Is it time to let Sleeping Whales Die? Another side of Protecting the Reward Pool
View this post on Hive: Is it time to let Sleeping Whales Die? Another side of Protecting the Reward Pool
View this post on Hive: Is it time to let Sleeping Whales Die? Another side of Protecting the Reward Pool
Excellent idea, and one that I think should be coupled with another that I came across recently.
As a brand new steemian I am finding the landscape here to be fairly off-putting in terms of what it would take to turn involvement with this platform into anything that experienced true growth, regardless of the quality of your content. This is largely because of the issue that you're highlighting here. There is true cronyism developing within the platform, and the situation is exacerbated by this phenomena of dead whales. Frankly, I didn't know such a thing existed before reading this post, but having read it I now have even less respect for the trajectory that the steemit platform is on.
I tend to be a big picture kind of guy. I look at overall trends and see patterns as opposed to looking at the nitty gritty detail of the world.
The pattern I see being replicated here on steemit is one of insularity and self promotion, with touches of clique behavior and, in effect, class segregation and disenfranchisement.
Your idea in this post should be coupled with a diminishing return algorithm that continuously reduces the reward given to an author for repeated votes to the same author over and over again.
I don't know what structure that would have to take mathematically, but it would encourage the use of steem power as a tool to help new material, quality material, to be discovered.
Hey @serapium! Thanks for the in depth comment. You are right, the system cannot survive indefinitely in it's current state. But, part of the problem with a decentralized platform is you don't leave anyone in charge to mend the issues. As long as Steem Inc do not address these issues with the overwhelming SP they have at their disposal to crush the evildoers (an action they show no inclination to take) then there really isn't anyone with the power and incentive to change the system.
The diminishing returns theory you put forth has been brought up before, with a couple of people actually going to the length of writing the code which would cause votes to provide diminished returns.
Two good follows in this area, if you don't already follow them, are @timcliff and @rycharde. They have both encouraged this sort of amendment to the reward pool previously.
As for us minnows.... we just have to do the best we can with the tools we have on hand. I will say, I pull my SBD rewards out of the system instead of exchanging for Steem and powering up because I feel the need to diversify my holdings into other crypto in the event that Steem were to crumble under the weight of the current system.
Every activity that can be performed by an End-User can be performed by a bot. Excluding of course Capitcha.
They will just rewrite their bots to make a post and upvote it.
I don't say it to be snarky, I am just saying if you close one avenue they can open another.
But if the whale is truly dormant, then someone has to have their key to reenable the vote. This isn't about people who are active and gaming the system, those are being addressed elsewhere, theoretically. This is about people who have set auto-votes up and then they disappeared from the platform. But their auto votes still tick along, upvoting every post for people months after the user themselves stopped being active.
Yeah, I would guess Steemvoter and Steemian have a lot of users signed up that aren't still in the game. It will be interesting to see how it goes.
Best of luck in pushing an idea through.
i would personally find "checking in" with a tick is troublesome, it might as well just make a proper post once every maybe 90 days, in case some people are "engaging nature" retreat that has no internet.
Even standard non Visa application countries had a threshold of 90 days.
upvoted
The proposal? I copied it below for the TLDR people:
I'm absolutely for it. Reverify if an account has been inactive (except for autovoting) for over 30 days, maybe more like 90 days. I think it's brilliant. Will it be implemented? Probably not. But it's a good idea. I hope a developer sees this. @ironshield
30 days, 90 days... 9 days.... wherever you draw the line, all people have to do is do one active activity to keep the voter going. It isn't that big of an ask I don't think.
But you are correct, probably not going to be implimented anytime soon.
This is a good idea Mike. I am also against auto voting to a certain extent. I do follow a few curators and allocate 10% of my vote when following them, but the vast majority of my voting is done manually, as I feel other people should also do. I don't think there is a perfect solution to the issue, but this one seems simple enough to put into practice and good work nicely
That does sound like a great idea. If someone is just automatically voting and they're giving out huge payouts and they aren't invested in Steemit anymore really by not commenting, posting, etc., that does sound good to ask them if they're still there and wanting to submit that upvote. I hadn't ever thought of this happening. Thanks for opening my eyes to another layer of automatic upvotes.
Finding a fool-proof solution is difficult. People will always find a way around it. I have yet to understand how everything works here but I appreciate people trying to fight abuse and I'm always with "giving the money back to the community" ideas.
Good article @mikepm74
I think it's a fair solution, and gives plenty of time for someone to respond. Maybe another possibility would be to have a time maximum that would need to be redone by the voter once per month or something.
No doubt someone would find workarounds, and the people who need to do this are some of the "offenders". Which is kind of ironic when you think about the purpose of decentralized transactions. Luckily, not all whales are the problem. Hope someone listens who can give it some traction!
True.... people who want to game the system will always find a way to be one step ahead of the people trying to protect the reward pool. However, if steps were taken to require some sort of action from the person doing the voting, then at least someone with that user's posting key would be required to take some action to ensure that the whale account continued to vote.
We'll see if the idea gains any traction... maybe... maybe not. haha Either way, thanks for joining the discussion!
that dog with the burning flames lol
hahaha
He's my buddy.. LOL
😂😂😂
He should teach me how to be that chill xD
There's a chance it might not fall on deaf ears. One of the people that runs one of these sites could see it, and consider implementing a similar feature. Though perhaps 3 days isn't enough. There's a habit of some to forget that not everyone checks their email every day, or even every week, or it can get lost in the weeds. I think once a week for 3 weeks would be fine as well.
There's also a chance someone that will eventually implement a service in the future will be shaped by not just your post, but the entire discussion around such things. I myself have commented before on there being a problem with auto-voters, and neglected auto-voting.
I have considered alternative ways of dealing with it. I believe that votes, and their rewards, should be weighted based on voting habits. Someone's vote that votes for every single post by someone should mean less than someone that only votes for that person occasionally, if they have the same or close SP. Similarly if they only vote for a small handful of people. In effect, it would be rewarding people that take effort to go out and vote new people, and rewarding those they vote for for standing out.
The auto-voting isn't the only issue of course. It's just one. Discussing these things makes a real impact, because it gets people talking about them.
Edit:
Forgot to mention that this would be less of a problem in the future if we had some other way of rewarding authors we like, built-in. Like maybe a subscribe button that would pay them weekly or monthly. If you could choose to take that out of your voting power, or pay directly in steem or SBD, then it would be the same for whales, without the issue of voting for crap, and a bonus for minnows, who might not have a ton of SP, but might be willing to put some money aside every month for their favorite authors.
What you are describing falls right in line with the voting algorithm proposed some months ago by @rycharde, and I believe @timcliff has written about the same idea.
I wonder if there will be some redistribution of the reward pool implemented with communities... like each community has their own reward pool versus one big shared pool.
Finding the best ways to ensure that content is rewarded appropriately will likely be the raging debate for the life of the blockchain. hhahaaha
It seems like a lot of people have some of the same ideas in regards to what should be done on here. Hopefully they'll actually implement some of the better ideas, and we can start improving things.