50/50 and then some

Wouldn't it be nice if everyone just knew what was best for the future of the community and did that? Wouldn't it be better if that same action was also what was best for the individuals too? Yeah, it isn't going to happen, there is no perfect model. I always feel weird talking about money/value even though it is a core part of Steem and has to be, otherwise we can all just post for free on Facebook or, not post at all and get on with our lives in the breathing world.

One thing that has been discussed for about as long as I can remember here (my first day) is 50% curation rewards, linear/superlinear voting and incentivized flagging. Here is a post by @kevinwong covering these three things with continued conversation in the comments section. Go have a read if you dare and see what engagement and people who care about the platform actually look like.

Honestly, I am far too limited technically to look at the mechanics of the linear/super linear or the incentivizing of downvotes aspects but, the 50/50 curation I do have some experience with. Recently I signed up to smoke.io (Steem clone) that has 50% curation. I didn't start with nothing though, I have held smoke for over a year now and traded here and there and have enough smoke to be a little Orca. What this means is that as far as the platform goes, my vote is pretty decent.

Now as you know, I spend a great deal of time on Steem which means, I don't really have time to post over on Smoke but, I do have time to go over have a read and throw some votes. The 50% return means that I am able to never post but still increase my returns at a rate similar to those I vote on but, not at the same percentage of growth. What I mean by this is that if I have 50k smoke and my vote is worth 10 smoke, getting 50% equals 5 smoke.

This is not an enormous amount but, for someone that only has 50 Smoke currently, it is 10% return for them. If we could both sell immediately, we would both sell at the same price and value, the rich getting richer is not the case once you take away the starting point. If we look at this over the space of 100 votes, I would get 500 smoke, they would get 500 smoke and we would both be able to power up and have that additional 500 smoke vested draw on the pool.

Over 1000 Votes, I would have grown by 5000 Smoke Power to 55k they would be a Smoke Dolphin with 5000 smoke power. Percentage wise I would have gained 10%, they who started at 50 smoke would have grown 10,000%. But again, if we both sell our gains, we have the same amount. Now, I might support 10 creators and each will have 500 instead but, they will still all have the same potential to draw from the pool as my own increase. Unless they sell.

Currently on Steem the content creator gets a guaranteed 75% of the value and greedy or not, this just isn't enough to compete for manual curation and instead many SP holders will sell their votes in the various ways that @kevinwong identifies as vote farming:

• Self-voting
• Vote-selling
• Vote-exchanging

This means that those who maximize their potential earning value put zero into curation as they take 100% out or close enough to.

Now, I am a content creator on Steem, I have earned every Steem I have through content creation (and a little trading) and I am pretty well supported for most likely several reasons. Going to a 50% curation means that I am likely to lose some posting value (things remaining equal) as it might be unlikely that people will vote at a higher percentage but, I am also more likely to make up for some of that through curation returns since I myself give out about 75% of the earning potential of the stake I control to the community. I have always recommended to people that it should be closer to 50/50 but with so few manual curators, I feel obligated to put more in and have been doing so this way for the last 1.5 years or so. Before that I didn't self vote much at all so it was close to 100% to the community but my vote wasn't worth as much.

But, although this would be a great benefit and draw some curators back from the vote selling, in and of itself it isn't enough because it still doesn't tie the vote to any need for quality and despite what some believe, quality matters for the long term view of the platform, at least to some degree. This is why the flags should be incentivized to some degree because then the community will be able to return what it considers misused votes on useless content back into the pool for redistribution.

That means that people can vote on crap but, they may have their vote nullified and it doesn't necessarily cost the flagger to do so. This makes flagging more of an option and bought votes on nonsense much more risky, especially considering the 50% curation return factor. The slightly superlinear model affects this too but I am not clever enough to understand that yet.

One of the arguments of content creators on the platform is that 50% curation is costing them but this isn't actually true. I always wonder, what if you didn't know? What if when you entered into the platform for the first time someone like @blocktrades or @thejohalfiles voted on your post at 50 dollars, would you be happy? Damn straight. The feeling of loss really comes when the payout value says they voted 100 dollars but took 50 back, doesn't it?

There was no loss, there was 50 dollars gain but come payout time, that number is smaller than it was just a moment ago and the person that took it from you has so much already. Do you ever question what these accounts have done to have those amounts? Do you know what they do in the real world, should it matter? If this was hidden from view, no one would see it as a loss.

Of course, this is a transparent blockchain but no one seems to worry about the banks taking 5% interest on a house loan for 25 years. On a 100,000 dollar loan the final cost is 173,000. There is a loan risk though isn't there? Same as there is a risk to hold Steem Power and a massive risk of holding a lot of Steem Power. It isn't in a whale's best interest to maximize their coins if the coins are going to continually go down in value.

The idea of a sense of loss is not a good argument as until it is in the wallet, it isn't yours. There is also the idea of what the content is deemed to be worth. If there is a painting for sale and the artist wants 1000 dollars for it and no one is willing to pay, the piece isn't worth 1000 dollars. By some stroke of luck however, a fine art collector might randomly fall in love with the piece and pay 100,000 dollars for it. What happens to the value of the artist's other pieces? Most likely, they too will attract larger values also if other collectors are now aware of the newly discovered artist. Social proof.

Currently, social proof is very hard to come by on Steem because so much of the stake is not determined through the community at all but rather through the artists buying votes. This means that they likely remain undiscovered for eternity and as soon as they stop buying, they are back into obscurity. I can't and won't speak for other accounts but my own has got to where it is through social proof on a mixture of content quality, range, community value, interaction and likely that I also reward comments but, those who are commenting hoping for 10 cents aren't the ones with large votes now are they? The received comment voting is part of the distribution mechanism I employ (about 15% of all my voting power goes to comments) in the hope that some of them invest into their future. Very few do when I check.

People forget that there is a risk to hold Steem in Steem Power but it is a memory of convenience as when it comes to themselves powering up, it is too risky as after all, they have things to buy and a hard life to live. I am not diminishing people's life experiences but, the assumption that having a large Steem wallet means living it up in the real world is not a great one to make as some people like myself among several others I know are, taking the risk despite the real world struggles.

Should I not, should I maximize also and leave it up to others? There is a responsibility component to Steem and, we all have it even if we don't take it. Shouldn't it be shared, or is it only for those with Steem Power to bear the burden of responsibility as after all, they are so rich? or is that we? Am I one of them now? I find it a little bit hilarious that holding magic internet money that has taken me literally several thousand hours to earn through a great deal of work and I have never used makes me, privileged. Ridiculous.

We are nowhere near the sweet spot where those with stake are incentivized enough to distribute the pool to anyone other than themselves unless they are feeling altruistic. And that is a pipe dream to expect an entire community to be altruistic. There has to be return of some kind for those who are taking the risk in holding Steem and distributing the pool to others and it has to be at more layers than Steem coin collection itself. The 50% curation balances that part at least but the next point is going to be, how to get the community to actually value quality content that adds value to the blockchain and people who are willing to continually stake themselves in and take a risk on the community's future and development.

Over at Smoke.io there are a lot of shitposts from people who are there for the coins. I can guarantee that while those that care about the future of that platform are powering up, the extractors will powerdown and sell as soon as possible. Some people will never invest into their future let alone that of a community because they are the eternal instant gratifiers who will forever struggle no matter how much opportunity comes there way. The same thing happened on Steem where people who have outstripped my earning by several times complain about a lack of votes while they have close to zero Steem left in their wallets. People want support from the community but don't want to give support to the community.

Somewhere in this mess there is a point of balance but it isn't going to happen by expecting people not to be human and maximize because for the most part, that is what we do.

I am tired, have a massive tax bill I have to figure out, a sick kid that keeps waking up and - this is just a really long rant to get some thoughts out but, maybe there is something in here that provokes a thought or two. Perhaps you could write a post on it and potentially earn some Steem through it. No votes are guaranteed though. I really hope this community can get itself together one day but expectations need to shift somewhat.

Taraz
[ a Steem original ]