Can we reduce corruption/manipulation of the Steem chain.

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The Hive

Howdy folks'.

Take a look over at history over the past years. Go back a few decades with it. The benefits to the community and the benefits to individuals who control the choices available, have a considerable gap.

False promise from political arenas that do not deliver on their campaign promises. The truth there is the finance for the promises made are never looked to. Building a new wing to a hospital for specialised care, does not provide a better healthcare system. It fails were the costs and future increasing costs to that new wing are not looked at.

A society built on false promise and private benefits from public funding. Representation of the people of a nation is never there. Representation of those who will provide the finance to get someone into power will be represented. Even at a cost to the general population.

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What is different on Steem?

From what I can see very little. There are a few at the top who hold the power to make decisions for the rest of the membership on Steemit.

This has been shown most recent with the effort to accumulate a greater amount of Steem for those with Steem and a reduction to what those without can gain. Over any period of time. The present decision makers have total control over any action another on Steemit may take.

A distinct reflection of the corruption that exists in the world before Crypto has emerged.

This has happened by controlling who is in what position on the witness list. One person with enough Steem power to get one witness to the top position. Has the power to get all top 20 witness under their vote. A failure to vote with the interests to benefit this voting source can result in a loss of that witness vote and loss of reward for hosting a witness position.

There has been a mass exodus from Steem. While the conversation seems to be about mass on boarding.

Probably here, there should be some distinction between on boarding to the Steem chain and on boarding to Steemit. This does not happen.

Setting a target audience, Is something which needs to change. Every user of the internet should be welcomed to participate. The reasons why efforts fail to bring and retain new users may have various components to it.

One of those components is a focus to bring business to the Steem chain.

Without a population already here, there is little reason for any large organisation to rest or host on the Steem chain. Yet this keeps getting pushed by the same voices at the top as what is needed to move Steem forward.

Centralisation of power on a decentralised platform remains centralised. The distribution of power is done through Proof of Stake. The more Steem power you hold the greater your voice.

The control over who can be a witness in any key position screams out corruption to any investor or general user to the chain. This control is maintained by the ability to vote to 30 witness when only 21 have a say in decision making.

The power to put a witness in the top witness position, permits for the same voter to put their choice of witness to all 30 positions. If this does not shout out corruption you just do not want to hear.

Options to change how this voting system works can be achieved and a greater representation of the voting for witness be expressed.

Tight now the general user of the Steem chain and more so to Steemit, is held hostage to the rule of a small minority

The number of witness voted to by any one account can be restricted to 5 or 3. This would eliminate some of the power one account can hold the rest of the platform or chain hostage to.

Right now a user has an option to make up to 30 votes to different witness's. Reducing this amount down to five or as low as three will reduce the centralised authority on the Steem chain and Steemit platform.

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Actually I think a reverse graduation of SP vs number of witness votes is needed. Over 100,000SP you are limited to 3 votes. 50,000SP-99,999SP 5 votes, 10,000-49,999SP 10 votes. 5,000SP-9,999SP 20 votes, and below 5,000SP 30 votes.

Limiting everyone top down to just 3 or 5 votes will change nothing. Empowering smaller accounts may make the witnesses more active in telling people what they really are doing to earn their keep.

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reducing to 3 or 5 would mean an account Steem Power would be divided by 4 to control the top 20.

I do like the idea of the declining vote number as voting Power goes u[p.

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Declining vote number is the only way to effectively prevent 2 or 3 accounts from controlling who the witnesses will be. When limiting everyone to 3 or 5, there would be no real change, just four more powerful accounts that one individual needs to keep track of. The number of votes may be lowered, but not likely, after all anytime there is talk of limiting an account or an individuals power you get the push back of Proof of Stake. Some of it I can understand, but it all boils down to a few wanting to rule the direction. At the end of the day Steem Block Chain may be decentralized, but the access and the use of it are all 100% centralized until someone with more money wants to change it. ALL changes/additions to the Steem Block Chain API go through steemit.inc they control what gets put forward to the bought and paid for witnesses for consideration in the next HF.

It is steemit.inc developers, not eSteem, not Busy, not 3Speak, not any other front end development team, that get to decide what gets presented for a hardfork, and then steemit.inc is the ones that make the hard fork happen.

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The witness act as the middle man between user and Steemit INc. If the witness instruct Steemit Inc that "said" is the consensus of the proof of stake, that gets implemented.

With reducing the witness vote. If it requires 1 Million Steem to have a witness at number 1 spot. Now a person needs 4 times that to hold the top 20.

A declining vote also produces an lack of equality and punishment for gaining more.

Limited low votes Means 1 account cannot take control,

(yes, there is always the possibility some will come along with enough Steem to do the same again)

Steem Inc right now is no more than a puppet to the Steem Power puppeteer.

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Wouldn't hurt to try.

It would definitely add a lot more incentive for the governance to coordinate and work with all the investors much much much more as their positions would depend upon them much much much more.

After all, the voting system is in place to serve as a representative governance type of model.

Right now, a couple of million of SP even 5 million SP can't really make any real difference in the overall governance here.

So yeah, it could bring about some real changes as to how things work.

Glad to see people thinking constructively.

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It would bring about a better representation of the electoral.

A few other things would need to be done along side this for the chain to resist a totalitarian rule.

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It would also promote the constant motivation to consistently POWER UP if anyone really wants to have more of an influence on our governance.

That is another additional plus to your suggestion.

However I seriously doubt that anything will be accepted, as with real world politicians, those in power never let go of their power or reduce their power on their own.

So many people keep talking about "being different" to that of the real world governance, yet when put into a position do make a real difference, they are no different, in fact worse.

So I dare say it seems to have a lot more to do with "human nature" or some aspect of "human nature", but at the end of the day even that is an "excuse". It really comes down to the individuals in question.

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You're on the right track I think. I never understood why the Top 20 got to make decisions while we each got 30 votes. We could expand the top witness ranks to Top 30 and reduce the votes to 20 and that would be a start. As we mature even more we could have a Top 50 witnesses with 10 votes. Thats more decentralization and more network resilience.

The counter argument will be that it'll make decision making about hard forks etc much harder as consensus among top witnesses is required, but that is why we need to mature along the way.

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There is no greater difficulty in decision making than there would be now, It is still the same amount of witness have to agree. History also show we need a greater diversity of thought in the top 20 to assist in prevention of a single controlling body.

Key number is the amount of witness involved in decision making, That should exceed by more than 3 x the amount of witness vote people have.

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@thehive Your suggestion to limit the votes at the top makes sense to me. Hard to get anything to change though as long as they are in control.

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As a member of the @Council - Community Curator Service, this post has received a 100.00% upvote.

Members of the community can all chip in to Power UP. Become a member, delegate 10 or more Steem Power (SP) to @Council to receive upvote and resteem. Here's the link to delegate https://on.king.net/council10sp it will redirect to Steem Connect for a secure connection. We share the Steem Power of all members that delegate to Community Curator Service, sharing our SP for a stronger upvote.

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