Just a Thought - Nothing "At" Stake
Stake is defined in many ways, but doing a brief search on the word's definition, I feel the most applicable to the blockchain I am engaging on is the following:
a share or interest in a business, situation, or system.
In our case having stake in the blockchain is having some share in this ecosystem through VESTING, but just because you own a piece of something doesn't necessarily mean that piece is worth anything. There are plenty of stakeholders in different ventures that hold worthless stake, what makes our stake in this system better than these collapsed ventures?
Feel free to interpret this picture however you please
While this question is open-ended and you are free to respond to in whatever way you please, I will answer the question by proposing two things:
- generated content
- token scarcity
If you have read any of my recent ramblings on the blockchain, you will know that I don't feel like Steem does a good job at the second thing, and does a very bad job at the first in terms of doing anything useful with content. In fact, it encourages garbage content creation by lazy creators? Why? Because nothing is at stake.
But wait, don't these folks posting have some stake? By the definition above, they most certainly do have stake. But do they have anything "at stake". Not really. "At stake" implies that there is a risk of loss. Now the proponents of Proof-of-Stake argue that monetary value at what is "at stake" in the system. But even though that might be true, the token which can represent value is never really at risk. It is never really at stake. Sure you might lose some value due to speculative nature of the asset, but unless the witnesses collude to commit fraud on the blockchain, you aren't losing tokens.
However, you could argue voting power and resource credits are at stake, but these are regenerative resources. They don't really count. You make a mistake with them and guess what, a few days later, they are back to where they were. While temporary influence is at stake here, it doesn't have to do with money and it is only temporary.
So, what sneaky and dirty thing am I suggesting? Tokens should be at stake. Rather than ROI money printers, they serve as a representative sacrifice demonstrating loyalty to the system. You know, being a responsible shareholder rather than a leech. What if you had to burn a little stake to use the blockchain?
Look at the two items above: content and scarcity. Now that there is downside risk to using the blockchain, lazy creators will think twice before being lazy or else they just burned stake they aren't getting back. Now the seldom used flags really mean something. They mean that you're taking a L. They mean negative ROI. They mean you better think twice about spamming (or else). As for scarcity, now that we are burning tokens, inflation doesn't become as much as an issue anymore because you can simply recycle burned tokens. And since you need tokens to get more tokens, demand skyrockets. RCs attempt to do something similar but they are overly complicated and favor whales over new users in an excessive and asymmetric way.
But of course, practically speaking no one would want to do this. Why? Because it introduces more risk into the equation and makes the scheme shift away from the freemium model. But the upside is that only those who sacrifice for the chain have the opportunity to be rewarded.
Of course, you can put your faith in the "stake" versus the "at-stake" model. You can put your faith in social consensus rather than hard (coded) incentives. You can put your faith that the winds of speculation will turn in your favor. Those things might work, but they don't have to. Not that I'm saying the "at-stake" model works any better, but it sounds more compelling on paper from a theoretical engineering point of view.
But hey, theoretical engineering means nothing. Look at the RC system. That was a waste of time despite all the optimistic praise it garnered after it limped into existence. However, I will mention this. I don't think this will ever work on Steem. The "at-stake" model is contra to the spirit of the whitepaper and contra to the social consensus of the blockchain.
So why bring this up? I don't know. I can post anything to this blockchain for free without any risk of losing anything (but pointless reputation and nearly pointless RCs). So I did. There you go.
If you enjoy any of my content be sure to hit that upvote button so I can earn more imaginary money tokens and hit that follow button so I can indoctrinate you with more of my sneaky ideas. Or you can return to paid programming and the cult of optimism. It's your choice.
How did you reach that conclusion? I'm of the opinion that it has done what it advertised, albeit with some valid concerns, which I don't think we need to rehash. Some measure of how expensive one blockchain action relative to another action is a valuable thing to have. Is spam gone? No, because it was never intended to fully get rid of spam. But it made it cost something. As in, now you can't create faucet accounts and have them spam everyone, which was happening before this change. Small improvement, but significant. (And paving the way for more complicated actions to come, though... yeah, that's been delayed...)
I reached that conclusion when I realized burning tokens do what RCs claim to do, but better and it's a lot simpler to explain and implement. Simplicity and elegance are better than complexity and confusion. Also, they threw waiting for equilibrium idea out the window when they simply edited RCs after HF20 to work better. Like why not do the same thing if the blockchain bloats again and prevents new users from using it again? It's a sloppy solution that feels more like a band-aid than a real solution.
Also, RCs work against new users in favor of pre-established larger users. New users have to buy in to participate in the system, while old users have their resource regenerated for them. Not exactly the most fair system ever. Sure, it gets users to hold onto the coins, but it doesn't make them more scarce and larger users can still spam as they please...
It still reaches equilibrium and adjusts to dynamics, and in the case where blockchain activity bloats, it prevents the whole 'bandwidth exceeded' debacle preventing all actions, instead of preventing the more expensive ones. I think the solution is quite elegant, for what its purpose was.
Agreed on newer users problem. That's still a problem but I think still usable. Though I haven't started from being a new user since the flip so I can't really comment on that. We should go find such a new user ;).
It would only be buy in at this point in time but not necessarily in the future as if there are RC delegation pools, an app can issue them at the door so that users can interact and then lose them at log out. afaik
Yeah delegation pools are a pretty big deal and HF20 makes a lot less sense without them. The big worry is that the demand for RCs will be high and people will start selling them. This won't be a problem until we hit another out of control bull run so I'm not too worried.
At the same time dapps aren't going to want to charge for RCs because they'll want more users on their app instead. If will be interesting to see where all this supply/demand takes the platform.
I think that the selling of RCs is going to be a good thing as it could be another way to distribute SMTs by rewarding investors. Plus, the price will go up the higher the demand which will drive more powering up and take steem (currently 58 million) off exchanges pushing Steem price up. People will want to cash Steem which takes RCs off the market and that price goes up. Do I power up and sell RCs or sell high priced steem once? Sellers will have a harder choice to make, especially as the selling of RCs doesn't affect vote power.
I think it's ironic that @greer184 talked trash about HF20 and RCs while at the same time proposing there is nothing at stake...
Am I taking crazy pills here? A user pays a little money for RCs and uses those RCs to post to the blockchain. Isn't that exactly what's being proposed in the Original Post?
RE: No, because RCs regenerate.
RE: Steem regenerates with inflation. It's just "slower". Which is also not true if there is a high enough demand for RCs.
Things that RCs still need to answer:
How burning stake addresses these issues:
I think a lot of this has to do with the regeneration of RCs. If RCs didn't automagically regenerate and were staked and only given back after meeting specific requirements, then it might work as intended, but in the meanwhile, the only people RCs look to help are large stakeholders granted Steem has a future.
With RC delegation pools, you would either have to buy the RCs or have them gifted to you. The issue with that is that larger users can move around RCs via delegation to side accounts and then you can farm with that set of accounts. Because RCs regenerate, these farms can easily be maintained and grown. At that point you're only harming the single account small user folks.
Regenerate resources can improve problems, but non-regenerative resources don't suffer from these issues, because there is no getting them back. I'm not a fan of regenerative resources because they hint that a problem exists but don't commit to actually solving that problem.
RCs have no voting power/ draw on the pool, just bandwidth I think - and are only available on powered up Steem. It is in the best interest of the application to have users use their app so the app (if it didn't have SP or needed more RCs) would be the customer of the delegation pool, not the users themselves.
RCs provide access to the pool. That's how they currently reduce spam. I'm saying that it's not to hard to get around that restriction granted you already had the RCs to work with.
Also, the application would then have to distribute the RCs again for the users of the app to do anything. So RCs end up with the user unless you have non-Steem associated accounts through the application which is more complicated and I imagine less desirable for the users.
by access to the pool do you mean ability to post? Yes.
So a larger account could delegate RCs to spammers or, they could sell them in a delegation pool to applications. When there is a viable revenue stream, why would they give them to spammers unless the spammers would pay, which in that case, they would just buy the Steem for their own RCs.
The application can provide from a pool on sign-in and give something like 30 SP worth of RCs so that account could interact. when they leave out the door, they lose their RCs. This means that a pool with RC's ascribed to application A, can't have those RC's used in application B. I think.
I have heard that spam is down around 80% from pre-HF20
To be fair, usage and monetary value are also down and that probably has some effect too.
this was in the two or three weeks directly after hf20 I think @markymark made a post on it.
Pretty straightforward and concise. I do love how you think, man!
Maybe having something in stake would improve usability. especially when it's done so that it's not enriching anyone in particular but making the blockchain better. Taking a small amount of steem from each post to the @null account for burning is a good idea. Also, figuring out ways to make the "Promote" tab more attractive to use would be cool.
Steemit inc should find a way to generate money off this site as well.
I don't think Steemit Inc. really cares all that much about Steemit. They're focused on the protocol itself. Although given their track record maybe they should focus on the application and let the decentralized community decide what's next for the protocol.
I still maintain that our pilot app (blogging) will be mocked in five years as the sad thing that no one really does anymore because there are so many more interesting things to be doing on the blockchain.
If we want content to improve we shouldn't be looking to hard fork into oblivion and shatter the foundation we have in an attempt to punish bad content.
This really feels like a bottom-up solution that still ends up punishing the little guy. How will this implementation change whale behavior? One thing is certain: whales aren't buying what we are selling.
If poor content is the problem we should be asking ourselves this: How valuable is blogging? In my opinion: not very. Steem blogging could be a Mecca of professional-grade genius, but that still wouldn't be very valuable.
The true value of this platform lies in the other proof-of-brain activities that don't exist yet.
I wouldn't hard fork into oblivion, I would pour a new foundation in terms of censorship resistant information publishing. I don't believe in Steem as money anymore. It is simply a social game with different groups looking for different things. It will always have representational value in terms of the game, but I can't support the notation that it's a good investment and preach about Steem's bright future when I don't see the development to back up these grand projections.
But maybe I hold this view because I have nothing to lose. I've never invested a single dollar into Steem. I might possess the token, but I never sacrificed anything to get where I am. I have no emotional attachment to my magical internet token. It might have paper value, but to be honest, it's how I keep score.
As we move into the next phase of the game, we'll see whether or not the bulls run again. It will be interesting to see how optimistic the preachers will remain in the next phase if the bulls stay quiet. Steemit, Inc. is basically a shell of itself and I don't see a strong movement to fill that void.
How does the world end again? Not with a bang, but a whimper. Yeah, I think that is how it goes.
Of course I could be wrong, look foolish, and have lots of money. I wouldn't mind that, but I'm not going to put any faith in it.
Fair enough, maybe my faith is misplaced. I just don't really see any kind of superior alternatives. I think we have to assume decentralized development of a new technology is going to take a long time to figure out.
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