RE: How can the Steem blockchain distinguish itself in the marketplace?
Congratulations on being included!
Thanks, it's actually a big responsibility and I don't know if I can be useful to the platform without enough resources. Sometimes one desire is not enough.
I agree that the role of manual curators is very important. We need more manual curators that are driven not only by the Steemit team, but also by the community.
However, changing the reward calculation algorithm would not be superfluous. Perhaps such a variant would be interesting:
I am still in favor of changing the distribution of rewards. But now I have a better idea. I believe that the number of unique views and the average time spent by the reader on the page should be hidden in the calculation of both author's and curatorial rewards.
Under these conditions, outright spam will receive small rewards even if it is voted by a bot. Owners of a large number of SP will have to look for a readership. Of course, this will not solve all problems, but it will significantly reduce the attractiveness of bid bots.
Unfortunately, I don't think there's a practical way to get that information to the blockchain at payout time.
Views and reading time are counted at the front-end, so the blockchain doesn't know about them... and in fact, you'd have to combine data from a potentially large number of front-ends.
I suppose something might be possible through the use of "oracles", but that's beyond my knowledge.
If I were the decision-maker, I'd commission a study and use a development environment to try to optimize the algorithm. Probably by testing 3-5 candidates (including trying to 'cheat' them).