Maybe It's Time To Change The Rewards Algorithm In Steemit? Revisiting YAVAP, A Two Years Old Proposal
Around two years ago, during times of turmoil in Steemit (but when there is NOT turmoil in Steemit, my friends?) I came up with a proposal to replace the current voting algorithm and rewards distribution. The proposal was called YAVAP (Yet Another Voting Algorithm Proposal) and you can read the first version of it here. After experimenting with it a bit and drawing some preliminary conclusions, I came up with an enhancement to it, that you can read here.
If you don't have time to look over the articles, here are the main points:
- each vote reward will include a portion paid from user's funds (from his / her own wallet) - the rest will come from the public rewards pool
- each vote will also include a specific curation reward, based on what the user spends from his / her own pocket, not from what he draws from the rewards pool
- there will be an extra parameter regulating the ratio between user's funds and rewards pool amount, similar to difficulty in mining, and this will be a consensus variable, meaning witnesses will adjust it by vote
Needless to say that nothing happened as a result of this proposal. I don't expect that all my proposals get noticed, let aside taken into account and implemented. I just state the obvious, that the voting algorithm remained the same for almost 2 years in Steemit.
Now, what happened outside Steemit during the last two years?
A lot, obviously. Steemit is not the only crypto-based social media platform, and I'm not talking about other forks of Steemit. There are alternatives being built on EOS and also experiments with UBI using tokens on the OMNI protocol, to mention just a couple.
I will just bring to discussion HyperSpace, the one playing with UBI. Surprisingly - or not - the rewards algorithm in HS is based almost entirely on people spending money out of their own pockets. There is also a curation reward, which is spread over an entire community of participants (or a space, how it's called there). But the main point is that when you reward someone else, you do it out of your own pocket.
I stressed this a lot in my proposal and I will stress it again: if you don't have skin in the game, you're not accountable. And any game that can be played without putting skin into it is flawed. I'm not using the term "scam", but it's a flawed, imbalanced game, if you can play it with an imbalanced risk /reward ratio. And the fact that in Steemit we draw from a formless reward pool and not from any of our own' funds, makes the risk / reward balance very imbalanced.
Maybe it's time to look around and realize where pride, ego boosting and stubbornness brought us. Maybe we will think a little clearer if we at lest stop the bleeding. Maybe we will switch focus from finding scape goats (or unaccountable actors) and try to build something that will actually spiral up, not down.
Because, you know, the Earth has this peculiar quality of keeping the spinning going on, regardless of what we would want it to do. We can't pretend to live in a fairy tale anymore, when instead of building value, the core actors are fighting over their ninja mined tokens, planning forks which will cut out other players, in a crab-like mentality that is more toxic than poverty.
The Earth is keep spinning, other platforms are popping out, users are migrating and, without users, no matter how many tokens you think you own, in your account here or in an exchange, their value will eventually be the same: zero.
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.
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I know the feeling. That's why I created steem.supply, an easy to use and accurate tool for calculating your Steemit rewards |
You are always posting interesting ideas. I agree Steemit is spiraling down. However, rewards out of your own pocket may increase selfish greed. Now users are giving out community funds. If you get UBI, will people give a portion out in votes?
It is already happening in other places, like HyperSpace. I'm glad this is happening, because it's the proof to my intuition from two years ago.
That can be much better
When I was launching my first company I remember the words one advisor told me; "the owners should only be those putting either money or time". In decentralized crypto projects, those just getting in for the airdrop or for the freebies just do not add anything to the project and should be avoided. That is why I do not like bots in Steem. Giving away from your pocket even if is something you have gotten from and UBI as you do in Hyperspace, makes you interact to decide who do you want to vote for and how much. That makes the "regular" user participate much more in the game even if it is just for curation.
If I look at how stingy people are with their votes (I get a lot of 1% votes), it almost feels like it came from their pockets...
I don't understand the benefit of paying a small amount from your own funds when upvoting? Can you clarify why this is a better model?
I tried to follow your examples in the enhancement post, but I did not understand it completely.
I guess those are my main questions about this model.
Thanks for taking the time to answer to this post and asking questions.
First of all: the percentage of own funds may not be that small, it's actually defined by witnesses, as a consensus value, which may be expressed as a percentage: for every vote, there might be 10% out of your own pocket and 90% out of rewards pool.
So, when you upvote, based on this rule, the rewards get calculated based on how much you give from your own pocket, not from what you draw from the reward pool. That's one of the benefits, linking the curation reward to the amount you're actually spending from your own pocket. It incentivizes users to spend their own money if they want to increase curation rewards, not relying only on the SP they already have (earned or delegated to them).
Another benefit would be increasing the liquidity and the circulation of Steem, regardless of how the rewards pool gets the inflation tokens. You may get only SBD (as it is the case now, or 50/50), but you will always keep a part of the Steem liquidity moving around.
And another benefit will be invalidating bots: since every vote implies a liquid part, bots will have a different scheme, if any, and that will be way less profitable than it is now (more liquid Steem needed to start a relevant bot, less curation rewards, etc).
What is rewarded, in this approach, is genuine, real people participation in the game.
Hope this clarifies things. If you have any questions, shout.
I understand the above now. But can you do a math example using:
PC = Personal Contribution (what the user is giving away with his vote, from his own wallet)
USP = User Steem Power
RPC = Reward Pool Contribution (the amount which is drawn from the reward pool as a consequence of the vote)
UCR = User Curation Reward (what the user receives as a curation reward)
AR = Author Reward
D = Difficulty Multiplier
RPC = PC * D * (1,000/SP)
AR = PC + RPC
UCR = RPC * D * (10,000/SP)
I want to see in real numbers how much I would have to spend to get x curation rewards or how much selfupvoting with 1 Steem (as a reference point) would influence my post payouts. I know that it is probably difficult to calculate. But as nothing is fixed yet, you can fill the variables just as you like, I just want an example and to be able to change numbers around seeing the impact on the numbers of curation rewards and author rewards.
Can you do an example with 1$ upvotes by others and 1$ selfupvote on my post and lets say I have 10k SP?
Started to do that but realized it's better to put it together in a separate post, I'll do that tomorrow. Thanks for following up on this.
This will be an interesting post.
I like the idea, but will be interested in how you work it our.
The removal of the bots alone would make your idea a good one
Well, I don't know what to say, but have the relevant people seen your proposal?
@steemalliance will solve all this ! ;)
You are always coming up with positive ideas
I think the rewards systems in on steemit needs to be review and changed a bit in other make the reward system more transparent and free from self voting syndrome . I have been with hyperspace for a few week now and I must confess I co like their universal basic income model and how rewards is been shared on the platform @dragosroua
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