Steemit is much fairer and democratic than you think... here's why...
In my first posting week on Steemit - in fact 2 days into it I posted my 5th article talking about how the system had become more democratic and fairer. Here's the link.
It was very much a gut feel piece, developed from the feeling I got when I had seen my voting power increase from 0c to 1c. I had an idea in my head and threw together some data and comparisons before and after the payout, and then attempted to come to a conclusion that made sense. Little did I know that conclusion has proved itself far more than I anticipated.
I'll come clean, there were huge gaps in the information I used to create the article. As I was writing the piece I completely disregarded the effect that a large increase in the value of Steem would also increase my voting power. I also didn't realize at the time that the payouts were every 24 hours. I thought they were every year! Haha!. All I cared about was the fact that my votes were now worth a cent… I had a voice, I had power!
Now that I have a bit more information and I've dug into the mechanics a little further, I'd like to shine the light once again on fairness and democracy.
Why the allocation is fairer than you think.
Around 57k of Steem is created every day, of that 90% goes to Steem Power holders, the other 10% goes to curators and content creators.
It's that 10% that’s has seen a huge re-distribution of 'Steem Power Wealth', some notable examples are @donkeypong and @stellabelle. A couple of great content creators.
@stellabelle has around 400m vests while @dan has 9912m vests. This is after only a couple of months. This is a crazy redistribution, after a few dozen articles @stellabelle is worth almost 5% of one of the founders accounts. Anyone discussing fairness needs to understand the implications of this.
Let's look at some data to make a stronger point…
Here is the richlist, the column to the left shows the top Steem Power holders. www.steemd.com/richlist
Let's look at the top 10.
Some of these accounts have 100% voting power, they don’t really vote and therefore receive 0 curation rewards, they are… steemit, ben, val-a, jamesc.
The infrequent voters include ned, smooth, blocktrades, dan.
The frequent voters are dantheman and berniesanders.
How do I know this?… click through to their names and note their voting power on www.steemd.com.
When people talk about fairness and the 'whales getting all of the rewards' stop for a minute and look at the richlist, the majority of Steem Power isn't being used. I think it's in the design, this is all about allocating the content rewards in the early stages in the most efficient way.
In my last article I talked about the high rewards of the introduce yourself posts, now we're transitioning into the phase of 'mass adoption' posts. A discussion of the implications will be covered further in another article, here...
If some of these 'whales' were to vote then they would take up a big slice of the curation rewards, a big slice of that 10%… but they're not… ask yourself why that is? This is a period of allocation, of adoption…. Where the 'fairness' is really massively in our favor.
So given all this how has the allocation changed from my post on the 4th?
4th July...
20th July....
Certainly the size of the pie has gotten bigger. On the 4th July you only needed $4000 worth of Steem Power to be a superhero, now you need $80000's worth. There's a marked increase in the number of superusers and heroes. A couple of superheroes have even moved up into the legends category.
Overall what can I say?
Keep posting, keep offering up value. You're not only in the early adopter phase you're also in the phase where your content and curation means relatively more to the whole system, due to most of the Steem Power being out of action. Will this continue in the future... probably not.
At the moment in my eyes the allocation mechanisms look incredibly beneficial to content creators, stake your claim!
Great read! One thing I totally missed somehow after studying steemd.com for a bit was that all the value shown here in posts and comments, is a 7 day estimate of the market price. Which was even more positive for the users cause when payment came and they did the math it showed a much higher price than estimated here, cause of the recent swings.
No where but up from here: (づ￣ ³￣)づ
Yes, I agree. Most users will look at the value of their 'liquid steem dollar amount' as the most important thing. As the size of the pie grows... people will start to realize that it's the steem power that really has the value. For instance I got involved posting here before the first payout, I made maybe $1400 steem dolars liquid, my Steem Power on the other hand has shot up to $24k.
The estimated price confuses people, but once it catches up, people will realize the true value of their steem power.
Good read, but valid, too.
Everyone's looking for their "get rich quick post" and are immediately being discouraged, but the reality is that this is the very beginning of Steemit, a lot of users have already been here for at least a month or two, patience will pay off.
That's a good analysis of the situation, maybe new comers and complainers about the reward mechanism needs to be more informed with this kind of articles. Got my upvote.
Awesome read, can't say that enough.
The problem is that you can create good content but without an upvote of a whale/dolphins, it will go unnoticed and disappear in the dark zone after 10 min. The problem is visibility not fairness. https://steemit.com/steem/@sictransitgloria/steem-could-benefit-to-have-more-dropdown-menu-labels-i-want-to-see-the-dark-steem-too and https://steemit.com/steemit-ideas/@sictransitgloria/steem-is-not-a-ponzi-scheme-but-it-relies-strongly-on-co-option-and-we-can-hope-it-will-get-better-in-the-future
Also you are posting the All accounts distribution. It's not relevant as many accounts of newbie are inactive. If you looks at the 24H activity, all the newbie accounts represents a total of 0.04% of the stake that is 10 times less than what you show.
Getting visibility is more and more difficult as more users join and there's no easy way to follow people. I think this will improve over time once the upgrades to the site are built in. Until then the only way to improve visibility is to add valuable comments to other peoples articles. That way you can get attention for a longer time if those posts go on to become very successful.
People will click on your name and see what you've written and may upvote you or add you to their following list. Until that features properly implemented it's tougher, but will become easier in the future.
Let's hope so! Yes, useful comments seems an easier way to start.
This is a great article, i have just joined and Im excited to share my knowledge with everyone and add value to this community! This is really an amazing opportunity to be an early adopter! Alla
Really nice read! Thanks for sharing!
i posted an article about the early adoption fase: https://steemit.com/steemit/@yonuts/diffusion-of-innovations-and-steemit
the fase is strong
It's all about having fun and enjoying the process. My blog entry is getting a lot more views and responses now than back when I used to write on Blogger so it just nice to be appreciated.
Still, the lack of liquidity and the gap in SP is there. And even if the 1% don't vote, the next 19% completely dominating is still inequity that will creative concentration of power that is against the promise of a decentralised social network.
I agree. This is way better than trying to get "fairness" out of Congress.
Having lived in DC my whole life, this is about the best form of democracy you're going to find. Fire Congress and let's legislate through #Steemit @dan @ned @michaelx