Steemit's Hard Fork 17. The Witnesses are Planning a Whale Smorgasbord and Plan to make it Look like generosity!!
The proposed changes to the steemit platform in the HF17 document just released have one sector of the steemit community in mind. When I say it has one sector in mind, it will produce a whale binge of such enormous proportions as to make Arnie look like a jockey.
I did write a very detailed analysis but I thought you might find that a tad dull – it is dull. Instead this is what HF17 means.
The creation of multiple accounts has never been easier or cheaper.
You may post as many times a day as you like – the protections against bot posting and spam posts are being removed.
[Edit - subject to confirmation by @abit]
Thank you very much @abit for your corrections of my numbers. I apologise for getting it wrong before. It was by no means intended! The wording of the document is not the easiest to follow. I am not sure where the 9.5% token comes into play ...
Maybe I should explain any changes!
Therefore, this is my understanding:
The distribution % is slightly different. It does not however, affect the capability of whales to hijack the rewards pool. There will be bot posts, bot comments and bot voting on an unprecedented scale.
All I have here is a tiny influence on the way in which votes are counted and valued.
I do not have an answer to the invitation to rort the system.
[End of Edit]
There is an entirely separate reward pool for comments. There is no definition of a comment. It could be as little as ‘hi’.
Comment vote recipients may nominate the recipient account of the vote rewards. In other words, Whale A publishes a post via a bot in a new alter-ego account. Whales A,B,C,D,E,F,G and H comment ‘hi’ on the post (probably via a bot) and they all vote upon each others comments. Then the rewards are distributed to other accounts.
Then a few more comments (via bots) and the same thing happens.
How do you find this post?
It is not in trending because the comment reward pool is separate from the post vote pool. The rewards are all scattered about.
The whales say what a great job they have done with decentralisation – look at the huge distribution difference!!
The rewards pool has just been hijacked and the rewards have gone …. To where?
What happened to the flattening of the rewards curve and the n2 realignment?
Why is it that there are, allegedly, two witnesses who are already refusing to put these protocols into effect?
Witnesses, I would suggest an explanation to the steemit community before you put these measures into effect. There are already people on strike … this could become an epidemic.
Again, may I please ask you to read some recommendations which will deliver a safer future for steemit: Suggested amendments to the Steemit Platform.
Follow @ebryans for Content:
@ebryans - there are a lot of ways to use the platform for good and bad. You are right that there are new ways to abuse the platform, but there are also a lot of good things that will come from it as well. I encourage you to read this post with an overview of the HF. It is a little out of date (a few minor changes have been made since I wrote the post) - but it is fairly close.
I will be deciding on my support for/against the HF this weekend and posting my decision and reasoning in my witness post.
Thank you for your candour @timcliff, I am afraid that there is not much that can be said about HF17, other than "burn it" - it even legitimises censorship. So steemit now comprises censorship (due to the dreadful structure's disdain for people) and massive centralisation. These two things are supposed to be the freedoms which set blockchain enterprises apart! Upped and i hope very much that you will see fit to kill this foe. You should!
Hmmm I have valid reason to be confused as I mentioned already a few times those past days. I really have to sit back and just relax . It's getting very hot here.
Yes, @mammasitta sit and relax, we are only ordinary user in this platform, let our trust give to @timcliff and I think he is the right person to carry on our hope about steemit. I hope the best thing happen. Nice !
I understand! This is, however, a really unpleasant set of protocols which will just massacre the engine room of content. There is really not much point in trying to write anything half decent!
I am still reading.....some things seem to be extremely fishy indeed. If you see my recent posts i only make fun using just a few words.
I'm sorry I didn't get to this earlier. I think you raise some legitimate concerns but these things have been discussed many times before both for and against. The only way we will know for sure is to try it out.
@ebryans: while I respect you, before accusation, please make the numbers right.
Thank you for your comment and engagement in this discussion @abit. I am grateful to you for your willingness to see a good and well-researched interaction on these issues. Respect to you.
Please be assured that my observations do not carry personal accusations, though I can see why you might read my title and opening sentences as such. I apologise for any offence caused. They are observations upon a post made by @mvandeberg on github, entitled Steem Simplicity 0.17.10.
In terms of getting my numbers right, I would be very grateful if you could tell me which numbers I have wrong and, should you be unable to furnishing the right ones, where I could source the corrections I need to make.
I took the HF17 numbers from the github post. Perhaps, there is something which I am missing?
Thanks again for joining in. It is very much appreciated. Namaste.
Numbers are in the links. And a little math.
HF16:
9.5% new token will be created in the first year.
75% of them is content related rewards.
25% of the 75% goes to curators, and 75% of the 75% goes to authors.
HF17:
Among the 75% of 75%, 38% goes to comments and 62% goes to root posts.
Thank you very much @abit for your corrections of my numbers. I apologise for getting it wrong before. It was by no means intended! The wording of the document is not the easiest to follow. I am not sure where the 9.5% token comes into play ...
Maybe I should explain any changes!
Therefore, this is my understanding:
The distribution % is slightly different. It does not however, affect the capability of whales to hijack the rewards pool. There will be bot posts, bot comments and bot voting on an unprecedented scale.
All I have here is a tiny influence on the way in which votes are counted and valued.
I do not have an answer to the invitation to rort the system.
While @abit's numbers are correct in a sense, 25% (of the 75%) does not actually go to curators. 25% is only a maximum and the actual amount is significantly lower (due to the reverse auction). I've seen 12% but I can't confirm that is accurate.
Automatic payout of rewards to other accounts is hardly going to make it any easier to do what people are already doing. A bot can automate these payments, if they fit into some nefarious plans. This change puts this function on-chain and makes it accessible to people without bots.
This business of bot voting you mention is highly specious. Votes are scaled according to SP of the voting account. Multiple accounts even with a sum of SP same as a single account do not have nearly the same power to affect rewards. And furthermore, the procedure you describe can be done already right now, posts, comments, whatever. So why is it happening so little now? Maybe because it doesn't pay off.
I am voting for the HF, FWIW. I think this is going to be a tight election but there's so much misconceptions about how the system works and what even the new ruleset will entail. I don't think partitioning rewards is really worth doing but maybe it will engage more users in conversation seeking to make the witty remark of the day. This is the only questionable element in my view.
The rest of the changes are good, although I am uncertain whether they are still using a reverse auction on the extended single 7 day payout. They should be, because otherwise vote sniping (or downvote sniping).
I, like many other witnesses, want to see the square or better still, linear (no scaling of weight according to SP) rewards distribution curve. As a very niche writer and with infrequent posts, since the 'no whales voting' and 'whales downvoting whales upvotes' "experiment", I think my rewards have gone up maybe 3-10% or so.
It's more fair, and the power curve, log10 turns whales into rockstars that every groupie wants to present lines on their rack to them for the privilege of getting votes. Right now, (and mostly unchanged in HF17), 50 accounts with a sum of 100,000 SP, ceteris paribus (all else being equal) versus 1 whale with 100,000 SP, the whale's vote still works out to (on average) more than 10x the group.
Hopefully people will start to understand the actual situation. Yes, whales are overly affecting the payouts in the forum. It was designed to do that, and this was a dumb idea. So was inflating the steem to 300 million. I believe the person who was behind both of these ideas has recently, famously jumped ship. I don't think there is more than a few theories in the WP that actually were not thoroughly thrashed in the field.
Mate, you might find this a more palatable option: The Way Forward
This post has been ranked within the top 50 most undervalued posts in the first half of Mar 17. We estimate that this post is undervalued by $3.31 as compared to a scenario in which every voter had an equal say.
See the full rankings and details in The Daily Tribune: Mar 17 - Part I. 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.
I'm new here so I can't say if you're right or wrong.
However I hope the community will flag every bot comments and posts used to make money. Bots and multiple accounts makes no sense in a social network.
Maybe in HF18? Source: sneak comment.
It might help you a little if you read this - Steemit Suggestions and Rationale - it will give you some context to the way in which the rewards pool is currently distributed which has given 99% of all the rewards pool to less than 4% of steemians. This HF17 set of proposals makes things even worse.
I am sorry if you are new to this - you have arrived at a time of strange behaviours!
All I would say is that thee are a few very greedy people whohold the keys and they have managed to take 93% of the value off the platform through sheer incompetence and greed.
Stick with it, count the steem not the $ and post about what you like. The ways around the system look strange but you will get the hang of it. Please shout out if you ever want any advice on anything! Namaste.
Thank you! Yes I know there's a huge disparity in accounts power, and I like your Steemit Suggestion post (again, I don't know if they're all right suggestion but I agree with the 6 principles).
What I can't tell is if things will be worse with HF17. The scenario your describing will be possible, but will it happen? I don't know how thes whales think and behave. If they will not upvote and spam comments each others, the new reward pool will be better for average users, I think, because writing comments is easier than writing post.
Personally I'm not here to make money, I'm here to read interesting stuff, in a place where no censorship is allowed. So I'm concerned more about the voting system / botnet than Steem price.
HF17 introduces censorship - officially - and 99% of all the rewards ever distributed have gone where?
Censorship?! What on Earth are you talking about?
@ebryans editing is only possible by the authority of the account that authored the comment. Even then, the edits are additional transactions, and don't actually touch the first transaction, which remains in the blockchain forever. How is that censorship?
Hi @sneak, Thanks for your comment
This is what it says in the HF17 : Comments can now be permanently edited.
We are adapting a new model of imposing as few restrictions in consensus code as possible and having witness actively reject transaction for both rate limiting and security. There is a soft freeze of 7 days that will be lifted with a non-consensus operation. This custom operation still needs to implemented, but will be included in 0.17.1. The operation will be a plugin op in the witness plugin that will inform a witness to accept edits for the next T minutes.
How? You make me think I understood nothing about these changes!
According to https://steemd.com/distribution 99% of rewards are distributed by the whales, but I don't know where they're gone. I saw whales voting whales but also whales voting minnows, however I'm new so I have not enough data to express myself. If you same whales are mostly upvoting whales, I believe you.
Thank you @ebryans! Very useful website!
OMG the curation rewards are even worse, 0.1% takes 90% of curations O_o
Now I see why someone wants to eliminate curation rewards.
Posting rewards looks better distributed, but still no minnows in sight:
If you go to here :http://steemwhales.com/
You will find this:
Blue is the top 1% of accounts, red is the second 1% and yellow is the dolphins. Green is the minnows - this chart shows the allocation of rewards by section of the steemit community - have a look at the rewards curve - it is an exponential curve. Out of the top 25 accounts, only 2 paid for their wealth and power
Show us the author rewards pie chart. That's where the rewards has gone to.
The author rewards pie-chart is as follows, @abit:
I think the 0.1% and 1% in the author reward chart are not the same people as in the curation chart or holding chart. Looks like it's misleading.
Thank you for that, @abit and your willingness to engage on important issues with a relative mini-minnow, such as myself.
Looking through the account details it would surprise me if the figures were far wrong. The centralisation of everything is fairly plain.
You might be interested in this:
I don't understand the new chart.
It shows the concentration of ownership of steem by estimated value.
So, on 19th March the platform ownership was held by % and numbers of accounts as follows: 90% by 251 accounts, 85% by 116 accounts, 80% by 64 accounts and 75% by 40 accounts.
Unfortunately, as you can see, the graph is not going in the right direction.
To me, this is an unhealthy position.
I am more than happy to give you more of this type of info - it also might help you understand why I have so much fear for the platform around HF17.
I would also add that a good portion of comments on many posts actually is the original author responding so a significant portion may even go to the author.
Flag because I disagree
flag because I disagree, no worries I'm not that lame :D , he doesn't have to say anything he has learned well, :D why push conversation when we can wave flags :D
Hi @dennygalindo, I do not mind you flagging if you disagree. I think it would show some integrity though, if you could actually say what you disagree with and why. You are the only person who has found it in themselves to disagree with this all day. I admire you for standing up! Please enlighten me. Even the witnesses are agreeing with me - so, please explain! I look forward to your rationale.
I'll reply later been busy. Thanks for your comment. I usually look at this at night.
I disagree because I think that author rewards should be lower. Even lower than hf 17 Content is not worth much at all . Curation and attention are what is valuable.
Thinking that everyone should get less does not answer your own question - the HF17 states, in effect, that whales should receive more of the rewards pool. As it is, they are receiving 99% of it. Your response says that you believe that the community should provide content and that the whales should be allowed to take everything they want to.
I was hoping that you would actually give a rational response.
You seem to be missing the point of Social Media. As one of the people who actually initiates ways of generating interaction you have picked on the wrong target in me.
I strongly suggest that you remove your flag. Why? Because it is contrary to your own view. I generate content, I generate curation opportunities and I generate attention and I generate interaction.
HF17 will reduce all of that.