Why Rewards Have to Change... (Fair warning, this is a long one)
I haven't written one of these posts in a while as I honestly got tired of being ignored for over a year, but we've finally reached that inevitable point where rewards are changing, because as many of us saw early on, there's really no choice if we want the platform to survive. Today I'll share my thoughts (again) on the problem with steemit's rewards breakdown and why PALnet is doing something different, regardless of what happens in the next hardfork.
We need to first establish some baseline concepts that some people seem to struggle with. First is that value is entirely subjective. Equality of opportunity does not equal equality of outcome. In general, human beings act in their own self interest and while some of us find moments to rise above this "human condition," the overall trend remains the same and currently dictates the norm.
The current problem with curation and vote selling on steemit stems from two core problems. One is that self voting is the most profitable thing to do and getting rid of it won't solve the problem as people can just make multiple accounts to vote themselves. The second major problem is that curation is basically asking someone to give away 75% of their potential earnings because someone did something and if we can accept that value is subjective, then it's only logical that the thing the person did doesn't provide enough value to the other person to make them voluntarily give up resources that they could give themselves.
If we're going to ever have a content driven economy with real world value attached to it, via advertisement or other means such as a rewards pool, then we have to realize that consumers are just as important as the content creators. Sure, the consumers don't come without the content, but the content has no value without the consumers so we end up with a bit of a chicken and the egg scenario when it comes to creating the value. Steemit's problem is that most people are trying to be a content creator and the platform has little to no actual consumption of the content.
The consensus reached with the PALnet team was to go with 50/50 rewards for authors and curators. This is a more balanced approach than steemit is currently using, but there is some thought out there among my fellow deep thinkers that to make a content driven economy we'd actually have to push things further. I'm not saying we will or plan to with PALnet, but I want anyone that reads this to honestly consider what could happen if the split was more like 20/80 in favor of curation.
The general theory is that while self voting would still remain the most profitable, the twenty percent sacrifice to upvote the best content would be a worthwhile investment to anyone holding tokens and curating as a source of income. Driving new traffic and users to the site while also focusing the vast majority of the rewards on the top quality content would increase the value of the platform as a whole. There is also the likelihood that people wouldn't post unless they felt they were delivering the absolute best quality content possible, as they would need to gain the support of lots of stake holders to make their efforts worthwhile.
In the previous example, sure the author may only get 20% of the rewards, but if a post is naturally valued in the hundreds or thousands of dollars versus the current dynamic where a natural $10 post is far from the norm and the author only gets 75% of that, then we can deduce the author would be earning significantly more even with the smaller percent of the rewards. The curators also wouldn't feel like they were just giving money away and wasting their time curating. It's a win-win-win as everyone's getting paid and the platform features and supports the best content to bring in new users.
The point of all of this is to hopefully grant some perspective as to why rewards have to change. We've tried the current method for far too long and it's resulted in less engagement and the poorest content quality I've seen on the blockchain since this all started. Most professional content creators left, most curators don't bother anymore, and no one but bag-holders are making any money and the value continues to decline as they pay themselves for the privilege of holding tokens. We didn't get stagnate, we started deteriorating.
If we can look at the simple facts stated at the start of this quite verbose post and understand that people generally do what is in their best, short-term interest, then we have to align the rewards model in a way that makes them doing so also be in the best interest of the platform. People need incentive to hold tokens, which is where an increase in curation rewards comes in, and we need to get rid of the garbage spam, which is where less author rewards come in. We have to find the right balance and that will take some experimentation.
It's not about paying quality content creators less, it's about getting people to actually use their stake in a positive manner that benefits the whole ecosystem and removing the incentive to spam by making it much less profitable as it does nothing but devalue the whole platform. Of course this all just my perspective and I already know not everyone agrees, but hopefully it provides some food for thought. Much love.
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Interesting that now we can move beyond theory into experimentation. PALnet is a new Steem environment does 50/50 author/curator rewards so we'll see how it plays out. But thanks to the new tools like SCOTs it is possible could set up another Steem environment and test the more extreme model you mentioned and see how it compares.
I'm sure someone will find a really great balance at some point, but it's going to take some out of the box thinking to figure it out.
I think the out of the box imperative is the actual problem in this particular case. Thousands of years of investment experience has been ignored and capital gains have not been the mechanism chosen to reward investors. Instead extracting profit before it can inure to the underlying investment vehicle has been encouraged, and the slow decline of Steem market cap has been the result.
This is not a surprise to actual investors, because of their personal experience. I think what we need is establishing sound and proven capital gains mechanism as the incentive for investors and ending profiteering. Instead of encouraging stakeholders to increase the value of Steem, we've encouraged them to put that value in their wallets, and that doesn't float all boats equitably, but concentrates it in the wallets of those with the most stake.
You're a waste of space. You've been flagged like the trash you are.
I think that there wouldn't be any content creators left...:)
I have a fair question though...How will the 50 - 50 split will help a newcomer in terms of curation rewards? I have a feeling that those who hold less than 500SP will practically earn nothing -curation wise- regardless if they vote everything at 100%...Even if it's double the curation rewards...no offence here, just out of curiosity.
They are mainly depended on that 75%
Besides we all know that newcomers or little fish need an extra push, right?
Here's a platform where most people vote 20% to author and 80% to keep (curation) from a rewards pool and the only number ever displayed goes directly to the author... no inflated number that gets chopped up later. The way it works in that case is that all votes impact a shared reward pool and each vote is worth a set value. What that would look like on STEEM is another question entirely, but I imagine with scotbot it's something that some community will explore in the future.
To address the concern of their being no content creators left though, from the site I linked you can see that clearly isn't true. Would I spend all the time required to write those quality of posts for a couple of bucks? Probably not, but it isn't stopping other people from doing it. Just because you or I don't think 20% would be worthwhile doesn't mean that would stop it from being successful. Perhaps if that dynamic played out, we'd just be voting/curating and let other people that enjoy and make better content be the creators while we get paid for voting.
The only thing we can tell with all certainty at this point is that what we're doing doesn't work. Continuing to do the same thing is insane at this point. I think trying something else is the only option if we aren't just milking this dead cow for as long as we can.
Agreed 100% mate.
I really do hope that PAL will set an example regarding what should had been done since day 1. And I also hope that this will "eventually" be a wake up call for all those big accounts that remain inactive for quite some time now...
I have had to split posts before, not because of rewards, but because I'm horribly verbose. An easy fix for long, high quality posts is to split them into chunks, or chapters.
You're a waste of space. You've been flagged like the trash you are.
Chicken and the egg indeed :)
Is a flexible split author/curator something to consider. Some will give away 80%, others 20%. It is up to them.
Yes, empower the content consumers, let them choose how much they give away. What is the minimum you think?
(yeah pretty sure I flipped your whole 'thing' and served it up to you, not sorry either as it wouldn't make any sense that the author should decide how much the curators earn, after all, it's like the consumers deciding how many words any one post should be, and if you didn't mean it like that, then I couldn't agree more, maybe a min 10%)
It's really no different than selling something for cheap with the hopes of making higher profit in bulk sales. The gourmet restaurant sells hamburgers for $20. They have fewer consumers and make less money than Mcdonalds, who sells their product for the lowest possible price.
I'm a content producer. I'd rather take a smaller percentage of potentially thousands of votes, than a larger percentage of practically nothing, because a large percentage of nothing, is nothing. Nothing is nearly where I'm at today. After nearly three years, there's no more ladder to climb, it's been downhill.
Agreed, I've been some form of a content creator on STEEM for about 3 years myself, but I recognize my niche has limited appeal, but it's what I'm passionate about. Seeing the content creators with much broader appeal all start exiting en masse should have been a wake up call, but it's taken almost 2 years of this shit to face the music. Hopefully PALnet can help and hopefully more economic models keep coming.
But 75% out of nothing you can have right now, why try to get 50% out of something that you might or might not have later..
Me not can math. How put what?
You can have three fourths out of nothing, right now, or you can risk it all and maybe get half of something or half of nothing.
Do you really want to risk a quarter from your nothing and end up with only half of nothing, that's what scares almost everyone.
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If it doesn't work, we all just leave, and these goofs who thought it was wise to act selfishly for so long can sit there with their thumbs up their asses and a wallets full of useless tokens.
#wekumillionares
Forced curation is a completely broken mechanic and should be scrapped entirely. If someone wants to allow curation to occur on their content, that should be their decision to make and for how much.
At it's core, Steem is a tipping platform. Yes, a lot of people choose not to tip those who are trying to bring value to the platform. They instead choose to tip themselves or form a circle with a small group. This is normal. This is fine.
Literally nothing needs to change. If it were up to me I would make curation optional on a sliding scale and peg SBD to a dollar with Steem collateral just like the MakerDAO does it.
All we have to do is wait. The platform is working just fine. I've been blogging here over a year and I've made way more money here than I would have anywhere else. You might call it a screaming success from this perspective.
We are coming from a place where content creators are trying to sell their product after giving it away for free. Yeah, this obviously isn't the most profitable business model, but it is a good start and a way to get a foot in the door.
Going forward encryption will be used to secure ownership of digital content. Frontends will not allow users to access content unless the blockchain proves that they own it. None of this has anything to do with the foundations of the Steem blockchain and can be implemented in a permissionless manner by anyone in the world.
For example, imagine a game where anyone is allowed to create a skin that makes your character look different. No one will be allowed to use that skin unless they pay the creator x amount for it. Problem solved.
The same concept can be applied to blogging, but it won't be popular, because who is going to buy blogging content? Smarter to just give it away for free and hope someone is generous, especially if that blogger/vlogger doesn't have a big built-in audience.
I think that's the crux of it at this point. Whether it's right or wrong, the status quo established throughout the first ~25 years of the internet was to basically give away this content. Some companies got wise, made it easy for anyone to do and got rich as fuck off of it by selling ads. The point being is there is value being created via the attention economy that is created. I think it's only natural in a blockchain setting that the people creating that value want a piece of the pie.
for me steem also had a feel of a tipping platform, and only thing you need to do so you can tip is have SP. And i really love the thing that i can give some people that i like some steen for their efforts. Some people love only themselves and tip only themselves and you can't change those people.
While i hand out as many votes to others it is good for people to also tip themselves. This is a core definition of money that all currencies should strive to attain. Per usual when greed takes over then people need the ability to stand together to affect the powerful. A main problem of the current system, among many, is that the power of money creation is only in the hands of a few.
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and that would not be a problem (well it is a problem but) if they would share. but they have a different view of steem
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You can't change acquisitive people, but you can make the tipping mechanism unsuitable for profiteering by them. Today the whales can cast a vote worth 100 Steem, and sell that vote for say ~60 Steem (not an example. I've never bought a vote, and have no idea what they actually cost). If their votes were only worth 1 Steem, selling them would be far too much trouble for the miserable return on their time it cost them to sell them.
Whales should be seeking capital gains, rather than extracting rewards from the pockets of creators. The rewards mechanism is indeed broken, as @clayboyn says. While I'd prefer curation rewards were just eliminated, @edicted is more right than am I when he says creators should be able to set a curation reward at their sole option. I think curation rewards discourage human judgement of quality from being the basis for casting an upvote - actual curation, and instead substitute ROI as an incentive to cast a vote. The potential financial return from casting a vote has nothing at all to do with the quality of the content, and is actually counterproductive to encouraging content of high quality.
Even so, curation payola will exist, on or off chain, and so it's better that it's on chain IMHO.
You're a waste of space. You've been flagged like the trash you are.
Let's just call it social media and then consider that the the incentive structure is not perfect, that it could be better, that it could have far more honest curation than 70% or more being delegated to bidbots, and imagine that the community is more empowered to check abuse, then maybe we can start discussing the future of it, but as you see, nobody will pay for what is otherwise freely given all over the place, and that's the market we are looking to capitulate on, the content consumers, and image what that would take.
Ode to Imagine all the people.
You and I disagree quite profoundly regarding the value of profiteering, but everything else you've pointed out here is, as usual, quite reasonable.
You're a waste of space. You've been flagged like the trash you are.
Are these great comments being flagged by you that I’ve read today really a waste of space, or are you?
Well the idea was not that bad but I would say the execution part was a bit awkward . They wanted to fight off the bots by increasing the curation rewards that would make the use of these bots quite useless. Either way it means that the small minnows are not going to be able to progress their growth as quickly because of the fact that a larger portion is going for curation . And believe me it is hard as a minnow to get noticed when you actually do provide good content . I personally do not see myself as a content creator but rather as a commentator and curator .
It was hard enough to get some SP from the start and now it will make it more crucial to have additional platforms such as this one to utilise and help our minnows of whom we might potentially see great incentives in the near future.
Yep, I agree. I think these proposed changes are going to do a lot more harm than good to steem and steemit.
Sounds like a reasonable and well thought out plan based on your personal experience. This is why we vote for witnesses. Our representatives that run the day to day operations of the blockchain, but you know that...
Though, not meaning to be nitpicking, but I see that you have only used 10 of the 30 votes available to you and 4 of those you vote for are inactive witnesses. We can debate/talk and give our ideas. Those that can make the changes to our ecosystem are the witnesses.
The voting of witnesses is the only democratic thing on this DPOS Platform. The only way that users can influence changes is through the voting of witnesses.
Content creators put in effort to produce the content which was why the initiate higher % of payout to content creators. Excessive self-voting is a problem indeed when these self-voters that may have high steempower do not promote quality content but their own spammed posts. Nevertheless, giving curators higher percentage than content creators may reduce the number of quality posts since time and effort need to be put which I agree with what mindtrap mentioned about no content creators left. BTW I wasn't able to find out when the next hardfork going to be. Do you have an idea?
As far as the hardfork, all I know is that the witnesses say they have been given zero code to review, which isn't a good sign in my opinion. As far as your concern goes, I'll show you this, which is the same thing I showed mindtrap. We can even look at Medium too, there are amazing content creators out there willing to write for free or $5-10 per post and put out better quality stuff than most everything on STEEM these days. Even if you or I don't find it worthwhile, that doesn't mean that others don't. The current situation on the platform is that most authors don't earn anywhere near $1 per post and we're just overflowing with junk. Hopefully things are going to get better though.
I have to admit that I have found myself doing more upvoting on pal than I have on steem, and it’s explicitly because of the 50/50 reward structure.
In the past on steem I had this mental calculation going involving my voting power, how much the post has already gained, how rich the author account was, and what other uses I had for my steem power.
Now on Palnet, I’m just like fuck it, have an upvote. I get half of it back anyways.
Edit: this also makes me realize that a SCOT can be used as a full scale test net for steem hardforks when applicable. Want to change rewards structure? Throw up a token, airdrop it to everyone with current steem values, and see how people use it.
That's actually a really good idea. Maybe we should let @aggroed know. :)
That's huge to be able to experiment with tokenomics like that!
Hmm, so does this mean we should curate from palnet, not steempeak? I don't understand how this works. Sorry Clay if this is obvious or written somewhere. Plus I took a break from steemit, so just checking your blog to see what I missed of yours.
If you're staking PAL and voting on posts with the tag, it doesn't matter where you vote them from, but using palnet.io puts them all in one place and helps sort them.
clay no one can ignore you its impossible :P i am a lazy ass curator but i will try to be better..
Curation has to balance out with authors rewards, or we have what we have now. If you tilt the scales in either direction, it becomes 100/0 or 0/100 depending on which side you favor. Fair is irrelevant when exploitation is possible. It is like a game, you need rules or it does not work, and having the wrong rules can be the most devastating, as we have witnessed.
I very much agree. I wish we would have been trying different models ever 3-6 months to find the sweet spot, but I think with these Nitrous instances we're going to see some interesting new incentive models pop up. Thanks for the resteem and support!
I agree, and this is why instead of tweaking how profitable profiteering is, I've proposed making it financially unattractive. Nothing else will actually return curation to being based on subjective judgment of individual people of the quality of the content, creator, or their relationship, and all the tweaks suggested like EIP just vary what is the best exploit for profiteering is.
You're a waste of space. You've been flagged like the trash you are.
Wow that was a long Read.
@clayboyn when I have been here on Steemit for two Years now and have already experienced HF19 and HF20, although I can't say for HF19 as it happened almost the same time I joined and at that time I had no clue how STEEM worked but by the time if HF20 I did get my Bearings right and understood what was going under the hood atleast a little. When HF20 happened there was a huge dissatisfaction among the users and a huge chunk of users simply Powered down and left even though the changes made in HF20 weren't that drastic but what about when the entire Reward Structure is flipped in this HF21 this could really be Catastrophic.
I do agree that quality content should be prioritized and it deserves better attention but you also have to understand that not everyone creates quality content worth thousands of Dollars, there are a lot of guys including me that just wants to Blog their Lifestyle and Experiences so what about them. Their content should also be worth something but with the new reward structure newbies won't even stand a chance unless their content is A Grade.
I am ok with change but when there is a change in a fundamental aspect like the Reward Setting/Split I really wished it would have been gradually done. Switching from 75/25 to 50/50 would be just a huge jump. If the split would have been 65/35 I'm favor of Author Reward that I believe would be the perfect option for now and then we check the stats if things are changing. If later on Witnesses decide that they need to Increase Curation Reward more than it can be increased again but in the next HF.
Drastic change always brings Drastic Results, and I am a little bit worried as to what will happen this Time.
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I agree with a lot of what you're saying here and I think the biggest problem we have with doing this on STEEM at this point is that the distribution is already so far gone that new users are never going to be able to wallk in and earn stake like we could when I get here. Most people don't know this, but I quit my job when STEEM was at 9 cents and started doing this 100+ hours a week. It's the only thing I ever really felt passionate about in my life and I felt like this was the future I had been waiting for, but the problem we have now is that users aren't earning hundreds of STEEM for a twenty-thirty dollar post. Users are lucky to earn a couple STEEM on their best work if they aren't paying for people to vote on their posts and it completely break the systems. It's so pay to play at this point that I think we're going to have to rely on second layer solutions to get people investing their time into the chain again, which is we launched PALnet. I share your concerns and while I'm not worried about the 50/50 split, I do think it's too little too late to fix STEEM alone.
Yes, I would agree that the Distribution has indeed gone to Far but that being said I don't believe it is Impossible for new Users to earn a stake. Yes, they won't be able to Earn their Stake like the ones that are here from the very Beginning but they do have a lot of options where they can Earn Stake.
BTW are you affiliated with PAL Community, if so can you help me out a little?
Sure, what's up?
I think I was banned on the PAL Discord server when I was flagged by Steemcleaners which was over a Year ago but after the Ban was removed by Steemcleaners I wasn't able to join the PAL Discord server.
I was unable to get any replies as to how I can get myself Unbanned from the Discord Group but later on, when I started to accumulate some SP I just gave up as PAL was basically for the Minnows and I was no longer a Minnow. But now we have Palnet and I am having some troubles understanding the ins and outs of Palnet so it would really help me if I could join the Discord Group and learn Things.
https://discord.gg/956MATM
I just fixed it.
I just got these Notifications what does it Mean?
As a noob, who has decided to stop creating content. I agree with everything you say. I was getting .01 or .02 cents for hours of work which wasn't a big deal because I just wanted to share my work. But someone with more money than me reposted my art in their blog to expose people for what he called plagerism, and he made more money from that 1 post of my work than I had made the whole time on this site. The whole experience was completely deflating, upsetting etc. So that is my personal experience of being a noob on steemit. I don't think I'm the only one to have this experience and I would imagine there is a high attrition rate and not much incentive to post quality when you work hard but there is no chance that you will be rewarded adequatley and someone else posts rubbish and makes money for nothing. On top of that some people can make you not want to be here. Hope my personal experience will help illustrate what is going on down in the trenches. It's not pretty.
I've seen this happen with quite a few people and yes, it's very disheartening. It's hard to expect people to come here when there are users trying to actively dissuade them.
Definitely gets the brain juices flowing. Lots to chew on here.
I think the 50/50 split has worked out okay so far. Great rundown of the pros and cons.
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I've always been a fan of creating a curation slider and allowing content creators to decide for themselves. It's up to the platform to decide thebupper and lower limits and how to display the settings. For example if I'm not looking for a post to be promoted I'll set curation low and take the tips. Otherwise I will set it high.
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I think it would be interesting, but I could also imagine that being infuriating for content creators having to go dig and find posts that they feel are worth curating and then check percentages and determine if it's "worth it" to them.
Ha, NOW that actually would be an outstanding procedure to get rid once and for all of all the fucking 'automatisms/trails/guilds' and voting bots to CLEARLY spot & pin down who the hell are here the REAL so called 'Curators' that actually deserves that extra 25% of dopamine blast.
Crux of the problem: voting bots give predictable ROI, curation doesn't (at least the way the voting window algo works right now)!
If I have lots of SP, why would I waste my precious time curating when I can just passively delegate my SP and collect a steady and predictable income.
You can play with the curator/author reward percentages all you want, the outcome will be the same. Full-time curators with large SP will want a steady income for their time spent on this platform, or else they go to the bid-bots or spend their $ on other coins.
I still find it hilarious that people actually pay for votes and tell themselves that they're getting promotion out of it. Aside from the handful of people that bother reading anything here... who are they promoting to? It's most more cost effective and reaches a much wider to audience to just make the same post on Medium and Facebook market it for about $10 bucks. If promotion is what people were really looking for, they wouldn't be using bidbots, but it looks it's going to come to an end one way or another as the price of STEEM gets closer to zero. Time will tell.
It's not just authors though, almost all dApp creators make use of bid-bots to gain visibility for their announcements. The bid-bots essentially created a type of competition for attention on Steemit. From the author's end, bid-bots offer ROI, although it is very unpredictable.
Have you looked at how promotion works on PALnet? This has been a pull request for Steemit for almost 2 years. Actual guaranteed promotion could be had in a way that benefits the platform, but whales that controls the witnesses don't want that, they'd rather sell votes.
What other coins? I'm not aware of any coins that provide for any other mechanism than capital gains for ROI. Were we to end profiteering from Steem rewards, I'm pretty confident that the value of Steem would rise very quickly, and begin to accurately reflect the quality of the blockchain and our use case. Social media has proven to be the most valuable business model in the world today. That's what the FAANGs have proven.
Given our use case, the profiteering has been an incredible deterrence to capital gains. The token Steem is much better currency than BTC, ETH, or almost any other, and is consistently ranked amongst the top ten. There is no better use case. That our market cap has been dropping is a testament to the harmful effects of extracting the value of social media content before it can inure to the investment vehicle.
If you had lots of SP and rewards were capped so that the maximum amount of Steem you could extract from one vote was 1 Steem, would you bother trying? It'd be a complete waste of time better spend on more profitable pursuits. There'd be no point to votebots, either.
Capital gains have successfully repaid investors since before there was money. It encourages investors to increase the value of the investment vehicle, whether oxen, gold, or stock certificates today. It will work great for Steem too. We've proven profiteering will not work in the last three years. I reckon we should make the switch to a functional reward system, not make the profiteering more profitable as EIP will.
You're a waste of space. You've been flagged like the trash you are.
No I think you have it really wrong, the biggest problem here is the circle jerk, where a group of about 100 or 200 people vote for each other every day and for nobody else, they take most of the rewards, you just have to look at the people who take in over $20.00 per post same guys same voters. And I see nothing wrong with that, they are taking advantage of the system legally and nothing is going to make them change their ways. whether the rewards are 50/50, 80/20 10/90 they still get the same votes and the same curation rewards and the only work they do is post a short article of so so quality and have their voting bots do the rest and reap the rewards. You go ahead and try to fix that by changing the reward system, 20/80 will just make the few good authors that have stayed here leave ASAP. I am still here because frankly I get a kick out of writing bad posts and making a few cents off of that.
Even if there are 200 authors earning $20 naturally due to circle jerks, I think you're missing the forest for the trees. The current rewards pool sits at $365,000. 200x20 = 4,000. Even if that's 7 days a week, you'e looking at $28,000. Where do you think the rest is going?
Where do you get that the reward pool is $365,000.00? Last time I heard it was around 70,000 Steem a day better said about $28,000.00, and those $20.00 guys don't just post once a day.
Any Discord server that has @banjo in it can pull up the current reward pool. I don't remember the exact formula off the top of my head, but it's accurate. If you want to check it just use the $rewardpool command. To be clear though, I get that there are circle jerks, but I've also been around since people used to circle jerk a handful of authors into the trending page ever day for months on end, while a few people may still be doing it, it's far from the bulk of our problems.
I found this post by @penguinpablo, it is old but I guess the formulas are still OK.
https://steemit.com/steem/@penguinpablo/til-how-much-steem-is-added-to-the-reward-pool-per-day
And in that article I read this:
So each time a new block has been produced, 1.668 STEEM is added to the reward pool.
Every 3 seconds: 1.668 STEEM
Every minute: 33.354 STEEM
Every hour: 2,001.237 STEEM
Every day: 48,029.695 STEEM
But it varies every day, since the post is two years old I have no idea if the reward pool has increased or decreased. But if the amount is this, circle jerking does take a good percentage of the reward pool, and add the bidbots and very little is left for the rest of us.
You'll get no argument from me on that. The whole point is that there is almost nothing left to reward genuine interaction and we end up with the current situation that we find ourselves in.
Exactly, but the question is how does reducing the rewards for authors help out the platform? There won't be a parade of people voting for everyone who posts a good article because now they get more curation rewards, the guys with the bigger votes will continue with their circle jerk. It is like the trickle down economy, that first you have to get the rich richer so then the excess money will trickle down to everyone, it just isn't going to happen.
Well it isn't happening now either. For whatever reason, be it greed, circle jerks, vote selling (some would say that's all greed), the current system isn't working. Why not take a chance on getting some of the whales that would vote more frequently using their stake productively instead of keep fighting over the crumbs that we're currently getting? Doing the same thing and expecting different results is literally insanity.
OK, I can understand what you are saying just that I don't think that option will work, the thing is I have seen a lot of changes and I think none of them worked so I am kind of skeptical on this change being a solution. I am now going to sleep it is nearly midnight here.
I hear ya, I guess time will tell, but hopefully we get it right eventually. Good night.
This wasn't long at all, but that's probably me. The most hilarious thing about the argument's against the 50/50 split, and this goes for basically dozens of posts and long ass comments from numerous people, some not so sharp and some very intelligent, is that they avoid even hinting at the largest group of users on social media, let alone actually acknowledging the consumers. Grade a myopia. I mean people get all angry when I call them retards and idiots and don't spell it out for them as if this hasn't been addressed by every single person who argued FOR the split.
Yeah idiots, "but without the authors what will be curated"..
Lol... for some reason I had you muted, but anyway fixed now. I think there's some cognitive dissonance and perhaps even entitlement to sort through. Plus there's the whole comparison problem. Comparison is the death of joy, when people start looking at what other people are earning it creates expectations and when they work hard and don't earn it, then they feel slighted. We have a lot of hurdles to overcome, but I think the 50/50 split is the least of the problems imo. The fact that about 80-90% of the reward pool is tied up in vote selling is a goddamn nightmare...
To some they call it the free market, they will even reason in their savant retardation that bidbots help maintain a demand for steem, these people suffer from myopia, they can't see that curation rewards are the way to the content consumer's pockets and if they see that then they can see that without enough curation rewards there's no demand for steem, as for the "but bidbots are filling up a market niche", much like prostitution does the same thing..
This is easily avoided by preventing rewards from being capable of supporting profiteering. Leaving rewards open-ended is just asking profiteers to extract them. According to my last look at @arcange's posts that detail such matters daily, the median payout is .1 SBD, while the average payout is 15 times that. That is the difference between organic curation and profiteering.
Using an algorithm to limit payouts to some reasonable multiple of the median (I have suggested Huey Long's proposal of 3% to 300%, which leaves two orders of magnitude for incentive for higher quality content, but any reasonable limitation works, such as .5% and 500% - as long as some incentive for newbs remains, and less than ~10 SBD at the top end, to prevent nominal rewards from being extractable by profiteers) will make rewards an unsuitable vector for profiteering. Whales aren't going to spend any time creating vast hordes of bots to vote up vast fleets of botposts to attain nominal returns on their stake.
Since content creators will be rewarded ~15 times more for their content (eliminating profiteering off rewards will pump the median up to the average, or close) they'll be far more rewarded for their content than they are now. Posts such as this one which is very highly rewarded would receive much less Steem, but still become popular, due to their quality. Folks that are determined to provide financial incentives to posts like this one that merit more can simply use the memospam technique that resteemers use now to tip. PAL and other SE or SMT coins can also be added to the mix, without changing Steem rewards.
Most of your posts don't earn this much, and even my own would probably halve in value. That's ok by me, because of the following.
Ending profiteering - the extraction of business returns before they can increase the value of the underlying investment vehicle (traditionally stock, but in this case the Steem token) will enable that value to inure the the token. Steem price will rise, and investors intent on capital gains will be able to buy Steem for that purpose, without needing to become serial self voters to gain ROI. While the amount of Steem payout on posts will remain within the range determined by algorithm, the value of the Steem may well skyrocket, and the actual financial rewards received by creators will do the same.
Curation rewards are nothing but incentive to profiteer. Uncountable platforms exist that aren't monetized, and folks upvote content based solely on their subjective evaluations. No financial incentive is necessary to drive actual curation. In fact, financial incentive is counterproductive to actual curation - the subjective determination that content is deserving of an upvote - and replaces it with incentive to extract financial rewards. This incentive can be manipulated all you want, but as long as financial incentive is extant, it will remain incentive to profiteer, rather than curate. IMHO, curation rewards should be eliminated as counterproductive to creating incentive to create good content, and allow curation to be the reason for upvotes.
Those that will remark that this leaves no reason for anyone to invest in Steem, or hold it, simply are unaware that capital gains has been a nominal incentive to invest in enterprises since before history began. It works fine, and also encourages investors to seek to increase the value of the investment vehicle, in this case Steem. Every mechanism that encourages extracting that value prior to it inuring to the token discourages capital gains, and the history of Steem demonstrates exactly this dynamic, as Steem continually falls in CMC. Investors know that profiteering prevents Steem from increasing in price by extracting that value prior to capital gains occurring, and invest in other tokens, despite Steem being one of the best blockchains in the world, and having once been the only cryptocurrency with the most valuable business model/use case in the world, social media.
Whales aren't going to spend their days consuming content on the whole, because they have other business interests they tend to. That's why they have the funds to buy enough Steem to be a whale. The ninjaminers that hold most of the stake today don't have it because they were savvy investors, but clever devs that either created the ninjamine, or lucked into it and managed to mine stake before Steemit even existed. This is probably why the extraction mechanisms exist: because they weren't coded by experienced investors, but clever devs without prior investment experience.
Even though their profiteering will be impaired, the buy ins by investors will likely reward them far more, because it will be the value of their stakes that provide most of the capital gains. It will be their stakes that investors buy to invest.
No one will benefit more from capital gains than extant whales.
I will be curious to see how PAL fares while riding on the Steem blockchain.
Thanks!
You're a waste of space. You've been flagged like the trash you are.
As always, you make some excellent points and I'll freely admit that I have my doubts about finding a solid working solution with the dynamic we have in place. One of the more interesting models I've seen lately is Publish0x... They don't actually make much, but projects basically give them tokens to act as a reward pool for the attention economy and they allow people to create content or curate. Curators can pick a sliding scale 20-80% give/keep. Obviously most curators give 20% and keep the 80... but it works similar to what you're saying about having a fixed reward pool, just with rewarding the consumers as well. Looking at the quality of the content they have on there and the rewards the authors are earning makes me realize we have something seriously wrong in our approach on STEEM if people are willing to write content of the quality I have seen there for so much less monetary reward. Great food for thought. Thanks for swinging by dude.
I am attracted to your posts like a moth to a flame. Regardless of my financial rewards for doing so, I always profit greatly from your incisive mind. Those are profits I seek to maximize and are worth investing my time in.
You're a waste of space. You've been flagged like the trash you are.
Wow, thanks, it's all to get people thinking, questioning and challenging they way we think things are or have to be. :)
I keep seeing this poppycock everywhere. "It's not about taking away creator's rewards, but about getting people to use their stake in a positive manner." This nothing more that an attempt to reframe the simple truth. You are taking rewards away from the creators, the very people you need to drive the platform.
Then, the next brilliant step in your plan to reorient rewards is to incentivizing curation. Curation of what exactly? The supposed shit content you're saying dominates the platform? This is nonsensical. When I part with my time or money on a product it's because I want it more than my time or money because I value that thing or things more. If the content is so shitty now, why would incentivizing people to curate shit lead to a better platform? Imagine this same dynamic with sandwiches.
CUSTOMER: Hi! How are your sandwiches?
YOU: They're shit, but we'll pay you to eat them.
CUSTOMER: Yeah, but they're made of shit.
YOU: Okay, right. I see where you're coming from, but we're paying you to go eat it in hopes that you'll find more shit for other people.
CUSTOMER: Do you actually pay people to make this shit?
YOU: Yeah, but we pay you the exact same for eating it. Fair, right?
Do you really think this kind of shit going to work?
There is one reason and one reason alone people aren't flocking to Steem and it's not the rewards structure, it's ease of use. Every single person I've gotten onto the platform gave me the same reasons for leaving and it wasn't the rewards structure for shit sandwiches. It was about ease of use! That's it!
You have to stop thinking economically and start thinking experientially! Steem is hard to use for most people. It's confusing and the initial exploration is extremely frustrating and so they leave within about two days. TWO DAYS!
So please, stop trying to sell me your shit.
Feel free to stop reading it. :)
Unfortunately, I read your unsubstantiated shit.
Lol yea thats the other problem I forgot to mention this sight is complicated af. On top of the other stuff I mentioned before.
I hear you. And I agree with both perspectives. Either, either what we are looking for is an opportunity to walk into something without a million dollars and still have an equal chance.
Unfortunately every new platform just fills up.
İt's just a fact of reality.
A global platform that gives equal chance to everyone is almost impossible.
İt's the same with street performing. Six years ago it was a lot easier because it was only the daring. And now that big pop singer from Ireland became a sensation and now every man, woman, child and fucking pet lizard is out there trying to make a buck on the street. Then where there were no regulations in the land of the free suddenly the world is regulated and only 'popstars' singing Brittney Spears in a punk outfit and thong pipe musicians playing Beethoven get a dollar.
So the fucking up of any new platform is inevitable.
İt's our ability as creators to adapt to the change of 'expression landscape' that allows us to push ourselves out there.
Steemit is a thing for a little while. And other platforms will rise and fall.
We just need to keep being innovative, and include this innovation as part of our creative ability, in order to survive.
It is very interesting what Palnet are doing with curation. I make it a point to search through Palnet content before other content to curate because of the higher curation rewards.
Will 50% split be sufficient to significantly increase curation? For me it is but for others I'm not sure. Currently, voting on Palnet also votes with Steem. So, curation rewards will still be lower than 50% for Steem and Pal stake combined. That can be worked around by voting with an alt account on Palnet.
Good article. May I translate it to Chinese so the CN users can read also?
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Sure.
thank you~
Congratulations @clayboyn!
Your post was mentioned in the Steem Hit Parade in the following category:
A 50/50 makes sense to me simply because it can't be cheated or there is no benefit to cheating. You earn the same for voting up your own stuff as you do voting for someone else.
What would happen in a 60/40 split or more would be alt accounts again voting for their own stuff. I see a 50/50 being the only fair and most rewarding system when I sit back and think about it.
As soon as there is even the smallest of edges to get more rewards in one direction they will come in droves.
Steemit itself could benefit hugely from this itself.
I have though about removing self votes but then again you still run into the same issue with alt accounts sadly. It's a real shame what people will do to try and game/cheat systems for pennies and it happens everywhere. It is why every social network that paid cash such as Yuwie, TSU etc all failed. You just can't give people free stuff without them abusing the hell out of it lol
That seems to be the unfortunate state of things. Even with 50/50, there are still going to be people that only self vote, but hopefully we can at least change the culture of most of the users.
Yup I think 50/50 would be at least a step in the right direction. It wouldn't matter if u self voted or voted for someone else.
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So I have a personal problem with flagging/downvoting content... I've been thinking about writing a post about that perspective...
BUT, if I interpret your reasoning correctly, your suggestion that a 20/80 split in favour of curator means we are using positive/generative reinforcement to prevent spamming and shitposts, because flagging as negative/limiting reinforcement combined with higher payouts to creators hasn't worked?
I think I can see your point.... it feels kinda counter-intuitive.... it will be interesting to see, and perhaps palnet as a kind of testnet would be a great way to test the hypothesis.
It's really about heavily incentivizing people to hold and stake their tokens and I think of it as more of a shift in where the income from the platform comes from. Should you be able to show up, post, have no interaction on the platform, and make a killing? It's just not logical. It's an attention economy and even the best authors that only show up to post amazing content, but spend no time voting others work, engaging, or staking the tokens, ultimately they're going to offer very limited value in an environment like this.
So we want to increase engagement to a certain degree.
Good content doesn’t necessarily mean it creates the space for engagement, but can still be liked, rewards, admired.
Incentivising engagement is not healthy or sustainable, at least in models I’ve seen or experienced so far (small cohort, not statistically relevant 😉).
I’m sure we can find a model that will work... I think you’re right with trying something for six months and changing if it doesn’t appear to work.
I guess the thing with engagement around here is we only have two ways of doing that — upvote and leaving a comment. Are there other ways?
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I think with more dynamic solutions, like what we're doing with PAL, the doors open to new opportunities. Like we have 10% of inflation going to PoI to reward active Discord members as we have a really popular broadcast network among the STEEM community. We have witness shows, music shows, I do a philosophy show, so being able to reward people for interacting in that aspect of the community is huge for us. I think the contests are one way people try to increase engagement, but ultimately the financial value that comes from engagement has to be capitalized on by things like advertisements.
We can keep advertisements in house by charging users burned stake to feature their posts, like we do on trending with PALnet or we can see steemit using traditional banner ads. There's ways to increase time spent on the site and capitalize on it financially, we just have to be willing to experiment and find what works.
YES!!!
I guess the thing is it could be argued that being on the Discord server isn’t being on Steem... even though it kinda is.
I can see the tokenBB forums playing a really important part of this too!!
We’ve been talking within the @naturalmedicine community about setting up a SCOT style tribe.... I see this as a great way of bringing people interested in that topic coming to Steem. We just need to work out how to do it... none of us are devs so it makes it a wee bit challenging to set up tokens and condensers and whatnot...
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So if I understand this right you want to reward people even more for clicking their way down the trending list as quickly as they can? This is what higher curation rewards will incentivize, not actually looking for quality content.
Plus, it doesn't feel FAIR. I'm one of those who spend a lot of time and thought in creating content (videos, photography). Aside from the time, it's costing real money to ride around to find footage to share. All this is supposed to be worth 20%, while the mere clicking on stuff is worth 80%?
You do this, I will be gone, too. O.K., my prime motivation isn't money; it's a hobby, but still...
So here is my suggestion: Why not go exactly the opposite way? NO CURATION REWARD at all, 100% towards the authors. So no incentive to like garbage anymore. Also, no whales and pond scum anymore. One man, one vote.
This I would combine with a surprise effect: No showing how high the author reward will be, no indication how many likes received, no trending lists, a secret vote so to speak - for seven days. Then rewards are decided AFTER the fact: All systemwide "likes" are totaled up and authors get their share of the reward pool based on the percentage of total likes they managed to get.
How something like this could be implemented I leave to you blockchain experts. I'm just venting my limited view which I haven't thought through all the way, nor am I interested in doing so.
In closing, Netflix isn't paying people to watch their offerings, it's the other way around. They do that by putting on stuff that people want to see. And that stuff comes from creators who are being paid halfway decent.
I thought i was the only one who liked the 50/50 votings system.
People just cant see the forest from the trees.
This article sums it up perfectly!
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