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.

A Waterfall of Sustainability

Imagine a beautiful stream of water running down a mountainside. It finds a hollow and fills it up, creating a pool. When that pool is filled, the water runs over the side and continues down the mountain. Maybe the path leads to a drop-off, and water sprays over the side, pouring down as a cascade, a waterfall. At its base, the waterfall carves out another pool and fills it with water, then continues to flow downhill. Maybe there are many pools, each filled with a rush of water from the pool before it, as the stream continues down the mountain, enriching the lives of all who see it and providing for those in the valley below.

img source pixabay

Let's reimagine @steembasicincome as a pool of SP, spraying out basic income to all the members. The size and shape of the pool limit it to 500 members, but that doesn't limit @steembasicincome to 500. The SP bubbles over and starts to fill a second pool. New members come into the second pool (and occasionally promote to the first pool as spots become available).

In the extended introduction, we talked about the impact of dilution on the pool; new members draw voting weight away from existing members, which prevents the program from improving the SP per member ratio and increasing the basic income that everyone receives. Creating a series of pools, where SP waterfalls from the first pool into each successive gives us a long-term solution to that problem.

The Dirty Math

SP will start in @steembasicincome. As shares are assigned to the second pool (@sbi2), @steembasicincome will delegate SP at a rate of 2 SP per share. In addition 25% of @steembasicincome's permanent (non-delegated) SP will be delegated to the second pool. As the SP grows for @steembasicincome, the SP will grow for @sbi2. The upvote value will continue to grow, without new members diluting the existing members.

For example, suppose that the second pool is launched with 100 shares. It will receive SP delegation of (2 * 100 = 200) to cover the shares in the pool and ensure they receive a fair basic income. It will also receive an SP delegation of 25% of @steembasicincome's permanent SP (783 * .25 = 195.75) This starting delegation of 395.75 (3.9575 per share) gives the members of pool 2 an upvote value that is close to the upvote value received by the members of pool 1 (4.14 SP per share) As new members come into pool 2, the enrollment fees will still be paid to @steembasicincome, but it will delegate new SP to pool 2, targeting 2 SP voting power per member, plus 25% of the permanent SP in pool 1.

When pool 2 is full, it will spill over into pool 3, which will receive delegation from pool 1, targeting 2 SP voting power per share in pool 3, plus delegation from pool 2 representing 25% of its permanent SP. And so on . . . until every Steemian is swimming in Steem Basic Income!

Member reassignment

Each member can have a maximum of 100 shares in each pool. If any member (here's looking at you, @sneakyninja) has more than 100 shares, they will be capped at 100 in the first pool and the remaining shares will take part in the next pool. Bonus shares from delegation or upvoting will not be counted against this limit.

Inactive members that have not posted in 90 days will be reassigned to the pool that new members flow into. This creates space for active members to promote up into pools that are in sustainable growth phase.

Paused members are not receiving any benefit from their positions, since their upvote weights are too small to actually receive upvotes. Since pool 2 will have fewer shares (even though the SP per member is comparable), paused members would typically come unstuck by moving into the 2nd pool. Any member that is paused for more than 1 week will be moved into the next pool so they can become unstuck.

After announcing a temporary cap (which we are now able to remove with the launch of our 'Waterfall of Sustainability,' we had quite a few questions from our most recent members about whether they would be wait-listed. There will be no more wait list (other than the normal 1-2 day wait for enrollments to be processed). We will publish a full roster tomorrow showing the membership of both pools, and giving members an opportunity validate their share counts and let us know if they see any issues.

Logo Contest

To celebrate the launch of our new 'Waterfall of Sustainability' we are havimng a logo contest. So far, every image used by @steembasicincome is either a screen-shot snippet, an infographic, or sourced from pixabay. It's time to see the creativity that we know is swimming in the pool!

There are two categories for entry:

1. A smaller logo that will look great as our profile picture.
2. A banner that we can use as our cover image.

The winning graphics will be the graphics we use here in user settings:

Please submit your graphics as responses to this post. Entry will close when this post pays out. At that time we will do a post featuring all of the entries and let members comment and vote on which images we should use.

Each winner will receive 5 shares, and be able to designate Steemians for another 5 shares (equivalent to a 5 SP enrollment transaction - donated by @josephsavage). They can split the 5 however they would like (all 5 to one person, or 1 each to 5 different people).

Delegation Bonus Shares

Existing members can receive bonus shares from delegation. For every 25 SP delegated to @steembasicincome, members will receive 1 bonus share. These bonus shares will be removed if the delegation is withdrawn. Currently each share receives a weekly voting weight of roughly 5.61%.

To simplify the tracking, all members should delegate to @steembasicincome. If the delegating member is not in pool 1, their delegation to @steembasicincome will be added to the delegation sent by @steembasicincome to the pool they are actually in.

These bonus shares will be counted before the bonus shares from upvoting @steembasicincome. So if you have 1 share, received 4 bonus shares from delegation of 100 SP, and then upvoted @steembasicincome regularly, you could potentially receive upvote weight equivalent to 10 shares instead of only 1!

Any Steemian that is already enrolled in @steembasicincome can delegate as much as they would like, to receive bonus shares. The approximate APR for this delegation is 27%. That's a 27% annual return to boost everybody's basic income. I don't think it gets much better than that! If you are not already a member but would like to delegate, please send an enrollment transaction to @steembasicincome and we will add your bonus shares at the time we process your enrollment.

We've had a few members take us up on this, and their upvote weight has been increased to reflect their bonus shares:

Here are some Handy Delegation links:

100	200	300	400	500

Enrollment

Sounds intriguing... How do I sign up?

Send 1 STEEM to @steembasicincome. Include the name of a Steemian to sponsor in the comments. You and the person you sponsor will each receive 1 share in the program (or be wait-listed).

Questions?

As always, we recognize that this is a lot to process. We are working on a full overview that will capture all of the recent changes. If you have any questions, ask away in the comments section!