Steem Preferred Stocks... Benefits of a type of Steem Power that does not confer voting power.
So, I just want to introduce an idea, again, for something, that I think would tremendously benefit Steem. You may understand that Steem Power is like a stock in Steem. It is precisely like a Common Stock. When you buy a lot of Stock in a company, you acquire the power to vote how the company runs. Steem in fact provides a simple mechanism for this, it is a portion of the newly produced Steem, that you, by your votes, can reward content creators with.
What if you just want to invest money, but don't want to be bothered with the necessity to curate in order to maximise your yields? I watch some of the Whales, and I think that this duty is upon them without any enthusiasm, in fact, to the contrary. They may want to have some vote power, but they mostly just want to get the maximum reasonable yield of dividends possible, but mostly just make comments, and not actually whip people's posts around the trending feed, and all the attendant attention that brings to them.
If there was a variant of Steem Power, that instead of boosting voting power, but instead, conferred a higher yield derived from what they would have redistributed, not all of their vote power allocation, but some arbitrary part of it. It could even be a setting. I have read that in the newest update, you can remove your power to vote entirely, with a setting. I am not sure where it is, but I am told it exists.
Let's say, instead, that you can say have a slider, that restricts your voting power benefit, and instead turns it into, say, 50% increase in your dividend on your Steem Power holding, in exchange for a reduction of your voting power.
In corporate stocks, these are a special type of share called 'Preferred Stocks'. They have no voting power, but instead, give you a bigger share of the dividend. If you are not interested in having influence on the company, and maybe because of that you don't use your voting power, that distribution still occurs, and effectively, it amplifies the vote power of others, and you get no direct benefit from refraining from the curation job.
I think that Whales would appreciate being able to be non-interacting observers, to some extent, and trade voting power for a bigger yield on their SP share.
Edit
I am appealing in my campaign for this change in the system for the reason that, unlike most people, I have the capacity to sympathise with others that is sometimes self defeating, but for me, the bigger picture is very important. Forcing investors to curate or accept lower yields is counterproductive, and I understand the contempt, and rightly so, towards sycophants, groupies and beggars.
I also want to call out the little minnows who are indulging in envy and persecution complexes, for the pathetic and unseemly behaviour that it is.
Whales are why you can have big rewards, people. Stop pestering and castigating them. And whales, when you read this, please, I am not begging for personal rewards, but campaigning for the benefit of all in balancing the system.
People may not understand what is wrong, but they still react. I hope I can help them understand so the priorities of all accord with the best possible outcome for all.
We can't stop here! This is Whale country!
Just came across your post then. really like your idea, in particular your focus on providing investors with more options. I agree, for Steemit to really succeed, we need to start thinking more bout investors, and how to attract and retain them.
Yeah, I think, overall, the issue list for minnows is now mostly quite resolved. Investors are the next priority, and I think, in the scale of things, after that should be Entrepreneurs and Venture Capitalists. In the process, Steem is going to mutate its public image a lot, most people don't realise that 'just a blog platform where you can get paid' is not the size of the vision of the creators of Steem, not at all. You only have to look at their portfolio of projects to see what their real interest and long term vision goes towards: Blockpay, Bitshares...
Also the idea is good, it will not have a quick immediate effect.
Imagine situation with community made of 1000 minnows having 10SP each, and 2 whales having 1 million SP each.
If one of the whales decizes to get his 1 million of "preferred stocks " , the immediate effect will be, that second whale doubles his vote weight with almost no impact on a minnow vote weight.
Yes, if a whale decides to not vote, their vote power is distributed amongst the rest. But it is not disproportionate. Let's do the math on your hypothetical Steemosphere:
Minnow power is a total of 10,000, Whale A now collects interest of equal to getting about say, 33% of potential curation rewards, and their other 66% goes to vote rewards, Whale B still only gets about the same curation reward as before, about 33% of the share distributed this way for this purpose along with the remainder being rewards.
The minnows voting power has not doubled, but increased in proportion with their mass share, in this case, 2,010,000 is the total SP in the system, so the minnows as a collective have 0.5% voting power. The Whale's share of curation rewards is 33% of their redistributed share of new Steem, but it has not fully doubled, it is now maybe at 64%.
But that little extra, which I haven't precisely quantified, is more than a doubling. The votes have gone down by nearly 50% in number, but the trade-off the non-voting whale makes does not yield the full 33%, they only get, let's say, half of the maximum, a bit under the yield of an average curator. So whale B's earning about 20% of available curation rewards on their slightly above average curation skill, and the remainder is distributed to the Minnows, Whale A is only taking 11% out of the share in their interest rate boost, which means that 1100x as much curation rewards are now available for the minnows.
Remember, curation rewards are distributed according to vote count as a factor, and this benefits the minnows as well, who now have the potential to earn as much as 11x as much curation reward with Whale A not voting.
My numbers may not be exact, but it demonstrates that whales who don't vote, trade, in my example, potential 33% proportion yields of reward distribution, and all the work attendant, for 11.111% of guaranteed boost to their SP, but 111% rise in potential curation rewards for the minnows.
The optimal configuration for the proportion I am not sure about, but I think you can see that in fact, the benefit for the voting whales is not as great as it is for the minnows, whose potential reward for good curation has gone up in this scenario 10x.
I have not been rigorous in my math here, and I think it would be of great benefit for someone to do the math and work out the optimal ratios, whether they are proportional to the ratio of Common vs Preferred, or whatever, but I think it is sufficient to say that, even if the increase in potential curation rewards, that comes out of the difference between the rise in SP, versus the way it redistributes the remainder, even if it is proportional, it still benefits all the same, but I think actually, the reward will be on average proportional, but minnows will have the capability of becoming more powerful curators out of this, and being minnows tend to be creators, schooled probably in some degree in the art of curation itself...
If it also happens to attract more investors, you have to then factor in the rate at which the total pool rises in value at the same time. I am quite confident that it would benefit the whole, overall. Someone will surely now after my half-arsed napkin paper scribble quality math on this, take up the challenge do take the existing redistribution map, and apply it to your hypothetical scenario, and give some more solid figures about the change.
Remember, curation rewards are proportional to votes, as much as to the overall share of available curation rewards. I am pretty sure this means that the benefit for skilled minnow curators is enormous, potentially.
Yes, I know, I tend to oversimplify things and jump to conclusions)
Now I can see that this scenario is more benefitial for minnows that it seemed to be in the first instance.
However in the real world minnows have a tendensy to follow whales anyway.
Recently I was surprized by @smooth saying that his single vote now have only about 40$ weight. But in fact it always more like 150$, because many dozens of people and bots try to target it in order to get curation reward.
I think you missed the whole point of this platform.
Actually, I think you did. I have talked with one of the developers, and the money side of it is a major concern. I don't know how long you have been here or watching the price move around, but we are at, hopefully, the bottom of the price. The way the price goes up is people buy, and with this platform, you can lock it in. but you only get part of the reward for locking in from this, the rest comes from curation, part goes to you, part goes to the author you vote on. But you can't just lock in, and exclude your share from being part of the total voting pool. There is a daily amount that gets allocated, from the new Steem mined in the system. Part of that goes to authors (the larger part) and a smaller part goes to those who promote them, the curators.
But this is not all of what Steem is about. Steem is a cryptocurrency, Steem has a smart contract for creating an asset that pegs to the US dollar (and mostly, to therefore, all currencies issued by government approved central banks). It also has an asset called Steem Power, which grants you the power to vote, and assigns a weight to your votes. However, this is exactly like in corporations with their shares. But corporations also have a different type of share you can own, called a Preferred Stock. This one gives you no voting rights, but you get a bigger dividend.