A Week as Steemhunt Mod: Observations - A Rant about “Milking It”

Steemhunt is one of the apps on Steem I’ve been following ever since first announced. Contrarily to several other apps, I didn’t write about steemhunt’s first post or launch, although I did mention the project at least once in a steem related post. And, of course, I resteemed @steemhunt’s first ever post. Those who follow me may even have seen the odd resteem from hunts I’ve submitted from my alt to Steemhunt over the last few months.

If I didn’t write about Steemhunt specifically so far yet, there was a reason for that. Ever since the product was first teased, and also posted to the SMT Telegram group, I have kept an eye on the evolution of the platform and also had the chance to talk with the team within hours after their first post. I’ve seen Steemhunt grow, pretty much like a distant nephew. A nephew which eventually moved closer and last week, some days after Steemhunt announced the largest yet Airdrop on the Steem blockchain, I was lucky enough to have been selected as a mod and became one of the Steemians, hunters approving submitted hunts.

What is Steemhunt

TL;DR: Steemhunt is an alternative platform to the popular ProductHunt site, but on the Steem blockchain.

101: Users can hunt awesome (tech) products and submit them to Steemhunt. Approved hunts receive an upvote at the end of the day (Korean timezone), according to ranking (reverse exponential).

At Steemhunt we mostly look for tech products, gadgets, games, connected items, apps, and web apps. Basically pretty much anything which has chips inside or operates on servers.

Steem Will Be Steem and Milkers are Gonna Milk

Before we started the moderation process, both Steemhunt founders approved each hunt themselves. The team was small but strong enough to deal with the daily amount of submissions and manually approve them. Steemhunt didn’t have much SP, but sufficient to live and grow, and thus the number of daily hunts was fairly limited.

After the airdrop announcement, over night 250k delegated SP was added, with every day more incoming, and I bet you can guess what that meant.

If there’s a free upvote to be had, it will be milked. Quality be darned, an upvote is an upvote. Queue the first genuine $hithunts.

Most likely we didn’t see the first $hithunts, but their frequency definitely increased. I cot kid you not.

Next came the bots.

As Steemhunt’s SP had passed the 250k SP cap, something new happened and we started seeing the top ranking votes rake it numbers never seen before. $15 for P7, $25 for P2, $35 for Top Spot on days. Steemhunt being on Steem, and with an upvote between $35-$55 for the top ranking spots, there was no doubt that the game would be gamed and the bots, the upgoats, and the smartmarket split votes came and locked out the top spots.

Because that’s what happens on Steem.

And you bet that you will find even Steemians who will call that positive for the economy, for Steem’s minnows and middle class and even for social vertical mobility. Right.

Yeah, right. yawns

But I digress. There we were as mods, powerless. Caught in the middle between needing to accept poor quality hunts because of user growth, needing to see the daily rankings locked because of greed, and pretty much... well we are rewarded and I would be lying if I said I hadn’t discovered awesome new products too. Because end of the day, that’s what Steemhunt is about.

Would I ever have considered a Darth Vader shower hose without Steemhunt? Nah. And pretty sure @howtostartablog wouldn’t have posted about it either without Steemhunt existing.

Mission accomplished.

Hold on there, Tiger! Not so fast!!!

Mission NOT accomplished. Not yet.

The Steemhunt community is extremely lucky to have two dedicated and super-committed, as well as agile, founders in @project7 and @tabris.

For a week now, and maybe also the days leading up to the mods selection, we as moderation team and the community have pretty much drowned them with suggestions, requests, and whatnots all while they are developing the wallet required for the Airdrop, the process to distribute Airdrop tokens and... a new ranking system.

But first of all, they had to knock out a moderation interface because they didn’t expect the immediate influx in submissions and thus the need to already get started with a moderation crew.

No problem, this is the Steemhunt team. Two days later: mods announced and mods workflow and UI integrated. #BOOM

#tothemoon

Things didn’t stop there. As the bots game stepped up (congrats, bots operators - thanks for nothing!), so did the Steemhunt team. We, dutiful mods we all are, we just kept approving hunts - and rejecting always more $hithunts while we were at it. Frustration surely led to stricter posting guidelines, and a slightly stricter attitude from our end as well.

Luckily, because after @freedom had sent a delegation to Steemhunt, and a post about the change in submissions and payouts - #tothemoon - the unexpected - but dreamt of - happened and @mrdelegation sent another 1m SP. #BOOM

The Game is On

Now, with a 100% upvote above $200 we are talking a whole new different game, of course.

Obviously, we all know what that means: the bid bot users are going to lock out the Top 20 Steemhunt is going to exclude bidbot powered hunts (sorry, not sorry, bot operators). #BOOM

I know what you’re thinking now: “Easy peasy, you smartasses. I’m just going to submit my upgoats and smartmarket purchase from another account.”

Fair enough.

Be our guest, we are fully aware that we can not prevent all abuse and that shouldn’t be our focus either. The exclusion of bidbot powered hunts is only a temporary solution.

Is it a bird? It’s a smart mouse!

Pre-introducing Account Based Voting

As things stand now, it is highly likely that Steemhunt will be the first Steem-based platform to introduce a form of Account Based Voting, which combined with some added Magic Sauce will henceforth power our rankings. #BOOM

Still not foolproof, I hear you.

That’s right. But you bet your sweet bottoms that we will monitor how things are played and just like in these 10 days since the announcement of the Steemhunt Airdrop, we will respond in an agile way and try to constantly design and maintain a system which minimizes abuse.

If your 357 gazillion alts will all submit 3 hunts, thanks for the awesome hunts! But don’t think we won’t spot the upvoting patterns and change our rules to possible 3 hunts in the last 30 days. Maybe 10 hunts/30 days. You play... we also play that same game. ;)

The Next Threat

The Steemhunt founders are absolutely community focused. The upvoting bot does not only reward submitted (and approved) hunts but also what we call pro/con comments. Everybody who leaves a pro/con comment can benefit an upvote.

With a bot with high SP we all know what that means on Steem, right? Milkers gonna Milk It!

But fear not, hunters. We’ve spotted it already and comments were talked about even before the awesome new freedom and mrdelegation delegations. Meaning: we’re keeping an eye on you and also for the comments a new system will be designed. A system which minimizes abuse options.

Check Out Steemhunt

Of course, at this point, I’m nothing but an absolutely biased shill but y’all should go check out Steemhunt. Maybe even hunt a cool product. Yes, you can even submit smoker grills... as long as they’re connected (CC: @ThaBiggDogg), the latest crypto based RPG card game, or a privacy focused mobile browser or the latest disgrace to society gadget you totally didn’t know you needed

What are you waiting for? Go! NOW!!!

We have to catch bidbot users and keep gossiping about $hithunters improving the review methods, and our founders have to keep designing starters system designs. I can’t stay here and write even more!

Go.check.Steemhunt.out.now.

PS: If you like a manually curated update of daily hunts, follow @teamhumble. He compiles a daily vlog in which he selects his personal top 10 of the day.