Pros and Cons of changing Curation rewards
Well it looks like @steemitblog´s last post regarding changes on curation rewards has sparked a lot of controversy in the inner circle of the Steemit community, and yes I say “inner circle” because I think that the vast majority of the users of steemit are small SP holders that would benefit from the proposed changes.
Being the small minnow that I am the proposed changes will have a positive impact in my future payouts, but instead of giving my opinion on the subject I would like to limit this post to listing the pros and cons that I have read and heard from the two sides (whales and minnows) so that you can figure out how this changes will affect you and why are some big investors so pissed off.
Pros:
- Authors will get more for their created content.
- Participation will grow and people will be more likely to comment on posts and not only upvote them.
- Because commenters will receive rewards only if their comments are upvoted the quality of the discussion will improve.
- Visits to the page should increase as people won´t want to miss out on the activity reward.
- Up-voting bots will probably cease to exist.
- Most users are not whales, so you could assume that most steemians would be happy with the change, it’s a popular measure.
Cons:
- A lot of whales, or should I say big investors, are not happy to see that their curation rewards will be completely wiped out. Some of them invested on steemit expecting to get returns in the form of curation rewards, this is no longer possible and neither is their business model.
- Pissed whales could trigger a massive sell off of the token steem.
- In order to automate the activity rewards, bots will be created to log-in and vote once a day on a random post.
- People may not vote as much anymore.
- There is no reward for finding new quality content.
Ultimately, it will be the founder’s choice to make and you can´t really blame them for it, they have been very transparent on posting all changes and creating a discussion about them…. Has Mark Zuckerberg ever asked you about possible changes to Facebook?
Please feel free to comment and add to this list!
Good summary.. No, I'm not a bot. Should I add more words, so that I looks less like a bot?
There won't be too much mass sell off, since whales can only get power down token every week. More likely there would be continuous sell pressure.
True, however with low volume and thin buy walls even a 5.000 steem sell would have a huge impact...
Great post. It will be interesting when the changes go into effect. I created a post about why it is good for whales to power down. https://steemit.com/steem/@brianphobos/it-is-good-when-the-steemit-whales-power-down-the-reasons-why-explained
Is there really "no reward for finding new quality content" under the proposed scheme? The prediction market aspect to Steem is one of the more interesting things as I see it.
The whales have already been rewarded, now lets reward them and ourselves by giving all of us a bigger ocean.
Not all whales have been rewarded. I am not a big whale, but I have been buying OPEN.Steem (on the BitShares DEX), withdrawing to my Steem acount and powering up every day for weeks. Just how have I been "already rewarded"?
you're right
An incentive for voting remains and there is certainly an incentive for finding quality content....as well as finding it early. I don't know of any whales that are 'pissed' at the changes. If anything, most of them seem to me to have welcomed the change. I have up voted because it's an important discussion but I think some of your points bear a touch more qualification.
This is because you haven´t been reading steem.slack channel today, I certainly read a few pissed off comments lol
Oh. Oh dear. So that's probably because, as xeroc pointed out....certain business models may no longer be viable. Ok i feel bad for that consequence. I can't help but feel the change overall is beneficial to more people and Steemit as a whole but I guess we'll find out. Thanks.
The incentive to vote is now only altruistic in nature. Voting more than once does not incentivize you. I could randomly vote one article and maximize my award activity for the day.
Im not complety sure about that. If I comment, I express part of my engagement via a vote. Regardless of rewards.
For people who would make a business model of curating, that is definitely killing that model of monetization.
A big point of contention is about the "retroactive" effect of that change.