Whale votes for witnesses have more weight than that of a minnow. Why?
I have only recently started looking into how witnesses work in Steemit so the other day while reading post on the topic I left a comment asking, "Does a whale witness vote have any more power than someone with less steempower or are all witness votes equal?" to which I received a reply, "Good question, your vote is directly proportional to your SP. So, YES a whale has more influence over the votes.".
I was shocked by this and wondered if anyone knew why this would be the case. I can understand why more SP would influence your power when upvoting but I don't understand why witness voting would also work this way. Surely it would be fairer to make all votes equal. To suggest a witness who gets a single vote from a whale could be 'elected' above a witness who gets 1000 votes from minnow sounds ridiculous to me.
I'm pretty sure I must be missing something here so could anyone enlighten me as to why witness voting works this way?
If you have been given the correct information then I can only guess that it is because they are the ones who are actually investing monetarily in the network - they have the most to lose if something goes wrong.
Whether this is fair or not depends on your point of view as to whom witnesses should primarily be "responsible" to or influenced by.
Whale votes do count more heavily than minnow votes. I'm currently trying to help @yunkzilla with his witness campaign and he can attest to the additional power having an influence.
As to the monetary investment statement, I don't think this is necessarily true. I made a $400 investment that got me 224 Steem, whereas someone who invested a few months back could have received 5,714 for the same money. I'm not upset about it but just thought I'd illustrate how technically my stake is the same as theirs, should their vote be worth more for that?
I'm all for equal weighted votes for witnesses.
Yes, but my statement, "they have the most to lose if something goes wrong" still holds as how they got their current Steem Power is irrelevant (it could be argued that they were taking a risk when they invested and in doing so helped SteemIt develop, but I think that that is also irrelevant).
"just thought I'd illustrate how technically my stake is the same as theirs, should their vote be worth more for that?"
Original investment is not necessarily the same as stake. I could just as easily say that they have a stake of 5714 and you have a stake of 224.
As to the question of vote worth - I wasn't suggesting that one person's vote should, or should not, be worth more than anybody else's. I was just stating what one of the reasons could be.
"he can attest to the additional power having an influence"
I guess it's not worth me voting then. It seems that it will only take a couple of whales to get who they want as a witness. To be truthful, while I understand their technical roles, I have no idea what affect witnesses have on policy. I think that's true for the vast majority of SteemIt users.
Vote, don't vote it's up to you.
In real terms if the original investment is lost both parties lose $400. The risk of loss is similar for all investors, regardless of the point that they bought in. Although the whales have had longer to 'earn' back their original investment. Everyone stands to lose their entire investment.
I take your point though. The whales can't cash out everything without destroying the market for everyone so in that respect they do have more at risk with regard to how the site is operated.
"In real terms if the original investment is lost both parties lose $400. The risk of loss is similar for all investors, regardless of the point that they bought in."
No, the value now is what matters - you wouldn't insure a house for the value it had 50 years ago.
If you hear some very bad news about SteemIt, you wouldn't say, "I know my investment is worth 5000 now, but I only invested 400, and as I'm prepared to lose 400, I'll risk it. You would, in all probability, have to chooses whether you wanted to risk 5000".
"Vote, don't vote it's up to you."
I don't understand why you made that remark.
The reason you insure your house for its current value is because you assume that to replace it will cost this amount.
How much would it cost to replace Steem if it was at $0?
Your real loss would still only be $400. You don't have the $5000 until you sell. We're investing in equity, not debt - you can't lose more than your original investment.
The remark about witness voting was In reference to you saying 'I guess it's not worth me voting'
"Your real loss would still only be $400. You don't have the $5000 until you sell. We're investing in equity, not debt - you can't lose more than your original investment."
In strict accounting terms, yes, this may be true, but how many people talk in terms of accounting.
So, if that person sell his Steem for dollars, and then buys the Steem back, he has now invested all those dollars in steem - we are starting a new account, so in accounting terms he has invested $5000. In real terms, nothing has really changed.
That is why the ordinary person would say that if you have $5000 in Steem, that is what you stand to lose.
Cryptocurrency is a type 'money', so I could just as easily argue that arguing in terms of $ is not relevant. In my world of cryptocurrency, the amount of Steem is what matters - Steem is the constant and dollars go up and down relative to it.
"The remark about witness voting was In reference to you saying 'I guess it's not worth me voting'"
Well, the post was about the value of people's votes, so what I said was very relevant. I fail to see how your remark was.
Thanks for the reply. I am hoping that someone will confirm whether what I was told is true but if it is I still find it odd. In my mind the witnesses should be responsible to or influenced by (in terms of witness votes) equally by all users. It surely shouldn't be the case where a single whale witness vote has 1000 times more weight than a minnow. Witnesses already have a lot of power of the network and the idea that they can just keep voting themselves in doesn't sound right to me.
According to the link given on steemd:
https://steemd.com/witnesses
The link they give is to BitShares to describe DPOS
https://bitshares.org/technology/delegated-proof-of-stake-consensus/
"Each account is allowed one vote per share per witness"
Anyway, as you say, someone will hopefully confirm how it works. It would be interesting to know.