I Was Wrong - (About HF 20)
I Hate To Admit It, But I Was Wrong About HF 20
I wrote a post in which I accused the people of Steemit Inc of being short-sighted and wrong with their approach to curation and the sending of money from our posts to the pool to be re-distributed! To sum it up, I was rather harsh on them (as @beeyou said at the time).
I made the point that we were just sending our money to the pool to be taken by the big players that game the system. While my intentions were proper (I did think it was really wrong), my analysis was flawed. I had received several attempts to reach out to me from Steem witnesses (and friends) @abh12345, @paulag, and @danielsaori; and all of them felt that the HF 20 wasn't a bad thing and that I was looking at it wrong. While I noted their opinions, and certainly respected their views, I was still not convinced.
Then I received a discord message from @carlgnash. He kept at it with me until I saw the light. I applaud his patience as he genuinely wanted me to understand how this was going to work. In the end, he did convince me. And that is something I, like most people, don't like to admit. I was wrong.
How HF 20 Will Work And Why I Now Support It
Brief Introduction
Part of the post payout will change under HF 20. The part that will change will have to do with the portion of curation that goes to the author. To simplify this, think of it as this way: A post has 75% that is called a "Author reward" and 25% that is called a "Curator reward".
The Author ALWAYS got his/her 75% and that will stay exactly the same under HF20. No one will lose any of that 75% and none of that will go to the "pool".
The Author SOMETIMES received some of the 25% of the Curation depending on when the votes were cast. The more there were early votes, the more % that went to the author (in addition to his 75% payout on the post). This is the part that will change under HF 20.
The Curators that voted early were in effect handing money from the post over to the Author. While this seems like a good thing, in reality if the so called "curators" were really tied to the Author (either through their own ALT accounts or bid-bots), then what was happening is that these weren't really curators upvoting the post because it was good. Instead these were just votes that were casts by the authors to scheme the way the system was designed. And HF 20 will alter this behavior dramatically.
The New Way
According to @carlgnash, now what will happen is the curators will still get paid their part of curation. But what will happen is the part of the early vote that was already foresaken by the curator (and going to the Author) will now go to the pool instead. So the Author will be the only one that loses from these early votes (but remember, the Author was getting these USUALLY because they had the money to upvote themselves). The other curators will still get paid based on where they fit on the time/vote-value scale, and that scale will stay pretty much the same (with minor alterations due to the limit going from 30 min to 15 min). So normal curators will still earn, and now they won't have to compete against the Author giving himself a raise in % by self-voting or using ALTS/Bid-bot Early Votes.
What This Means
The smaller steemians by and large essentially receive about 75% of their vote as it already stands. So the effect on them won't be much of a change, other than the pool for payout should actually now be increasing due to lack of early votes taking from the pool. In fact it could be argued that the small ones might even get a bump, as people search again for posts that might rise due to high quality.
The larger steemians and ones that use bid-bots to vote early (less than 5 min) will be hurt the most. They simply won't be able to do that anymore, and thus not get 90 to 95% of their posts paid to them while the small guys get 75%. In effect, the ones with money will actually lose their edge (in this respect).
I also think this will have an impact on the bot-owners too. They will have a decrease in demand as many people only used the bots to get this early vote advantage. Once HF20 comes into play, this will put a lot of pressure on the bot owners and they will have to cut back on their payouts for SP leases or they will suffer horribly on any downswings in price of steem.
One other loser (in my opinion) will be the delegators of their SP. As mentioned above, the demand for votes will be hurt by this move and force them to accept a lower rate of return. While this might sound like a bad thing, to those that have been paying a 25% to 30% rate of return to lease steem it will certainly be a positive thing. The investors that don't participate in day to day activities, should see a reduction in the interest they receive in passive form as a result of this change.
A Complete 180
Net net. I actually have done a 180 degree turn. I have gone from hating it and even thinking it is one more sign of tone-deafness by @ned and the people at Steemit Inc, to one that might just make a difference at the margin. While it will no means fix the lopsidedness of the distribution of Steem within the community, it will certainly help to give the small fish a chance to play on a more even field. It is a great step forward by the people that devised it and supported it, and I am happy to admit that I made a mistake when I denounced it a week ago!
Thank you to @carlgnash (a @curie community representative, direct follow curator and reviewer from @curie and the co-founder of @c-squared) for being patient enough to go back and forth with me to help me understand this topic.
I also want to thank the Steem Witness team of @steemcommunity @abh12345 and @paulag along with Steem Witness @danielsaori who all 3 separately spent time trying to give me some wisdom and understanding. I'm hard headed, but finally had my eyes open enough to see the light!
My "highly recommended" witness votes will now be added to my posts. I hope you add them as your witness and to your posts too!
@steemcommunity
@danielsaori
@yabapmatt
@steemgigs
@jackmiller
@noblewitness
@comedyopenmic
@curie
@qurator
@swelker101
@ats-witness
Are you sure the change will not apply exclusively to early self votes?
I did not comprehend it from steemitblog's thread about HF20.
Will the change be retroactive for all posts that were already posted and voted, but less than 7 days old?
Does this mean that now the linear time factor increase of 0-30 minutes will decrease to 0-15 minutes?
What does it mean to return to the reward pool?
For the vote to return to the reward pool of its post, or for it to return for the global reward pool, or for it to return to the posts' rewards part of the global reward pool?
Your conceptions about the effects on the bidbots, their users and their delegators are very simplistic, skewed and wrong.
The overall damage to vote buyers will be minute and some of them will experience an increase in overall vote values due to increased value of votes of people trying to make curation rewards, or at least less hurt by curating instead of self voting.
Vote buyers will become more attractive to upvote.
The best bidbots will experience increased curation rewards.
I may post (a thread) about this soon.
The current calculation of reducing the curation reward with early votes will remain, but the window for the reverse auction will be reduced to 15min.
Returning to the reward pool just means that less money will be paid out. The money that would have gone to the author in HF19, that money part of the post reward, will now return to the global reward pool.
So in case of your comment, let’s say you got that generous vote in the first minutes, after HF20 your reward as an author would be roughly 25% less.
So it will have a positive effect on early self votes or people using bots to magnify their author rewards. Let’s see how it will pan out, but unfortunately it won’t fix the issues we have today with the vote bots.
I comprehended nothing out of this.
What is reverse auction?
Retroactively, despite that it was already voted before HF20 was adopted?
I will still use bidbots, but it will make my life easier because I will not have to vote immediately.
There are already people whom vote me with pathetic votes on posts which I did not buy votes on that will earn them 0.001 SP of curation rewards at most, instead of the 0 that they get now, because I do not respect such pathetic votes.
Reverse auction is the thing happening between 0-30min.
The HF will impact all active posts/comments, no matter when the vote was cast.
You got a 100.00% upvote from @sleeplesswhale courtesy of @stimialiti!
You got a 55.40% upvote from @luckyvotes courtesy of @stimialiti!
This comment has received a 82.64 % upvote from @steemdiffuser thanks to: @stimialiti.
Bids above 0.1 SBD may get additional upvotes from our trail members.
Get Upvotes, Join Our Trail, or Delegate Some SP
It's ok Dave, I forgive you. As your punishment for getting it wrong, I will not be upvoting this post!
Also, I have straightened out that fork, with a bit of ESP magic, bending it back into its original shape.
Even the gold one has no clothes any more.
hahaha... that is hilarious ... You really are a very funny guy! I'm sure blondie will be sad that his gold one lost its clothes too :P
And lol... I am surprised I just lost your upvote, I was worried you might send me a downvote for that flagrant violation :)
DOWNVOTE COMPLETE
Wow, I've missed a lot while away. Great post @davemccoy. Heading through your blog now to read more. As usual, changes on steemit move quick! I've gotta a lot of catching up to do.
@mudcat36 lol... yes we will catch up this weekend for sure if you have time... I should be free for sure!
So in the end this does have a negative impact for you. Since you use bid bots.
However if you are right that won't be an issue. Cause if the demand decreases you will still be able to make nice profits.
that is exactly right... Me personally would do better myself because I understand the loophole... But the platform is suffering because the much larger guys than me do it 1000 times better than I can. So I am happy that it is getting fixed and frankly I think the bots will have to raise their payouts as a result... If they don't, then they will have a lot of bots stuck on 100% not voting... (and I don't think they want that).
You have it exactly right! :)
Nothing about Steem is super intuitive or easy to understand, to be honest :) I feel like where the lightbulb finally started going off with you was when I started talking about the impact of HF20 on bid bot votes on posting.
We already know that people set up scripts to front run bot votes to get a cut of the curation. Obviously this will not change, and in fact now the authors of those posts themselves will have to compete in that window before the bot vote arrives for curation. It is an absolute guarantee that posts with large bot votes will be sending money back to the pool, money that previously would have gone to the author of the post that received the big bot vote, and to the users who upvoted that posting in advance of the bid bot.
I don't think this will eliminate bid bot use by any means, but it will make it less profitable for authors and it will redistribute a chunk of the money from the use of bid bots back into the pool.
Likewise, the largest accounts that always have a high expected payout on their posting also see early incoming votes - again here, all large accounts with high expected payouts on posts will be sending back a bigger chunk to the pool. The amount that will be sent back to the pool from haejin/ranchorelaxo will be very substantial, and that almost all goes directly in haejin's wallet currently.
It is easy to think, oh the largest accounts already get most of the pool so sending rewards back to the pool benefits the largest accounts. This should actually reduce the % of the pool that the largest accounts and bid bot users control.
Well, I'm not swayed. No matter how you dice .. rewards are being taking away which will slow down account growth. Account growth is hard enough as it is.
I believe the deciding factor on Steemits success will be if users can grow accounts organically in a somewhat reasonable time frame. If that's not possible then this place will be forever a niche site.
The average social media outlet user ( FaceBook users / Instagram ect ) are not investing money for SP. There not going to stick around watching whales make hundreds while they make pennies. Sites like FaceBook don't have that issue as everyone is on even playing ground making the same $0.
I agree with you completely on your last 2 paragraphs and have very much been on that side the whole time... And I still am. And frankly the problem is that everyone got fat and happy early and now we have a distribution problem... 90% resides at the very top...
But this particular issue I think they did do the right thing. I was where you were a week ago. It took me many conversations with Carl to get to the point where I get the point. While the money is going away from the post, it is only money that is artificially created by and large... (ie bots or ALT votes).... And so it is disincintivizing early votes by that class.
While I myself have also found that loophole, there is no way that I could ever have expected to catch up to the big boys that could do it with far more money and far more efficiently than me.
I think you will be surprised, but I certainly agree with you about there still being a major gap and an general lack of understanding of how to build a community. I am by no means a fan of management. I simply think this HF 20 isn't the problem at all.
It's great to see some clarity. I read your earlier post and I really appreciate what you're doing with dustsweeper. It's clear you have the everyman's concern on your mind. I'm glad you got it sorted out.
Thank you very much @antimetica! I do try to always find way to help them retain "us"... I think that is the biggest flaw I have seen here. The complete inability to keep us coming back. (ie too much churn)... I think there are very simple fixes that don't require much money, but it would take them really putting some sales/marketing people into the equation. I think they focus too much on the tech side (I know its important, but so is customer retention too).
I'm glad you like @dustsweeper and I'm happy that it has shown people that removing dust entirely would be a good thing for the platform to do! :)
Have a wonderful week!
So HF20 is going to change the curation algorithm? Because as it is the first votes get more curation, so if there's an early vote, won't it take more of the subsequent curation rewards and also assign those to the reward pool? I guess I still don't understand.
That's mighty big of you to say you were wrong though. Props to you for taking the high road. I'm proud of you, man!
that's not exactly true... Remember that you only get a % of the amount of curation you get if you vote too early... So I will give you an example..
If you vote at 5 Min... lets say you only get 5% of the reward due to you... but 95% of that reward would go to the author. Yes you were early and get a high curation score between the 2 of you, but since 95% went to the author then you still get less than say someone at 20 min.
So really the guy who votes early is by and large working for the author... like his mule... And of course for the rich guys this means their alts/bid bot buys. This actually hurts the later curators since it is "artificial" demand.
But there will be a dis-incentive for the author to do this now. He will simply wait to do his upvotes as he doesn't want to send his funds to the pool... This will give the curators more chance to get in ahead of the author (since there is no way to beat a 0 min vote and make anything. Even a 5 min vote would suck on payout, even on a huge vote (on the way it is).
And technically it will take the same as it was before, but it will send it to the reward pool instead of the author. But in reality, what will happen is the early "fake" votes will dry up. So it will mean less being take away from the curation pool for everyone "other than the author".
And thanks Arch! It took Carl a few days and lots of questions to get me to this point. But I'm convinced he is right and I was wrong.
But since the earliest voters take the largest portion of the curation, even if they're giving it to the authors (soon to be to the pool), the later curators don't have as much curation to get.
If the first person would get 35% of the curation, the 2nd get 25%, the 3rd 15%, the 4th 10%, the 5th 7%, etc... then even if only the first person votes at 0 minutes, 35% of the curation is gone. Whatever happens with the rest of the reward, only 65% of the curation rewards will remain.
What would happen if they changed it so that rather than being sent to the rewards pool, they change it so it's just given to the later curators? It would just bump up the curation amounts that the later curators got. Maybe that's too complicated.
Oh, well. I've never really gotten anything off curation anyways, so it's not really going to affect me either way. Just let me know when HF20 is going to take place so I can roll the autovotes back a few minutes. :)
lol on the last paragraph... that is really my situation too! hahaha
as far as sending it back to the "pool" or burning it or sending it to the other curators, there are pros and cons of each.
As far as it hurting the other curators, it actually will have the opposite effect. Right now there is a HUGE incentive for anyone to do an autovote at 0 min. It is like 33% advantage. If those send the money away, then what will happen is they will just happening at that point in time. That one change will certainly affect the later curators as the autovotes will be later no mater what. (assuming the big guys care about getting paid for their vote and they have shown that inclination)
So if they move it to say 15 min, then you can hop in at 14 or 13 and still have a chance. In many cases they might not even try as most of the 0 min votes are done simply because they are "can't pass up" situations. If they disappear, then the votes cast later will have a better chance.
I am no expert, but I do know that removing the money going to the author from the early part of the curation will have a change of behavior so they don't self upvote or bid bot themselves in that timeframe. What is the best way to distribute that money or even just burning it, is something that many can have different views on.
My original though was you could take away from the author the 75% with early votes... But that is where my flaw was. It really doesn't affect the average guy at all, it really hits the guys that 0 min vote it with size. So they will either move their votes out farther in time or stop/reduce them. Either way they should get less of the pool than they were...
Frankly the only thing that worries me still is the top 20 witnesses voted for this, which many of them are bot owners. I'm surprised they are going to curtail their cash cow, but maybe they realize that it has gotten absurd. (we can hope)
Wait, the witnesses get to vote on proposed hardfork changes? Can I vote? heh
It's all kinda over my head at this point. i'm getting bits and pieces, but most of it isn't totally making sense. That's ok though. If you're happy, then I'm happy. I don't have the mental bandwidth to focus on it right now. Maybe later down the line.
Thanks for keeping an eye on things for us!
I’m in the exact same place, @themanwithnoname. All this information is dazzling me. I get some things, but most of it all sounds like Chinese to me, lol.
Bid bots usually vote in the 15-30 minute range I don't think it will affect them at all.
no it will effect the USERS of bid bots, who currently vote at 0 minutes on their post and get a big chunk of the curation reward from the bid bot. Now, any early voting behavior on posts that receive bid bot votes will send some of that back to the pool. Ultimately, that may trickle down (or up) to the bid bot operators themselves, but only if it has an impact on how many users are using bid bots. If users keep buying the votes even if they lose money (and that is already the case often, and people still do it) then it won't really have a huge impact on the bid bot operators. But it will return some money to the pool that would otherwise have gone to posting that was only receiving high payout because of bid bots.
That has changed a lot lately @gduran... If you check out steembottracker.com you will see a major shift has happened over this current downturn. I would say 2/3 of the bots are sub 15 min... and the reason is clear, to get those early votes to take away from later bot votes such as MB.
Thanks @davemccoy, appreciate you taking the time to set the record straight. I saw your original post and I have to admit most of it went over my head but will now study a bit more using this update post as a starting point. I don't think anyone who follows you has any doubt about your commitment to the platform or, more importantly, the people on the platform, so I tend to trust where you're coming from. Thanks Dave, @eoj / @starthere.
Thank you very much @eoj! That is a very nice thing to say! I do try to be as helpful as I can be and I was really bothered by HF20 a week ago... But after seriously going through all the practical effects, I realized that my fear that the rich were going to get richer was actually just misplaced. I was arguing for the right people (the common man/woman), but using a flawed analysis to determine what helped them most.
I'm very appreciative to Carl, Asher, Paula, and Daniel for collectively making an impact on my understanding. Carl in particular really went around and around with me, which was pretty awesome since he didn't need to do so!
ps... what happened to the @starthere account? Did you get locked out or just running a few?
@starthere is still going, I just felt like only focusing on crypto and humanitarian applications of blockchain to be a bit limiting so I ended up barely posting at all, just once or twice a month max. That is definitely not the creative side of my brain ;) I opened the @eoj account hoping it would inspire me to write more often. A little tough starting from scratch but so far it's working, I'm posting much more regularly!
Thanks again for writing on this topic. I still have a lot to learn on this, but between reading your post and the replies/comments I feel like I'm starting to understand...slowly! :)
Hope all is well, warm greetings from @suitcasemama and I from Thailand!