[Proposal] Decoupling Curation Rewards from Post's
In response to recent discussions regarding reward-curves adjustment and curation-rewards-removing.
The problems
I think the majority in the community are against the phenomena of post-rewards over-concentration. But most of us also agree that a pure linear curve will just swipe away the incentive to curate better. So, the upcoming Hard-fork is suggesting a balanced curve which trying to tolerate in either direction at each ends.
There are many other suggestions e.g. removing curation rewards, none of them seems to be a good candidate for solution.
I can't provide a solution either, but would like to propose a way to make things easier.
The Proposed Decoupling
The main obstacle here is we are trying to solve two/more problems with one single curve. That's like mission impossible.
I'm proposing that we cut the problem into smaller pieces, so that we could address each individually.
- Existing: calculate the individual post rewards based on votes and a curve, then cut 25% for splitting among curators.
- Propose: split the main pool 75/15 between a post-pool and curation-pool, then calculate individual post reward and curation reward, separately.
With this change, the amount of curation reward is no longer tied directly to post-rewards. Means we are able to adjust the reward curves separately and independently, to suite their own purpose.
For example, we could choose a pretty linear curve for post reward, while still using a non-linear (e.g. n^2) curve for curation rewards. A linear curve could address the over-concentration problem of post rewards, and making 'every vote counts'. While a highly skewed curve for curation reward might be a better choice to suite its objective of discourage self-voting and incentivice good curation.
Conclusion.
The proposal solves nothing but clears the way to finding solutions easier.
Open for discussion.
Just to give another example:
If we had decoupling the curation reward from post, then it become possible to reward voters who use their down-vote/flagging wisely.
In current curation scheme, there is a biased towards up-vote -- those who cast an upvote has nothing to lose, but those who perform flagging has nothing to earn.
If we had un-tied curation reward from post reward, then we can reward the curators in both scenario whether the total-votes for a post end up negative or positive... So, when a post has a positive accumulated votes, all up-voters get rewarded, while if a post get negative in consensus, then down-voter will get the curation rewards.
This symmetric curation scheme might be a fairer ground for all curators.
Simply rewarding down-votes by judging the post payout is not ideal. I can image that people will just write junks with suck puppets then flag them to death, it's far easier to write bad contents than write good contents.
Good point... overlook this scenario.
The idea is people who worked should get paid. The hard part is how to evaluate their work. If the rule encourages people to vote randomly, they will. If there are numbers, bots will play with them.
I wonder is it technically possible to mask the votes amount with some cryptogrphy until the end of voting round?
I guess it's possible.. But I'm not an expert on this topic.
By the way, after we implemented FABRIC, votes can be done on a sub-chain which is not open to public, so perhaps at that time we can hide things that need to be hidden.