Idea for Steemit - Tiered Voting Power Regeneration According to Vests
Introduction
First of all I would like to wish all my American friends a Happy Thanksgiving!
This is just an idea I've had that I wanted to share. It is not something urgent and I am just putting it out now because I wanted to share it and discuss it with the community.
We have had a lot of discussion regarding changes to the Steemit/Steem ecosystem lately. One thing which hasn't changed is the voting power regeneration time.
For those of us who vote a lot the 5 day period seems a little on the long side.
I know the Steemit team is still looking at the change to higher power voting i.e. the system where 5 votes per day are equivalent to the current 40.
I was against it previously but I have changed my mind after considering it over time.
I feel there may also be some merit to reviewing the voting regeneration system too.
I understand it may not be something that matters much to others but I personally feel it would be another means of improving things and also encouraging people to power up and invest in the system for the longer term.
The Basic Idea - Tiered Voting Regeneration based on MVests
Lower power accounts would have the same 5 day period but accounts with higher vests would be able to regenerate faster. The regeneration rate would therefore be tiered based on how many MVests an account holds.
An Example of How to Do It:
This pyramid graphic illustrates a way of tiering users:
In case the graphic is hard to read (e.g. mobile) here is a summary in text form:
1. Less than 10MV = 5 days
2. 10MV-30MV = 4 days
3. 30MV-60MV = 3 days
4. 60MV-150MV= 2 days
5. Greater than 150MV = 1 day
A few points to note
The figures are arbitrary for the sake of illustration. The actual figures and bands could be derived using some statistical analysis of voting behaviour.
People have been discussing using badges for "gamifying" purposes, this would be a perfect way of implementing badges too with each tier getting a different coloured badge to signify level.
Also I am not suggesting this change immediately.
It would probably best be done on it is own (or at most in combination with the voting freqency changes) AFTER the currently proposed changes to SP inflation etc have been implemented and stabilised.
Incorporate Reputation to Reduce Abuse
One alternative way to tier things would be to base it on people's reputation score:
e.g. 25-40 = 5 days and so on decreasing with different levels.
This might be considered fairer by some people.
Further the two methods could be combined to reduce gaming the system further:
e.g. for the 24 hours regeneration you would need both >150MV and reputation above 72.
Advantages and Disadvantages:
Advantages:
- You create a new incentive/reward to power up which helps with "gamification" and tapping into psychological reward mechanisms.
- People who vote more often and are more active curators have a means to encourage them to continue and even increase that behaviour if they want to.
- It could be done for a trial period as a means to collect data since we are still in beta. If it is found to be detrimental we could revert to the old system.
Disadvantages:
- This adds extra complexity to the system and will require work to implement.
- People with a huge amount of SP could power it down into mulitple accounts and potentially increase their influence - particularly if combined with the use of bots.
- Tiering should reduce this but the risk will always be there. The number of accounts that could do this to any significant degree are very small though.
- Adding reputation into tiering might help to reduce misuse but adds an extra level of complexity.
- There will likely be other issues that I have not foreseen.
For me the potential advantages outweigh the disadvantages but that is my opinion:
What do you think?
Is it worth exploring or trialling?
Previously the idea of changing the SP dilution and rewards was considered something that could not be changed and now we are not far away from a HF that will implement those changes.
Should we not take the chance to explore all possibilities whilst we are still in the early stages of the platform?
Please have your say in the comments.
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I like where you are going with this. I think the issue is that we are framing this website has a social media platform. Usually social media platform are fairly straight forward...but with this we are trying to get people to jump from hoops to hoops.
Maybe a better way to frame the cognitive overload would be to frame it as a "Social Media Game" where people earn real rewards. :-)
Then learning the "rules of the game" make sense if you want to "win".
Great idea. I think users like @sykochica have been talking about this for a while. In the same way that you learn how to play any video game we could present this in a similar vein. Badges and achievement could be unlocked. It works really well from a psychological perspective - just look at how mobile games in particular use these methods to keep people engaged.
Oh, RS and UV for you as usual, I always forget that in my comments lol
Thank you, that is very kind.
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Thank you:)
Hehe. How things change. From our limitation to imagine how things can be different, or better, and is possible... until the reality of the situation/issue/problem becomes apparent and then change is not only seen as possible and better, but required.
As for the proposal. I don't see viability for new users to have their ability to use the platform degraded, while those who are already high up get to use what everyone should be able to use to improve their standing in the platofrm. Making it harder for new steemians to do that will not play out well. I don't like it off the bat. The power differential is already great, adding this would only serve to widen the gap of how powerless new stemians feel.
You misunderstand. Nothing would change for new users. People could accelerate their voting regeneration by powering up that is all. The power gap would exist but it is a matter or perspective - one could also see it as a reward for powering up and sticking with the platform.
Alrighty... sorry, I understood making regular vote-bar power restore meter to be 5 days rather than 24h... lol. Woops... I see now it means going down to 0 vote power takes 5 days,but could regen quicker for higher SP users to make voting power better for them to reward/curate, and also coupled with the 5vote power maximization would give whales more curation power on posts they really really really like lol. Sorry again, I was confusing the 24h period and 5 days. I like the idea now :)
No problem. I should have explained it better because a few people got that impression! It is sometimes hard to explain these concepts in text form:)
@thecryptofiend thanks for the post. ..was always wondering why my Voting Power was mostly on 68% that now makes sense.
Glad you liked it:)
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Thanks:)
Your brain. So big. LOL
You know me a bit, I cannot follow all this yet LOL!!!! But I am glad you are here because you are in my
Lol thanks. You are very kind:)
I like these ideas. The development of the site isn't really my strong point, but whatever makes people's activity have more incentives will not only keep users here, but it'll encourage more people to join and let Steemit grow. Then that may encourage investors to invest more and the price of Steem go up.
Good ideas, @ thecryptofiend. Great photos, too.
Thank you:)
Do I misunderstand this, or does it make voting for newcomers seriously limited and necessarily infrequent? That would be a huge retention barrier.
You misunderstand it. Voting for new users would remain unchanged.
OK, then here is the part that confused me, "I know the Steemit team is still looking at the change to higher power voting i.e. the system where 5 votes per day are equivalent to the current 40."
If I only get 5 votes where I currently 40, isn't that a change? I took that to mean that each vote delivers more of my voting power ("higher power voting") so that I run out faster. Or is that saying that everyone's voting power is multiplied by 8, making five votes as powerful as 40? Or something else?
That is not the main point of this post but previously when this change was discussed there was a lot of misunderstanding about it so you would not be alone.
Yes that is how I understand it. In effect you would not be losing anything as it would be letting you vote with more of your power at each time - basically your vote would be worth eight times more. If you wanted to vote in the same way you could set your voting level to 12.5% on the slider and vote exactly the same as you did previously.
Anyway like I said that is not the point of this post. Whether it happens or not I think the change I am proposing would be beneficial for encouraging people to power up.
Thoughtful idea. Let's face it: any feature can be gamed. The question to ask is, does a feature enable gaming it in a way that would be good for the ecosystem? A question with a lot of subjective answers, true, but some of the answers are quasi-objective too.
I know that this point is only quasi-objective - there are good reasons to disagree - but it seems to me that a system that encourages people to buy STEEM is good for the ecosystem, as a higher market cap for STEEM correlates reasonably well to the viability of the platform. This, imho, is the reason for the x^2 relation between vests and curation rewards.
From this angle, your tiered idea is a good one. The major flaw, again imho, is the downside you noted:
This disadvantage could be reduced by a simple AND-ing based on age of vests in a particular account: if the vests arrived in an account in fewer than x days (or y blocks), the tiering advantage doesn't kick in. That wouldn't mitigate the gaming, but it would dampen the gaming.
Thanks that is a great way of making it harder to game:)