RE: Locking stake for 100% passive income, improving content, helping apps
Just to add to the discussion as we've talked about it during SF3:-
Steem has economic incentives (of 25% curation, linear rewards, costly downvotes) that promotes and rewards content-indifferent voting behavior.
With passive staking as per your suggestion, we're effectively reducing the rewards pool that remains to fuel the same voting behavior enabled by Steem's economic incentives (of 25% curation, linear rewards, costly downvotes).
Passive staking helps only to a certain degree. Point (1) above remains. Steem's economic incentives are still aligned to content-indifferent voting behavior, which should be fixed (by going for 50% curation, n1.x rewards, 10-30% free/pool downvotes). Between maximization strategies of taking part in voting or passive staking, being able to influence content by voting remains to be a powerful proposition.
As I said when we spoke, this doesn't exclude exploring 50/50 and discounted/free flagging. I actually think it might make them more effective as it is a kind of reset of the pool resources and a chance to improve overall distribution.
@kewinwong @tarazkp I'd like to see both of these ideas implemented together. We can do better and we should, if someone thinks Steem is working as intended right now, he's clueless.
We have to keep working until we have active curation happening, that's actually trying to embed the best content creators that come our way via giving them stake in our ecosystem. Else they will just leave when they see that in Trending low quality posts are gaining hundreds of dollars. I have to wonder has @ned given this another thought and what is his current stand on this. All he commented about bidbots (that I know of) was "interesting"... Bit lackluster when they have changed the ecosystem inside out, at least with Dan we would have gotten a lengthy post about the issue and I'd understand what the leadership is thinking.
Currently it feels like we all know the ship is sinking, but we hope SMT's will save it and are holding on. @ned please consider doing something other than another frontend... It's not the issue here, listen to your users. Whatever users you will get through fancy graphics, they'll leave because the flawed incentives.
Yep, even a limited pool (it is essentially limited already by bots and circles) is a better view of things. Consider that with a few more delegations the apps/curation initiatives become distribution forces and things could look much healthier fast.
And people like to compare what their posts make to others, when we take out 500 dollar promoted posts, mainstream users won't feel so bad when theirs make only few dollars. Platforms like these have to give a lot of thought to the human psychology. These days hundreds of thousands are spent by apps to scan brains in search for the best colors to be used in apps and such.
The current system sells the idea, that quality doesn't matter pretty hard to normal users we actually want to attract here.
Fyrstikken is user from another end of spectrum, he seems to be happy gaining "cheap tokens" as much as he can, wondering why everyone else isn't quite as happy as he. I wonder what he will do with them all when no real users are left here when they'll choose not to spent their time here viewing ads and feeling bad when some posts make 500 dollars and so on.
When we all will be using our SP through bid bots, what there'll be left? Everyone will log in to claim their gained rewards and sell them for other coins, because SP acts only as a passive way to gain wealth, nothing more. No posts will be curated, no comments made. It's a grim outlook I wish I wouldn't have and currently markets seem to share my view more than the positive one.
But with only few small changes, who knows, Steem could be proof-of-brain blockchain once again. Your post at least has stirred up discussion, and discussion is always good.
Fyrstikken runs a bid bot, don't take his word about alleged aquirations.
I know he does, I also know him from times before Steem. If he's reading this, remember dogecoin?
So I can say, that some individuals here, with big stakes put profits far ahead of any morale and as long as incentives are what they are, they'll continue profiting from it and move on when better opportunities rise, only being sorry for not making more money.
That's why the rules should direct the greediest to act in a way that's beneficial to us all. Now the best route is selling votes and messing up the content discovery, making this platform inefficient and not attractive to mainstream users.
I've been using bidbots to sell my votes for some time now, I see why they are popular, and this whole thing could be replicated with the idea Tarazkp is presenting here while still making the normal users happy, those who actually want to use Steem as a platform to find good content and socialize, and this should be considered and discussed at length until we have better understanding of the pros and cons.
I don't know you but I love you!
Yep, it's an ideal that actually made me get into Steem, but now after seeing bidbots and circles take over, I have yet again been reminded of the harshness of the reality we live in. Yet I hang on. But if SMT's fail to fulfill the original vision I had for this technology, I'll be long gone. Sad to see good technology be wasted like this. But someone will get it right eventually.
I completely agree. Tempering expectations and user retention is one of my main targets with this.
I am pretty sure that just like the fact that if everyone used bidbots the system would fail (not everyone does), not everyone will lock stake. I don't think I would at least.
Yes, there would still be people who would want to use Steem as intended, to reward good content and doing so encourage these creators to keep coming back with more of their creations, attracting more people here. It's a positive loop that we should encourage more.
I'm not sure if some people are playing some game theory strategy here, where they try to maximize their stake before inflation lowers down with all means possible. With the money some people are making here, I'm seeing surprisingly low amount of advertisement of Steem by them outside this small ecosystem. It is quite surprising. Or are they just shamed to mention it because of the way the ecosystem currently works?
(Quality doesn't matter much). Any day competitor could pop up, which has taken lessons from Steem and has fixed the issue of content discovery.
I know that I'd like to keep some voting power for myself to keep rewarding original, and interesting content like this:
and in my mind, the best route to ensure Steem is still a worthy platform to interact in ten years, is to make sure these people get rewarded here.
#metoo
"economic incentives" apart and without going into all those details (techy stuff) - if it is really truly seriously a matter of making a change in voting behavior from "content indifferent" to "Content Attentive" and Interested, about caring for Quality of Content (or at least about bothering to as much as VIEW that Content from inside the post - not from "outside", just its title in the Feed list)...
then there is quite easy and simple solution to accomplish that - IF Steemit Inc. would actually care to do so (yeah, yeah, and if Witnesses "come to consensus" etc). that solution I have explained here. it is basically, in brief: make the Upvote button visible only for those who have bothered to actually Open and Read that "Content" (post) ! :)
bots would "get tired" to open all those links, scroll down to the end of post, find that Upvote button -- all that just to press it to complete the so called "Curation process". (or perhaps bots can't even do all that)
that would help to achieve what you are trying to focus on:
if no one is able to press Upvote button at all from "outside" (from Feed List), but only from "inside" (from within the page of that post) - THAT would certainly INFLUENCE content by voting! and shift the voting behavior from "content indifferent" - to Content-Reading-Compulsory.
however something tells me that present state of affairs - quite perfectly FINE not only for the System itself, but also for all the "Investors" / "Stakeholders". whose main (or only) concern is not the Content itself nor its quality - but the ROI. (and for System - the long-term lock-up of the capital within itself; aka "High Yield Corporate Bonds", the "Mutual Fund" of all those SP "Stakes" combined)
Upvote button easily accessible from "outside" the Post (i.e. without need to open and actually Read its Content) and available for bots or anyone to just press it without need to click the Link (title) of the Post. therefore why bother to do any more than just trivial basic action of "pressing Upvote button"?
since System doesn't require anything else at all and doesn't care at all. then why should care all and any people who come here to Earn? (especially those who has Invested, especially quite a lot!)
so called "Active curation" (LOL! what a term! like "active pressing of Upvote button"? bots are good at that! :D) will not happen - because System doesn't care about it, doesn't require or demand it, because it is not important for it to generate the profits and to sustain itself. It keeps "minting" more and more new tokens "out of thin air" (as Taraz rightly mentioned it some time ago :) ), so, main thing of it is - "generation of connections" (aka "links from clicks on Upvote button" LOL :D) and the fact of "content discovery" aka "Curation" (= which Upvote buttons under which posts titles in the Feed List are pressed and which are not). as long as such "Business" continues - it is quite alright for the System. it is NOT at all necessary nor important to even READ the text inside - what to speak about the evaluation of Content Quality (what is normally meant by Curation).
That's why Stakeholders are being bluntly straightforward now - in making proposals of such ideas ("Lock up Stakes") - so that they don't even have to bother with such a silly nonsense as ANY kind of "Voting" at all. just Invest (= "Power Up"), "Lock Up" and get increased rewards for that (for NOT selling their votes otherwise) aka "Passive Income". funny though that at the same time "improving content" is mentioned at all. because WHAT "Content" or its quality is of any interest at all - if person is fully satisfied with "Earning on Autopilot".
yeah, why not! :)
desire to care about one's ROI is understandable. but there is no need to cover it with some sort of "caring about content improvement" and about "voting behavior" LOL