Steemit Improvement Proposal: Cosmetic Upvote Feature To Replace Bid Bots and Fund Blockchain Development

There has been a "PROMOTE" feature since the early days of Steemit.com which is barely being used at this point. The feature allowed users to burn SBD gain visibility in the https://steemit.com/promoted section. The bid bots have become a free market alternative for this creating a cheaper avenue for promotion which is being used by great many individuals on STEEM Blockchain.

Simple Economic Incentives

A trustless system rely on economic incentives to function as intended. There are only financial discouragements for using "PROMOTE" which is only available on Steemit.com and the "promoted" section is not regularly visited by anybody. As per information available on https://steembottracker.com most users tend loose close to 10% using the services of bid bots. We can thing of this as a current free market price for promotion.

The Cosmetic Upvotes

Steemit.com is merely an interface. All sorts of cosmetic changes are possible. Changing the payout value is possible. Instead of having a separate "promoted " section, the promoted posts can be merged with rest of the posts while using an indicator that the new "Cosmetic Upvotes" feature has been used. This can create more transparency.

Proposed cost is 10% of the desired STU value added in SBD.

If there is a post with a 2.45 STU and someone spend 5 SBD on cosmetic upvotes, Steemit interface will show 2.45 + 5*10 = 52.45 STU

This added value will be purely cosmetic and will have no effect on payout.

What Happens To The Collected Funds

"PROMOTE" feature used to burn SBD which is a great ting for the STEEM ecosystem as it will bring the debt level down and allow more people to be paid through SBD. During these times such a function has special significance especially regarding the restoration of the desired SBD price of 1 USD. Burning a portion of collected funds will be more warmly welcomed by Steemians as it is beneficial to all who have a stake. But all or portion of these funds can be collected to provide funding for development and/or infrastructure.

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STEEM Blockchain is an open sourced project. But most of the development and a large portion of the infrastructure supporting it comes from Steemit Inc. Having necessary funds for their project funded through voluntary mutually beneficial actions should be a desired outcome. All thoughtful additions are welcome.