The social media system behind a chain requires premine and i understand this.

But i dont know if its cool to call that as private invest. The "private" part its preety clear, but not the "invest" part. I dont want to be the negative guy, but for me is preety clear that they dont care much about content and they see this ecosystem more like a bank account than a content creator platform.

Whales dont read, barely comment and of course they just post a puppy picture to get hundred dollars each. Then sit on his invest and cry demanding for more. Im not talking about all whales, there are good whales out there , great and dedicated steemians and those really desserve to have big proffits.

Im not against rich people, im against greed.

Now, with MIRA implementations the cost of nodes should decrease. Why is this really necesary? Maybe whales never noticed about how much pain becomes with HF20 for newcommers. Or maybe they do, but, they dont care. This days new ussers cant post or even comment because RC is a joke if you have the 15 SP starter.

The system have to take care of new comers, instead making things difficult to them. And there is when im start thinking that they dont really care at all.

If something essential as adopting new ussers to create content, have more audience and be more known outside.

Steem are becoming a close system isolated from the world.

But, no. Steem system looks like designed to screw little people for the sake of "god" investors and stackers. But, arent them the responsables of all what happening? They call the shots, and when anything goes wrong just punish minnows and newcommers.

Sry my bad english... Thanks for sharing your thoughts

Posted using Partiko Android

Thanks for your reply, yes I do refer to the premined SP in the Steemit company accounts, even though it was premined to start the network and ideally should have been used in context of a foundation for the furtherance of the network, it was not and they clearly regard those funds as their private company funds now as was seen when a fork was threatened, they referred to it as company assets and not community assets. Steemit continues to powerdown and sell 800K Steem per month but I am happy that they have improved their communication and are rolling out MIRA and hardforks again, maybe now that they have fresh blood as leadership they will run things like a professional company going forward, with some element of corporate social responsibility.

At the end of the day it is the community that makes the Steemit stake worth anything.

800k x month?

Hope they finish soon and leave.

Maybe there the coin stop going down, with such a constant sell pression of our king steem...

On the other hand is funny how they low cost and are starting now to draining more from the minnows...

This descentralized chain looks like a centralized bank.

Posted using Partiko Android

Technically steemit's stake was not premined. A premine is when the developers start the mining without givinig access to third parties to the code. This did not happen. What they did do is made sure that they had more resources devoted to it than everyone else. If you look back on the bitcointalk forum they admited publicly that their intention was to have majority stake. So they invested more money than everyone else on the resources necessary to acomplish this.

I read the conversation on bitcointalk.org there, usser post screenshots about how Steem premine, giving wrong code access to those who want to participate on the release of the network.

If you can probe me wrong please send me the links information is power.

Posted using Partiko Android

It is public knowledge that the mining had to be restarted becuase of a bug (maybe that's were that person was confused?). Anyway, here is the link to the anouncement for the relaunch after the bug was fixed.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1410943.0

As you can see there are several miners commenting that they were able to do it so what ever the person you are referring too was saying is disproven by that fact.

  ·  6 years ago (edited)

Yeah, I took the time to reread a few pages. While I don't fully understand the technical aspects, it doesn't seem like a completely transparent release.

There is also no way to prove that some participants had privileged information to configure the witneses.

And if we see the corporate face, ambitious and not very productive that steemit inc has, I wouldn't be too surprised either.

After almost 4 years they don't even have a miserable App for Android, the web interface is practically the same and their biggest achievement was to modify a logo.

Now, they get 800k steem per month? It's not that I'm interested or it's my business to use them, but I could tell you that's what they don't do with that money. There are no advertising campaigns, the interface was already surpassed by every project that tried it (busy, partiko, but above all STEEMPEAK).

There is no leadership, no tasks, no collective goal, no path. We vaguely shout "Hurrah! Steem is the best" but we wander each one separately without a common goal.

They lower the costs of the nodes, dismiss staff and then plan to benefit (once again) those who already have everything? Because "it's not business" is literally saving the banks, the same thing governments do! The rules always change in favor of those who have more?

Great advantages of decentralization (?) because the rules have to change when those who win, don't win what they want? Or do they only do it because they are the ones who have the baton of command?

Forgive me if I find it outrageous (xD)

It's not that I can "pick another steem," it's the only one that exists. Should i move GOLOS? (I'm joking, on all fours I can speak English)


(SMT incoming. No! Joking! its not! Get a fork instead! King Steemit needs more money)


I can't blame you for having that point of view. Anyway, I wasn't defending Steemit Inc, I was just pointing out that "premine" is not an accurate term to use. After all they where upfront from the beggining that they intended to have majority stake, anyone that complained at the early mining stage of the project has only themselves to blame or were not competent enough to do it. I confess I didn't have the know-how to enter at that early time but I don't go around blaming steemit inc for my lack of knowledge like others did.

Yeah and some of the mining tools and documentation were problematic, and they launched quietly, it's known more as a ninja mine.

Thanks for your perspectives as we really depend on witnesses to operate here and given sharing your thoughts helps us decide who to support. My only concern is how the changes will change the attitudes of the community which is still unfortunately small and even more so how will future users become more interested as it seems that the learning and opportunity curve will steepen for smaller and potential users which are the immense majority.

Posted using Partiko iOS

Sure my pleasure, I also think the changes are too drastic and the SPS and downvote pool should have been released on their own, maybe also with converged linear if that is appropriate but certainly not also with th 50/50 curation split, at least start with 65/35 or not change that till a future HF.

Dear @thecryptodrive

the results little by little, @lanzjoseg following the teacher to give support @thecryptodrive

Friend @thecryptodrive, I just voted for you as a witness. Great work that you do.

Thanks for your vote I really appreciate it!

Hi, @thecryptodrive, I am from @Snaxteam.
Hardfork is the most discussed news on Steem the last days. And since the topic of rewards is touched on here, you must have heard about our Snax project? Snax is a blockchain platform. It was created for people to receive rewards for their social activity (tweets, Steem posts, and so on). We have our own view on a fair distribution of rewards, different from Steem (this is described here https://hackernoon.com/decentralizing-social-media-rewards-steem-and-snax-comparison-ac17201824cc).

We have already spent several rounds of rewards. And you are one of the leaders of our Attention rating now https://snax.one/steem?page=1. I hope it can be insteresting for you and your subscribers. Join now and start getting a Snax reward https://snax.one/. Ready to answer your questions here. Or you can write to us in the channel Discord https://discordapp.com/channels/509371605542109185/578602854437093426/ We will be glad to see you in our community)

Cool I see I'm in the top10 in the Snax ratings, please contact me on Discord - thecryptodrive#8144 to see what synergies BuildTeam.io and Snax can have.

Dear @thecryptodrive

from what I understand this to be is that the rewards start off as sublinear, meaning that rewards are less as the first few votes come in, once the content is proven by consensus to be vote-worthy then it converges to linear as it gets more traction, linear is what we have now.

Would that mean that rewards from upvoting comments will be cut down? I mean: if my 10% upvote would create reward worth 0.05$ then it seem that this will be way smaller amount in the future?

Yours
Piotr

Yes that is correct, I believe the plan is to encourage people to work as a group and network rather than just voting for self or one direct friend, it also promotes content sharing because for your vote to matter it needs other votes to vote with you to bring the rewards back to linear.

If you have a chance please engage on our forum for HF21 queries it is much easier for me to answer in one place. https://neosteem.com/topic-list?category=hf21

Everything above sounds good to me except for the 50/50 split in Author Rewards and Curation Rewards. I do agree that there should be more curation going on but then again if the Author Rewards are decreased this drastically then there might not be as much content to Curate.

After all a huge part of people here on Steemit wants to get some sort of earning out of this and if it gets reduced by 25% that would be a huge blunder, especially when there is a rumour of EOS launching their own Social Network.

I for one believe the 75/25 split I'm favor of Author Rewards is a perfectly balanced ratio. Plus now if we get the 15% Down vote pool we can somewhat counteract the One Liner/Picture Posts that has no context at all.

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Agree on that issue, it doesn't make cognitive sense because the creator (author) get's the same rewards as the consumer (curator), I also believe Steem was 50/50 at some point maybe have worked fine back then, so may work out, will see.

I forgot to mention this Earlier that there is also the fact that most Dapps on the STEEM Blockchain has a 10% Beneficiary Reward which I feel is necessary for them to Run the Service but if the split goes to 50/50 then actually it will be 40% Author Reward, 50% Curation Reward and 10% Beneficiary Reward.

The Delegation Market will Suffer as well because no one will be taking in any Huge Delegations when that will cost them huge Money in the Short Run. Plus I am pretty sure that a lot of Dapps will shut down as most people who still stay in the Platform after the 50/50 split will avoid those Dapps so that they can save that 10% Reward.

That's right I think lot's of apps will suffer after the HF, content and curation will be the few activities left.

After HF 20 we lost a lot of People her eon Steemit and I feel this time after HF 21 we might lose both people and Future Dapp Developments.

These are very important decisions and people need to be objective about them. Almost everyone sees one side of the coin that is facing upward but what about the side of the Coin that is facing downward.

I totally agree that we shod curate more but by doing that you shouldn't screw all the Authors. I just did a quick calculation on my Curation Rewards and it seems I am earning 60 SP per week as Curation Reward and 130 SP as Author Reward but if the 50/50 split happens then I will get 75 SP as Curation Reward and 80 SP as Author Reward which means I will lose more Author Rewards then I will get Curation Rewards. BTW I use 60% of my Power for curation and only 40% for my own Posts so ultimately even though I curate more I won't get a better deal out if this 50\50 split.

I take about 40000 SP lease so that I can curate and I pay for them from my Author Rewards after this I am most definitely not going to continue leasing as that would take money out of my pocket.

Posted using Partiko Android

Yes that is a concern I think the changes are geared with Steemit.com in mind and adjusting the economy around that, not much thought to other business types and potential publisher models that could arise out of the new Nitrous and Rocketx condenser clones.

  ·  6 years ago (edited)

This is a good reason for the SPS funding be shifted from the content reward pool. As you say content rewards based on voting is a very steemit.com-centric model, and as such is way overfunded with a 75% share going to a single model. Other models should have a chance to compete for those funds too (without needing to engage in reward-pool milking).

With SPS, other models and projects can make their proposal for a portion of the 'greater reward pool' funds intended to be spent in various ways to add value to Steem.

Ultimately I would like to see the steemit.com reward pool, if it survives in its present form at all, take the form of an SPS proposal that gets a piece of the budget in level competition with other apps and their proposals.

Or alternately, SPS proposals can draw from the unified reward pool alongside posts and comments.

Either way, we should get away from steemit.com as being the primary app that gets direct access to community funding and every other model has to compete for scraps.

I am all for the SPS, I am 100% behind it and also agree that would be nice that the blogging reward pool also take the form of a proposal and be budgetted in.

it doesn't make cognitive sense because the creator (author) get's the same rewards as the consumer (curator)

That's not actually how it works though.

You have, in a typical/hypothetical case, one author and 100 curators. The author gets 50%, each curator gets 1/2% (on average).

Sure but the author sees it like, I wrote this and am getting only half the rewards and these curators getting the other half for just clicking on an upvote button, authors don't take into consideration how many curators will be splitting the 50%, in some cases it could be the same person behind all those curator bot accounts anyway.

  ·  6 years ago (edited)

authors don't take into consideration how many curators will be splitting the 50%

Help educate them.

in some cases it could be the same person behind all those curator bot accounts anyway.

"In some cases" sure, but that is not typical of any sort of social platform with actual users. We have to think about these things in terms of how they actually work on a platform-wide basis not one edge case.

Anyway, that is not the reason why curation rewards need to be higher for the system to have a chance to work and that's a whole different discussion. It is useful for people to understand (to the extent they don't already or are being misled), that one piece (author's share) goes to a single user and the other piece (curation) is typically split up many ways with each voter getting only a tiny slice.

It would be more effective if the frontend such as steemit.com explains this, hard for one person to educate everyone and new users join all the time (hopefully) :).

  ·  6 years ago (edited)

You're right the UI is terrible. Maybe it improves (which would be somewhat of a miracle at this point after years of mostly not, but you never know) or maybe other apps and UIs continue to grow and take its place.

Anyway, as a Steem witness and Steem stakeholder and not a steemit.com witness nor a Steemit shareholder, my primary concern is that the blockchain mechanisms function effectively, which from all available evidence at this point requires a much higher (than 25%) curation split.

Which, of course, I told them in 2016 and if they had listened to me we could have avoided onboarding thousands of users under the false promise that a system paying the author 75% of the payouts would actually work. Now, unfortunately, we have to pay the substantial costs (not only this one by any means) of remedying years of bad decisions and general neglect. Hopefully it isn't too late and we manage to turn things around.

I really hope we can turn things around, especially in the face of Voice. The funding will help, once SPS is in place I'm applying for a marketing budget for Dlease and Tokenbb, I still think they can go viral given the right marketing.

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You don't seem very active as a witness on this blockchain. On which position are you right now?

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Lol I’m number 10, I’m CEO of https://buildteam.io and am active daily leading the development of @dlease, @tokenbb, @ginabot, @minnowbooster, @steemvoter and more. I’m active in our team Discord and in the Steem devs slack, in another post I mentioned there should be a public forum where the community can be part of discussions witnesses have off chain.

Oh wow, a great accomplishment and I am taking lately to start a witness server. What is the best way to be in 20 from your own experience?

You have to be trusted by the community by at least a year, put out some great apps that make a difference to the community, make friends in high places, be diplomatic. It's kind of like elections and campaigning.

Thanks, will be a cool challenge to reach!

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