RE: The Haejin Problem: The Solution is Simpler than Most Think, Much Simpler
I don’t believe any cap solutions to be workable in the long run.
First, as you point out, it does nothing against multi accounting. If someone is in the position to need to split an account, they will. Managing account #2 for an extra $264,000 a year is a trivial task. Combatting two smaller abusive accounts is no easier than one large account, it would still require the same amount of countering downvotes.
Steem is still so small. We have yet to see what true virality looks like, let alone big business on the blockchain, but this could totally hamstring all that.
An easy example would be to look at the newly launched fundition.io. Steem has a huge potential in the crowdfunding space in my opinion, particularly by way of using votes vs. direct transfers of currency. But can you imagine if a 30 day Kickstarter campaign was capped at $22,000? Or someone’s GoFundMe style campaign to raise $150,000 for surgery was forced to take 7 months to come in under a cap?
People should be able to “hit the lotto” every now & then. Random people go viral on today’s big social media regularly, get their few days of fame, millions of views & votes, and then fade away. The beauty of Steem is that this attention is directly monetized. We know a person with a continuous campaign of self voting abuse will multi account and get around a cap. It’s the person who hits the “attention jackpot” for a single week who will be penalized as their viral dLive video racks up 20 million views & votes on their account; but an algorithm restricts their valid (& temporary) large scale earning potential.
Viral content most often is an absolutely poor performer financially. With the blog network I used to manage in the past, we regularly hit Reddit, Techmeme and also have multiple entries still performer on Stumbleupon and generally they are the worst performers financially.
That also makes sense because most viral content attracts non-members, so-called side door traffic and the people leave again. Try getting your average Redditor to sign up, they're not interested they have Reddit and that's where they live.
I think the difficulty with any cap is to make the cap high enough to stay interesting and not be seen as a burden. We both agree that those who aren't satisfied will always find ways around but I think that will always be a
criminalminority.I'm not sure about winning the lottery, I think $22,000 is a rather nice ticket. Especially if it can be repeated monthly but by all means make it $30,000. ;)
As for fundition.io, I don't think the 7 days limit of Steem is a smart model for any crowdfunding platform. It is IMHO not because it initially seems a great fit and that it can be done that it also should be done. But it would be perfectly possible to not apply the cap on the SMT platform. That could be a simple option for SMT managers.