Bidding bots be gone

Investments do nothing by themselves.

Another proposal

Now let me take a different approach to argue against that strange, in my opinion, 50-50 rewards division suggestion. This I will do by presenting a counter proposal. Set the potential payout to 98% for the publisher and 2% for the curators. And have a slider for the publicist to choose how this 98% will be payed out. From a 100% liquid Steem to a 100% Steem Power, or no payout at all. (Where the 2% curator part also can be done like that.)

This will almost immidiately end the bidding bot services and stop the autovote bots usage at the same time. Or wont they? Well the bidding bot services still could ask a payment for their up-vote service. Autovoting bots might alter their algorithm, but I doubt if they will still be usefull. Now for these kinds of bots a 50-50 divided payout would be a gain too. No need for any human to actually curate personally, just an algorithm digging for a high return on up-votes.

What would the bots do

Bidding bots would still ask a payment from members for an up-vote. Yet they almost would not gain any Steem Power in the proces. (Curators get 2% from the potential payout.)If the up-vote service wanted even more SP, to be more competitive, by offering more up-vote value, then they would need to Power Up more Steem. Other bidding bot services would, so they also have to do so. And more SBD would be traded on the internal market for Steem.

Or these services could ask for delegations, offering part of the profit as a compensation. There are still many possible ways for bidding bot services to stay in business, while publishers would get better rewards. Other kinds of automated up-vote bots will become less usefull. Or the would track the patterns of human curators and vote on which ever predicts the highest gain. Bots are hard to get rid off in any payout division setting.

Investors already get rewarded

In response to my previous post there was the argument that 50-50 should be done because of the investors, those staking Steem Power {SP}. Meaning the potential payout would be divided as 50 percent for the publisher and 50 percent for the curators. While in the current situation the division is set at 75-25. The reason being that curating investors have more skin in the game and should therefore rewarded more.

Well, we are all Stakeholders in the Steem co-operation on the blockchain. For holding Steem Power at Stake we all get dividend. If I remember correctly this is virtually 15% a year. Actually in effect it is more because it gets calculated every block. Seems this effect of a Stake based blockchain like Steem gets overlooked in a discussion about splitting up the reward payout between publisher and curator(s). Investors do not need to do a thing and their Steem Power will still grow.

Curate and get payed

In my proposal the reservation for those who purely curate will be 2%. That is a drop of 23%, when compared to the current situation. While for some members, who have put a lot of SP at stake, this could be a means to get a higher Return On Investment {ROI}. Maybe by offering a bidding bot service. Even with a 2% payout reservation for curators they still can get more out than they gave put in.

Yet Steem was not marketed as 'Curate and get payed' or 'Invest and ROI guaranteed'. And it is perfectly okay to divide the newly created Steem in a few parts, but the most should be for rewarding publications. And if the crap ones get high payouts then maybe curation is getting way too big of a chunck in the deal. On such a scale that automated up-voting systems have become big business.

Publications add value

This is what Steem is all about. Publications that attract attention, not even the subjective 'good' or 'bad' matters. We can have investors and/ or curators discuss all they want, their posts pushed towards trending using bidding bots, but who cares for that? As good as useless when it comes to presenting Steem to the outside world. So, you want to read a fun story, or science fiction, maybe look at some amazing photographs, enjoy art, listen to some new music, watch videos or a combination of all that.

Now investors and curators can support that. Investors would do so in their own interest. Curators also would if they have Steem Power {SP} at Stake. And I think it is safe to assume that we all have, at least some, SP at Stake. Therefore it is in all of our interest that the publications attract attention. That is the economy of which Steem is a part of. Without publishers that gain attraction, adding value to Steem. The whole investment and curating part would be useless. And at a certain moment Steem would become nearly worthless.

Attention attraction economy

We are all members of the Steem stakeholder co-operation on a blockchain. Even if my proposal for a 98 percent for the publisher and 2 percent for the curator(s) payout division would become a reality, curators still get some reward. Maybe automated up-vote systems would become less usefull, would that be bad? And it can be that those members who consider themselves purely investors go for some human curation.

With publishers that attract attention visitors will come. Many just to read, view, listen and watch. That could be interesting for companies to buy Steem so they can use bidding bots to get enough potential payout to get on the trending page. And I am not the first who suggested this idea. No need for advertisement like on traditional media, we have Steem and the page to do a payed for trending page. But Steem needs to give people a reason to come here in the first place.

We are here together

And we are here on our own. Some just need a direct payout, while others can take a risk with putting some of their own skin in as Steem Power. Yet, no matter what, Steem is a platform that needs publishers who are able to attract attention. An investment alone does nothing, not even if there is a dividend payout on the Steem put at Stake. We all have Steem Power, so we all have invested.

For many the SP they vested came forth from putting time and energy into publishing. This is what adds value to the blockchain. Without these publishers Steem would be worthless. Bad news for investors, no need for curators either. The Steem members who publish can be investors and curators too, as most are. Another reason why I think that instead of rewarding curators/investors more, we should reward publishers more. As this benefits all Steemians.

Tough competition

Not only for Steem as a platform versus other platforms, but for publishing Steemians too. As the amount of newly created Steem is about the same and more members enter. While human curators can enjoy what gets published and can appreciate that with an up-vote, they can also reply and earn themselves the full 98%. This even might get better if self-upvoting got removed. It sure would change things around here. More involvement, human interaction, curators having an incentive to reply, showing engagement.

For publishers it will become harder to generate income from publishing. The more members sign up, the more the Steem in the pool will have be cut in smaller reward chuncks. Luckily the Smart Media Tokens {SMT} might just arrive at the right time. Then several kinds of publications can get rewards with a unique SMT token. But publications that attract attention are the most important part of the Steem economy. And these should be rewarded the best.

Or leave it like it is

Moving towards a 98-2 divided payout is quite a drastic move, I know. And I made this article mainly to look at the '50-50' suggestion from a different point of view. And I still think it is a bad idea, because it favors curation over publication and feeds the botnets with SP faster. Or it just takes rewards from the publishers and hands it over to those who view the content. 'Curate and get payed'? Nope, 'Publish and get rewarded'.

Lose the publishers lose the value of Steem. No more attracting attention, losing a share of that economy. Now those who mainly invested in Steem Power wont be happy if this happens. No member of the Steem community would be happy to see their Stake go to waste. We are all in this together. And no, I did not forget the witnesses, because without them this all would not even excist.

Maybe we could have a look at the innitial split of the newly created Steem. 10% to the Witnesses, 20% to the Stakeholders and 70% for rewards. Where I would suggest of that 70% not to go for 50-50, but 2% for the curators and 98 for the publishers. Or we could leave it like it is.

Have great one!

My guess is a good as yours.

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