@snowflake's really interesting proposal - Turn whales into moderators and give dolphins all the voting power (TLDR Version)
I came across this post from @snowflake today, and I have spent most of my night thinking about it.. The more I think about it, the more I think this is actually a really good idea!
Here is a shortened (and slightly modified) version:
- All accounts with more than 100 MV of SP (roughly $7,000 worth) become moderators.
- All accounts with 100 MV or less of SP are users.
- Users are able to upvote and downvote posts.
- Moderators can only downvote posts or negate other moderators downvotes.
- Curation rewards are eliminated.
- The funds from curation rewards will be used to pay the moderators a moderator fee.
[Edit] Alternate Versions:
- The first 100 MV of SP from a moderator's account could act as a 'regular' user.
- Downvotes from regular users would not negatively influence rewards.
Key benefits:
- The dolphins would be the key voters deciding on what posts were rewarded.
- Even minnows could have a small influence with their vote.
- Regular users would have a strong incentive to buy more STEEM and power up.
- Large SP investors will get a return on their investment without being required to curate.
- Whales would still have the ultimate say on what gets rewarded.
There are lots of details to iron out, but I think the idea is solid.
[Edit] Main Concerns:
- It would need buy-in from the major stakeholders.
I am only on board with this plan to the extent that there is buy-in from the majority of the major stake holders. If the whales do not want to do it, then it will not work. Whales would be giving up some of their power. In exchange, they would be receiving "moderator rewards", and hopefully a better return on their investment from the increased demand in SP. It is a question for the whales - are you on board with this? - It has the potential for whale abuse via sock-puppets.
There are only 50 users who have enough SP to abuse this by more than a factor of 10 'user' accounts. While the potential for abuse is still there, and it probably will happen to some extent - if anything were happening on a large scale, it would likely get detected and addressed by the moderators. Whales would also be giving up their "moderator rewards" in order to gain the extra influence. In the absence of curation rewards, I don't know if the risk vs. reward of doing this is high enough to cause it on a large scale.
What are everyone's thoughts?
Check out @snowflake's full proposal here:
Guardian of the steem universe : A different perspective on the role of whales within steem ecosystem [part 2]
I found this idea to be interesting and very creative. But, as I said on @snowflake's original post, I do feel that this would be quite a burden on the whales and could end up making their experience more negative than positive.
It does feel great to be able to give someone a reward, which is why when more of us are able to do that, a lot more users will come pouring in.
I made a post about three months ago where I proposed incentivizing powering up by offering a premium service to all users that have powered up over x amount per month.
As a rough example;
Power up over 1000 STEEM per month and you would receive benefits such as being able to renew your posts, either once a day or once per post. This means you could press a button and your post would return to the top of the new list as if you just posted it, because retaining visibility is difficult. I feel people would really love to have this advantage.
Adding up to seven tags per post.
There were more but, I don't recall them now as I have not really woken up properly yet.
The point is that those who have powered up over said amount per month have a little advantage as a reward for investing in the platform and in STEEM.
I feel that this would encourage users to not only power up their liquid STEEM into SP, but some would also be buying up STEEM on the market place so as to reach the target and ensure they also got the premium service in the following month.
You could also have a Get premium service insantly option where a user wouldn't have to waste till next month if they had $50 SBD or something, which would help to reduce some of the debt.
This is just a working concept, as I haven't gave it as much thought as I should have. But, I think that the answer to quicker SP redistribution, to increasing STEEM power holdings, to increasing demand for STEEM, and to raising the value of STEEM, is giving people a reason to power up.. Because the current prospect of being able to maybe give someone a reward of 1 cent after powering up for months is not really a good one at all.
So there are some differences between @snowflake's original proposal and the one in my post. One of the main ones is that whales would still get to keep 100 MV worth of SP to upvote posts as a 'regular' user. Basically it would just cap the amount of rewards that they could give out, so that whales and large dolphins are on the same footing.
The major difference is that the whales would also have the ability to moderate, and they would be getting a somewhat significant 'moderator reward' as an incentive to keep their moderator status as opposed to splitting up into a bunch of little accounts.
This is not mutually exclusive with the idea being proposed here. There is nothing saying that both could not be done.
I'm not a huge fan of the idea by itself, because IMO I don't think the incentives are high enough to encourage a large scale of users to power up huge amounts of SP. If all they get is a few small perks, they will just power up the minimum amount to get the perks, and then after they have the perks they might as well power it back down as soon as they get a chance.
I would see benefit to this also being implemented by requiring a certain level of SP to receive (and keep) certain benefits once they reach a certain amount of SP, or by providing more benefits to burning SBD.
Yes, that could be even better. As I said, it's not something I have given a huge amount of thought but if you can improve upon the idea so quickly then I am curious to see how well it could be refined with more brains and more thoughts.
I just feel that incentizing power ups should be the main priority, because doing so will get rid of most of the other problems we see on the platform.
More vest = less selling pressure, Incentive = higher demand. The two combined = quickly rising price of STEEM. This would naturally increase a dolphin and minnows influence in regards to rewards.
If you're able to give a penny now, how much will you be able to give should STEEM go back up to 4 dollars? A few times I have been able to click upvote and see a penny appear. I removed the upvote and did it again just to be sure it was my vote that did it.
I know this only happened because it was right below the penny mark, making mine appear to be giving the entire penny.. But, nonetheless it's a surprisingly satisfying feeling just to see that after having a completely ineffective vote.
I think if the price of STEEM is increased through this sort of thing, then even minnows will be able to give cents here and there, and dolphins dollars, and this will inspire people to want to be able to see their votes reward even more- leading to more powering up.
I just think it's something worth discussing further. I definitely like your idea too, as long as the goal is not too difficult to achieve, because then it will do wonders to keep new users on the platforms.
Might be best to have bronze, silver, gold, platinum and graphene level users, determined by how much has been directly powered up, not by STEEM power earned through posting. Then people will always have something to work towards, and a new perk once it is achieved.
A lot of thought is being put in behind the scenes on different ways to introduce 'gamification' and incentivize investment/power ups.
Agreed.
I am 99% sure that price of STEEM has a linear effect on the amount of your payouts. If I am giving out a penny today and the price of STEEM went back to $4.00, I would likely give out 26 cents per upvote. (This also changes based on the other voters that are voting too due to the n^2 algorithm.)
I'm in support.
Well I am excited to see what will happen in the next few months then.
And yes, I assumed it would be linear, I was just too lazy to do the maths. thanks for doing ti for me.
the next few months is probably a bit overly optimistic as far as the timeline, but yes I am excited for these types of changes as well :)
Just wanted to clarify. In my proposal the inflation that is currently allocated to 'users' would also get removed. Only moderators would receive inflation in proportion to their SP. This means that the more moderators accounts were to become 'users' accounts, the more inflation moderators would receive. It's an added incentive for moderators to stay moderators.
Yes.
As the votes for my work trickle in, I pay attention to the names. I want to be able to work my way up, as I've been doing since day one. As I climb the ranks and pass those who have supported me, I want to be able to give back some day, so they too can climb.
Say you vote for me. Seeing me become successful is an investment in yourself because there's a strong chance you will receive a vote in return(especially if we're building bonds and friendships, socializing, working together as a team towards a common goal). As it stands, I'm at nearly twenty percent of this limit of 100MV. Once I get there, I can no longer help the people who helped me. I don't like this idea at all.
Where's my incentive to climb the ranks? If it becomes my job to go around looking for things that aren't worthwhile so I can give it a down vote, when will I get a chance to look for the things I enjoy... and how can I show my appreciation?
Those whales are already viewed as negative by a growing populace of those who want to get to the top by skipping every step in the middle. Imagine how much hate they will receive when the only opportunity for the whale to interact is to place a negative impact on those who may wish to climb.
I'd like to work my way up so I can leave a lasting positive impact on those who have been there for me.
I see an entire set of new problems if those looking out for each other have to go around downvoting people just so the others who they'd prefer be rewarded can succeed. I'm not saying I'd be dishonest bastard like that, but let's be honest and look around at society and use that as our template.
Once you are about to become a moderator you can just use a different account and start to build up again with this one, you will be able to upvote with the other too. It's totally up to you if you want to be a moderator or a user.
You could use multiple accounts and you would accumulate more voting power in each one so essentially you would be climbing the rank.
The 100 MV limit is also not set in stone, when it is becoming common for many people to have more than $8000 in their social media wallet then the 100MV limit can be raised. But today they are only 0.2 % of users who have this amount in their wallet.
It won't be the only way to interact, whales can have smaller accounts too and upvote things they like. Nobody will be forced to be a moderator or a user, both gives different benefits, you can chose to be whatever you want.
Moderators won't be able to allocate reward to a specific user, so they won't downvote because they "prefer" they will downvote because they think the content is not worth the payout.
unless they downvote everyone else.
This wouldn't work as the content that didn't get downvoted by the whale would get downvoted by other moderators which would make the whale downvote moot.
We've seen this situation play out many times on steemit, where a whale upvote content and another whale that disagree with high payout would downvote to reduce rewards.
The scenario you describe would only be possible if whales would coordinate the attack and that there was more bad whales than good whales in the system.
What's the point to any of this if I can simply get around it by opening multiple accounts. If I have 10 accounts all sitting at 100MV, that essentially makes me ONE person with 1000MV worth of voting power to play with. Nothing changes. Instead of a user getting one vote, they get ten.
That's why the formula is key. It must be a more complicated formula. Either polynomial ending in exponential or ending in asymptote at the dolphin level.
If I sign on to Facebook... do I need one account to enjoy status messages and another account to argue under news feeds?
This was asked in the question above, but if you want to use your 1000 MV for influence, you can split it into 10 accounts. (One of the proposed changes in the upcoming HF will actually let you delegate the voting power to the other accounts without even having to transfer it.)
If you are using your SP for influence though, then you will not be collecting 'moderator' awards. You would basically be giving up a large chunk of money in order to have that extra influence.
unless youre using it to vote for sock puppets. And since you split up your account into a bunch of different accounts to beat the moderator status, you probably have a bunch of them
People could do that, yes. But they would be sacrificing a big chunk of cash (moderator rewards) in order to have the additional voting power. There would be no more curation rewards, so the only incentive to do that is the ability to upvote more posts (presumably your own).
To oversimplify it - there are two scenarios of this:
The other thing to keep in mind is that there are really only 50 users who have enough SP to create more than 10 'user' accounts. The ability/risk of abuse on a massive scale is not that big.
Even if there is some abuse of this to some extent (which there probably would be) - I think the net effect of the dolphin/minnow users having more say in the voting process would be a net plus.
I'm sure the experts will come to a logical conclusion. I've noticed though, those with a passion to create and drive to succeed do just that here. I've witnessed a few lackluster performers want the same success. This is life. I was in management for many years. I suppose I could get used to being paid to evaluate again, as long as pay was worth it. I have to run @timcliff. Good talk.
Ok, ttyl. Same to you!
Well, to me, it just seems like unnecessary micromanaging and a ploy to take the power away from those who've earned it by paying them off. I don't mean to sound negative or criticize. I could be missing something. It is late and I'm not feeling a clear head at the moment. I am the type to just go with the flow though...so whatever happens, happens.
I mentioned it in reply to @snowflake's post, but I am only in support of the idea if there is backing from the major stakeholders.
If the platform is successful though and attracts millions of users who get actively engaged in the platform and excited about "leveling up" - the large stakeholders (and the rest of us) should all be very happy about that.
I think this change has a real possibility to spark that level of interest and engagement.
You pay someone 10 bucks to flip burgers, they'll want 15. You pay them 15, they'll want 20.
I don't disagree, but there are a lot of differences between that and what we are talking about here.
You won't receive any financial benefits for having all these users accounts. If you were to put your stake in a 'moderator account' you would earn some steem in proportion to your SP and so you would "climb" as you said faster than if you were just a user.
Being a user allows you to give reward, being a moderator allows you to earn reward. It's up to you to decide which you prefer, you can have both in fact.
Note that if you upvote crap content you will likely waste your voting power as you will be moderated by a whale.
potentially to yourself
Which is no different than the current system.
Too many holes. Give more power to new users means more users creating ten accounts and voting for themselves. If half the place is here to downvote and the other half is here to upvote, that's a great way to create animosity. That could lead to terrible side effects and more fighting. I'm not being hostile here, by the way. Some I can agree with, but I see an entirely new set of problems coming from a change such as this and feel it requires a thorough examination. I really must be off though. Have a good day.
Also, your incentive to climb the ranks would be that you could actually influence rewards. The more SP you had, the more your vote would be worth. 100 MV would basically put you at the status of the highest whale, and you would have a large say over what got rewarded. Anything beyond 100 MV would give you additional 'moderator' rewards.
I did make an edit to the post though to account for users who want to use their first 100 MV of SP to remain a 'regular' user.
It could be setup so that everybody's first 100 MV was their 'user' account, and anything beyond that would be a separate moderator account.
The main idea behind the moderators is that as the primary stakeholders, they would have the ultimate say on the rewards. [Edit] Whales can already do this today, the main difference is that they would no longer be able to have as big of a postive influence on handing out rewards. (More power would be given to the rest of the community.)
there are three possibilities:
3.A hybrid outcome -- good whales will exercise restraint in using their downvotes, and only be involved to a limited extent. Bad whales will take advantage of the system to their financial b enefit.
None of these possible outcomes is positive
I replied to the sock-puppet abuse part in the other comment.
Regarding the downvotes, yes - there always will be a stigma associated with this.
There are really two separate issues:
The proposed solution does not address the second issue. It arguably will make it worse, since there probably will be more downvoting. I guess whether or not this gets significantly worse depends on how much perceived abuse there is, and how actively the moderators are dealing with it.
I proposed that downvotes are called moderator vote because that's essentially what they are.
All of these moderator votes would be hidden from the interface, the average user would have no idea what's going on behind the scene.
I'm oldschool. If you want something, you work for it (that doesn't mean slave away swinging a hammer). If there's something positive at the top of the tree, I'll climb the tree so I can have it. Sure, I could just cut the tree down, problem solved. Then the tree dies and there's nothing else for anyone to climb.
I started out with the same amount of SP as anyone else who didn't buy in. My vote was worth the same as all others, every step of the way. It wouldn't feel good to know had I started today, instead of months ago, I'd have far more SP and value in this account five months from now than I do today, if those changes were to go in effect. That's kind of a shot in the arm because I never felt like this place was unfair or required a change. I felt like you had to work up, be patient, and persevere. My vote was weak on day one. The way to change that was to build up the power, so I did, and still want to. It never occurred to me that I could simply change the rules in my favor.
I'm tired and rambling. All apologies.
There is still a ladder to climb. Earning (or buying) 100 MV of Steem Power is still a lot. I've been working very hard here for almost 6 months, and I have 32.3 MV. My vote is worth about a penny.
I'm happy to keep climbing, but I'm weird like that :) I don't think that many mainstream users are going to stick it out for so long just so they can add a penny of rewards.
I think that the reality is that the current ladder is just too steep to incentivize regular users to become an integral part of the platform. If you have to work your tail off for a half year just to have 1 penny of influence, then what's the point?
The platform is still in beta, so now is the time to change things if they need changing.
This formula must change
Either make the climb less exponential or experiment with polynomial that allows a quick rise to 1c then asymptotes at dolphin level
I want to keep climbing too and for some reason I've never met a hill too steep to climb.
I'd suggest, rather than the voting power steadily increasing, once it hits a certain plateau, the steady increase becomes more gradual until the whale's vote hits a "maximum".
The problem with a gradual taper is it creates a clear incentive for people to create multiple accounts.
You'll still have your hill :) You just have a point to reach where you will be at the 'top'. You will also get a lot more reward for actually getting there.
Try to look at it from the perspective of a mainstream users. I know you and I don't have a big issue with putting in a ton of work for very small incremental gain, but it is a big turn-off to the platform for the majority of users.
Have you considered that a whale could have many many 100mv or less account ? How do we draw the line at 100mv ?
Not sure what's the problem anyway.
Yes, if they wanted to they could. They would not be paid the "moderator" rewards if they split their SP like this though, since these would only be paid out to accounts with > 100 SP. The idea is that the moderators would be incentivized to be moderators.
The line would be drawn at the blockchain level. It would require a HF. 100 MV is an arbitrary number. It could be made higher or lower depending on what people feel is the right threshold. That is one of the parts that would need to be sorted out if this were to be implemented.
Not everyone is a content creator. The proposal to eliminate the curation rewards would remove the incentive to "curate" (vote) on content. Only investors with enough spare cash could afford to buy enough SP to become moderators.
Am I missing something? Were is the incentive for content consumers? Just the satisfaction that you will be contributing to someone else's payout?
It's a good point. It is definitely important to consider. The reality is though with the current system, earning curation rewards is not worthwhile unless you have a lot of SP to work with. I have around 15,000 SP and I usually get about 3-5 SP per week from curating. (I'm not a great curator - but the point is the returns are very low.) A good curator with my amount SP could probably earn 30-50 per week.
i dont think its fair to the whales.
they bought into the platform on some rules and now its not legit to change their influence in the middle.
hell i even think it wouldnt be fair to single user who bought STEEM on the initial rules unless he accepts it of course.
I've said it in a few other places, but I would not support the change unless it had support / buy-in from a majority of the whales.
The hope is that they would see that making the change would benefit the platform to the extent that their investment would go up. (Hopefully way up :) )
I think this is an interesting approach but it has one serious flaw...Steemit is supposed to be a decentralized social media platform. When we start giving certain powers to certain people then it becomes easily abused. I feel like Steemit could be self moderating. It mostly is now but I think there are a few key issues that tend to muck up the flow here on Steemit, but this just my opinion.
Anyway, that's just my thought...back to my hole, lol.
Thanks for your thoughts :)
I think we can make this system simply by using a polynomial instead of an exponential function
The first peak is around 1c of influence which would occur at a $400 stake or so. Then influence flatlines until $5000 or so and starts going up expentially again.
This
Another way might be a voting algorithm that reaches an asymptote at dolphin level. Maybe at $5000 or so. Sobvotes offer that are linear not exponential.
The key is the rewards formula. It must be tweaked.
Let's try to apply this model to Facebook. How many moderators we'll need to deal with 40.000 posts per minute ?
The same problem exists with today's version of the system. The proposed change doesn't really make that particular issue any worse. [Edit] (at least that I'm aware of - if there is something I'm missing, please elaborate.)
Well, even if it doesn't make it worse I still fail to see how it's making it any better.
However it looks to me that now just a few dozen whales are really able to abuse the system and they are capable to moderate each other. With proposed changes more regular users would get the opportunity to abuse the system - with the same numbers of moderators to take care.
That's a good point against having only the mods have downvote power. If any user could downvote, then the community could moderate itself except in extreme situations where the actual mods had to step in. Thanks for the input!!!
It's an interesting idea.
As a bit of a non-technical person (trying not to be a luddite), could you give we non-technical, but very supportive of steemit people a picture of how this would look? Take an average day, an average amount of posts, the average number of votes now etc etc. Then take the whole steem generation from the blockchain and show how the distribution makes for a better steemit. As it stands the whole scenario is filled with miscomprehension from the likes of me and my suggestions the other day to increase transparency met with one response - an affirmation as to how I phrased two suggestions. Not one answer!
@timcliff, you know that I have every trust in you as a witness and so forth. We, the 'social media' side of steemit, need explanations owing to (well, my) paucity of knowledge. The fact that you have about $5 for this post and over $7 for a comment ... either of those results would float my boat. That is not a criticism of you, as you well know, it is a miscomprehension as to why there are votes for admin issues and not for social media posts, barring a few exceptions. May I acknowledge the kind attentions of @blocktrades?
I also acknowledge that in many ways this is absolutely none of my business! I think, though, that if the platform says it is transparent, not being so is to lay itself open.
Hi @ebryans - it is actually a fairly complicated calculation, so I am going to 'make up numbers' to give you a rough idea.
With the current platform - if you get a lot of upvotes from minnows/dolphins, your posts are probably still worth < $1.00. But if you are one of the 'lucky ones' to be blessed with a whale vote that day, then your post will shoot up to $15-$30. If you get multiple whale votes, then it goes much higher.
With the new proposal - if you got upvotes from a bunch of dolphins, your post would probably be in the $5-10 range. More dolphins would increase it into the $10-20 range. Tons of dolphins, and it would go even higher than that.
The main difference is that there would be no more "huge whale votes". If someone like @blocktrades came along and upvoted your post - it would be using a maximum of 100 MV SP, so it would esentially have the same impact as a large dolphin voting on it.
One key to keep in mind, is the amount of rewards that would get paid out would remain the same. The only difference is the whales would have less say in who got what, and the dolphins (and to some extent even minnows) would have more.
....
As far as my post/comment rewards - I've spent my entire Saturday on this project and I also spent $20 SBD of my own money to promote my post. So the fact that the community is valuing it and voting on it to add to my rewards is good in my opinion :)
No criticism intended my friend - your work and contribution to steemit is not in dispute whatsoever - you deserve a lot more, hence why I promote you as I do! The point is understanding the distribution. I do believe that you know that, as my word has always been my bond. Having said that, I do understand you very well indeed! Spending many hours on delving for truth and solutions with scant reward to show for it can be a little soul-destroying.
My caveat would be that I put steemit on Page 1 of Google. It is still there on page 2 three weeks later so people are reading it, though they have no vote! The power within steemit does not value content. It values the Game Theory.
So, why not show the value of every account holders 100% vote? That is not that hard to do - they have to be available, otherwise the system could not function.
So, the picture can be painted - let's throw in $10,000 of steem per day (for illustration purposes). Where does it go now and where would it go in the revised system? Throw in 750 posts, from 600 authors. Distribute the votes such as the equation makes sense. Then show two variations to expose the pros and cons and then it is there for all to see. The daily usage of steemit over a period of one month has patterns.
I studied statistics - I wish IT was thrown in but computers had not been invented (personal computers!) when I was at school! - There will be lines of regression and degrees of probability. The algorithms may be complex but the way in which steem is distributed is not. Receive a vote of 'x' value and then another. They all tot up and a % goes to the author a % goes to the curator group and a % goes to witnesses and then there is the other ...
It is a complicated question, but it would likely give more authors medium sized rewards instead of as many giant ones, and lots of tiny ones.
Great! ~Let's have it! The better authors will win out. The dross will have to sharpen up their act. When do we get value alongside Reputation?
Right now reputation is not "consensus" based. What that means is it is not validated by the witnesses as part of block verification. So using it in its current form for any type of actual rewards is open to abuse.
There is some talk about making a consensus based reputation system, but is still just in 'discussion' phase.
Putting a value of vote next to a username would mean a lot more anyway! Get rid of the reputation score and put in the vote value - then it is all clear, surely?
Maybe to avert the embarassment of the whales, just give a rep score until a username's vote is worth $0.01. I know why you are reluctant to answer this but it is what transparency means. Don't cave in. The exponential curve needs to be understood by people other than just me!
It isn't that simple. The amount that your vote adds to the total is not a fixed amount. It changes as other voters vote on the post as well, and it also changes as other posts on the platform get upvoted/downvoted throughout the day.
Then display yesterday's vote value. I am aware that vote value changes as I watch the value of any decent payout dwindle as the day goes on. The reputation score clearly is not a working entity. Maybe a range value - $0.01-0.0125 - or give the vote value based upon the previous 7 days on steemit - yes, there will be funnies if someone has been away - then you use a median.
Transparency is being averted if there is no explanation. At present, there is no explanation on a "transparency" promise. You know that I know!
The current reputation system is a temporary thing. It was not intended to be the final implementation.
It is more than just dwindling. How much your vote adds is actually a very complicated calculation, and it is dependent on a lot of things at the time the vote is cast, as well as what happens to the post for the remaining time until it closes. There isn't a fixed amount for how much it is worth.
This site should show you what you are interested in:
https://steemstats.com/