Has Automation Killed Steem’s Proof of Brain?
One of the unique aspects about the Steem blockchain is its “Proof of Brain” based rewards mechanic concept, in which the community decides what content, creations are valuable and deserve to be rewarded.
As the blockchain is in its third year, and more blockchain based platforms with similar approach have appeared already or will soon be launched, the recent dip in the crypto market is a good time to consider whether Steem’s Proof of Brain has been a success so far.
Yet another Faketoshi lacking proof of brain
That even more because in recent months STEEM, the token, has been a constant poor performer when comparing to other tokens in CMC’s Top 50 given that the Steem blockchain has one of the most active user bases, if not the most active.
Recently @crokkon published a post in which they analyzed how many of the daily upvotes were done by bots. To do so they checked the transaction signature of each upvote, using the beem.py library.
In their analysis, more than 50% of the upvotes during the analysed period were done by automated services and/or bidbots/promotion bots. This equated to around 40% of the rewards distribution in that period. Steemauto was the leading service, by lightyears, with more than 40% of the votes (but less than 7% of the rewards). Bidbots Promotion services distributed around 33% of the rewards in that period with around 8% of the upvotes.
Graph from @crokkon’s post
You can check the actual numbers here.
While interestingly enough Steem’s whitepaper doesn’t mention Proof-of-brain but instead refers to Subjective proof of work, the bluepaper opens pretty much immediately with Proof-of-Brain and the SMT whitepaper links to the bluepaper also pretty much immediately to explain Proof-of-brain.
Have Automated Services Hurt The Value of $STEEM?
Given that both complexity and scarcity are generally considered elements of value, I have to wonder whether the lack of especially complexity has hurt the value of the $STEEM token. If one merely needs to join a curation project and end up on its trail’s autovoter, or pay for an automated not quality curated upvote... where’s the complexity?
Where’s the scarcity?
Have we so far built a Crypto-Keynesian paradise on the Steem blockchain? Have we treated the Steem blockchain as a Keynesian lunacy and hoped that the numbers and activity would de facto lead to value?
... makes clear that Crypto-Keynesians can’t tell the difference. This leads to the building products that add “activity” but fail in delivering any sort of value, in effect digging and filling ditches and pretending that means something. This is Crypto-Keynesian lunacy.
— Jimmy Song, Bitcoin Educator, Developer and Entrepreneur
Has automation killed (Steem’s) Proof of Brain and ruined the value of the token?
Chime in in the comments.
Notes
This post is not meant to be yet another emotional “bots are bad/good” thread. Bots, and automation, have definitely contributed to distribution. After more than two years though, we have to ask ourselves the hard questions. No matter whether we like them or not. Without asking those questions we will not be able to design better and improved systems.
I am fully aware that token values depend on more than just one element. Just as they depend NOT ONLY on BTC’s dominance, especially not during dips and their recovery periods. If that were the case $STEEM would still be near the top 20.
Yet, first impressions matter and complexity, or (subjective) proof of work AKA proof of brain may matter in those.
Yes, there are many more factors to be discussed but before we can possibly discuss “curation rewards”, it is primordial to actually look at what’s going on and assess what’s happening rather than potentially feeding automation even more without improving the core concepts and issues first.
To put the learn in fail where required. To #flearn.
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Auto curation is the killer. No one bothers to read very much. Everyone wants to be heard and not enough people want to hear because they want to be heard too.
I understand the principals of auto curation, Ive discussed it often but at the end of the day, curation is about reading, making a decision whether you like or agree and then upvote and comment accordingly. Its human, its organic, its a true connection.
If you miss someones normally excellent post, its up to you to make the effort to read, not just leave an autovote.
People here make almost zero effort to break oit of their normal circles to find new and interesting stuff, theyre too busy writing their own Steem opinion pieces which are the most rewarded posts here.
Bidbots just merely recirculate reward with very minor profit but eventual their use gets the user more followers, albeit often poor quality ones as people naturally flock towards big numbers to see what the fuss is about hence they can create more engagement.
This is not the case with autocuration, it just looks like circle jerking and is a hark back to the small close knit community right back at the beginning and discourages new users who know they will never be part of the in crowd and get similar rewards themselves.
Dump the auto curation is and always has been my philosophy to improve quality curation and better distribution of the people who actually read stuff.
Great post :-)
Thanks for your reply, @nathen007. I personally agree with all of that, even though I have some authors on autovote myself. Yet, I also consider them friends and friendship definitely also grew because they do contribute value in my eyes. My stake is too small to give away useless votes to those who don’t consistently produce.
Yes, I think bid votes are the main problem in Steem.
They convert the Proof of brain rewards into a proof of stake model. Furthermore, they make the promotion mechanism useless, which is the main tool for burning SBD.
Posted using Partiko Android
Promoted is poorly implemented though. It should be in category/tag feeds and also on trending/hot every xx posts.
Yes, promoting post should be reworked to add more visibility to promoted posts.
Posted using Partiko Android
Proof of Brain I feel is somewhat of a oxymoron in regards to a social platform that 'promises' reward for content. Perhaps the maximizers and sellers are the ones proving they have a brain as they sell out of Steem and buy BTC. The problem of course comes when what they are buying into is another position in the status quo.
As far as the bots are concerned, they definitely do decrease the level of engagement and unless one has very large stake, I think for the most part they should be limited to supporting a small pool of interesting authors rather than looking to maximize return through curation. OF course, that is crazy talk because from the moment most step on, they want to maximize their returns.
I can't really say how much it affects price because for the most part as far as I can see, price is not connected to anything other than who has the money and will to pump or dump a coin.
Hello,
You just received an automated vote from @apsu!
This comment is here just to point out that your post was still not read, but enjoy the rewards!
Best regards,
Who-Has-Time-To-Interact
Now go rocket this post to the top of Trending. Remember that time? 😁
Oh I feel good for being one of the first ones to get high in trending with use of a bought vote..
I had completely forgotten about that. I did use 100 SBD for that.
Naturally, our "proof-of-brain" has turned into an obfuscated "proof-of-work". Humans being the clever and lazy beings that they have naturally looked for the quickest and easiest way to generate the greatest return on the platform. This works for Bitcoin, because automated mining is only way to generate actual coins. But for Steem, I guess the hope is that social mining is harder to automate because people have distinct tastes.
Unfortunately for Steem, everyone has a taste for money. So, they'll burn the social aspect down as automating the process requires less work on their end. That's not to say something like Steem could never work. But it does make Steem fragile as a cryptocurrency. It's too dependent on having a majority of the stakers to behave in a social manner. But that requires more effort and generates less returns. There is no incentive to be a good actor on Steem. People have tried, but they all fail because they have to compete against the incentive structure.
Luckily, the system will come to an equilibrium price where the number of people that care about the platform as a social ecosystem will outnumber the people who care about the system as a means of generating maximal returns. Unfortunately for those users who are optimistic about Steem, I believe this number is very close to 0 if not 0. But maybe it's not.
It's the large users who will ultimately be put in the tough place. They can either continue to allow their "value" be razed to the ground via their own apathy or they can start to do something about it. I suspect they believe this issue is partly due to the rampaging bear market on cryptocurrency. But what I think this bear market is truly showing is that altcoins were always overvalued and their natural correlation with Bitcoin over-inflated their price. At some point you would expect to decouple from Bitcoin as you are a social network and not a "Proof-of-Work" coin.
Ironically, as long as Steem has monetary value it is a "Proof-of-Work" coin in its own weird way and Bitcoin already does that better.
It’s sweatshop equity. I think the WP (both Steem and also SMT one) actually mention the term, or at least reference it.
I agree with that. At least right now and until right now, looking at the current token values I think many are much better valued. Eventually, as investors start to notice that the ICOs didn’t truly make sense within their portfolio (that also due to it not being an equity stake and decision right) the real questions about the value of a token/platform/infrastructure will eventually be asked.
Is the current bear market the dotcom crash of crypto? After last year’s ICOs?
Auto voting would be the death of us all. Let me just give my brief background: I am a red fish and the first time I became a member of the steemit world, there are a lot of updates encouraging me to join teams or groups that basically promises to upvote my content. Some are even demanding payment for their services either in steem, steem power or steem dollar. I did not join those groups basically because I wanted to be known for the quality of my work and not on which group I belong into. Another reason was that, I really cannot afford their services and, I do not really want to spend my painfully earned tokens for such a thing.
Sometimes, it gets really offending mainly because some of the trending posts would often turn out to be a disappointment. Whenever I try to look closely at any of those disappointing posts, I would often stumble links or tie ups to autobots or groups that demand to upvote your work if you do the same to them or, you pay them in steem, steem power or steem dollar.
What I just want to suggest is for the steemit management to stop this practice as people starts earning a lot for very discouraging contents. Also, I just want to give a piece of my mind for those who joined the steemit community primarily to earn a lot without contributing much: steemit is not a get-rich-fast gig. It takes a lot of time to build one's content, reputation and niche(I'm still trying to find my footing!). If you guys wanted to earn legitimately, why not try legitimate ways like doing a lot of steem bounty, steemit hunts or simply posting in your accounts?
In early days, weeks, months it is good to join (discord) communities though. They are often the key to find your earliest followers. How else will one get noticed.
No matter how long you plan to be here and how long you think the marathon is, networking is of utmost importance. There is no magic search service like Google which will eventually absorb the quality content and drive traffic in exchange. This is mostly the feed life.
But seeing you are active on Steemhunt... keep at it and after a while your level will increase and some rewards will be generated via it. Steemhunt is also a marathon, especially for new members. It takes a while to achieve those first levels.
thanks for the advise. I am frankly not against discord groups- I am actually a member in some of them- aside from those who have upvote for upvote or requires me to pay up to be promoted.
Yeah, it's a tough one... the coveted whale vote and the random dtube vote train people to produce content... not good content, just consistent content.
However, the benefit to this is that the blockchain gets activity... and it sets a pretty low bar for others to try and replicate.
I, obviously, prefer the curie model where your work has to be really, really good to get an upvote... but obviously that is a ton more work than simply setting up an autovote.
Is activity better than quality?
Depends if you’re Crypto-Keynesian or not. If you are, you also think that being listed on more exchanges inevitably increases the value of the token.
Hi @fknmayhem, thanks for linking my post! You've raised some interesting aspects. Has automation killed (Steem’s) Proof of Brain and ruined the value of the token? - I don't think so, but I also think that the term "proof of brain" has to be taken with a grain of salt. Let's be honest, there's little chance for a newly created account to write a great post and be widely noticed and rewarded immediately. There's no doubt, a large fraction of the votes is automated, bought or curation-based (also automated in some sense). With the flood of posts on the chain, who should ever read those? I think for the "average user", the "proof of brain" aspect is less about an individual post, but more about building a network (and eventually get auto-voted as a result) or joining a human-curated community/dapp. In this context the "proof of brain" is still there, despite all the automation, but it's not focused on individual posts. If this is the kind of "proof of brain" that was originally foreseen in the bluepaper, or the "subjective proof of work" as in the whitepaper, is a different question, but I'd guess that this was somehow expected?
Thanks for your comment, @crokkon. And for the data analysis, of course.
Interestingly this was the topic of one of my first 5 posts I wrote on Steem. The need to build networks and one's own tribe.
Personally, I think that curation trails/communities are indeed a proof of brain. And so is the advanced game curation maximizes play. Besides, no platform can support any firehose and those who think platforms should they indeed may lack evident display of PoB.
I wasn't there when they discussed the initial "experiment" but generally communities behave in a "hostile" way to the spirit (read: opposite) when there's more to be had. Yet, that's often forgotten - or downplayed at least. Coincidentally, I'm Belgian and we have a saying that it's a civic duty to find the loophole to each law.
Lol, I'm Belgian too, and I wondered whether this expression was typical for the Belgian mentality or not :0)
I agree with @crokkon that for a new user it isn't easy to write post, build a network and manually curate all at the same time. I am 'fortunate' enough not to have a daytime job, but most pople do. Not just that, but a family and a real-life social life too. These days, it seems impossible to get noticed without sending most of the time networking. (For a good part, manual curation is one of the base elements of that.)
But as a newcomer, the gap between yourself and the people who have been here for a long time (and who write a big part of the articles that are of high quality). For most of them, building a network starts with their peers.
I'm not a fan of curation trails, by the way. I learned my lesson the hard way. At one point I got a message from someone and before I knew it, I found myself in the middle of a conflict between two people I didn't even know. They were throwing dirt (and stones) to eachother, and apparently the curation trail I was following had voted on one of the hate posts. I wouldn't even have known if one of the involved parties hadn't messaged me, asking if I would be able to moderate between the two hate-posters...
I instantly removed myself from the trail. I think that allowing everyone and every community to set up its own curation trail is dangerous, because history has shown us what following blindly can lead to.
IMO, auto voting is very useful when one lives in a totally different timezone than the majority of people here, like you and me. I do have autovotes set up, but it took me a lot of research to find authors that are consistantly posting articles I wánt to upvote. These decisions weren't taken overnight
I have traveled many countries and stayed in more than ten countries longer than 4 months at least to get to know the people and the culture better.
I have never spotted that mindset, or even the expression. But then again few nations can say like Belgium can that at night they rule the world. At least a large part of it. :D
Over 50%! Well it figures. Life pulled me away from Steemit soon after I got involved so it was a false start but I´m back.
I never got started in curation trails and all of that because it did not make sense to me although I empathized with some reasons for doing that.
It left a lot of questions. And that itch remained their until I cam back recently.
So I had to know Why this is considered a good thing, or necessary and I needed to see first hand so I got set up on Steem Auto just last week and commenced.
And I hated it. No personal presence with the actions that are being taken (yes, I knew that but I had not felt it yet- the void) so to me was neither satisfying or meaningful. For those who have experienced the value that is the steemit community, I think it is apparent- if souls are not participating / interacting, there isn´t much worthwhile value. This IS a community, no? This is the Big Thing that surprised me when I started. I was exploring income opportunity and crypto for the first time too, but I had no idea of the impact that a community of diverse strangers would have on me personally.
Of course bots are a dehumanizing force here. And this is a microcosm of what? Exactly. What if this is the resulting challenge that feel in our laps? A higher priority ahead of Steemit and the blockchain?
Or am I just catching perspective, that it has been fading away around us for decades.. that the unexpected attraction I found, resembles what is already too far gone- even almost forgotten, and I have never felt more sad than I do now.
Thanks for your excellent comment, @dougbudlong.
I have four or five authors on autovote myself (20% of daily available VP) and I do not always manage to read all their posts. Mea culpa, mea culpa.
At the same time, I also benefit a trail but most of value I've gotten out of Steem has been the personal, off-chain interaction.
Your last paragraph is an interesting topic. A Guardian columnist recently wrote that most adults can not leave Facebook longer than 10 days, when they realize how hollow their lives have become.