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If you're a stakeholder that leases delegation, you might find that the people you delegate to are not adding any value to the network that gives your token value.

For instance, the list above of accounts selling upvotes to anybody regardless of the quality of content. Note there are few views and the comments are almost all bots. Rewarding this content makes it difficult for good content creators to attain a reward for their more engaging content. Advertising does not bring people to social media networks. But good quality or popular content does, and in the past it has been these satisfied content creators who later invest in Steem Power. If these people leave before they reach that euphoria that entices them to invest, the STEEM network is only left with people trying to make money from their own posts, but with no interest in other peoples. These people are far less likely to invest in STEEM if they can just continuously purchase upvotes with the money they made from the last upvote.

13 out of the 23 people delegating from @freedom are selling their upvotes. Apart from @utopian-io and @dmania who rewards the content creators for using the platform and makes @freedom a beneficiary of all post rewards, the others appear to be upvoting anti-socially.

You might argue that people are inherently selfish and there is nothing wrong with upvoting yourself. I would argue that too much of anything can be bad for you and it is up to the major stakeholders to decide and hold each other accountable for what is too anti-social. This is the reason we were given the downvote, but punishing those who purchased a service from a major stakeholder gives us a catch-22 where the STEEM network suffers from appearing to be a scam either way.

In her recent post @whatsup asked if user retention is even important anymore. I would argue that if it isn't, it's because the quality of content is no longer important since you can just continuously earn STEEM and SBD by leasing delegations and selling upvotes. She also made the important point that "Anything earned easily isn't valuable and will not go up in price." The reason this is important is because when we had people buying steem and powering it up it was not easy. Now that you can sell upvotes and delegation - now that you can buy upvotes and delegation - it is easy.

This might seem OK to some.

For the large stakeholders selling delegation and upvotes, this is a profitable way to make money. Even though a stakeholder with 500'000 SP would make $5'000 every time the price of STEEM goes up by 1c, this is locked up in Steem Power which has to be powered down before taking it out. Selling upvotes and leasing delegation on the other hand allows them to stay powered up while they continue to send what they make to dump on the markets.

The small stakeholders however are here to increase their stake in the platform. And instead of buying Steem Power to do so they are buying upvotes or renting delegation. The price at which they buy gives them just enough SBD to pay for the next upvote and the same value in Steem Power. If the power of STEEM were to go up, this could eventually become profitable for the small stakeholder. Unfortunately this system creates very little demand to buy STEEM. Those people who do buy it to purchase upvotes are more likely to lose more money than they make due to the price of STEEM continuing to crash as the stakeholders selling upvotes and delegations dump their liquid profits on the dieing market.

Solutions?

Well that really depends on the response from this post. If the stakeholders want to turn STEEM into a place where stakeholders make money but content creators and curators do not, then I do not wish to be part of this. Instead of investing their delegations in bots that drive good content creators away from the platform due to only advertising getting rewarded, stakeholders could be investing in good quality curators like we have seen from @ned, @stellabelle and @fulltimegeek and I've explained exactly how you can profit from this in my last post.

Finding good curators is hard so let me help you!

I do understand that there is a risk in delegating to people who don't bring any value to the platform. For this we could set up a referral or recommendation system. Here is a list of curators that I deem to be people who would be great curators from what I can tell from their charts. If you are a large stakeholder selling upvotes or delegations, and you want to see the whole network grow rather than just make money until this unsustainable system implodes, then consider some of these minnow curators, who retain users on the platform and make nothing for their efforts to bring value to your token.

10% max on one account

@zinovi of Bulgaria, @ammonite from Ireland , @anaman in Africa

@oluwoleolaide from Africa, @harrywolton from Pakistan, hafiz34 in Saudi Arabia

@oendertuerk in Germany, @iwrite from the Philippines, @heroic15397 USA

@sanmi who hosts the caption contest, @techtek who's a developer and @rakkasan84 who's a veteran.

@armshippie , @molovelly , @artsygoddess three great community curators

@illuminatus of Nigeria, @xyzashu from India, @yandot from Indonesia

@bambam808 who hosts SteemitsGotTalent, @udibekwe from UEA and @daudimitch from the Carribean

@johurulbot from Bangladesh, @jonknight who is a fiction writer and poet and @limabeing who hosts the GirlPowa community

@thekittygirl from the US, @jakemore from Ghana and @RiskDebonair from Ireland

@jodipamungkas from Indonesia, @tinypaleokitchen from Belgium, @erikaflynn from Ukraine

5% max on one account

@kaykunoichi from New Zealand and @ehiboss

@maintain4real-eu from Nigeria and @myeasin

@salmankhoja from Pakistan and @rehan12

@clayboyn and @guiltyparties who are both witnesses

@steemitgraven29 and @otemzi who are excellent engagers from the Voices of the Underground

Given the chance these people (and many other good curators) would do wonders for this network, retaining users from within their communities for long enough to turn many of them into investors. We could encourage good quality content that brings investors to steemit. We could turn this ship around so that not only do the current whales make money, but the people giving value to their token make money too.

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I will soon be hosting a contest to win 3000 SP in delegation. Please join the server above and register to enter.