No More Curation Rewards and Split STEEM POWER into 2 Options: STEEM POWER and STEEM STAKE
Curation rewards appear to be flawed
Curation rewards have incentivized a large portion of stake to vote in a way that maximizes their own stake at the expense of the platform and content quality (this is assuming that we want to be a social media site for real humans using their actual eyeballs, rather than a social media site for bots and guilds).
STEEM POWER currently has 2 benefits:
- Earns you more STEEM
- Gives you more influence
But what if we gave users the option to choose?
POWER UP and/or STAKE UP
If these were 2 separate options that users could choose between (STEEM POWER and STEEM STAKE), then those who want more financial return would get more STEEM. And those who want more influence over the rewards pool would get more voting power.
All users would have the option to both POWER UP and/or STAKE UP whatever amounts they want. Both STEEM POWER and STEEM STAKE could continue to lock STEEM up for the 3 month period.
In the real world, influence usually costs something, even for the rich. People should have to give up something in order to gain more influence. In this situation, they would be giving up earning more STEEM in order to have more influence over the rewards pool.
The STEEM POWER vs. STEEM STAKE market
The free market would dictate the value of influence vs. stake. The more people "STAKING UP", the cheaper influences gets. And the more people "POWERING UP", the cheaper stake gets.
Example:
If more people put their STEEM into STEEM POWER... then the few who "STAKED UP" would make huge amounts of STEEM, causing a market correction.
If more people put their STEEM into STEEM STAKE... then the few who "POWERED UP" would have a huge amount of influence over the rewards pool, causing a market correction.
The market would eventually decide the value of STAKE vs POWER.
The result:
Those who want more STEEM would earn significantly more than they are earning right now.
Those who want more influence would get significantly more control over the rewards pool than they currently have.
Bots and guilds would begin to play a more minor role.
People who hold STEEM POWER would still be incentivized to vote because they know that they're sacrificing stake for their voting power.
Capping STEEM POWER
Capping STEEM POWER could still be looked at later. I imagine that dodging sybil attack and scaling it would be very complicated... possibly possible... but very complicated.
Disclaimer
This post is just a suggestion to spark more discussion. I also assume that Steemit Inc. and many others have already considered ideas like this... but I haven't personally seen it discussed so I thought I'd throw it out there.
This post was inspired by @snowflake's posts (here and here) and @timcliff's post (here).
Peace,
dan-atstarlite
upvoted for provoking discussion, but IMO this is a bad idea.
Aside from making a whole new currency (sort of) on a platform that already has like 3 more currencies than it ought the problem is that youre making SP less desirable.
We can't get people to buy it when we're offering both sp incentives and influence. Changing it so you can only have one or the other will only make things worse, not better.
People could still POWER UP and STAKE UP 50/50 or what ever percentages they want... so there isn't less incentive. Someone 100% POWERED UP would have a lot more influence over the rewards pool than they currently have... and someone who was 100% STAKED UP would be making a lot more STEEM then they currently do.
Yeah, i get it. Its kind of an inception thing to me.
Being more complicated doesn't necessarily make it better. It just makes it harder to see the problems.
i don't really like the idea, but i can't help but be impressed by the enthusiasm... Even though you didn't do it in a vlog, im still imagining you pitching it.
lol, yeah I have to get back to vlogging but my camera phone dies outside in the cold right now and indoor lighting sucks on iPhone video.
Just because you are perceiving this idea as more complex doesn't mean that's what motivated my thinking. I'm always trying to simplify... aren't we all? I don't think anyone thinks Steemit needs to be more complicated lol. I feel like you're thinking that two things is always more complicated than one thing. Whereas I'm thinking that two very simple things is much more simple than one very complicated thing. - anyways lol I'm just clarifying my intent since you decided to judge it;)
It's an interesting idea. It's very similar to smooth's idea but easier to implement I think. Curation rewards would also be removed right?
Right! No more curation rewards. This way... all the people who are motivated solely by gaining more STEEM, whether they are whales or not... will no longer be controlling the rewards pool. My guess is that this change alone might even make minnow votes count, if they choose to POWER UP over STAKE UP.
One thing though, if the steem power is locked whales wouldn't have enough time to transfer their fund into steem stake to counter a sybil attempt. The proposal would only work if people could transfer between steem power and steem stake instantly.
Your right... the transition would be very tricky and I'm not an expert in the code. Might need to have a transition period of 3 months where STEEM POWER and STEEM STAKE both behave like the current STEEM POWER. That would give people a chance to move their STEEM into their desired account before the accounts start to act differently. Basically, create a second SP account that functions exactly the same for 3 months and then switches to being the SS account once everyone's had a chance to move their funds. - This is just a stab in the dark though... I'm not really sure how to pull it off technically.
Also, I'm not attached to the 3 month lock, but I do think there needs to be some time lock to avoid people switching back and forth really fast... and also for obvious security reason. But it could be like 3 days. Also it could just be called STEEM SAVINGS rather than STEEM STAKE and just replace the current savings option... but I digress.
If this were the case, I wouldn't know what to do. I'd want the influence, but I'd also want the STEEM. Now that I'm thinking about it, I'd probably put it into stake rather than power, so I could have even more influence in the future.
That's the thing... everyone would have to choose what's more important to them. I think most active users would choose to have some of both or lean toward more STEEM POWER. I think most less active users would choose STEEM STAKE, since they wouldn't make any money from just turning their voting power over to a bot or a guild.
I'd probably choose mostly STEEM POWER.
This post has been ranked within the top 80 most undervalued posts in the second half of Feb 14. We estimate that this post is undervalued by $4.90 as compared to a scenario in which every voter had an equal say.
See the full rankings and details in The Daily Tribune: Feb 14 - Part II. You can also read about some of our methodology, data analysis and technical details in our initial post.
If you are the author and would prefer not to receive these comments, simply reply "Stop" to this comment.
upvoted for discussion.