My Controversial idea for Steem Power- by Charlie Shrem
Disclaimer - this is a social thought experiment. I'm not saying this will be implemented or even should be implemented in its current state
Late last night I was having a conversation about Steem Power and an interesting idea was formed. I was asked to write a post about it and see what the community thought.
In life, one of the biggest value to each and every one of us is peer approval. Its what makes the world work. It's why we want to love and be loved, its why we have friends and are who we are. We want to feel accepted and be accepted by other human beings. In comes the digital era and all of this has moved to the internet. We are on facebook, twitter, linkedin, ect. We get excited when someone retweets or shares our posts.
This feeling and acceptance we get is called Social Capital. It's not money which is another type of capital. Social Capital can be purchased to an extend but with diminishing returns. You can buy flashy cars, big mansions and be a part of the elite. However those people usually have a lot of ego and pride and are looked at in contempt by the majority, even though we secretly want to be like them.
Real Social Capital has no bias, you don't need to be rich or poor, good looking or bad looking. In the digital age its about the knowledge you have and the contribution to bring to a community or society. Think Nobel Peace Prize winners, athletes, doctors, or our favorite authors. The best example is Reddit Karma. Karma cannot be purchased only earned. Its why Redditors are a part of the community, they don't get paid for their work in money, they get paid in Social Capital.
Ned has said he wants Steem to be more like Reddit. I agree, but I think Steem should be better than Reddit. Let's get the best content we can get by paying for it in new money creation and social capital. I want to see every magazine, newspaper and high quality content using Steem. I want to see every content creator in the world using Steem.
My wacky idea - let's make Steem Power social capital that can be powered down into Steem but cannot be powered up. The only way to earn Steem Power is by creating or voting on content. Steem Power becomes social capital that you earn by being a productive member of the Steem community, and you get paid in cash for it as well! I propose this will make Steem Power immensely more valuable as the project grows. Think about making money every time someone reweets or facebook shares your post. You can't buy reweets (you can buy robot retweets, I mean human ones) or facebook likes but you can earn them. I'm proposing to make Steem Power that Social Capital and have the ability to power it down.
Content would be paid in liquid Steem/SBD and half in Steem Power, like it is now. This way we can introduce high quality content from newspapers, magazines, authors who have operating budgets and research costs. At the same time they can earn social capital.
The idea could work if everyone had the same opportunity to earn SP. Many people, including myself, bought Steem and powered up. My thought on that is two fold.
- Replay the blockchain and all Steem Power that was earned by content creation or curation stays in Steem Power. (On further thought, I dont know how fair this is. Replaying the blockchain and changing peoples balances, I'm not advocating it. I would NEVER tell someone what they can and cannot do with their money. I am fiercely against that. This is just a social thought experiment. )
- All other Steem Power becomes liquid Steem.
We all start on an even playing field when it comes to Social Capital. It only has value if it cannot be purchased. Thats the key here.
Someone suggested leaving Steem Power the way it is and creating a 3rd currency that is paid out called "Steem Points" that acts as the social capital.
We do have a reputation score next to our names- I would go further and allow your score to give you weight in voting and content creation, at the same time allow you to power it down.
OK I know its controversial, crazy and I could be completely wrong on this. It's merely a thought experiment and I'm not a game theorist.
There are questions that remain:
- How do you attract investors in Steem? We have this question now because with hyperinflation being dropped and moving to new 9.5% inflation next week, the incentive to buy Steem Power is a lot lower.
- Won't this introduce immense short term selling pressure? Yes, it would. We could have the power down time be a certain lengh of time to mitigate that. I'm not sure how else to do it. There are 3-4 accounts that hold a large % of Steem and I'm not sure how that would work.
- We'd have a lot of speculators, but how do we introduce long term investors? Maybe moving Steem into savings triggers extra interest. I'm not sure.
I look forward to your thoughts, feel free to call me crazy or a genius in the comments!
-Charlie
- Help keep SteemPower.org running! Vote for us as a witness the following way:
https://steemit.com/~witnesses click the arrow next to "charlieshrem"
In many ways that is what the "reputation number" next to each individual's name is currently a proxy for. It can be earned but not bought. It is directly proportional to the total earned on the site.
The reputation system - even if not perfect - is mostly an adequate measure of one's "social capital," even if not directly monetized. The problem with using SP as social capital is parsing that SP.
Currently, you can earn SP from posting, commenting, and curating - or you can buy Steem and power it up into SP. Posting rewards can be split 50/50 between SP and liquid Steem. Commenting is split 50/50. Unless you have chosen the 100% SP option since you began creating content on Steemit (which wasn't even possible for users in the first few months, I don't believe), you won't receive that "social capital" under this proposed system. Anyone who had received the 50/50 payout and then powered up the other half - or any portion of it - will essentially be penalized. Even though they earned the "social capital" as a reward for their content, it wouldn't be recognized as such. Comment rewards and powering that up would be the same.
It all gets a little messy and I really don't think it's necessary. As stated in a comment below - we need to have additional/better incentives for holding SP. We don't need to further complicate the system. It's already complex enough for the average user. Finding more ways to use the different tokens and to encourage people to want to buy, sell, and hold them should be the priority for development.
I like that we're discussing new and different ideas. I just don't think this is a particularly good one. It doesn't solve a problem and it doesn't increase the desire to hold or use the currency.
I like the way you think, thanks for commenting and providing further insight !
Agreed. @charlieshrem's idea is to explicitly monetize reputation. This is a neat idea, but it would then suffer from all the usual problems of reputation systems (sybils etc), but the money would include an additional incentive for people to find ways to game it.
Very good point. The idea would be that this could become another currency that can be powered down, at the same time have weight for voting.
Saying that steem power should be something that can only be earned is very easy to say and accept by someone who has no problem earning it, like from your point of view that almost every blog post by charlieshrem has hit the #1 spot on the trending page. Another user who has a very hard time earning rewards would feel even more crushed by not having the option to buy steem power while not being able to earn rewards, and that's not good for user retention
Man the voice of reasoning has spoken...Great Comment Mr.Grant!!!
Very reasonable! Not only that but Steem Power in my opinion is the center weight of the Steem platform. It is the utility which can be used as a measure in the attention economy.
For example if I want to contact you maybe you can set it where either I have X amount of Steem Power, Y Reputation, or I pay you Z amount in Steem for your time. This could allow us to set up consulting networks and people can begin to barter, and offer services, where Steem Power and Reputation would signify how important a person is to the social network.
If a person has little to no Steem Power and has a low Reputation, maybe no one will want to add them as a friend until they either buy the Steem Power or earn it, and or build a Reputation.
Good point.
So if I understand you correctly:
you want your reputation-shares to be tokenized so they can be converted to steem and sold?
You currently have:
120,870,541,768,298Reputation-shares in the system according to: https://steemd.com/@charlieshremI personally and professionally don´t see how another "power-down" suggestion will bring any value to steemit. So I will have to vote NO on this suggestion for now.
Sincerely, and in all friendliness
@fyrstikken
Nope, thats not what I'm suggesting. In fact, Im not suggesting anything.
No need for a vote, this is a social thought experiment. For discussion and mental exercise :)
I think any change should be short of creating another token or making SP blog to earn only. Like allowing Rep to have vote weight might be something that doesn't scare away investors. Stability is an important factor in any investment. If we throw too many new bells and whistles on without focusing on the meat and potatoes like scaling and user retention we could lose focus
Yes
But I could buy someones account that has reputation can't I?
Right, Reputation serves that purpose but I do think we can make Steem Power have greater social utility. For example no one below a certain Steem Power can private message you, and you set the threshold, or no one below a certain Steem Power and Reputation can add you as a friend, and so on.
A slightly less radical, yet more complex approach would be to differentiate earned vs bought SP (either renaming one or the other or just breaking down the composition when displaying the value).
The influence would be the same as today, but the social aspect would remain.
AHHH this could work. So introducing a new type of Steem Power that is social capital.
I really like this idea. It can be done without any changes at all to the blockchain, just a display change on people's wallet page. The Posting Rewards are right there already:
If we could see immediately who is a high Steem Power influencer due to investment verses content creation, that would go a long way towards understanding that individual account's social capital.
Great thoughts, Charlie! Thanks for putting these ideas out there for us all to think about.
YES, this is good :)
Excellent idea!
Actually, a great idea. I had thought of this before as well, but seemed like it's antithetical to the platform with the whole 2 year lock in and to make it the investment aspect.
SP as an exclusive platform acquired token, would be like Rep. You can't buy your way to Rep, so too for SP you would not be able to buy your way up the SP power ladder. You have to get others to upvote you. It's more tied to the community this way. It has pros and cons, but overall it's making it more valuable indeed. And no one would want to Power Down since you lose your standing that is harder to earn.
It's an interesting thing for sure, I don't know of all the downsides though... heh.
I like the way you think! Although I wouldn't narrow it to just "Reputation"because thats only one aspect of social capital.
Thanks. Hehe... nono... I was just making an analogy as to how it's acquired, i.e. you can't buy it. ;) Not that it will be the new rep.
@charlieshrem , i had the same idea three month ago:
https://steemit.com/steemit/@laonie/my-proposal-kill-the-whales-change-the-reward-system-from-sp-weighted-to-reputation-weighted-sp
I would be happy to be a stake holder only, the only thing i care about is grow the number of users on steemit.
Thanks for your response, I appreciate it. Also, you are an awesome curator.
I don't think this would go over well with non-creators. The vast majority of SP is earned from blog posts. Those who are here for reading, commenting, and voting will be left behind. It would skew the influence too much in the creators' direction.
There are other reasons to object to this, but that would be the largest one, in my opinion.
Hmm, I look at @laonie who earns thousands of Steem Power a week without creating any content. He is a good content curator. You can follow his trail and do the same.
Also, this would work if there were different platforms for Steem. Not sure the blog post platform we have now. We would need a Twitter style, facebook style, ect.
What @laonie accomplishes is not typical. He has the advantage of using a lot of his own accounts in his trails and has been building up SP for months by automated vote. What he earns now is a result of all of that work. I don't think the average user would want to do that just to earn SP.
Rather than finding a new gimmick for SP accumulation, why not find more/better ways to incentivize powering up? We want more people to hold SP, not more ways for it to be exclusionary. Let's think of some new ideas for how SP can be used to the advantage of users and investors alike.
"more/better ways to incentivize powering up"... YES :)
As i said I am new , but how can he earn without creating posts. If he doesn't want to contribute how can he earn so much money
He's earning by upvoting posts, which is also called curating. He's regularly listed on the top curator's list - @furion created a page on his steem.li site: http://steem.li/curators .
@thecryptofiend along with help from the community created a great Steemit FAQ that goes over curation in more detail: https://steemit.com/steemit/@thecryptofiend/the-missing-faq-a-beginners-guide-to-using-steemit
Thank you
Many thanks
laonie also bought a lot of Steem and powered up. I doubt he'd be appreciative of having his investment pulled out of SP and into Steem. I know I wouldn't.
Right now many of us who bought Steem for the purpose of powering up are having to rethink our strategy. I'm not complaining, because it may be what's best for Steemit in the long run, which should increase the value of our investment proportionately. But it's still tough to wade through since the terms of that initial investment are being altered.
IMO, the idea of stripping all unearned SP and turning it into Steem is a bit onerous and alters the original appeal of the investment far too dramatically.
There is a sense in which I like this though, if SP could float in value separate from Steem. An investment in Steem would be an investment in the currency. But SP would be directly an investment in Steemit, like shares in a corporation. Steem "earned" on Steemit could be powered up, but Steem transferred in would be subject to market differences between SP and Steem.
Like you, I'm just thinking out loud. Maybe it has merit, but it's just off the top of my head.
Thanks for the cognitive exercise. :)
Isn't that what reputation score is for?
Yes @dajohns1420, that is exactly what reputation-points are.
Not necessarily. Under the non-hyperinflationary model holding (or buying) STEEM if you believe in the platform and want a larger stake in it than you personally earned is a perfectly reasonable option. It is only because of the current hyperinflationary model that we tend to think of in terms of "SP or out".
Here some thoughs on:
Reputation
In terms of reputation, we do not have to look far way to see that (besides the algorithmically calculated score) there is an even better indicator which is already in place - and also used as a main indicator in popular social networks: the number of followers. In fact, people usually follow other people if they like their content, if they are really interested in reading, watching or earing what they post. Accounts with a high number of followers are more likely to be read by more people. These are in fact the most valuable accounts in terms of advertisement and product placement. Perhaps, to spin around your though-experiment, the blockchain should automatically reward post proportionally to its author's number of followers in the same way, for instance, a youtube partner pays more to a user with more followers, or an advert cost more on a newspaper with a higher number of printouts.
In terms of user growth / user retention, in my opinion, there is only one way: improve the user experience: And this, can only be achieve by equalky improving the site's a) Usability and b) Customisation
Usability
Steemit.com, which is today almost the only trustable face of the steem network, is far behind sites/apps such as facebook, youtube, tweeter in terms of usability. It is not easy to create content for steemit and it is even more difficult to discover it. Add picture/videos upload capabilities, album creation & sharing, chating, grouping, linking, easy editing and formating and more interation capabilities. Create a full featured profesionall phone app, comparable in terms of performance and functionality to those from youtube, facebook or tweeter and the user base will automaticallt begin to grow.
And the investors will follow and they'll also buy liquid steem to pay content creators with a high number of followers for their content
Customisation
People love to be unique. They love to have differenciating characteristics To buy clothes, houses or cars which have a personal touch. Do you remeber the product launch of the apple watch? What was the key of its success?
Bloggers like to personalize their blogs and they articles. Youtubers love to create their videos with a clear, differenciating and personal style and so they do with their entry pages. And so do twitter and even facebook users.
Add customizacion capabilities to help users create appealing personal identities. Im sorry but a link to a url as a profile picture is just not enough.
Customisation will atract users to the platform. I'll happen.
I seriously think, we shoud become less concerned about steempower and steem economy and investors in general and beging thinking more about the users who use the site/app/network/blockchain because they enjoy it
You are spot on. I posted right before you I think... it's 2016 people! Why can't we get a great looking site (design) with some awesome content creation features?
I agree. This site is very old school looking and unappealing. Steemit inc has millions of dollars in their steemit account, why can't they use a tiny portion of that money to hire a team of UX designers to built a sexy modern interface?
It makes sense to me. I feel more satisfied when I look at my Karma rating at Reddit than I do my SP here. People can buy SP, but you can't buy Karma. It's a legitimate metric for what kind of "citizen" you are. I like it. I know it may not sit well with some people, especially those that bought Steem just to power up and watch their vests grow, but your idea has the emphasis on Steem being a social platform and not simply some kind of money generating machine to be used with your hands-off.
With the interest rate going down to 9.5% after the next hard fork, Steem Power won't generate nearly as much as it does now.
Thank you!
@Charliesherem so, are you saying we will still be earning just not as much? I heard it was going to completely stop? And I'm a bit confused on what your proposing here as your idea is about to be implemented by Ned and Dan next week?
Maybe I'm just tired and read wrong, I will have to re-read later on lol
Update:
ok I see, but I believe the whole idea from the beginning was to have an investment vehicle type social platform. I think buying SP is perfectly fine. I'm in this for the investment ride as well.
The proposed changes still have an effective interest rate on SP but it will be very low. The purpose of it as an incentive (reducing inflation) for very long term investors. Over the short term you won't even notice it (unlike now).
This is true, I hadn't thought about the fork and how it changes the rate next week. Consider that argument null! Let's implement your suggestion!
To grow your VESTs you need to either curate, post or buy steem power. Sitting there doing nothing will not give you any VESTs.