Is HF21 a trap?

HF21 has a bunch of different things in it. People for years have complained about combining too many things into a hardfork for Steem at once. The challenge on teh other side is that every hardfork is a risk to exchanges not keeping up. Poloniex has gone down for literal months. So, I'm an advocate of hardforking smaller changes once every 3-6 months, but I just don't see that kind of development pace being sustainable under current circumstances. So, we're left with no changes, bigger changes, and longer cycles. It's less than ideal.

In terms of this hardfork like every other hardfork the question is "How are you redistributing the money that I get now?" I've come to the conclusion that nearly every complaint on the platform is "I want to do less work to get more return." Well, at the moment posting doesn't seem to be the mass market success making thing. It seems we need other stuff happening on the chain than your trestise on scrotal infections of South African right handed salamanders. it would be great if Steemit would do some of this other stuff, but it's hard to count on them for anything outside of pure product development and a steady 800k sell wall every month. Also, that product development has really been about them and their wants rather than what the community has been asking for often for years...

So, anyway if you want marketing efforts, larger projects than $20 to get accomplished, or product development you're going to need to get it from the SPS going forward. that's the thingy were money goes in and you can make requests of the community. It's kinda like a tax, but the whole thing is voluntary and controlled by the stakeholders. So, it's kinda like opt in taxes where you choose which proposals your stake will support.

It means we can make bigger projects happens or really I'm just happy that it means we could help projects happen here. The bad news is that your mega post on scrotal infections might not make as much money. Once the rage goes down a little please realize that there's now a second way to earn. Make a proposal to do something that adds value to the chain.

If you're worried about how you're going to make something seen or heard I can offer for you to talk about your proposal on muh radio show on Sunday nights. If I like the plan I'll resteem and advocate for you.

So, with the current plan your post rewards will take a 10% immediate hit. If the goals of the SPS are met and we're adding more value than the price of Steem goes up because it's spreading into more hands through more projects and hopefully within say a year your posts are worth more than they would have been and we have this neato funding thing.

EIP

There are three parts to the economic incentive plan.

1. A reward curve change
2. Downvotes
3. Curation changes

My current view is that 1 does almost nothing. It's a very gentle tweak. I may be wrong, but that's my current take.

1. Down votes are 100% necessary in a functioning system. The challenge is whales like Bernie who flag accounts like @sgtreports to zero because of opinion flagging. @sgtreports now is promising to never post here again.

So, the whole thing is kinda prima dona esque. Bernie or anyone else flagging for opinion difference especially to zero is a shitty behavior. But I think if everyone is armed or everyone is in their own communities it likely won't matter nearly as much. Ok, fine nuke my steem rewards, but if you want to fuck with my PAL rewards be prepared to buy the same amount or more as me to flag me down....

I guess I think this is a short term problem or a problem for communities that can't control their membership at all. Fortunately steem-engine has mute features, so even if a whale buys a shit ton to fuck with a community a community thorugh the owner of the issuing account has the ability to mute them. Controversial? Yes? Big Stick? Yes. It could also be used like a time-out. You've been a bad boy flagging people for bullshit all your posts are on a time-out now. Here's a dunce cap too.

Anyway, flagging is important to be able to disincentive spam. We haven't had it and so much of the rewards system is leached away every day and devaluing everythhing we do around here. Hopefully everyone can start tossing some flags on clear leaching like comment farming or all of Bernies computer authored posts or all of trafs mega bid botted posts. Then let's see how the rewards shift.

The last portion is 50:50 curation. We have this on PALnet now. Note it hasn't ruined the platform. I actually feel a lot more incentive to make sure I'm curating every day knowing that a healthy dose of curation is coming back my way. The other thing I noticed is that now owning stake matters more. So, why would a rich person read and upvote your scrotal infection article is a little more important. It's because they want to get better returns on their steem voting. After viewing these changes on PALnet I actually think the combo is a slightly non-linear curation curve (R^1.05) combined with 50:50 makes me actually curate, which I haven't paid all that much attention to in my almost 3 years here.

Anyway, tldr, it's a clickbait title and it's not a trap. The whole thing is better than what we have now. We're experiencing a lot of these changes on PALnet already and they are good. I've thrown posts into trending calling certain hardforks a clusterfuck. I think I was right then. I think these are good improvements and in the long term will reward all people on the platform more than they are now. It's gonna be ok.

If you want to discuss it I have a radio show from 9-11 eastern tonight on msp-waves.