Steem community brainstorming: If there were a voting power cap what could we do to make accounts beyond that cap still be compelling to have?
There are posts talking about the idea that limiting voting power beyond a certain steem power might be a good thing. If we do this then there are some other things we need to solve first.
This post is about some potential drawbacks to limiting voting power (so only people below a certain steem power can actually vote) and if we are going to do this we need to first have a plan for addressing these things.
If we do not it will be short sited and it is highly probable will lead to bigger problems than we are thinking this can fix.
Right now people earn liquid crypto (the stuff they can easily trade and then spend) by voting, posting, and commenting.
If you are above the cap this does not change that.
PROBLEM 1:
If we were to remove the people's ability beyond a cap from earning then the only way they would be able to earn any liquid currency is if they are a content creator. Some people are not gifted at this, and they essentially would no longer be making any liquid rewards. In fact, they wouldn't be getting any rewards at all unless the value of steem increases, in which case the only way they could spend any of it is by powering down.
This would make having any account beyond that cap highly unattractive.
PROBLEM 2:
Steem power is a moving target. We all are powering up by using our steem power. At some point more and more of us would go across that voting cap.
REASON PEOPLE THINK THE VOTING CAP IS A GOOD IDEA:
People think the voting cap is a good idea because currently the steem power is concentrated into the hands of a few that can dominate everything here. So we are aiming a short term "solution" at this centralization issue, but in the long term this would impact a lot more people.
Brainstorming Solutions
Rather than reaching for the big red easy button and potentially making the problem far worse in the future there is another target we should all brainstorm on that if we can come up with a good idea could make this solution more of a long term one.
The question is simple...
What can we do/implement to make having an account beyond such a voting power cap compelling?
There needs to be something beyond simple altruism that would make someone want to have an account beyond that cap. Otherwise, they will simply power down, and spread their power across multiple accounts and do the exact same thing as now. The difference is that they'd be a lot harder to keep track of due to the number of accounts they likely would wield.
The real issue here is that you may be stopping any liquid rewards for people beyond the cap. They still need to be able to earn some liquid rewards and hopefully enough for it to be attractive, since they cannot vote.
I don't have the solution... I thought perhaps as a community we can brainstorm on it.
For without an actual solution to this problem all we're doing is kicking the can down the road and potentially breaking a window as the can sails through it.
The red easy button is often NOT a good thing. It can have consequences and ignoring those is very dangerous.
Steem On!
Here are some ideas for benefits;
interest on their stake that ensures protection from Steem inflation...perhaps a touch more.
a Steem growth dividend, paid for by the Steemit account upon reaching certain Steem price targets.
the ability to lend steem power with a modest rate of interest (i'm somewhat wary of this one until a fully functioning, mature Steem Economy exists.)
the ability to gift Steem for use by other accounts for set period of time (like guilds where the guild benefits from the curation rewards that the additional Steem Power grants upon self-voting.)
a place in Steem History.....legacy, philanthropy, honor, generosity....take your pick, they are all worthy of recognition
There have got to be more!
Those were the type of things I was seeking...
If we are going to TAKE something away from an account we need to GIVE something back. No one should be penalized for having an account and eventually doing well with it.
I want to bullet point those things you suggested as they are actually the first anyone has supplied that actually answer my actual question rather than focusing on the voting.
#1 and #2 I think could have potential and would need some discussion and thought on specifics.
#3 will only appeal to some people. Some current actors likely wouldn't give damn about that.
#4 Have to be careful with this. This is much like delegation of power which is already coming and is an easy way to skirt the voting cap in the first place and still be able to vote with similar power to what they can now. Just need to loan their power to other accounts belonging to themselves.
What I stated on #4 is actually potentially true of #2 but could be worse. Not only could they lend themselves steem power, they could potentially make interest off of lending it to another account of theirs.
#2 and #4 are really similar. If there were an interest perhaps they get a % of curation rewards from the usage of their power by others. Yet IF #2 or #4 were used the issue of why not simply spread their power across multiple accounts and keep doing exactly what they can today with a single account still exists.
So how to accomplish this in a way that is attractive to them, and would make them not want to split their account or otherwise game the system.
Also sharing their power would dump that power back into the reward pool which is what we are trying to remove in the first place with the voting cap. Just because someone else is using it does not stop it from tilting the voting outcomes.
Very interesting, thank you. You've given me more to think about.
Great points here! "Guys, what are your thoughts?"
Time to get to work!
I wrote it some time back, and its still the best idea I think (after all its mine :D):
There are several levels of voting power. Lets say you have:
Yes, you could create more accounts to always be in the 100% and just autovote from your "main", but that is true for all sorts of voting power prevention, and in this step model and steempower still counting (albeit far less) the incentive to split accounts is way smaller.
(Of course, numbers here just for demonstration, its not that I did any big calculation on SP distribution)
Yes, but can we come up with some reason that someone would not want to split their account?
What you have essentially proposed is an inverse curve applied to the voting curve.
I don't actually see it reducing the incentive any. You are counting on the altruistic nature of people to be okay with making less money than they could be.
We've already had powerful people gaming the system. There have been investigations of it. When they are challenged we are told "It is my account, I can do what I want with it", or "I vote how I want".
This would not go away with such activities. We would suddenly have a lot of accounts constantly being created that were below 10K steem power. More would keep coming over time.
Are there people that will take the altruistic approach? Sure.
Yet there also those that follow Barnum and Bailey's statement of "There is a sucker born every minute"
I only see any kind of voting cap as working if there is a compelling reason for people to actually want a powerful account. If it is not in voting then it would need to be some other thing.
If people only go for the money...
There is no way to reduce the incentive of several accounts without making the reason to do that (money) uninfluential. You can't go left and right at the same time. If you want to decrease voting power, you decrease voting power. In one way or the other.
It would e.g. be possible to set a daily maximum voting that is way more restrictive then today. People would still autovote to maximize earning, and if you have only 10 votes a day, they will do it 10 times.
Yes, but you are still thinking in the box. That is not the question I asked.
If we reduce the voting power or restrict it beyond a certain amount of power how can we make those accounts that are now restricted attractive in SOME OTHER way.
Nothing to do with voting at that point. Yet, if there is no attractive reason to have such account then human nature is going to drive a lot of people to find work arounds.
What can we come up with to make them maybe not want to have a workaround?
Basically... if you have to penalize someone else in order to make other people happy then it is a bad idea.
Right now it is a bad idea. How do we turn it into a good one?
I realize it is not an easy problem. If it was I'd simply post my idea for a solution and try to persuade people to try my idea.
I don't yet have a solution to this in mind.
It is my hope that WE can come up with something, but it's going to require some serious exploration outside of the box and is based upon their voting being limited or eliminated by a cap or even a tier system like you have.
So we need not talk about the vote. This question assumes we are somehow restricting the vote. So the question is how do we remove the feeling of being penalized from more powerful accounts and make those accounts still worth having?
As people use the platform more and more people would rise through those ranks, so this decision in the long run would begin to restrict more and more people.
So we need some plan.
Oh and I do appreciate your responses. Thus why I keep up voting them. I'm not try to get things my way, as I don't know a solution to this yet so I don't currently have a WAY.
There are a few original sins, so to speak.
A linear reward distribution (instead of quadratic) would mitigate many problems with concentration of voting power, without giving users reasons for splitting accounts.
Yes, I do think experiments with the n^2 and the voting curve can help lessen the blow.
Some of the whales were the founders, others were there early enough to mine it before the platform had really taken off (right place, right time) and if I have heard correctly only one of them actually bought their way in.
If steem were 0.10/steem then 1,000,000 steem power would be $100,000 (though don't know how low it was) and through the $4/steem rush they made more than that in profit.
Yet really... I am never a fan of forced redistribution and forcefully taking something from someone else.
So at this point I see HOW they got it as irrelevant. They have it, we can't and shouldn't steal it from them...
So what do we do?
I do believe experimenting with the curve could be helpful.
If we only permitted one account per user, per business, etc that could help but it would require good verification.
The idea of the platform was that there would be no centralization. A verification agency does create a point of centralization rather than being decentralized. It actually creates a vulnerability that can be used by governments or other entities to stifle the platform in the future.
I do realize these are tricky problems. Tricky problems tend to be the norm when exploring unknown territory.
We can't steal it because it would be the end of trust in the platform.
But there's a problem when you sell Steem platform as "human mining" and "free market" when there was computer mining, bot voting, and no true competition from the beginning: someone started with millions of SP and others started with 35 SP (correct?).
Apart from reward curve, I think it would be interesting discussing a cap to posts rewards instead of cap for voting power.
Maybe impossible to do, but I don't know really...
Unless it is done at blockchain level. How to do that? No idea : ) But I think is something to address for future blockchains development, not only for Steem.
Basically... instead of the ideas resulting in people being penalized for now power, we need to address this in a way that does not penalize people.
Taking away their voting power and restricting multiple accounts LOCKS them in place with a mostly worthless account...
The game plan then likely would become...
Power down for awhile... sell my steem...
Use my account for awhile until I am forced to power down again and dump steem on the market.
I agree with you, however there's another reason (apart from voting power) to keep SP and not power down, and that is the high interests rate of Steem Power (if this hasn't changed from the whitepaper).
I haven't seen interest on steem power for awhile. Though I did address that in another response I gave you. I think that is gone, and if it is then what if we brought that back for people that were not allowed to vote if a voting cap is instituted. (only if that is instituted)
That experiment is simple Bullshit. Not least because people get kicked in the head for being liked by a whale. Should you try to write only things whales don't like??
I agree any experimenting should be done in a controlled fashion. As soon as they knew not all whales would be on board that kind of invalidated it. As soon as they had to start flagging to enforce it that made it worse.
That would mean yu would punish the most important voters - the ones who manually vote.
No vote - you get interest.
Autovote - "interest" through bot-ing.
Manual vote - no interest and way less curation rewards then bots.
What would happen if we base SP interest based on voting power?
The more you vote the less interest. Average interest is somehow based on average vote curation - if you curate good, you get more then on interest, if you curate bad you get less then interest.
Would likely mean people would only vote for people they know get lots of $ every post like dwinblood and not on unknown authors :(
It is a tricky thing. I am not really talking about voting itself. There are people advocating for making the EXPERIMENT permanent and even making it code based.
If they do that we need to know what incentive those people that are no longer permitted to vote will have to keep their account where it is powered up.
That is the goal of this post.
If people don't keep the experiment going then what this post about is irrelevant.
Yet we need to come up with incentive for those people that cannot vote as opposed to talking more about voting.
Fantastic dwinblood....good work.