Don't use vote-selling bots: use @promoted instead. A bot that upvotes you when you burn money!
We have all seen the rise in power of the dark schemes that are selling their votes. @randowhale, @booster, WhaleShare come to mind first, but I am probably missing a few. These exploits work for a simple reason: you get an about equal return on your investment 7 days later, and as an added bonus you get more exposure in the hot / trending tabs, which usually results in even more generic upvotes/money. Fantastic...
I'm sure I'm not alone to believe that we need to reduce these exploits. And offering a better, more honest alternative could be a solution. The promoted tab in steemit.com is supposed to be what people use to promote their posts. Many users probably don't know it, but the price you pay to promote, gets burned. This is a good, sane way to promote posts on STEEM, and it grows the reward pool. Today, instead, people use the vote-selling bots that give a better near- instant return on investment.
Introducing @promoted
I ended up doing this because my genius friend @fabien recently created the account @promoted, and was looking for someone to run a voting bot with a twist... Instead of selling the votes, it upvotes if you promoted your post normally and burned your SBDs. The bot doesn't make any profit, it just boosts you if you burn money. As an added bonus, you also appear in the promoted tab!
Bot Details
- Maximum: 10 SBD burned => 100% upvote
- Minimum: 0.001 SBD burned => 0.01% upvote
Very easy to understand I believe.
EDIT: Actually, we are constantly changing the settings for the best, soon the @promoted account will post with more information
How to get upvoted by @promoted
Just use the promote button at the bottom right of the post you want to boost.
Step 1
Step 2
Voilà. You will receive your upvote within the next 10 seconds.
At the moment the bot upvotes give much less (about 15%) than the promotion amount. That's because @fabien delegated only 40K SP to the account, which is very low compared to other voting bots.
Helping the cause
- use post promotion instead of vote-sellers
- delegate SP to @promoted (feel free to contact @fabien about it)
- run your own similar bot -> github source
Current Delegators
| Delegator | Time | VESTS | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| fabien | 2017-07-09T16:07:51 | 81522927.660326 VESTS | 0.43209491860150334 |
| robrigo | 2017-07-10T17:42:33 | 5000000.000000 VESTS | 0.02650143551650834 |
| ekitcho | 2017-07-10T18:38:15 | 50000000.000000 VESTS | 0.2650143551650834 |
| arhag | 2017-07-10T19:35:00 | 52146098.000000 VESTS | 0.27638929071690493 |
If we manage to raise the power of @promoted, and offer a better alternative than the vote-selling bots for users, they will burn their SBDs instead of sending it to people manipulating the current hard-fork's weaknesses for profit. By using the promote button, the burned money will go back into the reward pool, to everyone.
As usual, feel free to comment about how this makes you feel, good or bad.
Ungreedy bot, that's cool! :-)
Would be cooler if they didn't misrepresent themselves as saying they make no profit when they very clearly make curation rewards while simultaneously condemning Whaleshares as "vote buying" when we only release the whaleshare tokens through contests and rewarding people who have benefited the community and the beyondbit token as a means of creating funding for various crypto projects by giving them tokens to upvote their posts and only make curation rewards too. Furthermore, since our tokens are only released to minnows participating in contests as a means of helping the community instead of whatever posts are being promoted which is clearly an effort to maximize those curation rewards I find the remarks about being not for profit incredibly deceptive.
personally, I kind of hate the fact that promoted posts "burn" money. enough crypto is burned off already just by people losing their keys and such, so why "accelerate" the process. perhaps this made more sense when the annual inflation rate of STEEM was 100% or so annually.
I think I might appreciate the promoted feature more if at least those funds went towards perhaps some sort of community stake-weighted vote on how best to use the funds (projects, charitable efforts, etc). And by "happenstance", that's sort of what it seems whaleshares is trying to achieve! :)
I'm just reading this now - I am new to all of this crypto stuff as well as to steemit. What does the term "burn money" even mean? Trying to learn and constantly lost here :)
as if you would destroy a dollar bill by burning it, you destroy crypto by sending it to an address (in this case @null) where it's basically lost forever, and cannot be used by anyone else.
That is a completely new aspect of this world to me. Thank you for the explanation but I'm not sure I get the analogy.
Are you saying that @null will never spend it and so it is lost? Why will @null never spend it, or by what mechanism does he/she/it destroy it? How would that be different from someone who is just holding steem money of the various kinds without spending it to boost their power or whatever?
I'm not sure I understand how the money is created in the first place and this is another side to it. I really appreciate your replying. Thank you.
because @null doesn't actually exist as a user, any money sent there is forever inaccessible to anyone! And that's also my point, it's no different than someone just holding STEEM, EXCEPT that they can eventually choose to spend it. Unless they lose their keys, of course, at which point it's also as good as "burned" (ie. completely inaccessible forever, or until quantum computers figure out how to crack it)!
Regarding money creation, think of the STEEM blockchain as a new sort of "blockchain government". And how do governments create money? They "print" it into existence, out of "thin air". That's basically what the STEEM blockchain does as well. However, it is done very precisely according to a specific algorithm agreed upon by the community and the witnesses they support.
All new STEEM and SBD go into the reward pool and are delegated according to the rules of the system. So, unlike say the Federal Reserve, each of us actually has a say in how that newly printed crypto money will be distributed to the stakeholders in the community! How great is that?! :)
Anything that diversifies me out of fiat is fabulous to hear! This is why I am on barter platforms as well. Thank you for that very good information and I am pasting into my long doc of info to understand.
What is the benefit side of the destruction for null or for anyone else?
Why would null not want to spend the money?
How to you get to be a non-existent user in the first place?
Are many users non-existent like null, or just is this one or one of a few?
Why would this system allow the destruction or is there no way to stop it and that is just a risk in this type of currency?
So many questions!
@null is having so much money at the moment that his wallet can't be even loaded :) :) :)
But i agree and i understand concept of @null, non-accessible account with wallet defined in config for steem blockchain.
HAAHA Funny I BUMP into YOU here! Anyway, thanks for the explanation, so it is frowned upon by part of the community to use the upvote sellers it seems. I just realized how insanely easy it is to take advantage of and I was thinking of using vote selling to promote a guy on youtube to come to steemit with his 80,000 followers, if using vote bots helped me snag him and his 80k followers would that still be considered as a "net" negative to the community? I am essentially advertising that which is disliked by the author I think, but with the caveat that it potentially could strengthen the steemit user base hmmmmmmmm.
And who is going to decide, where this money go ???
New steem is created every day and will be forever. Burning steem is just to put upword pressure on the price. When more is created, the value goes down, when more is burned, the value goes up. Of course, that is only the supply side of the equation. You have to factor in demand as well.
^this
Thanks very good post !!!!
Awesome Work!
Keep it up!!!
@cryptoinvestinfo
I like this !!!!!
I am celebrating 2002 followers and just gave 11000 SBD Back to @null and therefore to the community @edje
Just for a nice feeling to say thank you
You kind of missed the decimal point haha
it was 11 SBD :D
grüße aus Wien
Its great to see the vote bots diversifying and increasing competition in that space. A really interesting dynamic introduced by the last HF.
It will be interesting to see how this all pans out.
Wow very great project!
I think its a great way to help the rewards pool to recover and I kind of dont like the activity around @randowhale with his accounts @randowhalefund @berniesanders, @cached, @thecyclist, @yougotflagged, @danknugs, @nextgencrypto and @engagement because he is cashing out good.
Liked, commented and resteemed :)
Cry me a rivier.
randowhale is just one part of the problem, just the most charismatic one. There's others doing it, and there will be more, nothing can stop it. We shouldn't blame the people, we should blame the exploit and try to fix it.
Part of the problem, eh? Why is this? Because you didn't think of it first?
Also, just to note, your bot has had 0 effect on people using @randowhale. In fact, traffic has increased.
STEEM's traffic is growing organically for a while now... And you advertise your service very well. I must say you anticipated HF19 quite well. I wouldn't have been able to do it myself because I don't have an absurd amount of steem power, and I don't think my friends or other current delegators would delegate power if it was a greedy bot like yours.
Please though as I said before, don't blame the people. I never attacked you, or anyone directly through my article, so I hope you are not taking it too personal. STEEM changes a lot and I'm sure you would find another better way to use your power once we get rid of the current vote-selling exploit.
The fact that you call it an "exploit" is absolutely ridiculous and shows your blatant ignorance of how the platform works.
Again, you sound like you're just sore because you didn't come up with the idea and don't have the SP to support it. Your jealousy is not flattering.
^ Exactly
WOW @RANDOWHALE EVEN HID MY REPLY BECAUSE IT IS TOO TRUE
this can all be seen in his wallets
REALY WORTH TO RESHOW IT AND THINK ABOUT WHY HE DID IT
HE PROBABLY DOWNVOTES THIS AS WELL!
All of randowhales SBD income goes to @randowhalefund and from there to @nextgencrypto and @cached to get then to bittrex an so on...
and thats not even close to be a complete list
WOW he ruined my reputation completely
I used to have a 34 REP and now I am down to 16!
It's a great job..........
For the record, Whaleshares doesn't sell votes. We don't sell anything. We are a community and only release the whaleshares token through contests and by rewarding people who have helped us. Beyondbit was created purely to fund various projects and aren't "sold" or traded on the exchange by us either. The tokens that are traded on the exchange are ones people acquired through these means that chose to trade them. We believe in libertarian free-market capitalism so decided that they are free to do with them as they wish. All we get out of it is curation rewards so essentially it is a means of delegating curation while creating synergy between Steem and Bitshares, 2 similar blockchains with different use cases that we love. With that in mind, saying that this doesn't earn a profit when it will clearly make profit off curation rewards is also misleading. I see no problem delegating the curation of your SP to benefit the community as this is exactly what we are doing too and think this is a wonderful idea that might actually get people to use the promotion feature. Would have been nice if you didn't condemn us as "vote selling" when we have never sold a single token and promote yourself as "non profit" when you are earning the same curation rewards we are though.
Many good points here
Very, very good idea for 4 main reasons.
The promote feature is not that great and is haphazard, you can spend 50 SBD and get nothing in return.
It was very difficult to tell exactly HOW the promote button helped your post.
It was underused because of the above two points.
This initiative now gives people a reason to use promote, plus there is direct correlation with their investment and the vote they get.
In its first incarnation, @randowhale was great, because 2 SBD, even at the lower end of the voting power, gave a good return. However now it seems unlikely that you will even get your 2 SBD back.
Anyway, I'm not against vote buying, but I am for fairness, and that's why I like this, is it is fair, and at the same time helps the overall system.
Well done!
Cg
Yeah i just used 1 dollar and it was all i had and only got .35 cent... the randowhale is much better.. but its like sustainability you gotta make sacrifices..
I like your bot! I will start using promote feature now!
I don't know if I agree with your opinion on the good/evil that these vote selling bots present. I'm curious to know why it's any worse than any of the other things that happen surrounding whale accounts with large votes.
Why do you see these as a problem? How is it any different than whales voting for their friends constantly, huge curation trails, or gratuitous self voting?
At the moment I'm fairly indifferent on the morality of selling votes/voting power/delegation, and interested to see how the markets evolve. I however don't see anything worse happening now than in the past year.
Edit - Just to add a comment about this bot itself - glad to see the others getting more competition and you've got a nice twist. I do however think the post promotion system is somewhat worthless - and I doubt anyone even really reads it for the most part. Would love to see data on trending page views vs promoted page views.
I believe the vote-selling to be less of a trouble than past exploits (voting games for example), but it is one nonetheless. It is unnecessary service that only exists because a hole in the system exists. @randowhale added a random factor in the thing, which was smart, but I don't believe people use it for gambling when there are dozens of more entertaining gambling methods online.
Self-voting/friend-voting is easy to detect and is a consequence of the brutal change on the last fork. It's pretty bad in my opinion but it can be fixed easily by changing back to another non-linear reward, or something 50% HF18 + 50% HF19. Community can point fingers too but I don't think this is a viable long-term solution, we don't want to have useless contents just to 'flag' abusive users.
Curation trails I'm unsure about it. I don't think it's great for promoting the best contents but in the end this is how the world works... L'union fait la force. Still, I don't use it personally.
About the exploits on STEEM, I believe that this will be an ongoing cat-and-mouse game. We improve the mechanics of the STEEM game with updates, then someone will find a new exploit, until we find a solution and make an update, for someone to exploit again.
It is very similar to online game cheats that need to perpetually evolve to not get detected, and how anti-cheats need to perpetually improve their detection as well.
Hi mate, sorry that comment suggests a real ignorance of market mechanics. Voting bots exist and are incredibly successful because they are necessary ie because there is an incredible demand for them. The fact is, it is incredibly hard as a Minnow on Steemit, HF19 may have even made it worse as people sit on their VP now. For many people just starting out, the only way to get anything from a post is from a voting bot.
Having said that, I think people milking the voting bots for every drop by upvoting their own comments is a real problem. This is why we introduced the selfgoat on MinnowBooster. If you are upvoting your own comments, people are going to see a picture of a goat licking it's own ____ all over your comment section.
At the end of the day, a post can only get a single vote from any one bot. I think comment upvoting in general is a much bigger problem and drain on the rewards pool, and should be removed all together and replaced with a tipping system.
Either way, I think this bot from @fabien is a really cool idea and finally makes the Promotion feature actually worth using. We welcome the competition.
Full disclosure: I am a mod on MinnowBooster Discord server and have around 170 Steem invested in the project and 200SP out on delegation. I earn a daily slice of revenue from my invested Steem and daily dividend payments from my delegation.
Well said. I'm still not sure I'm concerned with people selling votes (it's probably the best incentive to power up I've seen to date...), but I understand where you're coming from.
Best of luck with the new bot and it'll be interesting to see how this all unfolds :)
This is what I've been saying since the first time I saw Steemit. The promoted posts feature is a complete waste of money due to the current way it's setup. If they want anyone to put money into that, they need to figure out a way to get eyeballs on the promoted posts. You're better off running a Facebook ad to a post and having an outside monetization method on the post to make money from it then you are throwing away SBD on a promoted post here. Maybe if they made promoted posts as sticky posts in the trending section then you'd see people pumping more money into using it. Or make the default page after you click a tag go to the promoted section instead of trending.
I tend to agree with @jesta to be honest, but this really could work if you were to get a mega crap ton of steem power behind it. I'm willing to try it just to see how it plays out, and you do get the added bonus of being on the promoted page, but I think the attraction of the other bots is not only the instant return but that it is (potentially) worth it. I just promoted my post for 10sbd and got a (just barely over) $1.00 upvote from @promoted. There will likely be some residual votes from being on the promoted page, but that probably was me literally just burning my money. Most people (especially noobs who don't have anything to burn) are not gonna be into that. I'm curious to see how this progresses though, I think in general it's a good idea and a good thing for the platform.
I agree with you, but I cannot fund this myself, I'm far from being a whale. Anyone can delegate SP to the account to help the cause (or run the bot yourself)
A lot of people were already using the promote feature regularly, we just gave it an extra boost. It isn't much yet, but it's better than nothing in my opinion.
I used these bots weeks ago, and I can tell you that I'm at the bottom i have a loss, do not waste your time and money making the rich richer. Thank you for this wonderful initiative, unfortunately there is no way to stop these bots unless some pretty influential whales take action. Yet steemit is a decentralized network and it is normal for people to provide such services, the only way to stop them if we do not buy these votes.
I couldn't agree more. For the current state we just want to offer a saner alternative to greedy bots. If they disappear, I would see no reason to keep running @promoted.
If any whales want to help, they can delegate SP to the @promoted account. We are making a public list of the delegators and will give the curation rewards back to delegators.
I used this now.. It's cool!! @heimindanger
Where upvotes from promouted bot?
https://steemit.com/@promoted
I made several translations, but 0 upvote!
resteemit SERVICE! We're offering resteems to over 2400 followers for only 0.25 SBD or 0.25 STEEM per resteem. Our resteems generally do better than Promoted Posts. you can simply send 0.25 SBD or 0.25 STEEM now and the link to your post to @wayforhappiness and we'll resteem it right away. Resteems get you more views, more followers, more engagement on your post, and usually more money. We've had several repeat buyers who love the service. Thanks!