Trending as a whole hasn’t been good for a loooooong time...if ever. It’s actually a very poor representation of what this place has to offer. I don’t think it should be the featured page for the site. The addition of the mega-vote buying only makes it worse...with no added benefit of demand for STEEM.
In my opinion, this and delegation leasing is killing demand, which was already low. But since very few people want to actually acknowledge and address the problems around here that have been brought on by terrible hard forks, not much can be done. It’s really sad to see. There was so much potential for this place and it feels like it’s slipping away, being replaced by obvious scheming and scamming disguised as “blockchain businesses.”
Yeah, I never look at the trending page unless there is some whacky wildness going on. Newcomers are totally obsessed by which totally does make it even worse now with the vote buying malarkey.
The delegation leasing, definitely another thing. I have been approached lately by two separate groups suggesting I chip in and join with them so that they can buy a big delegation and upvote themselves exclusively. It's just going to become more and more prevalent. Scheming and scamming indeed. Sigh
Word re: the trending page. It is mostly just established whales with solid trails, content aside.
Regarding demand - DLM is priced in STEEM, people wanting to lease have to buy STEEM. See your point with the voting bot though. @Reggaemuffin can you not charge STEEM for votes instead to boost STEEM demand?
Also as I said above, there's a certain originating whale dumping 80K on the market every few days ... that is fucking demand. 3.5 mil delegated to MB is 3.5 not being dumped.
Was it just the hard forks that brought Steemit to its current sorry state? That would suggest there are rule sets that could prevent or negate the process of degeneration and accumulation we have been seeing.
I am not sure such rule sets exist within the economic thinking that was the basis of Steemit; I can only hope they do, and that the powers that be are still interested in implementing them.
For all I know, they think that Steemit is "working as intended" and will never even consider rule sets that fall outside the scope of their economic belief system.
Having said that, I must admit that I don't have a solution either, but I don't think adjusting curves and percentages will dissuade the richer short-term reward seekers from doing what they will without considering the long-term effects of their behaviour on the image of Steemit and the price of Steem .