I've been thinking about this a long time; long before anyone was talking about doubling down on the busted curation mechanic.

Originally, the goal was to simply sidestep the 25% curation mechanic.

Obviously now this issue has doubled in size, causing me to ponder it even more.

Problem

Curation exists in the core consensus layer of the Steem cryptocurrency. There is no way to turn it off. We are forced to use it.

Curation caters to the trending tab. The idea being that curators should be paid for making posts visible. This visibility literally only occurs on the trending and hot tab. As someone who never uses the trending and hot tab because they are thoroughly ineffective, this leaves me in a situation where I'm incentivized to not upvote content that has already been upvoted.

When I upvote someone, I want them to get all of the money I tipped them. Therefore, when a post I want to upvote is already paying out $20, I don't want to upvote that post because my curation rewards are going to be leeched out to the votes who got there first.

Did these 'curators' actually curate anything? No. These posts were curated myself because the content was on my feed because I follow these people. No curation was performed, yet curators are still leeching my upvote. This is unacceptable.

Permissionless Solution

I can't stop Steemit Inc. and the witnesses from allowing these new 'economic incentives' to come into the next hardfork, but it can be sidestepped.

Tip-Jar is the answer.

Users of Tip-Jar will first create their own top-level post with the permlink "tip-jar". Whenever anyone wants to add money to their Tip-Jar they create an automated comment connected to the original tip-jar permlink post in conjunction with their username.

For example, Tip-Jar on account @edicted would begin by making the following blog post:

https://steemit.com/tip-jar/@edicted/tip-jar

Money enters the @tip-jar

I just now created this link for real. It will now serve as the hub for all my Tip Jar comments. Any time I want to add money to my Tip Jar an automated comment will be created that I will then self-upvote. @tip-jar will keep track of all the money that has entered and exited the tip jar.

Users will obviously also be able to add money to the virtual tip jar manually if they so desire. (Without self-upvoting) And there would also by an option to count every 100% self-upvoted comment to the Tip-Jar automatically (avoiding the need to spam needless comments to the blockchain) and basically allow one to 'curate' their own comments they make on the platform for free while still being able to tip that money to the real content creators.

Money exits the @tip-jar.

Ideally, @tip-jar would also have its own frontend with its own means of curation. My vision for curation revolves around resteems and decentralized trending tabs to achieve said goals. This new frontend would not care about how much posts have been upvoted. It would care about which posts have been tipped liquid assets using @tip-jar (among other factors).

To start, this rudimentary frontend could piggyback off the full nodes of Steem already being offered to the public for free. A basic feed could be constructed using API calls to the nodes already in place without having to set up a dedicated node for @tip-jar to operate.

The upvote button on the @tip-jar frontend would not upvote the way Steemit and other frontends upvote, but instead tip liquid Steem from the users personal Tip Jar (Steem Wallet) to the content creator they want to tip. The memo of the transaction would include the fact that @tip-jar was used and the permlink to the content that was upvoted. Using this information the @tip-jar frontend could order curate posts accordingly. I think it should be obvious at this point that users do not actually curate content, but rather that Steem frontends have all the power to show whatever they want in whatever order.

Points of failure.

What happens if someone starts flagging you because you're quote, "Only self-upvoting"? Well, in that case you can sell your vote and acquire the liquid SBD/Steem instantly and add it to the Tip Jar that way. I also have another idea about how to sell votes in a decentralized manner without the need of centralized Bid-Bots, but that's another post entirely.

Some users would obviously also use the service to try avoid being downvoted. "Don't downvote me, these aren't self-upvotes these are for Tip Jar!." However, I hardly see this as a problem because centralized Bid-Bot services and delegations already allow for these people to get away with everything.

Avoiding downvotes.

If the new economic incentives really do add a separate downvote pool, this is effectively a new resource popping out of thin air. This new resource will be worth money, and a supply/demand liquidity market will emerge where users are selling their flags for liquid Steem instead of altruistically cleaning up the platform.

All the more reason to use Tip Jar.
Sell all your upvotes and downvotes and opt out of this broken system.
Show Steemit incorporated that these new EIPs were a foolish and rash idea.

Conclusion

It is obvious to me that the connection from the Steemit frontend (trending) to the Steem consensus layer backend (curation) should be severed without delay. Until more people start to realize that 3rd party frontends to the Steem blockchain should have no effect on the consensus layer I'll be here brainstorming ideas about how to sever that connection in a permissionless manner.

Who knows, maybe I'll even start programming it myself if I can muster the time. It would be nice to hit the ground running and thwart the next hardfork before it even comes into existence.