RE: Does steemit need a referral reward system? Recruit a Friend to steemit - CONTEST PROPOSAL?
Either way people will always game the system so might as well make it as public and as automated as possible while limiting exploitation.
Process of Referring
Under our keys we should just be able to generate a referral link. Anyone who signs up using that gives us credit for them doing so if the following conditions are meet:
- Intro post was created
- Person been active for at least one week on Steemit (what “active” means will have to be defined by someone)
Rewards
A new account is created by Steemit Inc. and they put some some SP into that account. SP is then delegated from that account for 3 weeks towards the top recruiters. How many you recruited gets broken down into a % with a hard cap of 5% to be delegated toward those people. Max of 90% of SP from the account should be delegated at most.
A new tab is added that is called “referrals” or whatever that show who you sign up and when. Information should also be shown on the blockchain.
Monthly list is then put out of the top people and how much SP they are delegated for 3 weeks.
Anyone who gets caught cheating the system is then downvoted by the remaining unused SP from the Steemit Inc. account for two weeks. Your ability to create referral link is also disabled and can only be manually enabled by Steemit inc. if they feel it is warranted.
Issues
Now this does leave us with some issues. People exploiting the system for delegated SP and avoiding detection.
People abusing someone else’s referral link to get them downvoted and their referral ability revoked.
Time Steemit Inc. has to invest time: creating, maintaining, and dealing with removing people form the ban list.
Opt Out Option
For those who don’t want a referral link or wish to remove their referral link for whatever reason have the ability to disable it themselves.
This has the makings of a good solution, but will rely on development action from steemit inc, which I guess is unlikely for some time. The question is whether it is worth trying to come up with a manually administered scheme in the interim?
I’ve noticed certain people who have gained an influence outside of Steemit to bring people in have been given decent sizes delegation of SP. Not sure if it’s related to their recruiting efforts or something else. Maybe something is already being tested and worked on in the background.
The main issue is without Steemit Inc. we simply don’t have any tools to tell if someone is trying cheat with multiple accounts or not or what other ways people try and game a system like this.
I simply view it as to much work. Which is why I passed it off as an idea that if it looks good enough maybe others would come in and refine it down into something more simple and easier to admin.
Then there is the issue of having a fair share of SP to lessee out.