[PROPOSAL] Let content creators commit a portion of their authorship reward to curators

I was thinking about the recent post by @sephiroth about authors purchasing whale votes. If you haven't read (and potentially upvoted) his post yet, I encourage you to do so - he raises a valid question. The issue, in short, is this: should we be worried that an author offers a whale this deal: I'll give you a cut of my SD earnings if you upvote me. This is a totally realistic scenario, since some of the bigger whales cause $100-$200 bumps to post valuations when they vote.

The stock answer is that "whales have to consider the long-run interests of the system, so they won't do this because it's bad" feels pretty unsatisfying because it's so non-specific. It is almost certainly possible that whales could do this and avoid getting caught by making the amounts small. We're not talking about whales torpedoing the whole thing, just about skimming a bit off the top.

I invite you to set these things aside for a moment, and consider this instead: are we sure that our curation reward formula is exactly what it should be? In other words, are we paying curators too much? too little? Right now, this is absolutely set in stone and there is nothing we can do about it. We currently have fixed prices for curation, and fixed prices are begging for black markets. I propose instead that we establish an explicit, open market for curation prices.

My Proposal

I propose that when an author writes a post , s/he can decide how much of the SD author reward to keep, and how much to offer to curators. If the author decides to allocate a nonzero fraction of the earned reward to curators, this curation bonus is paid in SP. The effect of this is that rather than price-fixing the curation rewards and potentially incentivizing black markets, we give the market the flexibility to choose how much the curation service is worth.

Some Pros

• Weakens the possibility that whale vote-black-markets arise
• Ends fixed-pricing of curation rewards
• Gives us information, through pricing, of the value of curation
• Allows authors to gain an edge by offering large curation rewards
• A larger fraction of authorship rewards will be paid out in SP rather than SD

Some Cons

• The curator fraction will likely be large due to competition for curation services; this will cut dramatically into the profits of authors
• Black markets are still possible
• Adds an additional level of complication for authors; makes the platform less user-friendly

I invite a robust discussion! @dantheman, @ned, @sephiroth, @complexring, @theoretical, @smooth.

And if you have not seen it yet, take a look at part 4 of my game theory series.