Who is the real leader of the Steem realm?

in #steem6 years ago (edited)

138 Steem Bitcoin Thermometer 20180703_235305.jpg

Steem is decentralized, but a delegated-proof-of-stake system. You must vote for the witnesses to participate in the decisions – people advise you in various posts or in the FAQ. But let’s dig in it a little deeper. Who makes the decisions in reality?

Small shareholders have no weight

I will never forget the moment when a new shareholder of a public stock exchange listed company noticed on the general meeting: the thousands of small investors of the company have practically zero weight. “We are puppets here” – he told me wonderingly. There was some decision large shareholders wanted and small stakeholders were against it.

The result: 98.7 percent, with the “whale’s” votes, accepted the proposal, one percent was against it, some have abstained. The “small fish” had very little weight, almost nothing. But so is capitalism and so are public companies working.

Same as Facebook or Amazon

Steem system is something very similar, the money is voting. By the statistics of @arcange, the 37 whales are controlling 56.7 percent of all voting power. Orcas other 20.2. We can say that the whales don’t need us, they could make all (most?) decisions without us, others. That means proof-of-stake, sorry.

138 voting power.jpg
(January 26, 2019., data by @arcange)

(In reality, many users aren’t voting, not even all whales. And small votes can also count, for example when whales don’t agree.)

Please don’t interpret me wrong, I don’t want to say the Steem decision-making system is wrong, nor people shouldn’t vote. I only wanted you to understand what happens. Steem works in big part as the whales are voting because they have the power. Like Facebook, Apple, Amazon or General Electric are also mostly making what mayor shareholders want.

What do whales need?

Sometimes the interests of the whales and minnows are the same, for example, I think both are interested in the increase of Steem price. In other cases, these interests can be different.

But what could be the interest of whales, orcas? For example, lending Steem power, self-upvote, vote selling and make robots work are mostly in the interest of people with more wealth, investment, Steem power – with one word, more money. As they have invested a lot, they are interested redistribution of new, fresh printed Steem proportional to the capital (investment).

What do minnows need?

Like any other money owner on the Earth, whales, orcas may want to have their earnings (interests, dividends, yields, ROI, all the same.) Minnows, other small fishes, people who can’t or don’t want to invest, who doesn’t have much money, are interested in the redistribution of Steem to their posts.

You can buy yourself in or can work in – wrote the Steem white paper. If somebody can’t invest, has the possibility to produce “quality content”, and earn money with it. Working themselves in. But there are problems with this.

Demotivators

human interaction is rare on Steemit. This can be very disappointing and demotivating if you spend hours of work with a very engaging blog post, and you see that almost (or literally) no one cares about it – wrote @xplosive in a comment.

I also wrote earlier that many people come here to make money, by the call “we pay you for your content”, but gets disappointed because they receive only a few cents. _(Here, and poll here That’s why so many people are “deadfish”, leave the system early and don’t come back. (See the table.)


(January 26, 2019. @arcange)

Reset the variables?

That’s why I think a better upvoting and redistribution system would be in the interest of writers, of people without investments, means, for the masses. People with no money but with creative ideas in their heads. “Proof of brain” without “proof of money” (proof of stake, that’s the name officially, I know). Maybe we shouldn’t mix these two cases, or the proportions should be different. Perhaps the redistribution should reward more the brain than the money.

No, I’m not complaining. You can’t blame anybody because he isn’t voting against his proper interest, his money. Money holders will vote for their money, for decisions adequate for their wealth. I think financial interests are mostly stronger than culture or charity. Tell a millionaire he should spend all his money to support culture. Maybe he will spend some, but only a couple of percent of it.

Mass adoption? Adopt the mass first

Or tell a Steemian he should gift his votes to others, curate manually when he can sell these votes, too. Some do it, but many people, not. Some of the selfish people of yesterday are now orcas or whales and have huge voting power. I think if we want mass adoption, we should reward more the masses. Or Steem will stay the game, the business of some thousand wealthy people. Very simple, or not? Please comment.

A poll: Do you think Steem needs a big change?

Update: Poll: Why fell Steem to 7.2 cents?

The best post among dozens I found about the importance of the Steem witnesses here.

(I’m writing about the Steem blockchain with its “delegated proof of stake” system, not about Steemit Inc. nor Steemit.com.)

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Some good points here . Yeah it’s tough going when you write a nice post and only get a few cents . Thank god for projects like @curie and @csquared

When finding myself down on my rewards here on the steem blockchain, it always helps to think back to how long it took to receive my first cheque from facebook. 😎

tienes razon, muchas veces se escriben muy buenos articulos y solo quedan a la deriva en el mar de Steemit, me ha pasado aunque apenas estoy comenzando en esta comunidad, pero si me he percatado de ese punto...

you are right, many times very good articles are written and they are only adrift in the sea of ​​Steemit, it has happened to me although I am just beginning in this community, but I have noticed that point...

Pienso que el verdadero lider en el Reino Steem , està representado tanto por inversores, como por autores y curadores, por tanto es necesario votar por los testigos que actuarìan como sus representantes, sin tomar en cuenta que el pez grande se come al pequeño; porque todos tienen que velar por la generaciòn de altos precios que redundaràn en altos rendimientos. No olvidemos que en todo mercado donde se hagan transacciones utilizando el dinero como medio, el fin ùltimo es que se traduzca en la generaciòn de màs dinero, por supuesto que los que tengan mayor inversiòn tendràn mayores rendimientos.

tienes razon, muchas veces se escriben muy buenos articulos y solo quedan a la deriva en el mar de Steemit, me ha pasado aunque apenas estoy comenzando en esta comunidad, pero si me he percatado de ese punto...

you are right, many times very good articles are written and they are only adrift in the sea of ​​Steemit, it has happened to me although I am just beginning in this community, but I have noticed that point...

Calling @originalworks :)
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Nice, you got an awesome upgoat, thanks to @deathcross
BuildTeam wishes everyone a bullish new Year!
Want a boost? Minnowbooster's got your back!

Pretty much a non-point article, really ironic with the massive bid for tipu.
Changing distribution of reward is fine but what actual implementation should the change take?
There are about million of shit posters who look to milk cents from Steemit. Who's going to pay a group of people to sift through the trash to reward the brain? Is it expected to be an unrewarded, holistic job that whales should do out of the kindness of their hearts?
Adopt the mass by letting the mass leads you by the nose? Every single bastards on the blockchain is about making money. Are we going to reward every bid bots buying, trash post making, self aggrandizing dipshit like me and drive Steem/SBD price of oblivion?

Even in real life, money makes money. If begging for self righteousness doesn't work in real life, sure as hell isn't going to work here either.

Online press is trying to measure success with the number of visitors and number of page loads. Measuring online media is a science, not applied here. Why?


Maybe many are trying to make cents on Steem system, but whales receive the big share. I didn't say we shouldn't reward stake (capital), I said we should reward valuable content more. The question is, how?


People, whales or not, upvoting themselves, lending Steem power to others for money or selling/buying votes, or simply voting for each other in a small group, "cirkle jerking", are all the same. All are converting Steem Power to cash (or more Steem Power that can be converted to cash). I don't think that concludes with the original goals of Steem and oviously something should be made to reach a broader, or mass adoption. If you can't change people - you can't, I'm sure -, you should change the rules.


Yes, I use robots, like many others. If you are playing poker alone with 4 swindlers and you play clean, you are irational. "Don't hate the player, hate the game."

Lol, at least you own up to what you do. I can respect that.

Calling @originalworks :)
img credz: pixabay.com
Nice, you got an awesome upgoat, thanks to @deathcross
BuildTeam wishes everyone a bullish new Year!
Want a boost? Minnowbooster's got your back!

I didn't say we shouldn't reward stake (capital), I said we should reward valuable content more. The question is, how?

There has been an old idea of mine that could bring back trust in Proof of Brain, which you may be interested to look into.

Calling @originalworks :)
img credz: pixabay.com
Nice, you got an awesome upgoat, thanks to @deathcross
BuildTeam wishes everyone a bullish new Year!
Want a boost? Minnowbooster's got your back!