RE: Improving the Economics of Steem: A Community Proposal
Nonetheless, it would also lead to higher concentrations of votes on fewer accounts
In some sense that is the idea since self-voting is the opposite of that.
The real question is one of degree. You don't want everyone voting for themselves (maximum spread across maximum accounts) but you also don't want too much concentration that doesn't help the value of Steem (that being said, very high value contributors with a large audience are indeed worth a lot in what they bring and give back, which is why such people are paid a lot on other platforms).
All that being said, curation itself doesn't necessarily encourage extreme concentration of votes. Once there are a lot of votes on a piece of content, voting for it will earn sub-par curation rewards. To maximize curation, you are better off finding something else that isn't heavily voted yet.
These proposals don't reduce incentive to self vote or delegate to bidbots at all. They increase those incentives for substantial stakeholders, at the expense of almost all accounts.
I disagree. The curve change doesn't reduce the incentive to self vote or delegate to bid bots, and if that were the only change it could even make things worse. The other two changes (cheaper downvotes and higher share of rewards going to curation) do reduce the incentive to self-vote and delegate to bidbots. That does not necessarily mean they would solve every problem or even any problem, but its wrong to say they don't change incentives.
Yeah, that's why I do support it. Although, together with the adjusted reward curve, I believe it could make the "concentration of votes" too extreme. Especially combined with bid bot usage then.
I think we would need to see a specific proposal on the parameters of the curve. If it is too superlinear beyond the low end then I agree.
yeah it definitely depends strongly on where the main curve lays. If we penalize especially small votes (< 1$ or < 0.1$) but have it almost linear at everything above that might be a good way to avoid bot farming while keeping the rest the same for the vast majority of users. On the other hand if the main curve is around 10-50$ it would be more on the shoulders of the smaller users and lead to more bid bot farming.
@smooth, having read many of your comments over the years, I've learned to respect your opinion on these type of topics, so, if you don't mind, I 'd like to get your opinion on a proposed solution (by @bashadow) that I read higher up in the comments to this post, one that I believe could have a beneficial impact on voting behaviors.
Below is the link to that comment:
https://steemit.com/steem/@bashadow/re-steemitblog-improving-the-economics-of-steem-a-community-proposal-20190516t193202343z
I don't know if it's at all possible, or feasible at the blockchain level, but it seems to me that randomly picking a time within the 7-day payout window to reward as the highest percent curation payout per SP voted on the given post, and then "paying out concentrically" from whatever time is determined (eg if the determined time is 24 hours, then the account closest would get the highest curation payout per used SP and two separate accounts that voted at hours 23 and 25, both 1 hour off from the random generated number, would be paid at the same rate per SP), would be an effective way to remove the incentive to vote within a (small) time window.
I'd love to get your thoughts on this, assuming you can follow what I've attempted to ask.
I don't have an opinion on the 'random curation' proposal, but in general any proposal for randomness on a blockchain is an extremely difficult proposition. I saw one of the replies mentioned looking at the previous block hash. That works to a point, but isn't entirely safe or fair because the block creator can tinker with the block in ways to change the hash into one that subtly favors themselves or a collaborator and it is very difficult to detect this (particularly on non-PoW chains).
Anyway, I don't rule it out, I just haven't studied it enough to have an opinion at this time. There are some ways to properly address the randomness issue if it is really necessarily and helpful, but they are definitely harder than just looking at a block hash and you should be suspicious of someone who suggests that; they probably don't understand blockchains very well.
I had a feeling that it wouldn't be so easy to pull off. Thanks for taking the time to explain that.