How the Steemit Liquidity Exploit is Creating a Permanent Superuser Class
I'm sure many of you have already heard of the liquidity exploit that is allowing some traders on Steemit to make themselves around 1200 Steem per hour. See here: https://steemit.com/steem/@blakemiles84/two-users-are-gaming-the-liquidity-reward-system-and-earning-1200-steem-per-hour
While reading the thread, and even before, I became very concerned by this exploit, namely because it's allowing these users to become, in effect, a separate class of Steemit user, a superuser class. By having so much more Steem than any normal user could ever gain (even via powering up with BTC), and thus Steem power, these users are in effect (even if unintentionally) silencing users who can't hope to compete with hundreds of thousands or millions of Steem and powered up Steem.
Due to the compounding nature of Steemit, this problem will become worse as time goes on and the superusers accumulate ever more posts and power.
Eventually, posts from normal users will almost never be seen due to how much more powerful the superuser groups posts are.
Ultimately, this undermines the platform in a very major and potentially unrecoverable way.
ROFL. That's funny as hell. I would upvote that 10 times if I could.
I totally agree, and this problem needs to be fixed ASAP. Have we heard from either @dan or @ned regarding this problem yet?
So they could start uploading things and upvoting each other to make even more Steem if they were so inclined?
Yup, that's exactly my worry.
If the superuser class that has gained hundreds of thousands of Steem power start creating secondary accounts, no one will be able to stop those accounts from also being rocketed to the top, effectively censoring users that the superuser group doesn't spend votes on (which could potentially solely be their own accounts).
Then those users now have double the amount of voting power, and can rocket a third account even faster, and so on and so on.
Compound interest is a force of nature. It will be difficult to overcome.
We all know crypto is more than just money. It's freedom, possibility, excitement like the first day of school. So, to hell with conventional economics. Maybe the chance for everyone to have something means that no one has the right to everything. And once a person and their family are financially secure, truly secure, what need is there for more?
Proposal - Rough
STEEM - anyone can own as much as they want.
STEEMPOWER - some kind of limit - I'll propose 100K - once a user reaches that limit, some kind of conversion to STEEMDollars that would target keeping up with inflation, say 2.5% annual. Users with less than the max SP, would have STEEMDollars that target the 10% annual. Or maybe there's a sliding scale.
The point is that inequality isn't the problem; it's the notion that there are already overlords and sharecroppers. That's the non-crypto system we live in now. Part of our movement is pressing beyond the current constraints of nation-states, economies, and enormous personal fortunes.
The 3/5s compromise was as ugly as it gets but without it, the United States would have never become a nation. Our Great Compromise needs to ensure that those starting from scratch have some kind of chance and I think that means there must be upper limits on ownership.
Wait what ?
You want to completely change the system because of one ancillary glitch in the system?
Sorry that's madness. You're advocating for arbitrary tyranny over numbers, and squelching opportunity before it even springs forth.
How about just change the liquidity reward algorithm ?
History Note: The 3/5ths compromise was a compromise because the South wanted their slaves to be counted as a whole person on the census, despite the fact that they weren't free. The North wanted them to have 0/5ths power to vote against the slavery law, which they couldn't pass because the South would perpetually have so many delegates due to the amount of slaves taken in the census. Hence, they compromised over the amount that a slave could be worth on the census.
And honestly, I have no idea how that relates to this.
It was called the "Great Compromise" because it birthed a nation, professor. A man was counted as 3/5 of a man. I mean how in the hell can a person be less than a person.
I alluded to that in order to make a point that a similarly distasteful compromise might help steemit become whatever it will become.
That's quite a decent idea, from the face of it. Almost like the (destroyed, sadly) Estate Tax, which was intended for a similar purpose in meatspace.