Proof of no brain
Fact #1
Steem is an amazing technology. It's the biggest decentralized social network ever, and has sprouted a new type of economy that has rewarded at least tens of millions of dollars of pure value to it's organically built community.
Fact #2
We built and released dozens of cooler projects than any eth/eos developer has ever been able to ship, despite the millions in funding around these financially bigger blockchains.
Fact #3
Steem is worth $0.29 right now, still worth about 4 times as much as it's all time low, but 20 times less than it's all time high.
Fact #4
Steemit Inc has firmly communicated their intentions to slowly step back as the arch-leader of this blockchain with their recent announcements and actions.
Fact #5
Most community projects are struggling financially. As a consequence, development and new projects release has clearly gone down. Existing projects update less often, and innovation is basically non-existent. Witnesses are also concerned, as their earnings drastically reduced. Even AskSteem (a search api used by many apps including dtube, steempeak, etc) is shutting down.
So? What's wrong?
I've seen tons of blathering by witnesses or project owners these days... On discord, telegram, slack, or even steemit itself. These people try to identify the current issues, and how to solve the issues. How to re-organize. And how to make steem's future great. They say we need blockchain developers that costs XXK$/year. We need a new landing page. Also we need to implement new solutions for on-boarding users. That's all complete bullshit or ignorance as usual. These people are all either failing to recognize the real issue of STEEM, or intentionally trying to distract the casual users with mindless conversations.
The forsaken feature
What if I told you that there is one very important feature that has been working intermittently through time. Probably because it has been neglected in terms of development. But every time it's been working well, STEEM's value in satoshi and dollars has been growing, alongside many new accounts being created. Everytime I talk about this feature to other Steemians, they call me an idealist, and change conversation...
It's the feature that helped STEEM survive when it was worth $0.07, and the one that convinced 95%+ of my readers to register in the first place. The promise of a network where we would directly reward real humans based on merit instead of computing power. I'm talking about the Proof-of-Brain™ monetary distribution feature. That's the closest thing we can get to the original Satoshi's vision. And many of you were already here when it was working, and you witnessed the power of it with your own eyes, otherwise you wouldn't have stayed.
And the funny part is that nothing broke technically, it's just humans who adapted to the rules, and built truly complex systems in order to cheat the proof of brain and earn from it programmatically or systematically. These programs or systems have different names, such as: bid-bots, curation trails, app delegation, ninja-mining, upvote as a salary, and so on, but are broadly referred to as 'financial tools'. In reality, they are just breaking the rules to their advantage, and still the community has welcomed them with open arms, as if they didn't understand that any penny made by these robots, is a penny less that goes into the reward pool.
What do?
With lack of proof of brain, the incentive for playing the game normally is nulled, and no one feels like engaging or registering anymore, even less powering up. If you want to fix proof of brain, and STEEM as a whole, there are two solutions:
The hard solution would be to refactor the proof of brain algorithm, a critical part of the steem blockchain where inexperienced developers will risk breaking the consensus and forking the chain. And then you'd need to allow SMTs™ to use the feature with changeable configuration through time, so that we could adapt to any type of new abuse, a bit how video game producers update their games to detect cheaters or 'nerf' certain strategies. If SteemIt Inc can't, would you do it?
The easy solution is to make the majority of users change their mindsets. Make them stop thinking of STEEM as a way to make money. Educating them about the original purpose of rewarding the largest number of real humans, and being generous with your own upvotes when you make a real human connection. Of course that means no delegation to your favorite bid bot, nor powering down and selling the stuff on binance. Rebooting your brain to make steem work again. Would you do it?
That's what I thought :)
Amen to that. Selling and buying votes killed the heart of Steem. It's not an honest evaluation of content. And these bidbot coders have risen in witness rankings too. What a joke... Money rules the platform and minds of many. I stopped posting about bidbot issues a while ago. The community at large either doesnt care, or cant do anything because most of the SP holders support the vote selling and buying anyways. Having everyone "get it" is a dream it seems...
the problem is not votes, but ranking system of content in website, right now its who got more money got better visibility. But overall because of this rule, without bots there is almost no visibility of posts.
I'm not sure old-school witnesses care too much about it either, they are the ones who let this happen. You warned people, I warned people, we did our duty.
How about system neglect the user's post who used bid bots from going to trending/hot tab. I mean most of bid-bots are known so shouldn't be a hard task, so put them in ignore list. When people won't get visibility using those boys , they will eventually stop using it.
But yeah, this can't stop minnowbooster, smart steem where votes are directly sold between users.
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I will answer shortly but can develop if need.
We are definitely struggling financially, but that doesnt mean that we are not improving and updating our projects.
The real problem is most of devs are just sitting on a Steemit delegation and that comfort give them no more will to improve their existent project... So I definitely prefer my position... I'm having hard time (and my team too) to get my head off the sea, but that force me to work harder each day to find some ways to keep to do better day by day.
Innovation was never existent on Steem (at least to my eyes), most of apps are only some copies of existent mainstream apps (with 50x less features), while we have the power to make some real innovation, people prefer to assure their gain with some basic app...
For asksteem, I couldnt get my datas indexed on it, and today you have esteemsearch/surfer which is based on hivemind/elasticdb and free to use so it's not a waste at all.
I agree with some people who try to find solution to some issues, like the governance part, but I also agree with you about the "no sens" to trying to onboard users... While I say that, I don't blame them for what they do, and I just think that we are missing communication between the community (people with the will to improve the steem state) and some people with clear mind and who understand that blockchain.
I never trusted the Proof Of Brain, or not as a standalone. And in that way even before thinking about to build an app we have built the Proof of Merit which is a complementary overlay to PoB. Free to each team to dev their own layer, or to talk with us to implement the PoM. A simple thing about it, we dont try to abuse of the pool by anyway (like voting at 30minutes) or putting an alarm when we are at 100% to spend our votingpower, but mostly calculating each upvotes and trying to give only upvotes that will serve the whole community. How many team and apps can say that?
In my mind there is no difference between a bid bot and the system of dtube, which buy votes from users. You are talking about something but before that you should look at your home. And don't tell me that incentive have any proof of brain in it...
So I definitely trust that we can improve the mind of people if we give them better tools and if we educate them. And why not also improving the blockchain curation process. I don't see only one solution, but rather multiple ways to achieve that and make Steem the dream that we want to be true.
I worked with you for few months and I know how much you care about steem, as I do. So why not being an example for steem and starting to make something with dtube in that way? You have the potential to change things with your position as one of the most used dApps over whole blockchains.
But would you do it? :)
We don't have to hard fork to fix this problem. We need to come to consensus. There is a huge community and consensus here that believes in the merit of Proof-of-Brain.
So where is the proof-of-brain political party on Steem? It doesn't exist. How hard would it be for such a group to make these "financial tools" unprofitable? It wouldn't be hard at all. It would be stupidly easy.
All of the greedy leeches of this platform are lone wolves. They aren't working together to exploit this platform. It's everyone-for-themselves capitalism. A group of people working together to fix it can outgun these lone wolves by 1000 fold, bring them on to team proof-of-brain, and then move on to the next lone wolf exploiting the platform.
With a little bit of communication we can pit the wolves against each other and bring this platform back into balance.
I like the concept but how do you propose this be done?
If I had the capital, I would stand up a bot that would indiscrimately downvote vote buyers.
I don't care if the vote buyer's content is ok. All I know is they are feeding into a system that empowers our enemies.
I don't care if the bid bot owners cooperate with us to blacklist a few here and there. A blacklist is not enough by a longshot.
We recently uncovered a meme ripoff abuse network usng bid bots. That's the sort of thing that makes me want to rage quit and I have to search deep to find a reason to stay.
The blockchain does not forget and I hope it's users will not either. The ones that offer you votes for $$$ are not doing you a service. They are doing to blockchain a disservice.
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I actually just posted my solution.
Making the POB pipe dream a reality.
A proof-of-brain DAO needs to be created.
Twas a fantastic read!
Perhaps we are fully aware of that, but when some of us spoke loudly about the issue, those in position to support where nowhere to be found. Now it's too late to be vocal about it, the system has been this way for too long. I adapted and found some positiveness out of them. Do I love them? No. Do I hate them? Not anymore. Did we adapt? Yes, we had to.
What you're saying here is absolutely right.
It is the systems/businesses that are a product of human greed (bidbots are the main perpetrators) that have ruined steem. I suggested exactly what you are saying in this post (about bidbots removing value from steem without providing any positive service) in a conversation where 3 witnesses were present at steemfest, only to be talked over by a certain individual who has an inflated sence of his own intelligence/importance.
The fact is that a huge amount of value has been taken out of the system by bidbots/vote buying as these people who run them are only in it for profit. They aren't building anything positive, there service simply promotes the dumbing down of our trending as shit reaches a place that should be highlighting steem's best and brightest... and to add insult to injury, some of these people who run bidbots, are involved in a high position in some of the better discord communities. Honestly, they should be held accountable for the damage they have done! It is not all about steem price. A huge amount of talent left steem within months of joining because they saw what was going on with vote buying. But also, a huge amount of value has left steem as these vote buying services sell there profits to fiat.
There is a concerted message being pushed across steem right now, mainly by whales, about minnows & dolphins building a successful blockchain. These same people are talking about too many minnows didn't power up & took there steem out to fiat etc. But, these are the same people who delegate to vote selling services because they are too lazy to curate. They throw some autovotes to people who are agreeing with them or getting involved in thier projects but they do not curate content based on quality. Some do delegate to @curie or @ocd but even OCD have started there own vote selling now.
Basically, we have a situation here where responsibility for the mess the steem blockchain is in, is not being taken by the people who contributed most to what we're left with now. And they are certainly not changing their behaviour because they want that easy money Politics and crowd manipulation might be as old as the Bible, but that doesn't mean we should accept it or perpetuate it. Unfortunately, people are pretty much set up to be followers. Add the financial dynamics of Steem' into the mix and it is easy for people to be incentivized to say 'yes sir, I'll put in a tone of work for you' without questioning who or what they're really working for. It is also easy for bad actors in this space to suppress facts they would rather not be held accountable for through the fear of down votes.
Anyway, that's my 10 cents.
P.s. I have powered up nearly 100% of my earnings, both from posts & curie curating.
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You are right, brains are not rewarded. Brains are eaten by money.
As long as Steem is marketed as a place to “get paid for your content” and as long as the incentives are set up to push rewards to those most likely to sell the tokens, this blockchain will not see any real growth and prices will not hold any meaningful gains.
Rewards attracted most of users here, you are telling to remove them!?
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He said : As long as Steem is marketed as a place to “get paid for your content”.
It's not about removing the rewards, but giving some different offers and possibilities to users than only getting paid for sharing a content.
If 'getting paid for your content' was bringing some value on Steem many steemians would be rich now no??
So I definitely agree that people shouldnt see it like a finality or as the main purpose for their apps, (even if they use it for marketing) but rather like a little bonus to attract people, which is cool in my opinion.
It has been more than two years now and the most common questions from steem users and for most of communities is : Why I didnt get upvoted? What I have to do to obtain an upvote?
In fact only a small bunch of apps really care about this. I can count them on my hand's fingers ;) In that way, nobody is perfect of course, but everyone can still try/tend to be better.
For the rest they keep to ruin this ecosystem while making hypocritical post where they tell you that they care about steem and they make tons of tools and apps without any value for the blockchain.
It's easy to QQ about steemit inc, steem, whales, and the current situation for avoiding the real problems.
I maybe wrong too, those people can be stupid as hell and not hypocritical... but I have some doubt :)
That sickness make me mad lol, I go back to my bed.
I agree with your assessment that the distribution mechanism is broken. When it comes down to changing user behavior or refactoring algorithms, it's clear to me that user behavior won't change. Nobody really flags. They complain that there isn't an incentive to doing so, but if you look at it long enough there is, but that if you can get beyond ROI-centric views. Most folks wont.
Which leaves us with refactoring the algorithm. In my opinion, we are suffering from a nothing-at-stake problem where users can behave in undesirable ways because they have little to lose. If we increase the downside (beyond flags) so that risk comes into play, then low effort milking becomes harder to do, because something is at stake. But of course such an idea would be massively unpopular because freeloaders gotta freeload.
I agree nothing at stake is an issue. Maybe making people pay with a % of their voting power like for upvotes would reduce the spam level.
Agree as well and we've been working to increase those stakes using off-chain tools. For example, running flag campaigns against a bid bot abuse 4chan ripoff network on my @smartmeme alt and using the SFR bot to claim upvotes for flags w/ explanatory comments (including a valid SFR abuse category and mention as well). Some resistance is better than no resistance.
If you are interesting in being part of turning up the heat on users following abusive patters, feel free to join us at @steemflagrewards. We're a flag happy bunch but we do strive to be reasonable.
SFR Discord
When I first found Steem 'Proof of brain' was what most attracted me and helped me attract others to this place. In my year and a half here I have tried to be true to the vision of how I thought the system should work as advertised, creating what i think is good content and upvoting others who I think also produce work that is of value.
I have never used a bid bot or set autovotes to other people. I want my success or failure to be based on merit, being a real human and manually curating. All of this is recorded on the blockchain for all to see. There are many users here doing the same and they are the ones I try and support.
I agree with what you say, that the system is broken the way it is and the automation of voting is, for me the biggest culprit. It has taken the 'social' out of the 'social media'. Making the place pay to play and scaring off many amazing creators.
Even though it has been pretty hard going I am in for the long hall. The lack of readers on my posts doesn't make me want to leave but it does make me check out other platforms like Whaleshares , a platform that seems to care about content and it is there that I will be sending other content creators to in the future. Sorry Steem
I do see @therealwolf 's side of the argument but in the long term it is creating a centralised power on how the rewards are getting distributed that will slowly but surely reduce to nothing for all involved.
Good to see you post and I hope you continue to do so. Any plans to tackle these issues you highlighted with dtube?
Indeed