The "Whale No Vote" Experiment - Whale Participation Data
Just in case you haven't heard about 'the experiment' yet, you can check out this post for an explanation: The Whale Voting Experiment Explained (including downvotes from @abit).
The threshold provided by @abit regarding the cutoff for a whale vs. a large dolphin is 800 MV of SP. Users that have more than 800 MV are asked to scale down the weight of their votes, so that they are not voting with their full power. Users with more than 800 MV of voting power that are still voting with full strength are being countered with downvotes.
I collected data for all of the accounts with over 800 MV of SP. Below is a chart showing:
- The username of the account
- How much SP the account has, measured in MV
- My assessment of the account's voting behavior over the last few days
- My assessment of whether the account is following the 'requirements' of the experiment
Yes = The account is voting in line with the 'requirements' of the experiment
No = The account is not voting in line with the 'requirements' of the experiment
Yes* = The account is voting in line with the 'requirements' of the experiment, with minor exceptions
Notes: This is just my analysis of their voting behavior based on what I collected form steemd.com. I did my best to ensure its accuracy, but no guarantees of any kind are implied. Just because an account is not voting, does not mean they are 'in support' of the experiment.
| Account | SP (MV) | Description | In line with voting 'requirements' |
|---|---|---|---|
| @steemit | 161,194 | not voting | Yes |
| @freedom | 14,865 | Voting with <= 30% weight | No |
| @blocktrades | 12,965 | Voting with 1% weight | Yes |
| @ned | 11,934 | A few votes with <= 12% weight | Yes* |
| @dan | 9,838 | A few votes with 100% weight | No |
| @jamesc | 6,926 | not voting | Yes |
| @val-a | 6,220 | not voting | Yes |
| @abit | 6,202 | Voting with 1% weight | Yes |
| @dantheman | 5,195 | A few votes with 100% weight | No |
| @smooth | 5,054 | Voting with 1% weight | Yes |
| @mottler | 4,617 | not voting | Yes |
| @ben | 4,557 | not voting | Yes |
| @tombstone | 4,190 | stopped voting 2 days ago | Yes |
| @databass | 3,500 | not voting | Yes |
| @val-b | 3,314 | not voting | Yes |
| @michael-b | 3,084 | not voting | Yes |
| @hendrikdegrote | 2,652 | Voting with 10% weight | Yes |
| @thejohalfiles | 2,368 | Still voting | No |
| @engagement | 2,113 | Still voting | No |
| @pharesim | 2,073 | Voting with 1% weight | Yes |
| @rainman | 2,058 | A few votes with 100% weight | No |
| @transisto | 2,057 | not voting | Yes |
| @michael-a | 2,045 | not voting | Yes |
| @created | 2,038 | Voting with mostly <= 30% weight | Yes* |
| @proskynneo | 1,984 | not voting | Yes |
| @xeldal | 1,851 | Voting with 1% weight | Yes |
| @roadscape | 1,827 | A few votes with <= 50% weight | Yes* |
| @arhag | 1,779 | not voting | Yes |
| @summon | 1,759 | stopped voting | Yes |
| @wang | 1,541 | Voting with 1% weight, occasional vote up to 75% | Yes* |
| @safari | 1,500 | not voting | Yes |
| @riverhead | 1,387 | not voting | Yes |
| @witness.svk | 1,377 | not voting | Yes |
| @wackou | 1,314 | not voting | Yes |
| @jaewoocho | 1,311 | Voting with <= 50% weight | Yes |
| @batel | 1,310 | not voting | Yes |
| @cloop1 | 1,264 | not voting | Yes |
| @thecyclist | 1,227 | Still voting | No |
| @steempty | 1,119 | not voting | Yes |
| @enki | 1,101 | not voting | Yes |
| @bob | 1,078 | not voting | Yes |
| @tamim | 1,072 | Still voting | No |
| @fuzzyvest | 1,042 | Still voting | No |
| @steemed | 1,019 | Still voting | No |
| @adm | 1,003 | @abit's account, only being used to negate too extreme of downvotes from @abit | Yes |
| @onceuponatime | 984 | Still voting | No |
| @alice | 954 | not voting | Yes |
| @thisvsthis | 933 | Still voting | No |
| @bitcube | 857 | not voting | Yes |
| @goku1 | 856 | Still voting | No |
| @kushed | 844 | Still voting | No |
| @renohq | 834 | Still voting | No |
How about another column in addition to "in line with voting requirements".
How about "in line with not powering down and cashing out", which would be my greatest short term criteria for enhancing the value of steem.
And how about a column for "in line with purchasing steem" so that actual authors of posts can cash out without crashing the steem price - thus enhancing the reputation of steemit among content creators.
Here is my answer to my downvoter, @abit, on another thread:
onceuponatime 69 · 1 hour ago
You say: "respectful, as always"
Well then,
why assume that your decision as to whether a full power vote is wise or not is superior to mine? How do you know what criteria I use when I vote? Why would you think that your criteria are more enlightened than mine? They may be .... but they might not be too.
In the absence of any effort at all on your part to reach a reasoned mutual agreement with me on the wisest course of action for the steemit platform - downvoting makes it appear that you lack respect for my decisions on how to vote my stake. It is a bullying use of power to negate my will. It thus appears to me that you are in violation of the Non Aggression Principle and your actions would be judged immoral by those who seek voluntary interactions between individuals.
https://steemit.com/steemit/@lukestokes/community-service-announcement-you-control-steem-vote-for-witnesses
Please keep in mind that they are calling me, who has much less steem power than my downvoters, a "whale" - but did not invite me to their "whale channel" where discussions and decisions on this so called "experiment" were hatched.
These are good questions to ask. I believe there are already some users that are building regular reports with this data though.
I would recommend reading this post on downvotes/flags: https://steemit.com/payout/@timcliff/everything-you-need-to-know-about-potential-payouts-and-flagging-for-new-users
You do not need to make a very big adjustment in order to be in line with the experiment. Voting with 80% voting power would be within the threshold.
The downvote has nothing to do with you personally. It is not a disagreement with how you are using your stake. It is an attempt to redistribute some influence towards users with less stake.
I read your post on downvotes/flags when it came out (you will notice my 100% upvote 6th from the top). I will re-read it now.
I recommend that you read this new post which I have promoted (I am not the author):
https://steemit.com/steemit/@williambanks/how-to-make-steemit-great-again-in-5-easy-steps
Thanks for the mention! Also thanks for the promotion!
I read it when it showed up in my feed this morning :)
If anything, this experiment is pissing off the big SP holders who're having their votes negated by the likes of smooth and abit, which can obviously be bad. We already have enough people powering down as it is. More whale power-downs is not what STEEM/ Steemit needs right now.
EDIT: I do like having five cent up-votes, however :)
Actually maybe it is though. The more whales that power down the fewer whales there are. This means the whales that hang in there will have a HUGE edge over the up and comers. Because they will already own a ton of steem as the price rises when people finally decide to start buying back in.
This flagging war kills the price, but it also forces redistribution.
I do not support the experiment because it is having unintended psychological impacts on the community and it is not being applied consistently. There are people getting downvotes from theses "non-voting" whales even though no whale upvotes have been given to the posts., which is dishonest because...
A DOWNVOTE IS STILL A VOTE!
It's very selective enforcement and because of this it's pissing off a vocal minority who will take a substantial majority with them when they leave. Any competitor that pops up during this time of turmoil has a real chance of grabbing our entire alienated user base and getting a serious jumpstart. This could also crash the price of steem hard and for a very long time.
This needs to be examined closer.
IMO, experiment or no - any user who is upset over 'pending rewards' being taken away, or their upvote being countered by another user's downvote needs to gain a better understanding of the platform. It is not to say that we shouldn't be concerned over the users who are upset, but it would be best to look at it from the perspective of what is best for the platform. Catering to the users who are upset over this may not be the best idea - even if they are upset.
I beg to differ. This currency ONLY has value because of the platform.
This platform is billing itself as a social media platform and yet major players are acting in a way that is decidedly anti-social. This is already alienating existing users and those users are leaving and taking their entire social networks with them to new places where they don't have to deal with this.
The concept that we have here where downvotes work as an income redistribution mechanism is in the most literal sense, no different than the government coming to your bank, seeing you have too much money and taking that money to redistribute to others.
Either we earn the money on our own merits or we don't. Once earned, taking it back to give to others, simply because the person taking the money has more money than the person being taken from is a form of fascism and I'm surprised any of you support this.
This is a design flaw you're calling a feature, and I've been calling it out since July. As the price declines, the rewards pool shrinks. Money is a form of energy and as energy leaves the system, there is no longer sufficient energy for all players to have their needs met. Thus you have larger entities predating on smaller entities.
Simplest solutions that would boost the price of steem to historic highs.
Kill curation rewards. No one deserves to make money for clicking an upvote button and the fact people are using a bot to do that proves my point, sorry but true.
Take the money that is presently being used for curation and add it to the comments pool. If comments are paid more highly, more people will comment. Commenting at least requires SOME effort. It increases stickiness and user participation and this increases excitement about the platform.
Remove downvoting. Keep it as flagging and the flagger should suffer the same financial penalty as the person being flagged. This would mean that people would only flag in the most egregious cases of trolling, copyright infringement etc. If you don't like that some content is so highly paid, then go find content you do like and use your power to upvote that. It would have the same net effect.
This currency has almost no value left because it does not empower people, it only reproduces the same power structure that we already have ( the 1% controlling the 99%) This is the reason steem is almost worthless eventhought the tech is the most advanced.
The money is not earned until the end of the voting period. This is why to avoid users getting upset we just have to hide payout or just give an estimation, but this is an interface issue.
Donwvoting is an integral part of the system
Its an antisocial behavior on a social network. That's the a definition of, design flaw.
It is alienating to every person on the receiving end and it's a forceable redistribution of wealth. Which is what makes it shocking to me that you guys are in support of a fascist system.
The foundation of a home is also an integral part of a system. But if that foundation begins to subside incorrectly the house will crack split and fall begin to crumble.
There are three choices when this happens.
I couldn't disagree more about removing curation rewards:
*w.r.t. point 1, see The Myth of AI, A Conversation with Jaron Lanier
While you're talking about people have the right to vote as they see fit, you talked about removing the incentives to vote from them. It sounds not right to me.
While people vote to give others author rewards, they also get some for themselves. IMHO the more they get and the more they give to the chosen few, the less others will get. Thus less people will be happy. This kind of behavior was driving out users already.
I agree that current design is flawed. However, even within a flawed system, we can still try our best to play as positively as possible, before it get fixed. Everyone tries to milk the system then nobody will win.
I'm not saying that what I'm doing has no downside. I mean, there are trade-offs.
Thanks for expressing your opinion.
People will vote for content and people they like regardless of curation rewards. Your experiment is proof if that.
However removing the curation rewards, kills all the voting bots that are there to game the curation rewards system.
My point is that downvoting is absolutely necessary, what if a rich pedophile started to upvote all his kiddie porn content to the trending page?
Im not sure about your analogy but if you think the foundation is what is flawed on steemit you are wrong, the blockchain works as it should, the social/emotional stuff should be dealt with a the interface level.
I didn't say that downvoting was incorrect I said it suffers from a design flaw. Your example proves my point. The entire community could come along and flag the dude and nothing would happen. It would require someone else who is rich enough to counter that...
This is the definition of a design flaw.
Stake based weighting does not work and the current war is proving that to be true. Voting needs to be isolated and seperate from censorship. Censorship should reflect the values of the Democratic majority not the economic majority.
Let's look at your example. Who defines minor or explicit content? In some countries it is illegal and even pornographic for a female of any age to be in a bikini or even a 1 piece swimsuit. Yet in other countries it is illegal for women to wear a so called burkini which covers too much, because it's a sign she is part of a radicalized sect.
This needs a rethink because at the moment, all control is in the hands of the economic majority and the Democratic majority has very nearly no say in the matter. Thus the values of the system already reflect only the values of the rich. It is only by luck that those who are in the whale category happen to have a set of values that align with what's left of our active user base.
What happens when some advertising company buys a large stake and begins to spam the site with advertisements and upvotes their own ads as an additional revenue stream? They suddenly begin to claim a disproportionate share of the rewards pool. What happens when other advertisers see this, begin to run their own ads and use their weight to censor the content of competitors.
It's a complex problem, there are no simple solutions but this is what I mean by a design flaw. Integral or not, this has issues. Significant issues that need significant thought applied. In the meantime, the only currency this site really has is the good will of the community and the current experiment is burning through that most limited of resources.
I admit it has had a positive effect on the reward pool. I admit it may have directly driven the current rise in price.
It's still flawed. Flagging should be democratic and it should have as much impact on the person giving as the person receiving.
We can stop bot votes by ditching curation rewards. Then the only bot votes left and really the only reason to vote would be solidarity. Which is really the only reason you should vote in the first place. Leave the stealing to the government , upvote what and who you like.
Someone recently suggested that we could all have equal downvote power but the upvote power will be stake based. I thought it was interesting and worth exploring but there was some sybil issue with it that should be addressed first.
"Stake based weighting does not work "
capitalism*
What you're saying might be true, but it comes at quite a large cost. The two most obvious costs are:
1.) further price depreciation in STEEM
2.) less market confidence in STEEM/ Steemit and/or larger numbers of Steemit users leaving the system.
As it is, starting from August, STEEM has one of the ugliest performing price charts that I've ever personally witnessed. Another 95% drop from here and I don't foresee anybody who's a current member of Steemit being a happy member.
You're missing my point...
Proof of stake whether distributed or otherwise suffers from a fatal flaw in reasoning, which is that stakeholders will always act in the best interests of their investment.
This is proving to not be true. Instead we have people who are looking at this from a different angle. Taking actions they know will alienate users, forcing the users to dump and this puts downward pressure on the price. Once the price has dropped, then the same stakeholders can buy back in at the lower price and consolidate their level of control over the platform.
It is not good for steemit at all, but there is SOME good in that some of the people bailing out right now are taking huge losses and these losses are subsidizing the further democratization of the currency. This is good for steem, but it's a shitty situation for steemit because it's feeding a cycle of alienation.
The truth about all proof of stake is this...
Stakeholders will act to protect their stake so long as it aligns with their other interests. But stake is a sunk cost investment. If it doesn't go up, then logically, forcing it go down, in order to sweep up a bunch on the bottom as other stakeholders bail out is a valid strategy for any stakeholder. Might be shitty for everyone else though. It's mostly going to depend on the dollar averaged cost of the investment and the perceived longterm value of the currency.
As a side effect it's also democratizing the currency a bit more since no one has the risk appetite for huge amounts of this coin right now. Lots of smaller players probably do though.
I see your point. My point is that it's possible to reach a point in which no one will buy back in and those so called whales will be bag holders.
When everyone and their mothers are trying to sell and no one takes the thing seriously enough to invest over $10 into it, it's dead, just like the thousands of penny-stocks that I've watched trade themselves down into "triple zero" dollars which eventually reached zero daily volume. People come to see the light that there are better options to multiply their wealth and they move on.
I don't think Steem is too far from that point. As it is, I'm convinced that very few "outsiders" to the platform so much as consider taking a bite on Steem. I wouldn't be surprised if something like 99% of all Steem buying were made by Steemit users.
If that's true and we're losing existing users in droves, which we seem to be, AND the majority of people remaining have lost faith in the future of the platform, which very well could be true, especially with the "captain" (Dan) abandoning ship just the other day, well, that's the recipe for no bid.
"It's still flawed. Flagging should be democratic and it should have as much impact on the person giving as the person receiving." I absolutely agree with what you say @williambanks Excellent analysis. I received several flags not for the quality of my posts, but because I was voted too. Amazing ... I can not feel like doing something good while it lasts this thing and I think that the level of content will subside.
This is also why an investor class is important, it incentivizes large stake holder not to do what you describe and leave the influence to the minnows/dolphins.
Trails are targeted, too. That's why a post doesn't need to be upvoted by a whale to be downvoted. Trails are like whales, one voter use a huge amount of SP at a given time.
Ironically, I wrote Down-votes: Steemit's Achilles' Heel? within a day or so before they announced the experiment. There are two points of view on the experiment, but it must be admitted that it has been disruptive, in either a positive or a negative way. Now, instead of two whales with good intentions but controversial methods, imagine that the downvote is wielded by a hostile multi-billion dollar competitor or censors from a repressive state - both of whom have plenty of money to burn if it will help them to eliminate competition or criticism...
No matter how it plays out in this particular instance, the experiment has more or less convinced me that as long as the downvote exists, it is a threat to the platform's long term survival.
I think someone needs to find something more along the lines of @demotruk's median proposal, although I recognize that upvote and downvote are built into the blockchain, so some creativity would need to be applied.
Very great experiment, kind of interesting to see who is active in voting for others and not at the moment due to the threshold paradigm asked of the whales. My question is this though, why a threshold to down play votes by whales on others....? Is it not encouraged here to invest save up steem power in order to help others that we feel content is worthy? Or is there some hidden reasons I am not aware about. I am small fries here at the moment but scaling up soon and hopefully more as I hope to achieve a ton of Steem Power eventually. Just wondering if the system is designed with an issue of spreading around major upvote hits it creates some long term issue to generate generous help from whales to bring the lesser guys up. Going to Resteem this to my project on FB, Twitter and our Slack I call Steemit Blogger Central, think our group will find this experiment interesting.
If you look at your account and compare it to a whale like @ned, you have 355 STEEM POWER. @ned has 4,877,165. Obviously @ned is a lot more powerful, and has a ton more influence - as he should. The problem though is how much more influence..
Ned has about 13,738 times as much STEEM POWER as you do. You would think that would mean that his vote is worth 13,738 times as much as yours. That is not how it works though.
The block-chain actually squares the votes, so if you vote with 355 SP, it is more along the lines of voting with 355*355 = 126,025 SP. When Ned votes with 4,877,165 SP, it is more along the lines of him voting with 4,877,165 * 4,877,165 = 23,786,738,437,225 SP. 13,738 times as much SP is 188,746,188 times as strong!
(The actual formula/numbers are a little different, but I simplified it to illustrate the point.)
Basically the whales votes are soo much stronger than the votes of non-whales, that it makes voting on posts pretty much pointless unless you are a whale.
That is the reason for the whale experiment. Whales are still allowed to vote, but they are only allowed to use a certain amount of voting power so they are not completely canceling out the votes of the 'regular' voters.
Hardfork 19 (scheduled for next Tuesday) is going to change the formula so 13,738 times as much SP means your vote is 13,738 times as strong. It is called changing to a linear voting curve. After this, the whale votes will not be as disproportionately strong, and the whales will be allowed to vote with full strength again.
So well explained, now I am getting the dynamic completely. So you have a 10th to the power hike up basically, more volume of SP the more extra is kicking in on a whales vote, limiting the smaller guys from having ultimately any say against the system spread around. Makes perfect sense now.
Now on this hard fork coming, is this a see-saw mechanism style of a voting curve coming? I ask this because it looks so close to what I seen when I was working in PIVX, almost so close when I seen the GitHub and the announcement about the HF that chart is side by side very similar to what I seen in our staking rewards payout scaling there. If so then great because to be honest I was thinking a flipping see-saw reward system might do Steemit great, balances a lot and did the trick for us at PIVX. I was in their marketing most of the year but moved on here full time for myself...long story.
Really appreciate that clear breakdown of it. So to me that encourages my love even more here, seems you guys are really about the whole of the community and glad to see the whales are taking that into account as well. Still hope in crypto after all after seeing all this. Plus that gives me down here a bit more incentive that the 16 hour days I push to grow myself won't be too in vain, there is hope for myself still in Steemit lol. Thanks so much for the education and so well taught out.
I'm not familiar with the see-saw mechanism, but it is getting converted into a very simple formula - linear. If you vote with 100 SP, you will add 100 times as much to the payout as someone who voted with 1 SP.
It is totally possible. When I joined, I knew nobody here and had no influence/followers. I posted like mad for 6+ months, making pretty much nothing money wise on my posts but gaining followers. Now I earn quite a bit from my posts and I'm even a top 20 witness. It is not easy by any means, but I am proof that it can be done :)
Got you, no that wouldn't be a a see-saw style. In see-saw what would happen is a shift of voting power from whale to lower investor, and back and forth. So in that algorithm, which is a staking more type one of just sitting and holding it probably wouldn't work well with actual voting now that I think about it lol...why I am no dev lol. A linear system makes more sense and wow that will be cool because I been looking forward to my rise and my votes actually benefiting others lol. I better let the voting power rise up for the 20th then.
I am with you about the hard work here, that I am game to do and just ride up with the efforts in place. Its good to see someone that has done it in that route so I commend you for that time well spent. I am about a month in as a very active user, up to almost 600 followers so doing okay. I think my clincher to grow will be this Steemit Blogger Central project, that is growing faster than I am so maybe with worth through that I can help new people and in turn grow myself with my writing here. Either way my passion for writing has rekindled and that is plenty reward enough right now. Thank you so much for the help. Definitely following you to keep up on the info and really appreciate you taking time out of your day to help me grasp this stuff...looking to me like the future is bright for all of us, just have to keep at it. Congrats by the way on your rise up....hard work always pays off
Thank you. Following you now as well :)
Awesome, look forward to more great conversations.
Oh I missed the link that explains so that answered my questions a little more lol....okay so this is to spread the pool around so the new users have a fighting chance to lay claim to the pool and go from there to figure out the way to enhance the out reach to gain more untapped sign ups to Steemit by encouraging the possibilities of earnings. This is wise, I run Steemit Blogger Central and I am finding I can pull people in with that project but the complaints and loss of those new users so far is the struggle to get ahead in the start, I try to coach them about Steem Power and the need to save and invest but it scares people off. Good experiment now that I see more what its about.
This is great, well done and thank you. 😁
One really minor point but can't help but say it. Spice up your chart! The eye isn't drawn hugely to the difference between "Still voting" and "not voting". And summary statistics are always good.
Thanks again, I'm super tempted to use your banner now 😜
My spouse ( @artist1989) actually made the banners. There is one 'for' and one 'against' the experiment :) Feel free to use either one!
https://steemit.com/experiment/@artist1989/the-whale-experiment-are-you-for-or-against-it-show-your-support-opposition-with-these-banner-images
I agree that whales not voting is creating the conditions needed for giving voting power to the masses. What I would like to know is how is this going to translate into a permanent solution?
A great question! We'll have to wait and see. If the experiment goes well and the community likes the way things are going with the revised voting behavior (ignoring the unhappiness over downvotes) then I think we will be in a good position to discuss long-term solutions.
Would there be a link between "experiment" and the increase in the price of steem?
There are a lot of factors that influence price. IMO though, the whale experiment has shown a level of leadership from the community that we have not seen in a while. Whether people agree with the direction or not - someone is taking charge and driving us to a new place.
I would say no. There was a spike in the price of Steem today due to a pump that Steem received when someone deposited hundreds of BTC's into it.
And if there has been an injection in Steemit, maybe a new confidence is being established? It is a good new!
I won't deny that's a possibility.
On the same token, I won't deny that it could be a simple transaction between bitcoin holders who know Steem has no transaction fees.
We will see in a few days if the trend keeps! Nevertheless, the experiment was a request that had been made for several months.
Good data, thanks!
Thanks I really appreciated the information you provided with this post.
Welcome!
I'll be upvoting with 10-50% with my curation trail during this experiment.
Cool!
Thank you for assembling this data. It helps me get a bigger picture.
Welcome.