Beaten HF21 and blue

The prettiest sounding word in the Finnish language is Sininen. It means blue. Finnish is generally a horrible sounding language that sounds a bit like I would imagine a chainsaw cutting through a live elephant and getting stuck on a bone would sound - With the elephant being a serious cigar smoking, whiskey drinker.

This has very little to do with this post.

@whatsup asked in a post a few hours back what people plan to change if HF21 goes through and I have a pretty boring response, nothing much.

While I am planning to pull stake out of @ocdb (some for sure) so that I have more downvoting power, y other activities aren't going to change much at all because, I want to be able to evaluate the changes made.

As I said on her blog, one of the arguments consistently put forward (and I agree) is that bundling changes into one Hardfork means that it is hard to work out what has changed what. However, every hardfork requires a lot of work for exchanges and the like so it is understandable that they are also rarer, meaning more packed into them. This creates more potential for failure too, but hopefully the witnesses on the testnet are doing their jobs well and preparing for in case they haven't too.

But, this hardfork would bring in the SPS and the EIP.

The SPS is a longburn move that is going to take quite a lot of time to be able to judge its effectiveness as it first has to take proposals, build and deliver proposals and then, see how they perform. There are likely to be many proposals, many attemts and somethings will fail and some will succeed. Some will fail because they are bad ideas, some are good ideas poorly executed and some are good ideas executed at the wrong time. Some will succeed because they are good ideas, good ideas well executed or bad ideas poorly executed but have the luck of good timing. Regardless of it all, it will take time to see if the SPS will perform well.

The EIP on the other hand will be an immediate change in the system that should affect behaviour in many ways. It is the grouping of three core elements - convergent curve, 50/50 and downvoting and due to the relationship between these things, they need to be introduced together. If introduced separately, they are all bound to fail.

People should imagine them like organs in a body, the heart pumps blood and the lungs absorb oxygen but neither is much use alone. The combination of the three components creates a lot of complexities and will also bring in new problems to face, like any good change does. Overall, I am hopeful they will make a difference to active user experience.

But, it is because of this complexity that I am not going to be changing much of my behavior immediately because while I am not a fan of bundling components into experiments but understand why this is done, I can monitor how the hardfork affects me. While this seems selfish, it is actually what everyone does as the main point of contention is always, how do the changes impact on my actions, beliefs, likes, dislikes and potential to earn. It is all selfish.

However, I am the only one who has control (sometimes not even me) over my own actions which means I have the opportunity to see what I do now and how it is affected after the hardfork. This way I can then make an informed decision based on my own performance about what changes I might want to make in my own behavior.

Do I vote comments in the same way? Do I keep stake in or buy votes from @ocdb? Do I start selfvoting? Do I automate my vote? Do I care when I vote on content? Do I aim for curation more?

One thing I do know and I have mentioned before is, everyone with stake is better off after Hardfork21 and the EIP because everyone will have access to 25% more of the pool. Sure, the SPS takes some of that, but of whatever is left, everyone has more control over. Control in the positive through upvotes, control in the negative through downvotes.

People should always remember that the pool is based on stake and while some don't want to downvote because quality is subjective, the bidbots have taken away active eyes and subjectivity. If I buy a vote on my own crap content, that is not the community's subjectivity making the call on where that portion of the pool goes. However, because there is so much blind voting stake drawing from the pool (There is something like 40 million SP in bots. that is 20% of the powered up stake but since Steemit accounts mostly don't vote, it is more like 40% of the active stake. I don't know the actual figures).

What I think I am going to do is have a look at the votes on posts and make a worth judgment if it has bought votes on it as all of that stake is coming out of the pool. If it is organic looking voting, it is the subjectivity of the crowd (I will downvote spam, plagiarism and repeated shit consistently) and won't downvote. At least that is what I am thinking now.

At these prices, there are very few posts that should have 100, 200, 300 SBD on them from a "content" perspective and you will probably see the ones that should because of the other people who vote on it. Those that are buying much too highly are likely going to get their payouts trimmed and with so little (about 10%) margin in it, it doesn't take much to incur a large loss. That should change buying behavior and changing demand affects supply, and changing supply affects demand.

Will this all work? I have no idea but the difference isn't going to be in how much Steem each person gets, it will be in whether the price of Steem increases significantly and sustainably over time. I am not looking for a steem pump, I am working for a Steem economy. While the EIP hopefully changes user behavior for the better, the SPS will hopefully change the platform for the better. Combined, they might help us all.

This is all an experiment however which means that no one is completely sure how it is going to work in the short-term, let alone how it will affect the ecosystem one or five years from now. And because nothing is perfect, in the long-term there will be more changes to improve what has been done, or fix what was broken. Those arguing over the details have to eventually come to the point that Steem is always evolving and, always in a state of flux and what harms today might be a huge benefit tomorrow.

The main concern everyone has with any change on Steem is generally the same:

Do I get more, or do I get less?

That will likely depend on your behavior now, and always.

Sininen, Sininen, Sininen.
A bit of beauty in a sea of ugly, or a little ugly in a beautiful sea.

Taraz
[ a Steem original ]