Steemit has all of a sudden become a lot more democratic...a lot fairer, and it's all because of the payout
Your first impressions upon joining this site might have been. What's going on? Why are there dollar signs next to someones post? Why has someone gotten hundreds of dollars just for slapping together a hello? Why do some votes mean more than others?
A few days a go the distribution of Steem Power was very top heavy.
Using the data from site www.steemd.com
..we can see the shift in distribution more clearly.
This shows the distribution of Steem power, 24 hours before the July 4th payout.
This is the distribution after the payout:
it's a subtle difference, but an important one...
The 'legends' increased their numbers from 34 to 41 and their stake from 62.53% to 63.89%. [2.17%+]
The 'superhero' class increased from 149 to 171 and their stake from 26.57% to 29.85%. [12.3%+]
The 'hero' class increased from 264 to 438 and their stake from 5.61% to 7.28%.[29.8%+]
The important thing to note here is that both the hero and superhero level drastically increased their numbers and stake in the network while the legends saw a much more conservative move up. Many users were pulled out of 'power poverty'.
here's why...
Some of the most consistently highly voted (in terms of dollars) posts are ones from the #introduceyourself section. Now ask yourself why that is? There are two reasons...
It's because one of the 'legends' has voted for you, most likely it was @ned, one of the founders who has been on a crusade to upvote as many introduction posts as he can. He hasn't voted for all of them however and for one to get to $1000+ it would have needed more 'legends' to get involved.
Why would he/they do that? It's about the distribution of power, @ned is one of the founders, he has a ridiculous amount of voting power. If someone's willing to be honest and share the story of their life, with pictures and really become inspired by the community and add value then he will upvote you. It's about more than money, it's about giving you a voice on Steem.
this didn't really mean much before the payout...
However it's now starting to make sense, those that really put themselves out there and introduced themselves, really 'emotionally' invested into the platform have now been rewarded with Steem Power, their votes now count...
...their upvotes will add to a payout, they have a voice...they have power
It will not be like this in the future, if 10,000 new users join tomorrow and 8000 of them write great introduction posts @ned will not be able to continue his crusade. His voting power will be diminished to a few dollars per introduction.
So lets continue to evolve through this early-adopter stage, in the future when more and more people join the site there will be fewer and fewer $1000 hello posts. What will be left are those 'heroes' who had the courage to jump in at the beginning, be honest and now have some genuine steem power to influence and reward others. A more democratic distribution of power, a fairer system.
As more and more payouts happen, things will continue to get more democratic. This is the very intention of a reward based currency driven social media site. This is one of the most interesting crypto projects going on.
Spot on.
You're so right, I couldn't really picture what it was going to look like after the 4th, so it's good to see and it's really nice to have some voting influence :-)
CG
With the payout a new piece has been added to the Steemit 'puzzle' . Now people can write about a range of other things and have an increasing userbase be able to vote for them, while not a really high amount. This should grow over time and I think we'll start seeing even more creative and original content. Step by step :)
I tried to make this exact point about the content rewards creating many new vested participants (and they will continue to do this every day as new rewards are paid out!) during the brutal Curation Reward Debates, but it is much easier to understand when you can see it for yourself than when someone is trying to explain it (and apparently was not doing a very good job).
Yeah, it all of a sudden hits you once a whole throng of users gets lifted and your voting power increases at the same time. A very interesting time to be in. Smooth, don't worry. you've done a great job, some of your posts sowed the seeds for this one :)
I love these little updates, thank you. I can't wait till the follow button does something and I can immediately check out the users posts I enjoy directly.
Hopefully you've still got the arb trade on, down to 19% the last time I looked!
Arb trade on?
Buying steem externally and exchanging for steem dollar internally for a discount? Am I wrong?
You have to believe that Steem Dollar will someday trade at (or at least closer to) par, or that Steem price will be reasonably stable going forward. Neither of these are guaranteed, but I think they are good bets for the short term. You should make your own investment decisions though, don't listen to me.
Could not agree with you more and that is exactly while I voted for many (good) posts in #introduceyourself
I initially viewed all the intro posts a bit skeptically, but if you look at it from an allocation perspective, it makes perfect sense.
Like I said before, loving the new system. I definitely didn't get a payout I was expecting, but it doesn't bother me in the slightest, as I know it'll pay off in the end :)
Your post just told the tail of tape:) now i understand why my bio post gained so much so fast, i put some personal information out for all to know me..cheers m8t!
Glad to hear it. I had a very suspicious attitude at first, but once you see it from this context it makes total sense
It would be quite interesting to see a similar survey of power distribution one month after payout, at August 4th