RE: Was I wrong about Hardfork 19? Probably...
I was very surprised to learn that as it didn't (and still doesn't actually) make much sense to me. I think the weight of each voted could have been adjusted without destroying the synergy created when people vote on the same post.
Ok I'll try to explain it. The problem is that Steemit can't actually give credit to different accounts voting on the same thing. Why not? Sybil attacks my friend.
Imagine this (simplified code)
if (accounts voting > 50) then <magic>
There are certain people in the system who have managed to gain control thousands of accounts. If the code above were implemented, you'd simply be exchanging one set of whales with another. Those bot masters would become your new whales.
Instead of this, the system only knows SteemPower. If ten minnows (accounts with 10 SP) vote, the effect will be 100^2 = 10000.
But a single account of size 100 SP would get the same treatment
100^2 = 10000
Bigger accounts become "groups" unto themselves, which is why whale accounts feel so powerful.
There is no easy answer to this problem, but putting a power cap on the biggest whales could be a thing. That's basically what the non-whale voting experiment is doing right now.
See, I knew I was still getting something wrong ;)
Thanks again for the explanation! I think your comment is actually more valuable and enlightening than both my posts on the topic so I really appreciate you writing it ;) Unfortunately not enough people will actually see it here, so if you feel like it, I think many of us will appreciate you going on this tangent in a stand-alone post.
So if I understand you correctly, the network needs to walk a fine line between giving too much power to single accounts that hold a lot of Steem Power which happens with the exponential curve and giving too much power to bot masters who can sockpuppet large pools of account to start creating an equivalent of whale votes by having large pools of accounts voting in unison. But this can really be a serious problem only if we have "two different curves" as I ignorantly suggested. I agree that this would be even less fair because with the N^2 curve, we at least have correspondence between being invested in the system and having influence over the system. Opening up the network to Sybil attacks (which I of coures also checked on wikipedia ;)) would exchange the current whales who do have a merit and a rightful claim to influence with people who would be gaming the system without having a corresponding stake in it.
I guess the little bit of Steem Power loaned by steemit to new users is something that could still be a basis for a Sybil attack, it just requires a really huge scale, right?
I wonder, how is the network currently protected against individuals who want to have 1000s of accounts and game the system? My guess would be that can never be 100% protected, but settings like the curve we are talking about can make this difficult enough to not e worth it for potential abusers.
I could not have said it better.
I will add the SP is SP, in other words, owning 1000 acounts with 10 SP each is pretty much the same as owning a single account with 10000 SP when it comes to affecting post rewards (or witness voting). Reputation is a different matter. It's easier to get a single account a high reputation.
Nice investigation work!