RE: An Opponent of the Exponent: Making the Case for Vshare Linearity
Interesting post!
I remember 2 other aspects from the White Paper. There IS a lottery effect from the current n^2 voting power formula, and it was a desired effect according to the White Paper. If you get a large payout once in a while, at an interval that you can't predict, then that plays on certain human psychology which is also at play when we gamble.
The second thing was the Sybil issue of people making multiple accounts. It is less profitable to spread your available steem power among multiple accounts than it is to concentrate it in one account, with n^2 voting.
How about a more moderate change rather than just going linear, which is in effect n^1 voting...
why not try an exponent less than 2 and greater than 1 for a while and see what the affect is. In fact, the exponent's value could be something the witnesses vote on, much like they currently vote on the SBD interest rate.
I would love to see what happens if we go to, say, n^1.5 voting. I think that would be a good experiment without being a drastic change. And then the witnesses could evaluate and change the exponent further, if they feel it needs to be changed, just like they change the SBD interest rate.
No its not. Under the current system, if you have 100 accounts with 10SP each, its exactly the same as having one account with 1000SP. You gain no advantage and suffer no detriment.
I realize that, to a certain extent, i am trying to have my cake and eat it too by quoting the whitepaper in my post, then completely disagreeing with another aspect of it.
But i do and always have thought the lottery effect was a stupid idea (especially in the current system where the same people always win the lottery, but stupid generally.) I think youll get many more interested engaged people by making a system where everyone gets something that approaches a fair share based on the value of their contributions.
I thought that if a person had one account with 200 voting power, it would count for 4 times the effect of what would be the case if they controlled 2 accounts each with 100 voting power.
We give the witnesses the power to change things like the SBD interest rate and whether or not to hard fork; why not let them decide on the exponent of voting power, bounded in a range of 1 to 2? 2 would be no change from the current system. 1 would be linear. Let's go this way and see what happens.
one account with 200 voting power would have 4x the power of 1 account with 100 voting power. But the two accounts with 100 voting power, even though they are only 1/4 as strong as the 200 voting power account alone, when they combine their vote, they are just as strong as he is.
Now, if the 200VP guy used his account like 2 100VP accounts, he would lose out. FOr example, if he cast 50% votes on twice as many things. And if the 2 100VP guys vote for different things, then their strength is only half as much as the 200VP guy.
If that makes sense
It does make sense, thanks! I do have to think more about your first paragraph though. I see how 2 100 votes adds up to 200 when they combine vote, but each is still multiplied by the exponent separately. 100^2 + 100^2 != 200^2 So I still think, at the moment, that exponential voting prevents sybil activity, but I could be wrong! :-)
(100 + 100)^2.
So lets say your first 100 voting power guy upvotes a post (lets assume hes the first one). The post will now have 100 voting power voting for it and get 100^2 in rewards.
Now lets say the second guy comes along and also votes for the post. Now, the post will have 200 voting power voting for it, and get 200^2 rewards.
So if the first 100 voting power vote gives him $1 in rewards, the second will give him an additional $3 (for a total of $4) and the third, if there is one will give him an additional $5 (for a total of $9)
But if these three guys all voted on seperate posts alone, they would only be assigning $3
Many perceive the current lottery system as "being chosen by whales"
this is a super neat idea (though id have to think about it some before i came to any conclusions)
First of all, technically, integer is preferred (1, 2 or 3 for instance). Secondly, Sybil issue is not relevant because there is no difference between one big vote from an account or aggregated small votes from multiple accounts.
As @sigmajin well pointed out, the basic assumption of n^2 is equally distributed stakes, however this is not the case in the current Steem.
The only issue with linear system is self-voting. Regarding this, please see my comment above. IMO, self-voting is not a serious issue in the linear system.