The Potential For The Steem Upvote
I want to start off by saying I am agaisnt taking any % away from the upvote reward pool, and here is why.
Potential For Upvotes
Keep the % the same for reward pools, maybe tweak it 50/50 for curators and authors but do not take away % amount from the pool; the upvote is too mighty to mess with.
I think the upvote on Steem is highly underestimated. Upvote for a coffee, anyone? - That would make some sweet headlines!
How about an upvote for a Steem Monster booster pack? Upvote for merchandise on Price-breaker.com? These are all things that we can open up.
Unlocking Upvote Potential
It would be cool if the Steem/SBD from an upvote were deposited instantly into the authors account when one received an upvote; the upvoting period still lasting seven days. This would allow for a sorta "zero comp" payment style (similar to BCH/BSV) but in the form of an upvote. This could work potentially is if we have a dynamic upvote system where we can choose (up to 25%) how much of our curator rewards we wish to give to the author. If I wanted to give 100%, 100% of my upvote and the curators rewards I would have receive then go to the author. If I wanted to buy something with an upvote for instance, I choose 100% goes to the author, and then they get credited with the amount of the upvote. (I know the 25% curator reward is based off the 7days but we can brain storm something) We could even create a Coinpayments like app that converts an upvote instantly into BTC/fiat for merchants. Take Busy/Partiko UI where it shows the amount your upvote is worth, upvote to send the payment. The possibilities are endless.
- If we take away from the reward pools for upvotes, we lose a unique, powerful edge on what makes Steem, Steem. The ability to efficiently distribute crypto to people and places all over the world. If anything we should be looking to make the upvote as powerful as it can be.
Steem Upvotes & SMTs
When upvoting using Steempower, you get paid back in that platforms token, and the platform keeps the steem.
Example Busy.org creates a token, "Busy Token." I use the Busy.org UI, but I have a bunch of SP and no BP (BusyPower). So what? "I gotta sell some Steem for Busy Token to use Busy? Ffs, I gotta do this shit with Partiko too? To hell with that! I'm outchea." - This is the mental process of a new person trying to explore different dApps on the Steem blockchain. The answer is if I have SP and use Busy, I upvote someone on Busy; it gives Busy tokens in exchange for the Steem rewards. So Busy keeps the Steem, and The people get the Busy tokens. Or The Steem is burned, and Busy Tokens are minted in its place. The point is the Steem upvote needs to be universal and accepted everywhere, like Visa. To compete with other UI will depend on how much tokens the project gives per Steem upvote, the value those tokens provide and the overall token economy. This will bring out the best competitive environment where we should see some impressive dApps form.
Merchants and SMTs.
Merchants can create SMTs like coupons for their store, even some that expire if not used for a specific date. If they had a way to upvote people using their Steem power, and as a bonus they airdrop their "SMTcoupon" on top of their upvote, that would be powerful. Now merchants can attract customers via significant upvotes and give away their SMT coupon at the same time. People have this token; it's sitting there why not use it right? Or at least see what the store has to offer.
- This may "drain the reward pool" for curators. This is sort of a perfect world argument. What do people drain the reward pool with nowadays? Bidbots and selfupvotes. People wouldn't self-upvote if they could spend that upvote on a pair of Nikes. People will use their upvote as they please and giving a more extensive array of use cases for that upvote will only help, not hurt the price of Steem. It is the same as donations, Ninja on Twitch gets tons of donations from people because they like his content. This is how the world works. Creator great content and upvoting is just a much easier way of tipping then having to use a credit/debit card or Paypal etc.
Investors & Steem
To increase investor interest. Make delegation to projects lucrative IE. SMTs or community projects, etc. For this, we need delegation lockup periods, so both parties are protected. If we want to delegate to a project for one year in return for tokens/fiat, we need a way that no one can break that year contract; this will make delegations much more attractive to both parties involved. Why? Because dApps will be willing to pay more knowing that a delegation can't be pulled if a mutual lockup period is assigned. The investor is happy because they get more money for their delegations and thus have more leverage/negation power when working a deal.
- Inflation and Steem is not a big deal at all from my POV. Why? Because I know we have only one million accounts, and even if all of those were unique accounts it is also what would be considered the tip of the ice burg. Inflation right now is meaningless because the project as such room the stretch. (If Steem goes from 30 cents a token to 30 dollars per, do I care about the 9%ish inflation now?) The inflation will matter to investors when we have a billion users, and they were THEN looking for an entry point. By that time inflation will be lowered and the demand for Steem will be much more consistent; and not a bad problem to have when we get there.
Steem is the only platform where my tokens can mint new tokens but only if I give those tokens to another person/account via an upvote. That is a fantastic idea, and with that, we can unlock many things.
I wrote this now a little rushed as I am late for the gym, but wanted to start some discussion on this and see what you all think. Cheers.
There's a lot here, but I just wanted to comment on one specific part for now:
It purposely doesn't work like this because then it wouldn't be possible to have downvotes. If that happened people would be able to take huge advantage of the reward pool with no possible repercussions.
There could easily be a service that exchanges your votes for liquids with a % cut that depends on flags and price volatility. Say it could have a mining difficulty sort of function that changes the percentage depending on last week and total average and of course the service creators could take a fee too.
Good idea acidyo. The risk wouldn't be high; It would be for smaller payments for the most part. I am thinking digital items would be a nice start, that world is growing bigger and bigger and digital item cost can be in the pennies for some items.
I'll have a ginger beer
I was thinking similar and wished to sell some products for Upvotes. but it looks complex as not only the buyer upvote the post but also the other followers. so I just keep posting to promote our products and solld some products for direct steem/SBD.
Posted using Partiko Android
This would destroy the 'proof of brain' concept where any upvote can be 'negotiated' by the community (added to via more upvotes, flagged/downvoted if upvote is considered too high). The upvotes was designed this way on purpose and I've seen that although it's not perfect it's a much needed mechanism.
There's a lot of beauty in delegations that can be taken away from a project at any time, because it puts the pressure on the one who promised a product (if they don't deliver, the delegations disappear, meanwhile the investor taking the risk of investing didn't loose a cent), whereas in ICO's the pressure is at the investor who has no way of knowing if he/she will ever gets what they were promised. But the other side of the coin is indeed it can be scary for investors as well to not know how long a delegation will last, and I've seen the downside of this already a few times on the Steem blockchain in different projects. It would be a shame if that same mechanism that's so distinctive from all other blockchains would keep investors from coming on here. A lock-up period would still mean any project on the Steem blockchain does not need to do an ICO but still has something 'stable' in hands. I can't see the downside of that, would be a great salespitch for investors and there could be different tiers of incentives for 'normal' delegators and 'long-term'/fixed delegators.
Ya, I was hoping to brainstorm some way that would work that wouldn't allow abuse of the system. Acidyo had a good idea about a possible middleman service: "There could easily be a service that exchanges your votes for liquids with a % cut that depends on flags and price volatility. Say it could have a mining difficulty sort of function that changes the percentage depending on last week and total average and of course the service creators could take a fee too."
I hear you about the delegations. The delegations can have the option to have no lock-up period if you choose, but right now no serious business can be done if a dApp has the trust me or any other investor, the delegation isn't real when it can be swiped away at any minute. And a flimsy delegation doesn't demand a high price at all, but if I can lock it for a year or two, it becomes a much bigger bargaining chip for me as an investor into a dApp.
Interesting thought from Acidyo regarding the middleman service - although part of my love for Steem is the absolute lack of fees and the accompanying 'clarity' of transfers made on this blockchain. Not here to be negative, just letting it sink in and trying to figure out how it would work so that both the seller as well as the buyer feel like it's an easy 'contract'. As the Steem whitepaper states:
Also, buying through upvotes is cool for those who have Steem Power to spend, but I'm a top 1% (probably even 0.1%) Steem Holder currently but my 100% upvote is only worth .12$ or about a quarter STEEM. I don't know how many people will actually use 'upvote to buy' if only 0.05 percent on this platform actually has more than 1$ to upvote? And who would first buy thousands of STEEM to then buy a 10-100$ item? I see the attraction if there's a huge amount of items to buy this way, because that investment basically gives you buying power for life and it will earn back in the end.
Just some notes, off to read comments of others now ;-)
(Totally agree on the delegations part by the way, locking up delegations would definitely add a strong aspect to the current system.)
I really dig this vision for utilizing the vote slider as a method for transactions.
What that does is encourage users to Power Up as opposed to keeping their funds liquid.
The real challenge will be breaking past itty bitty micro-transactions so that the payment method is viable for transactions that cost more than a dollar.
Perhaps it would be better applied as a “discount”. When paying for a product or service, the user may choose to reduce the price with the value of their vote.
Posted using Partiko iOS
And that will be the starting point where Dapps will possibly have a better ROI than bid bots. Investors would place their SP to the most useful apps out there. Win win for everyone...for the investors, for simple users...for the whole community...
The idea behind SP becoming universally distributed in exchange for the platform token e.g dtube-tokens (indirectly we are distributing STEEM across the globe) is a great one. It will create a different market for steem entirely.
Great way to get the community thinking and brainstorming. I agree thay investment needs to be incentivized more than it is currently as we need to see more liquidity and demand for the token to receive morr open doors externally as well.
Posted using Partiko iOS
It sounds like you kinda want crypto credit. Vendor-willing, you could already buy Nikes or coffee with Steem or SBD, but you want to buy them with upvotes which is like a promise... a promise that the vendor would get a percentage of the total reward pool based on your vote value. It's an interesting concept... The vendor would just have to hope that
Surely no one would upvote content if they could buy themselves coffees instead. Totally hear what you're saying about Ninja and Twitch... and yes people sub and donate because they enjoy his content, but there is also an element of showing off as well.. people get attention for their donations... I guess like Twitch, we'd have to hope that people don't take-back their donations silently later.
As it stands now, there would be no way to have vendors accept upvotes. The only possible way to make Steem/SBD credit instantly would be via third parties will to pay now to take a small cut in 7 days. (credit acidyo with this idea)
As for the upvotes, vs. donate, an upvote is a donation in my eyes. People delegate to bid bots/ upvote themselves if someone wants to abuse the system they can now, and it happens all the time. So when someone upvotes you, that is a donation because they could have sold the vote or upvoted themselves and kept the money. Giving people to ability to do more with their upvote would encourage them to spend it on merchandise rather than self-upvote.
Yeah, sorry, I meant that a donation in Twitch usually gets you a lot of attention... Ninja says thank you and thousands of people see how generous you are.
Totally agree that an upvote is a donation, actually, maybe it's more like a pledge. Would love to see more options for upvotes... I'm sure it'll come as more people develop and have convos like this...
I agree with you, it would be great, once someone has a vote and this generates Steem / sbd, the author, you can have them available in your account. The lapse of 7 days, I think it is far away. On this platform, there are many users who use steemit as a way of life, and in which, their income depends on this platform and, if they can minimize those times ,. it would be very important
Very true. Being sure of your security will encourage investors to invest more. There is a high need for the delegation lockup period such that they delegator cannot breach the contract when not due.