Whales & Minnows on Steemit
I was just wondering how many up-votes would it take for someone to receive 1 dollar if he received all the votes from freshly created 10 steem accounts.
This question also made think about the power of big whales in steem, how many minnows would make up for a whale?
The answer to this question will show the full extent of the difference between large steem power holders and small users.
So, I am not sure how the payouts are calculated so I took a comment that got upvoted by @smooth and received 110 usd as the basis of my analysis:
So with a very basic primary school level rule of 3, I came up with this:
If someone with 772.349 Steem power upvoting me rewarded 110 USD, how much would 10 steem power get me?
772.349 Steem ------> 110 USD
10 Steem -------------->?
10*110/772.349 = 0.0014 USD
As you can see, with my current steem power (157) a new account should get me 0.0014. Maybe I am missing something here (please tell me if I am), but for the sake of argument lets continue assuming that this is true and answer the questions I mentioned at the begging of the post:
How many up-votes would it take for someone to receive 1 dollar if he received all the votes from freshly created 10 steem accounts? (Assuming he has same steem power as me)
1 usd / 0.0014 = 714 up-votes
How many minnows would make up for a whale?
110 usd whale vote / 0.0014 usd minnow vote = 78.571 votes
Conclusion:
As you can see, the results show the enormous influence of whales in the platform, something that in my opinion could discourage or even frustrate new users. In theory this problem will be partially solved after the first payout on the 4th of July, since a lot of users will increase their vote power and vote on different stuff, thus distributing steem power to more and more people who post on different subjects.
However, small accounts will still need to get lucky and catch the attention of a large holder. An incredible viral post with 714 upvotes from small holders gets only 1 dollar and a normal post that gets up-voted by 1 whale gets more than 100 bucks!
A possible fix to this situation would be to give bonuses to posts according to the amount of votes they get, regardless of the power of users who voted for them. For example, a post could receive 1 dollar if it reaches over 10 votes, 2 dollars if it gets 20 and so on. In that way minnows will be rewarded for popular content even if whales don’t vote for them.
Let's hope that no people would not make 714 puppets account :-)
I dont think you can at the moment.. unless you have 714 facebook or reddits accounts and even if you do it will get you 1 dollar hehe..
We could use IBM's Watson to create account using mining :D
I'm a 10-Steemer, and have given you an upvote in the interests of this experiment.
Interesting, I wonder if I received 0.0014 usd... thanks!!
You inspired me to look at the front page to see if there were any posts with lots of votes but low value. After scrolling and scrolling and scrolling, I found two:
The following post has 19 votes and a value of $3.14 as at the time of posting:
https://steemit.com/bitcoin/@canhazlulz/andreas-antonopouloss-latest-talk-on-blockchain-deloitte-fintech-talks-event-in-milan
and the following post has 37 votes and a value of $3.84 as at the time of posting:
https://steemit.com/steem-marketing/@nanzo-scoop/jokes-aside-part-2--nailing-down-the-dollar-amount-steemit-ux
So you would need a lot of people voting just 'cause they like your stuff, plus ignoring the "no more than 20 votes" thing that appears to have gained currency (which prevents people voting as often as they would really like).
well this post has 19 votes and 3 cents! hehe
I like your idea very much !!! Something like that should absolutely implemented !!!
PS the only problem as said would be puppet accounts etc... but I think many solutions and ideas are out there to prevent this... maybe these rewards could applied to "hero" members that have at least 50 post and one month presence on the platform or something like that...
I think we need to wait and see how it plays out. If you have 50 posts, how likely is it that one or two of your posts pay off reasonably well, which means you have more SP and your vote has higher weight anyway even without a special rule? The current SP distribution is very extreme with many minimal 10 SP accounts since there are no rewards distributed, a few whales since the early mining and developer stashes haven't had a chance to flatten out much, and very little in between.
I agree. The distribution after July 4th will be much better. Between now and then the goal is to produce content that the whales find useful. In reality, that means introducing yourself with a meaningful post that convinces whales you are not a bot and that you will add value to the platform over time. This is not a tough task. Anyone who has really tried to get involved has earned a very high rate of return on their time.
I can testify to that. As my attempts at quality content have improved so has my potential payout come 4th July.
Steemit is well worth my time.
I'm going against the grain, breaking the mold, charting my own path and throwing every crazy ass thought that comes into my tiny brain at Steemit to see what happens. So far it's paying about $40 per post. At 300+ post ... that ain't a bad month's work ... errr play. ;)
I think it will pay off for Steemit in the long run too, because the earnings from post I've made with others content will be donated back to the original author in hopes of coaxing them to post here in the future.
My list of Steemwhales, $50K to over a $million : https://steemit.com/steem/@oliverb/steemwhale-watching-greater-than-list-of-users-you-need-to-get-upvotes-from-and-watch-for-new-content
Hi Chitty - you've managed to put together a coherent theory for the economics of up voting. My simple mind can compute your musings and has added substance to a question a lot of Steemers may be asking. good job!