My Take on the New "EIP" Hardfork 21 Announcement

It's crazy how this whole thing has gradually shifted from rumour into actual fruition. There have been murmurings about these implementations from over a year back, if I recall correctly. Whisperings of a possible sweeping change that will introduce that vital missing ingredient of "fairness" and "equality" to the Steemit platform. However, upon discovering the nature of those changes, I quickly dismissed them as pure propaganda nonsense. Fast track to today. Oh yeah, reality has hit home and real hard too...

First off, I absolutely hate the "I" in "EIP". "Improvement"? Interesting choice of linguistics there. I think the community can be the judge of that, thank you very much. Looks like this was a pre-decided "done deal" from long before, regardless of what we all thought about it. But anyways, there's no evidence I've got to back up such a statement so let's call it a hunch for now.

So we might also be getting a downvoting pool. To you know, stop "bad content" from getting remuneration. And free downvotes would appear the logical answer to this, right? Well, why not hand some seventh grader an AK47 and usher them into class. Not sure which one is a worse idea, lol. Or perhaps that example was a bit extreme, lol! Still... The way I see it, downvotes right now are self-regulated via using your existing voting power. Hence, they are used sparingly and only when absolutely necessary. Some might remember a pedophilic image doing the rounds a while back. That post got downvoted to shit and justly so. There was no concern about loss of voting power then. Purely a collective community effort of obliterate a piece of "bad content" that should never have been posted in the first place. Others might remember that crazy Jerry Banfield video about his attempts at sucking himself off whilst trying to coerce his mate into sleeping with him. Again, "bad content" and the community spoke. We're not stupid. We don't need free downvotes as incentivisation to remove what it perceived as "bad content". It will happens organically happen as and when need be. History has proven this. Remember all those people that pissed you off in the past? All those users you had a beef with? Well, since voting power isn't tying you down anymore, let's all have a free-for-all flagging war courtesy of the downvote pool. Very nice indeed. And anyone thinking this simply won't happen and the good Samaritans of this platform will let their high upstanding moral virtuosity take control, is living in cloud cuckoo land.

Next up, we have the SPS (Steem Proposal System). All well and good in theory, but let's take a look at what's been achieved so far without it. @aggroed and @yabapmatt producing both Steem Monsters and Steem Engine. Incredible applications in their own right, one of which offers SMT functionality and delivered in record time. Who'd have thought, eh? Except these stunning achievements were just regular individuals who stumbled across this blockchain and decided to code Dapps on it. And grounds breaking Dapps, might I add. All off their "own" volition. Same goes for @oracle-d and @theycallmedan with their implementation of 3Speak for the de-platformed. "If the product is good enough, people will come". I guess that statement has some merit to it after all. This is an excellent blockchain with huge potential, thus it managed to attract innovation and commitment. And from what I hear, more "organic" development is on the way. Now, although I do understand the reasoning behind having a separate pool for development, don't forget that it will be financed through author rewards. So let's hope it doesn't turn into a big old boys club where developers proposals are voting in based on "who they know" as opposed to the "originality and contributive value" their product has to offer. Just saying.

And then we have the 50/50 reward split. To stop the bid-bots from causing widespread devastation to the platform. Solution? Possibly drive away bucketloads of content creators we already have. Why would that be the case, you might ask? Well, under our current linear rewards ruleset, everyone is on the same page, always knowing how much their vote is worth at any time. Nice and simple to understand. Ever tried explaining the concept of "Steem Power" to a non-Steemian? If so, you'll know exactly how lost people can get even with getting their head around the basics of this platform. But after the "EIP" implementation, we will have a non-linear system on anything below 16 Steem on posts. In other words, it has suddenly become much harder to offer meaningful votes without first acquiring a significant amount of Steem Power because the value of singular voting will have been slashed. So essentially, that ladder that you were climbing to build you account and status on here? Hell, it's gonna get a whole lot higher. And another point. If the previous system of non-linear rewards is anything to go by, prepare to see the same names always trending at the top instead of the bid-botted content we have now. We currently have an expanding middle-class that I'm really pleased about. Reason being because adding to your account translates to a visibly increase in your power on the platform. Take that motivating factor away from those individuals who have spent ages stacking SP with their own personal goals in place and expect the powerdowns to start in full force. Essentially, the last thing we need right now given how great this blockchain has been looking lately. And yet another stark example of this proposed hardfork seemingly extracting incentives instead of adding to them.

There are a few other areas I'm concerned about, but does it even matter mentioning them at this point? Right now, it appears HF 21 is a foregone conclusion and yeah, I'm real worried about it. And that's something I gotta say I'm pretty sick of. Being thought-consumed over these types of potential proposals and the detrimental effects they might entail. I've been here a good while and can honestly say, never have I seen such a backlash against a proposed change like this one. Is a large cross-section of the community wrong? I guess only time will tell. I get many people want to eradicate bid-bots by and large, but you also don't want to cut off your nose to spite your face. You feel me on that point? Apologies if I've got some factual information incorrect, but hey, it can't be more confusing than that ridiculous graph contained within the latest HF 21 announcement post. Let's see where this all goes. It's just...

Don't you find it ironic that we've only just come out of "Beta", to then have the economics model altered from the ground up? That's like opening a new Mercedes showroom, only to have a change of heart the week after and start selling Toyota cars instead. IN THE SAME DAMN SHOWROOM!