Announcing My Own Steemit Experiment: The "FuckUp Files" Series
My last two posts were set up as "Decline Payout", which means I didn't participate in any way in the reward pool. I asked my readers to just send me Steem or SBD if they find the content useful, out of their own pockets. Here are the results:
| Post | Potential rewards from the pool | Rewards form followers |
|---|---|---|
| Steemit and the "Crab Mentality" | $9 | 3SBD/10Steem |
| 30 Days into Intermittent Fasting - First Conclusions | $9 | 3.15SBD/16.79 Steem |
If you do the math, you'll see that this is almost the exact amount I would receive if I would take rewards from the reward pool. You should take out whatever I give to curators, obviously. This is very interesting and it motivated me to start my own experiment.
By the way, I sent back to all contributors whatever they sent me + 10% premium. My experiment is based on the fact that "giving is receiving". You can test all this by looking on the blockchain, it's all there.
Motivation
Whatever money we generate right now in Steemit by upvoting or receiving votes is coming from the reward pool. This reward pool literally "mints" or "prints" around 43000 tokens every day (there is more than that, but that's the part the goes to the reward pool after witnesses are getting their cut).
This money doesn't technically belong to anybody, until a certain time window passes. The first time window is 24 hours, and the second is 30 days. At the end of these time windows, whatever was generated by the votes and their corresponding influence, is deposited into the beneficiary wallet.
The problem with this "money for nothing and the chicks for free" approach is that every action to direct money to a certain post is subject to a counter-action. It's the (in)famous flagging which drove people away constantly during the last 2 months. I won't go into details about why this started, I think this is irrelevant now, and there's already a lot of ink on this topic.
My understanding is that if people will put "some skin in the game" by actually giving some money from their own pocket, things will look very differently. Why?
Well, first of all, this action shouldn't be opposable by a downvote. If the money I send is mine, then you can't play with it, the same way you play with money which doesn't have an owner yet.
Second, this will shift the actions from "influence" to "stake". Having a certain amount of SP accounts for having influence, but unless you actually use or give away some of your accumulated value, we can't talk about a stake. Influence is passive and amounts to the number of "shares" (or, simpler, Steem Power) you bought / generated, while stake should be -at least in my opinion - active, meaning it should actively participate in the game, by being transferred from one owner to another. Stake is actually stake only when it moves and it should influence whatever we have in a reward pool only when it's active.
There are many situations in which people who accumulated large amounts of influence are driving "nobody's money" from the reward pool in arbitrary ways, which have no link whatsoever with the perceived quality of the content, nor with what a majority of people (with much less influence, but with some stake) decides.
I already sketched my proposal for an improvement of the voting mechanism in Steemit back when I was still a witness (which I'm not anymore, since I don't want to support the platform in its current state). You can read the initial proposal here. I am actively working on a refined and revised version of this, which will solve many - if not all - of the initial problems.
So this experiment aims at understanding if my approach is correct in regard with the modifications to that proposal. At the end of the experiment I will publish my conclusions and the revised proposal.
Methodology
The experiment will last for 30 days, starting now. It will include 12 posts, on the following dates:
- Announcement - March 21st (this one, obviously)
- The Fuckup Files - Episode One - March 24th
- The Fuckup Files - Episode Two - March 27th
- The Fuckup Files - Episode Three - March 30th
- The Fuckup Files - Episode Four - April 2nd
- The Fuckup Files - Episode Five - April 5th
- The Fuckup Files - Episode Six - April 8th
- The Fuckup Files - Episode Seven - April 11th
- The Fuckup Files - Episode Eight - April 14th
- The Fuckup Files - Episode Nine - April 17th
- The Fuckup Files - Episode Ten - April 20th
- The Experiment Conclusions and The Revised YAVAP Rules - April 23rd
The topic of all these posts will be related to entrepreneurial mistakes. I've been willing for a long time to do a series on that, not only because I have a very rich history of blunders myself, but also because there is this penchant towards "smiling, successful entrepreneurs who are just getting it", which I think it's very toxic. Before becoming famous each and every successful entrepreneur made quite a few mistakes, some of them very, very relevant. It's true that the successful ones had the ability to learn from them.
So, I think this topic, on this exact moment in time when Steemit / Steem looks to be on the verge of a significant blunder itself, seems very appropriate.
All the posts will be set up as "Decline Payout" and I will only take direct payments from readers, either Steem or SBD. Money will be sent voluntarily, only if people like the post or if they think it was useful and it will represent only what they want to give away. Each post will have a specific memo key, so I can track the payments.
At the end of the 24ish time window, I will keep 20% of all the proceedings and then I will redistribute all the rewards equally to all contributors.
So, if I had 7 contributors, with a total of 10 SBD, I will keep 2 SBD and the rest of the 8 SBD will be redistributed to all the 7 contributors, who will receive each 1.14 SBD.
The minimum amount will be 1SBD or 10 Steem. This will prevent people who want to trick the system by sending 0.001 Steem to participate in the redistribution of the remaining 80% (see below the paragraph about the potential "unfairness" of the redistribution process).
As you can see, I'm designing some sort of a manual reward pool here, only there are no downvotes involved. Just the willing to give, which will translate in receiving.
Some may objectify that if one contributor pays 5SBD and another one just 1SBD, the second one will have an advantage when the money is redistributed. This is true and it's by design. I'm interested more in testing the willingness of contributing in a deterministic way, as opposed to the completely non-deterministic way we have right now, even if the redistribution may seem "unfair". The final proposal of YAVAP will not follow these lines, by the way, it will be different.
Measurement
I will make a report each day containing money received and money redistributed.
At the end of the experiment I will measure:
- total amount of money transferred in this experiment
- total number of contributors
- total number of contributors for each post
- average amount per post, average contributors per post
- trends (up or down)
- average redistribution per contributor
Based on these metrics I will decide if the revised proposal for YAVAP will make sense. I will publish the proposal even if the results will indicate it won't be a reliable path, just for the sake of transparency.
So, if you like the experiment, if you think it will bring value, you can start participating in it right now, by sending me Steem or SBD using the following memo: "fuckup files announcement". All Steem and SBD will be used according to the rules: I will retain 20% for myself and the rest I will redistribute equally among all contributors.
To quote another famous experimenter on Steemit: "let's see how this will play out".
I'm a serial entrepreneur, blogger and ultrarunner. You can find me mainly on my blog at Dragos Roua where I write about productivity, business, relationships and running. Here on Steemit you may stay updated by following me @dragosroua.
Great Experiment. Just send you some SBD for support!
BTW, I appreciate it sooo much that you decided to stay active on Steemit, and now even trying this experiment after your decision to stop as a witness regarding all the flagging. BTW, I was in favour of that Experiment too, but I do understand your position, and indeed, I'm in general against flagging, since it shall be used only for things as plagiarising. Added to that, I think Steemit rewarding needs more balance, and changing the system to a tipping system may just do that. The generate funds can then be distributed to us as kind of interest, or help newbies with a larger start capital or used for marketing of Steemit in order to get more members on board, or whatever we jointly can agree to :)
Update: @dragosroua I unfortunately did not include the note given by you in the post in the transfer memo when transferring some SBD to you earlier today, I used this phrase instead "Supporting you Experiment!". I hope you can still count my gift and I as valid participation in your experiment. Sorry for the inconvenience me error in memo may cause you.
@dragosroua Thanks you for the Steem / SBD!
I think you need to come up with a different word than stake. The reason why we can talk about accumulated value (SP) as stake is because each of us who have Steem invested in the blockchain (SP) has money (though it's crypto) at stake by virtue of it being bound up in the entire venture. In this sense SP is like shares.
We get more shares and payment (SD and liquid Steem) given to us by the venture, allocated according to the activity of everyone, though weighted by others' stake. We each of us have skin in the game simply by having invested Steem (SP). If we take it out of the blockchain, we can the use it as we wish independently, selling it for other cryptos, in exchange for goods or services, whatever.
The game we do not have skin in is the game of allocating newly mined Steem. I know this is what you're talking about, but you're conflating that with the idea of stake in the blockchain in general.
In the voting / allocation game, there is no skin in directly, it's a free vote (voting power is restored over time, so doesn't count as skin). The only skin we have in the game here is our reputation, both the quantitive amount and simply the our perception in the eyes of other users. Perhaps this risk should be increased and more direct, I'd probably support such an idea if it was well thought out. But to say we do not have stake already is simply false.
On your post and idea, it's an interesting experiment, looking forward to see how it plays out! I'll participate with this one. Disagreeing is not a negative outcome 😉
Also this is an important statement, thank you:
So now I get it. I was getting hung up on the word "stake" because we do have a stake. If we vote well, our holdings get more valuable. If we vote badly, our holdings lose value. Beyond that, we also have a stake in the form of desired curation rewards.
What we don't have is an immediate/direct penalty for voting badly. Privatized profits and socialized losses. So (thinking out loud) how 'bout just applying a tiny fee (in an N2 curve based on a percentage of RSHARES voted - subject to revision according to the influence curve) and adding the fees into the curation rewards pool? Bots and whales would pay more to vote, fees for regular users would be negligible.
I don't have any liquid steem or SBD at the moment, but I'll free some up so I can participate in this experiment for future posts.
Our holdings get more valuable as a result of the price of Steem going up. I'm not very educated in this, but as far as I know there is nothing a single person can do to bring up the price of Steem except "pump" the system by buying lots of coin. The value of the holdings (vested Steem, i.e. SP) is not directly affected by voting.
There are curation rewards for voting "well", by which I mean voting on content in a rewarding way (this may not be "well" in a quality way, but it's subjective anyway), however this does not increase the value of your holdings, but the amount of them.
If you vote "badly" there is no direct loss, just no gain. Since flagging is a vote with negative weight, you could consider this to be voting "badly" but no one can take away your holdings.
Only have time for a quick reply. What I meant by this
Was that if we vote in a way that surfaces content that attracts users, our SP gets more valuable. If we vote in ways that drive users away, then our SP gets less valuable. Not a direct response.
Yes I agree with that, just wanted to clarify direct and indirect consequences. With the indirect it's very complex so there's not a one to one relationship between attracting users and a Steem price increase (take for example whether or not users are retained, etc.), though it is of course very likely to bring up the price.
The whole ethos of steem is not to create penalties for such but let voluntary reactions dictate that, not a system of punishing. Instead of punishing the whole ethos of steem is to reward. The reward has value like @personz pointed out because it's vested in the system and cannot be taken out at a moment's notice to create bubbles or bust and boom cycles.
Thats a tax, and taxes are immoral, you cannot force people to act to altruistic ends through coercion and justify it as a benefit in the long term, its immoral.
Prices are not taxes. Taxes are imposed through coercion by governments. Prices are paid voluntarily. There is already a fee to be able to vote, but its paid by steemit for people who get their accounts that way.
I think there's some truth to what @baah is saying, it does sound like a tax, though it would be good to disentangle it with the implications of government tax. Is there really such a difference between tax and fee in this sense?
Taxes are applied to people in general, but more often they are on some voluntary activity, such as earning income, buying something, etc. You don't have to buy a loaf of bread and thus don't have to pay the VAT on it. But then again you may starve and die if you don't, so the argument is more complicated when taxes are on the basics of survival, and the general, essential operations in one's life.
A fee is more like a cut that a middleman takes on a product or service, or the term that someone providing a first hand service to justify their charges. People getting paid privately to provide something to someone else, beyond the cost of the thing itself.
The reason your proposal would be like a tax is because voting is an essential part of Steem. It's like a fee because it's voluntary. I would oppose it however not on this basis, but because of the probable market effects of disincentivizing people to vote freely and according to whim. We need to stay whimsical 😉
I predict that some people will stop voting entirely if there is any cost to it, to preserve their holdings. Imagine if someone voted "badly" in this scenario and saw a net loss? I think this is what @dragosroua is proposing, and that's what "skin in the game" is - the possibility of loss as a result of an action. I also think that this would institutionalize "good" and "bad" voting, which is definitely what some people want (hey @krnel) but I would oppose strongly. But good and bad here would refer still to the dynamic of the day, which is currently popularity of those with the most SP.
A once off gift from our benevolent leaders is not a operationally a fee on the user and is not equivalent to what you are suggesting which is continued fee / tax paying.
Also you have not addressed how it is counter to the ethos of steem: to reward instead of punishing, PERIOD. No and, if's or buts about it. Punishment is not incentivized, it is left to the community/individuals and rightly so, people should decide "punishments" or repercussions on a strictly voluntary basis, and thus reward right/moral and justifiable behavior. Not addressing that won't make it go away.
The "ethos of steem" is what the community says it is, and it evolves. 8 months ago, downvotes for value were counter to the ethos of steem. Now they're not.
Further, the ability to vote requires an additional amount of steem power above and beyond the account creation fee. A user with an account but no steem power is able to post and comment but not vote. So it is consistent with the ethos of steem to exchange value for voting.
Further, the very existence of an account creation fee proves definitively that fees are not counter to "the ethos of steem." A price is not a punishment, it's an exchange of value for a service.
But you're right that one of steem's big advantages is free transactions, and voting is a blockchain transaction, so it needs more thought than an off the cuff remark in the comments somewhere, which is why I parenthetically noted that I was thinking out loud.
NO!
The ethos of steem is the values it seeks to embody and live up to, like the noble virtues they are immutable and haven't changed at all. The downvotes were built from day one to remove value from the post, be it that it was not expressed in the list of reasons to flag until a few months ago those values have not moved one inch, they have only been reinforced through explicit reasoning.
A new account comes standard with SP, from what I recall when I signed up I had already SP vested in my account at then the value of $4.50. I might not remember this correctly but looking at my account activity I don't see me powering up from liquid steem, and I doubt that they would miss such a simple thing that could be abused to no end.
https://steemdb.com/@baah/powerup
Fees are counter to steem, it says so explicitly in the whitepaper and from every conversation that points out that fees are non existent.
To call it a fee like I said suggest that someone is forking out money when it is in fact NO PERSON, not even STEEMINC that does that, it simply is vested power to begin with, therefore keeping the value of steem in check by limiting the supply and not creating an exploitative loophole by allowing people to transfer that steem out of the system by making such transfer painfully costly in time waited to begin with.
Regardless of the nature of the remark the facts are that applying a fee to a voluntary transaction is a tax, regardless of the counter nature of the idea : rewarding curation and taxing it as well.
Prices is what a thing is worth, yes. Taxes are imposed by individuals through systems, which can happen on steem as well. The fee to be able to vote/account creation is built into the system, yes, how is it paid by steemit and not the whole community, investors and content creators alike, and furthermore the price paid is not an accurate representation of what takes place, the steem paid is vested into the account and not liquid, so it goes back into the system to comply with the function that all commodities gain value through: supply and demand.
Just because the community "pays" for account creation is not a valid reason to impose a tax on people's behavior and redistribute that wealth, just like taxes in the real world. It certainly falls under coercion and calling it a price is disingenuous, it's actually a tax, imposed by the system, seeking to coerce people for voluntary behavior.
Nesting limit. Replying to your subsequent comment.
You are mistaken about how account creation works. If you don't get your account from steemit, you pay your own fee. Steemit only pays the fee and provides a small stake for the accounts that they create. As to your tax definition, the phrases that you conveniently ignored are, "contribution to state revenue" and "levied by the government."
No time to hang around, so that's it for me. Have a nice day.
I used that definition not to "ignore" that verbiage, only to point that it is a synonym for fee, fees and tax are interchangeable in this context, a tax is also a strain, it's also the other sense of the word tax.
I was mistaken, now I know that account creation does cost money, but having read the whitepaper on that topic it's clear why it does cost money and the only precedent sent is to protect against sibyl attacks, not a precedent to charge fees, and least to tax people for voting.
I really like the thought you've put into this and I will participate in this experiment. [edit] Sent 1 SBD now.
expanding on a thought... Having worked in retail I know how much tips mean to servers. Based on my current reputation and average earnings per post I would definitely tailor my voting and tipping to what I could afford. I might even consider the content I'm reading, how much I like them and their community interaction, and tip more...or not at all.
This is how you announce an experiment - you give details and let people opt in.
I'm up for it.
12 STEEM on its way (which is what @dragosroua returned to me for the last post)
Interesting experience. Has sent. Good luck!
Received, thanks!
This is probably the most refreshing post I have read this week!! The idea sounds fascinating. very curious here. I am in.
That was very well thought out and explained. I'm not one who generally understands the technical aspects of things, but this was written in a way that anyone, no matter the left or right leanings of their brains could comprehend.
I have contributed a bit of my own money to steem, about twenty percent of my accounts worth, so I for one have no trouble imagining others doing the same. On one hand it seems that part of the reason they give steem 'for free' is to attract people to come here in a "nothing to lose" type of scenario. However I think most people find the concept of 'free money' as too good to be true, or not ultimately viable, which may explain why the platform has remained small.
One of the things I truly appreciate about this method, is that there would no longer be a time period for payout. I could find something on a person's blog from a month ago that I love and donate to them for it, while at the moment there's barely an incentive to even upvote it.
Definitely supporting your experiment :)
interesting ...
For the sake of experimenting (and the effort involved), I'll donate to this :-)
Looking forward to your results!
Interesting idea! Following you now and sad you are not a witness anymore, I still have some votes to spend. Good luck with the experiment!