RE: Moving to hive
The reward pool is split by all steemians according to upvotes they receive. If a single user pulls in a disproportionate amount of the rewards pool, they do so at the others' expense. They are taking a bigger piece of the pie. So to answer you question, yes, it affects the economy here. That is why everybody has some say in how big that pie is. That is why flagging a post because you don't feel the rewards earned are justified is not only allowed, but encouraged. It is the decentralized method for protecting the reward pool from abuse or misuse.
The single user mentioned, @ranchorelaxo, is a bit of an enigma. His upvotes are worth over $300 each. He upvoted 37 times, 36 of which were for haejin or himself. Here are some facts I found on him:
-rancho showed up here about 10 months ago and laid mostly dormant.
-7 months ago started buying massive amounts of steem
-@ned reached out to him around this time asking him to "ping" him on steemit.chat
-2 months later, @theprophet0 reached out again asking him to ping him on Steemit.chat
-15 days ago, he started upvoting @haejin's posts eventually to the tune of 10,775.09
-he also upvoted himself 3 times for like $1000.
-he also upvoted one other person for $10.
-Note the numbers above changed during my analysis (going lower) I'm not sure if that was due to downvotes or changes in the price of steem. I was using steemit more info chrome plugin for the data.
-@haejin reached out to rancho when the upvotes started with the following: "I am very grateful for your upVote! Thank You! If you'd like a crypto analyzed, please don't hesitate to let me know!"
-@Ranchorelaxo has no other interactions that I saw other than a single comment ("great post") on a post that he didn't upvote.
To many steemians, this seems very suspect. Haejin for his part claims to be rich, so if that is true, it's possible he made another account to upvote his own posts in order to gain more visibility and a bigger piece of the reward pool. This is far from proven. Nonetheless, if action hadn't been taken, haejin was on track to profit $2 million dollars in the next 52 weeks from the reward pool. Granted, that is based on numbers from a single weeks sample at the current SBD and Steem prices (which he predicts to rise substantially).
Thank you for explaining that in full detail. This may be like our 9th day actually being active on this account but it all makes a lot of sense when you put it that way and yes something about that does seem very suspect especially if that means that I am working hard and someone is sticking their hand inside of my cookie jar. I have to be quite honest I kind of got a little upset there and explained it to my partner on here because I myself am an Ethereum miner and if someone found a way to con 6% of the block reward I would honestly be pissed. I'm still new here so given all the details I agree that it sounds EXTREMELY suspicious but also I do believe he earns some (not all) of it so how to tell which is which because this seems to be a bit of a pickle. Wow you explained that well.. I upvoted for what it's worth and to be honest I can see why you are upset about it because I think I may be a little uneasy about it as well now. If I understand this correctly... "He is getting a HUGE chunk of all of OUR money that we earn in the rewards but he is not earning it rather he may be con'ing most of it away in a loophole that he found?"
Well, he may not be earning. I am trying to come at this as objective as I can be, but as a steemian, I do have skin in the game (we all do). @themarkymark pointed out that while I thought I had 15 days worth of upvoting data for rancho, it was actually more like 3.5. So in 3.5 days, he spent 11k of the reward pool for the most part on one individual. If that trend had continued, he would have taken over 1,147,142 from the reward pool over the course of a year. That is not considering compounding and growing of his SP and what he would have done with those funds. That also is not taking into account the market value of those proceeds which I would estimate to be over 5 million. That is also in addition to what he is already taking in which is a sizable chunk and probably over a million market value in and of itself.
The thing that frustrates me the most is that he (haejin) doesn't seem to debate this thing head on. If it were me, I would be on every one of these threads. If I wasn't associated with rancho, I would offer to give back all of the money from rancho's upvotes. I would decline payment. He himself says he doesn't need the money and only wants the exposure. He could decline payout and still trend.
Thanks for the detailed explanation brother @moeknows
My suggestion is that you follow Haejin and Bernie Sanders and after a couple of weeks you will then know first hand how the ground lies.
I am not concerned with a bernie vs haejin contest. I am concerned that so many people refuse to even acknowledge the rancho situation and why it is a cause for concern. If you have a problem with the rewards Bernie receives for his posts, you can downvote him, and I will support your right to do so. Many people have already done that here on Steemit resulting in his current rep. Many of the same people take issue with a whale potentially rewarding haejin with $3000 dollars daily from the reward pool. Now, that doesn't seem to be happening anymore, and I'm glad about that. How do you feel about it.
I disagree with all flagging and all downvoting.... unless there is a very very good reason. These words im wrong will no doubt get downvoted. Do you agree with that? Do you think a service like Randowhale should be used to censor? I've watched Haejins posts since the early days. He has one amazing day - I know as it jumped out at me - and I counted his rewards. It was abour $1500 if I remember correctly. He was immediately savaged by B.S. it also seems B.S's data was wrong. The irony is that he earns more in some posts. Live and let live. Just bite positively for what you like. The good will float to the top.
Haejin was gifted with nearly 11K worth of upvotes in about 3.5 days over 33 posts from a single user. I believe a dispute over the amount of rewards to be a very good reason. I don't agree that your post should be downvoted for simply disagreeing with someone. Now, I would be fine with someone downvoting your comment with the belief that it isn't worth the .52 that you self-voted, but I don't think it should be made to disappear unless you use offensive language that a sufficient number of the community has requested be minimized.
Go to steemworld.org/@haejin and refresh the coming author rewards section. He is still scheduled to make $ 6,667.46 in the next 7 days. worth a market value of 27,353.15. While you're there, take a look at the downvotes he is receiving vs the upvotes he is getting.
To address your last statement, I pretty much do that and have not downvoted haejin, but if he is taking a big piece of the pie,he does so at the expense of everybody else. If his pie is voted on by many different users, I don't see much of an issue with that. If it is because of a single user, that deserves attention.
They didn't find a way to earn 6%. He had one good day when he earnt 0.6% but someone doctored the numbers. He worked hard for months helping people for free (yes free 30 min consulatations!) and finally had a great day when one whale awarded him for the good work.
52 weeks? My estimate he would been 150-200k/week if it was a full 7 days of upvotes and not just 2 days which the 56k figure was based on.
I based my figure off of steemworld.org.
You had visibility into this situation before I did and as I mentioned in my post, the numbers were going down as I was analyzing ranchos activities. The number on steemworld was based on his coming author rewards and the estimated cash value it puts out. Currently, those numbers would have haejin making $4975 in SP/SBD rewards which is estimated to be worth $26,865. That multiplied by 52 would be about 1.4 million.
These numbers would reflect the ongoing efforts to change his rewards. So it would have been higher, but I had no first hand data to do that analysis. I'm still kinda a steemit noob.
At the time, Rancho only had two days of votes and that was a 7 day estimate. So a full 7 days of votes would be much higher
There were 15 days that I saw.
Unless my steemit more info plugin was failing me.
ok, I see what you're saying. I had 15 days of voting data, but he really only had 3.5-4 days of upvoting all of @haejins posts. So yeah, the 11K number would have been much much higher potentially.
so all that drama because of two days voting!
@themarkymark
That blows my mind.
Those 2 days equated to over $50,000 USD.
What are you saying exactly with that statement @themarkymark ?
that @ranchorelaxo actually made up votes of $50,000.00 USD
i have been looking at the account very closely. The account is there for a reason but its not there for the purpose of money making. That much is a certainty
Thanks for the summary of the goings on and your efforts in collating the information you have provided @moeknows.
You're welcome. I also have the following which is more subjective in nature:
Other findings
-@haejin's content seems legit, but some posts are low in content containing only a couple of charts and a sentence.
-he was very successful and had many followers long before rancho came around
-many of his supporters seem to have came here for him or because of him
-many of his supporters have no idea who rancho is (or that he was giving haejin 11k in upvote) and think this campaign is about his success due to their upvotes.
-@haejin doesn't seem to ever mention @ranchorelaxo by name to his followers, and I haven't heard him directly address the accusation that he was colluding. (He does mention that he is accused of having multiple bots and denies it)
-I don't think haejin has directly addressed bernie or any of the groups here on steemit in a dialog (I could be wrong), but he does mention the attack during the last 4 or 5 minutes of his youtube videos starting on 20 Dec.
Haejin has bots? Crazy allegation! He works flat out on TA ans some people find his short direct of the moment posts incredibly useful. BS aka randowhale has 60 bots he uses. A little research will show you... but you will need to click on them to reveal content as theyve been censored by yours truely BS
Did I say he has bots? I think you may have misread my post. I said that haejin himself mentions allegations, but I have not. The conduct of Bernie is not really relevant to this conversation, but I am aware of his bots, as is the general steemit community. How do you think he got a negative rep? That being said, the haejin/rancho situation deserves attention. What is your take on it?
Sorry! Got the wrong end of the stick there. Re: Haejin Rancho I don't see the issue at all. Randowhale upvotes hisnown posts to value of $100 or more. I have an sceen shot that I posted burn of course Randowhale censored it. As far as I believe Rancho is an independent whale, but if he isn't, so what? BS runs 60 or so fake accounts aka bots. My issue is not with Randowhale biting fie himself (though I think it's by dishonest to the people that have paid him) but it's the negative voting I have issue with. Randowhale xouldnahve simply used his voting power uplift 100's of minnows of posts he thought were worthy. ITN would have had sameness effect on the reward pool bur has positive results. I.e. 100's of motivate minnows
I disagree with bernie's self-voting and really self voting in general. I also disagree with his using his power to downvote people he doesn't agree with. Now that we got that out of the way.
Rancho can do what he wants, but the community has a bit of a responsibility to correct his efforts if they don't believe in the worth of those posts. Otherwise, one whale could simply by the whole pot and kill steemit. I don't believe that haejin should be downvoted to 0, but honestly, he's doing pretty well.
The only problem i would have with thinking that the @Ranchorelaxo account being owned by @haejin is that the voting pattern of @haejin is as followes:
He up votes himself quite a lot and does not waste his votes. Plus he has been striking out with down votes to people like @littleboy.
on the other hand the @Ranchorelaxo account has been dormant for a couple or three days. The owner of this account does not prioritize money making
It seems more likely that it is owned by a mischievous whale : )
Let me know what you think
I believe the behaviors you mentioned are in response to the effort to downvote. It's possible that rancho is just some steem noob millionaire that likes haejin and didn't know that his upvotes would be a detriment to the rest of the community. I don't know, and we haven't really heard from either one of them in terms of dialog. I do know that I'm glad it's stopped. Haejin was posting about 8-9 times a day. So if rancho had just continued to upvote only him, it could have pulled about $3000 daily from the reward pool.