Steem Basic Income

Steem Basic Income is a social experiment to bring a basic income to as many Steemians as possible. Members join by sponsoring others into the program. Steem Basic Income is delivered through providing regular upvotes to member content.

Still Going Strong

We are up to six pools, so your upvotes could come from @steembasicincome, @sbi2, @sbi3, @sbi4, @sbi5, or @sbi6. We currently have 1639 members that have posted within the last 28 days, and many more members that have not. Unfortunately the members that are not posting are not receiving upvotes. There are currently 7390 'shares' in the program, and it grows every day.

Pool 1 accounts voted

There has been a spike in inactivity in the last few weeks as the low STEEM price has many people discouraged. Managing voting power around inactive members is always a challenge. The portion of inactive members has grown to 30%. Some comment but don't post, so they will start receiving upvotes when we finish our automation project.

The excess voting power that should go to the inactive members is distributed to the active members in the pool so that it is not wasted. If voting power gets close to 100%, we do extra self-votes on comments, but we prefer to reallocate to the active members as much as possible. With so many recent inactive members, we have only been able to upvote 327 of the members in pool 1!

img source: http://www.steemreports.com/outgoing-votes-info/?account=steembasicincome&days=7

Last week we had a 24.4% self-vote, which is much higher than we would like. Over Easter weekend, there was a big drop-off in the number of accounts posting, relative to a normal weekend. It's been a very difficult week in trying to keep voting power from being wasted, and the growth of the program makes it much more difficult to respond quickly to changes in member posting frequency. Thankfully, automation will resolve those issues and allow us become much less dependent on self-voting as a release valve.

Pool 2 accounts voted

And the same for pool 2 upvotes (pool 2 upvotes come from @sbi2!)

img source: http://www.steemreports.com/outgoing-votes-info/?account=sbi2&days=7

It has been even more difficult to manage the voting power in the lower pools. Pool 2 peaked at 45% of the members in it being inactive (with moving them down to pool 3 after 60 days). I have been shifting that down from 60 to rebalance the inactive members more evenly across each pool, working toward a cap of 30% in each pool, with any excess collecting at the bottom. This will be good for the active members because it will make it easier to focus our voting power on members, even while full automation is not yet ready.

Pool 3 accounts voted

And the same for pool 3 upvotes (pool 3upvotes come from @sbi3!)

img source: http://www.steemreports.com/outgoing-votes-info/?account=sbi3&days=7

What's really interesting about these charts is not that self-voting on @steembasicincome is so high, but that it isn't higher. If we have 500 members in each pool, and 30% inactive rates, you would expect higher self-voting. The fact that it's consistently lower than 30% shows 2 things. First, that members with more shares are less likely to become inactive, and second, that the effort to redistribute voting weight from the inactive members to the active members is at least working to some extent. Since lower pools have lower average shares per member, point 1 becomes less of a factor, and it becomes even more difficult to manage voting power effectively.

Pool 4 accounts voted

And the same for pool 4 upvotes (pool 4 upvotes come from @sbi4!)

img source: http://www.steemreports.com/outgoing-votes-info/?account=sbi4&days=7

Enough said about inactives. I moved the total weight distributed each week back to 8000% so that we can reduce self-voting even further, but it will take some time for all the rules to be updated. Hopefully by the next time we publish these charts, they will be in a status that I'm much more comfortable with.

Pool 5 accounts voted

And the same for pool 5 upvotes (pool 5 upvotes come from @sbi5!)

img source: http://www.steemreports.com/outgoing-votes-info/?account=sbi5&days=7
We really start to see @dynamicrypto and @dynamicgreentk in action as we get down to pool 5. Each member is capped at 100 shares per pool, so these guys try to reach that cap every time a new pool is launched. They haven't invaded pool 6 yet (just launched this week), but I'm sure that's only a matter of time! As members with more shares move up into higher pools, it makes them the only large members in the lower pools, and that shows up in the charts.

Pool 6 accounts voted

And the same for pool 6 upvotes (pool 6 upvotes come from @sbi6!)

img source: http://www.steemreports.com/outgoing-votes-info/?account=sbi6&days=7

We launched pool 6 this week to give a place for members that post so frequently that even pool 5 would have them paused. Once full automation is in place, we can have it skip posts that would have an upvote that is too low to commit to the blockchain, and save the voting power for their next post. So really active members wouldn't have upvotes on every post anymore, but they would still have the same weekly returns, without having to sequester them in their own pool.

That will also mean that we won't have to open new pools until the bottom pool starts actually getting full! That's going to be a positive development as well.

Conclusion

I realize that the high self-voting percentages are going to be seen as a concern for some members. Technically, every active member is still receiving the voting weight that they have subscribed to, they just aren't getting as much extra voting weight from inactive members as I would like to give them. I am working actively to improve this in light of rising inactivity rates. Please be patient with me, as manually rebalancing voting weights is extremely time intensive. Full automation will resolve most of these issues, and it looms on the horizon!

Enrollment

If this sounds interesting and you want to get involved, or to increase the share of basic income that you receive, enrollment is pretty straightforward:

Just send 1 STEEM to @steembasicincome. Include the name of a Steemian to sponsor in the transaction memo (preceded by @). You and the person you sponsor will each receive 1 share in the program. You can sponsor any active Steemian, it does not have to be a current member.

If you're unclear, please check out our full transaction memo guidelines and then let us know if you have any questions.
https://steemit.com/basicincome/@steembasicincome/steem-basic-income-new-transaction-memo-guidelines

The official currency for enrollment is STEEM. We accept SBD at our discretion (usually when they're very close, or when SBD is stronger) but you do not receive extra value or any partial refund for paying in SBD instead of STEEM. If we choose to accept an SBD enrollment, we accept the entire amount. If we choose to reject it, we refund the entire amount and request you to send STEEM instead.

Steem Creators Conference

We are pleased to have been invited to speak at the Steem Creators Conference in Las Vegas next month. Learn all about it at https://www.steemcreators.com/ Mark your calendars and book your tickets, this is going to be an awesome event! (Look for our name on the registration page to get a $25 discount on your tickets.)

Questions?

We broke down the mechanics for how the program works in the complete overview. You can check your share counts and upvoting weight in our spreadsheet explained here. If you have any questions, ask away in the comments section or join us in our discord channel.