Locking stake for 100% passive income, improving content, helping apps

in #steem6 years ago

This is a pretty bold idea of sorts and isn't mine however, I am going to present it without names at this point. If they choose to chime in under the post and join the discussion, that would be fantastic. I spoke to several people at Steemfest about this and there are many facets and possibilities it could bring.

For a little background, ~30% of the stake is delegated to bidbots and used as a passive investment mechanism. This stake isn't passive, it is voting and it effects the organic nature of content. The delegators are free to do what they choose with their stake as we are all aware and maximization is definitely common. Let them maximize 100% guaranteed.

Let stake be 'locked' up via a switch so that it cannot vote but automatically takes 10x 100% vote values from the pool each day at the 2.4 hr maximum rate. What this means is that those who choose to invest passively are silent investors with the percentage of the stake they lock away. They can unlock and use it as stake if they choose under normal rules but while locked, it has zero mobility.

In a scenario only using bidbot percentage. Around 30% of the entire pool is distributed to bidbots each day and they are voting on 0.5% of posts. They vote at a percentage so that the vote will offer some profit for the bidder, and returns somewhere between 80 and 90% to the delegators and owners. For the most part it is not sensitive to the content it votes on at all but it affects things like Trending. This leaves 70% of the stake to be used by all other users.

Instead of this, if the same delegators locked their stake and took max rewards, that same 30% would come out of the pool and into their accounts (50/50 if they choose I guess) but cannot be used to affect any post payout at all. This means that there would be zero 1500 dollar posts in Trending unless organically voted. This means that for the most part, Trending will be completely organic. Even the circlejerkers are likely to lock in large percentages of their stakes.

What this means is that a new user can come into Trending and rather than see 1000 dollar posts, will see 20 dollar posts and those posts will much more likely be better quality or Dapps. This sets expectations of both quality and monetary return and should help with retention. The curation initiatives with minimal delegations will be able to affect Trending also. The ability for a community to downvote rubbish is possible because it is at a much lower range too.

Remember, the switch can be turned off and the stake used (under certain conditions) and considering they are maximizing at 80-90% now, essentially it would be the same as getting 1-2 free flags if they choose. They could also keep some stake free to support authors or projects they want to keep supporting a little.

It is no secret I think that we are moving toward a position where the Steem pool will no longer be distributed to post payouts as SMTs will be distributed instead. This means there will be a true investor layer to Steem. This incentivizes passive and silent investment into Steem as other than holding powered up Steem, they will still have access to the critical factor for the future, Resource Credits. They will be able to own their stake, take from the pool and provide RCs to the applications for bandwidth as well as onboarding activities.

The only risk is that everyone with any stake powers up but that is very unlikely. Most will leave some stake free because they want to have some influence over the content, they wan to be able to reward their audience and the ones they read and of course, many will not earn much locking their minimal stake up. Large stake however could easily lock the majority of their stake and still operate.

This means that the gap between large and small closes massively and the small stake that previously had little say in the order of things, have a great deal more in their ability to affect content. For example, a whale with 500k SP could lock 90% of it and they and I will be voting on the platform with the same stake of ~50k SP. A minnow or group of minnows with a 1000 SP are able to have significant say on the order of content and draw on the remaining pool.

The remaining pool is important here, as whatever is left can only be drawn upon by active stake. Rather that 30% going to 0.5% of posts with the 70 spread to the rest, the (in this scenario) 70% gets spread to the rest but it will be that 70% that is seen in trending. Unless a post has real support, it is unlikely to get pushed into the Trending pages.

This gives more opportunity to real users and real reason to be a quality, compelling and engaging author as once again (or perhaps for the first time) the real network one has developed takes precedence and holds value.

Now, apps might want to still buy position and for the most part this will be relatively easy as most app developers work closely with staked users which means, they just have to say when they are going to post and the whale can flick their switch out of hibernation and use it to bump posts they choose. It won't require a $600 dollar cost to be seen in Trending since the values needed are more in the 30 range most likely.

This seems like a lot of crazy but there are a great many benefits to having actual passive investors that do not affect content organization. It empowers real users, it gives a healthier view, it is more organic, it offers investment potential, locks up more Steem, provides a stable base for RCs, gives small users more say, increases options, decreases voting stake disparity, increases incentives to flag, takes away the need to self vote comments or shitposts 10x a day, reduces circlejerks, adds game into the platform. Does ranchorelaxo stop voting haejin and lock stack for full return instead? Does Parys ever get seen in Trending again? Does Freedom stop delegating and flick the switch instead?

While the interfaces will try to hide Trending and bidbots (I am not a fan of sweeping under the rug), what this does is stop those same buyers from getting votes unless organic. It means that whatever is left in the pool to be distributed will be distributed much wider and more likely to people who create good and care about content and community. They are also the ones more likely to power up as it will take less stake to have an impact on the content they enjoy.

Communities will have more say, the applications with delegations will get more visibility and it will drive users to find places to earn, rather than rely on paid votes. If Steemit Inc made this possible and then delegated stake to distributor apps and curation initiatives, it will completely change the view and health of the platform almost overnight and empower the apps to build strong communities that will be ready for SMTs, and give the RC pools the resources needed via the investor class.

Not only would new users have a healthier view and expectations, they will have bandwidth available to interact for free and land in communities that can help them not only feel at home but also earn their own stake. Rather than the constant struggle, good actors and performers will find themselves among the highest earners on the platform through real visibility and less grind.

We talk a lot about distribution and this will essentially give anyone the chance to take their cut based on their stake but, it will also mean they might not earn more than their 10x vote. It will change the way people delegate to bots and to users and will bring back a reality to the platform unseen for perhaps ever. The smaller accounts, the dolphins, minnows and redfish will be the ones who have the power to distribute and affect the entire ecosystem at the visible layers.

This is a large topic and I have barely scratched the surface. There are intricacies and thought that needs to be put in to work out the best ways but the more I think of it the more I am encouraged to think about it seriously. Why keep trying to stop people self-voting shit 10x a day, why keep fighting maximizers for doing what they are going to do anyway. Give them what they want and let the people who actually care, the people who want to interact and be part of the platform the power to decide what the platform is going to reward. Passive can stay silent and invisible.

There is essentially no risk in doing this as it is all opt-in and is also opt-out. If at any point the locked stake decides that it isn't working the way they would like, they can flick the switch and return to being active on Steem again at any point. It really appears to be the simplest and most elegant solution to returning the ecosystem to a equilibrium point where content and community matters and investors are able to earn guilt free.

I am interested in hearing your thoughts and opening up the discussion.

Taraz
[ a Steem original ]

Sorry about the long post, it is such a big thing with so many ramifications that aren't immediately obvious, I will have to write followups. I was much better at speaking this with hand gestures at Steemfest.I know I left stuff out....

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Thanks so much for writing this up!
The idea was posted before, unfortunately I am not able to find the original post or poster any more. (edit: @meno helped to dig it out! click!)

After more than two and a half years of watching maximizers getting more and more common on this platform, I immediately agreed with the guy bringing this idea to the table. There are a lot of people who'll always go the easiest way to maximize their ROI, and when they screw the original intent of the platform up like it is happening now it's just logical that even the strongest idealist will give in at some point.

We talk a lot about voluntarism, but don't take into account that money makes us do things we wouldn't necessarily do if it wouldn't play a role. Let's stop forcing people to play a game they don't care about and just want their gains. And let's hand over the playing field to those who really want to use the platform as it was intended.

I tried to promote the idea a bit below some posts and in the dev slack, but was generally ignored. Glad we came to talk about it at steemfest and it has some traction in the community now!

I think @tcpolymath wrote about this once... I thought it was great, but got very little traction as far as I know...

how difficult would this be to code into the blockchain? realistically... ?

Here's the original post.

There's some interesting discussion of implementation there that I haven't gone digging father into. But my feeling is that if we can't fit a half-size Steem and half a basic POS system into the space currently occupied by a full Steem then something really weird is going on.

Thanks for sharing your in depth view on the steem structure in your article!

So basically what you are saying is that we need to remove the rshares and replace them with STEEM? If so why don't we have the problem of self-voting in this system? Probably I missed the connection - looking forward to your response!

No we keep rshares and all of that, but we just make the whole posting-voting-rewards system something people can opt into if they want to participate, rather than something everyone has to be a part of if they want to hold Steem.

Basically self-voting and bidbots are mechanisms to get around the fact that the system forces people to vote in order to get their rewards. So if we stop doing that, they won't need that particular method.

to paraphrase (or add):

Basically self-voting and bidbots are mechanisms to get ...

interest (earn) without bothering to even look at "content" at all - what to speak of actually reading it, evaluating, deciding how good it is (what normally curation means).
so, yes - system "forces to vote" - but doesn't forces to read :)
or in fact even bother to click on the link of "content" to even as much as open it. just "vote" action (= press upvote button) is good enough for system.

I'm not a coder... but Savings is already there in the wallet and already gets 9% or 10% or whatever... so I'd guess that most of the code to make this happen is pretty much already written.

Well, I don't code anymore, but I can somewhat think of the logic...

Technically, the rshares would remain the same for the reward pool assignment, that part would not change.

Since vested STEEM already makes ROI (not much mind you) it would be simply adjusting that number, setting conditions to it (ie stake not being delegated out) and creating an equivalent of a switch condition with cool downs and what not.

I used to code, its been a couple of decades now.. but it doesn't seem too hard, at least by comparison.

9 or 10%? interest?? savings dont be makin no money no more mon! Wachu talkin bout mon dis steem wallet be broken mon andf i tink its only a few percentage points aye and not anymore

Has anyone flagged this comment?

Let's stop forcing people to play a game they don't care about and just want their gains. And let's hand over the playing field to those who really want to use the platform as it was intended.

This is what I am hoping for if this can get pushed through for a trial.

I tried to promote the idea a bit below some posts and in the dev slack, but was generally ignored. Glad we came to talk about it at steemfest and it has some traction in the community now!

I think it is hard to get status quo changed and it seems that many are waiting for something to save them. As I just mentioned, this prepares for turning off the Steem tap and makes a nice smooth transition for the Dapps to implement SMTs.

Let's see what others say. Thank you for all of the various forms of support you have provided the platform over the years, and thank you from me too.

Just as @pharesim said, I instantly loved the idea when i was reading through the article. I though hear such a proposal for the very first time and I’ll need to take my time and think about all the implications it would have.

First thing that caught my eye is that it doesn’t seem right to give an option to instantly switch between the locked Steem and SP. People could then just farm 5-7x 100% votes per day, switch to SP influence the platform (and gain curation reward?) and switch back - repeat. Maybe I misunderstood something but it feels like big investors could maintain the option to influence the platform a lot while still farming those "self-votes" EVERY DAY. Thus the lesser users wouldn’t really have bigger say. I think it would be healthy to truly distinguish between "locked Steem and "SP" by implementing similar rule that exists when delegating SP or converting Steem - in other words it would be healthy to have like a week long period when the locked Steem is converting to SP or Steem. Or maybe use the power down rule? So one could "power up" either to "Locked Steem" or "SP" instantly, but it would take long time to power down, but the user would be receiving portion of it every single week (then again the user could power down either into Steem, or into the other "locked version of Steem".

Those are my very initial thoughts about the matter so it probably isn’t anything extraordinary:D. Anyway great food for thought as always bud. Resteemed:)

Yep, the details themselves would have to be discussed and thought through at a much deeper level that I am able to do but I tihnk there would be a way to make it much less gameable than the current system is and increase stake influence of smaller users. I am glad people are talking and thinking about it.

Wow, a 20k SP flag for managing to bring up a discussion, and you don't even give your opinion. I thought better of you @transisto

Due to the lack of reasoning I assume you're afraid of your stupid middleman service becoming useless if this happens. Interesting choice of priorities.

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Just to add to the discussion as we've talked about it during SF3:-

  1. Steem has economic incentives (of 25% curation, linear rewards, costly downvotes) that promotes and rewards content-indifferent voting behavior.

  2. With passive staking as per your suggestion, we're effectively reducing the rewards pool that remains to fuel the same voting behavior enabled by Steem's economic incentives (of 25% curation, linear rewards, costly downvotes).

Passive staking helps only to a certain degree. Point (1) above remains. Steem's economic incentives are still aligned to content-indifferent voting behavior, which should be fixed (by going for 50% curation, n1.x rewards, 10-30% free/pool downvotes). Between maximization strategies of taking part in voting or passive staking, being able to influence content by voting remains to be a powerful proposition.

As I said when we spoke, this doesn't exclude exploring 50/50 and discounted/free flagging. I actually think it might make them more effective as it is a kind of reset of the pool resources and a chance to improve overall distribution.

@kewinwong @tarazkp I'd like to see both of these ideas implemented together. We can do better and we should, if someone thinks Steem is working as intended right now, he's clueless.

We have to keep working until we have active curation happening, that's actually trying to embed the best content creators that come our way via giving them stake in our ecosystem. Else they will just leave when they see that in Trending low quality posts are gaining hundreds of dollars. I have to wonder has @ned given this another thought and what is his current stand on this. All he commented about bidbots (that I know of) was "interesting"... Bit lackluster when they have changed the ecosystem inside out, at least with Dan we would have gotten a lengthy post about the issue and I'd understand what the leadership is thinking.

Currently it feels like we all know the ship is sinking, but we hope SMT's will save it and are holding on. @ned please consider doing something other than another frontend... It's not the issue here, listen to your users. Whatever users you will get through fancy graphics, they'll leave because the flawed incentives.

We have to keep working until we have active curation happening, that's actually trying to embed the best content creators that come our way via giving them stake in our ecosystem.

Yep, even a limited pool (it is essentially limited already by bots and circles) is a better view of things. Consider that with a few more delegations the apps/curation initiatives become distribution forces and things could look much healthier fast.

And people like to compare what their posts make to others, when we take out 500 dollar promoted posts, mainstream users won't feel so bad when theirs make only few dollars. Platforms like these have to give a lot of thought to the human psychology. These days hundreds of thousands are spent by apps to scan brains in search for the best colors to be used in apps and such.

The current system sells the idea, that quality doesn't matter pretty hard to normal users we actually want to attract here.

Fyrstikken is user from another end of spectrum, he seems to be happy gaining "cheap tokens" as much as he can, wondering why everyone else isn't quite as happy as he. I wonder what he will do with them all when no real users are left here when they'll choose not to spent their time here viewing ads and feeling bad when some posts make 500 dollars and so on.

When we all will be using our SP through bid bots, what there'll be left? Everyone will log in to claim their gained rewards and sell them for other coins, because SP acts only as a passive way to gain wealth, nothing more. No posts will be curated, no comments made. It's a grim outlook I wish I wouldn't have and currently markets seem to share my view more than the positive one.

But with only few small changes, who knows, Steem could be proof-of-brain blockchain once again. Your post at least has stirred up discussion, and discussion is always good.

Fyrstikken runs a bid bot, don't take his word about alleged aquirations.

I know he does, I also know him from times before Steem. If he's reading this, remember dogecoin?

So I can say, that some individuals here, with big stakes put profits far ahead of any morale and as long as incentives are what they are, they'll continue profiting from it and move on when better opportunities rise, only being sorry for not making more money.

That's why the rules should direct the greediest to act in a way that's beneficial to us all. Now the best route is selling votes and messing up the content discovery, making this platform inefficient and not attractive to mainstream users.

I've been using bidbots to sell my votes for some time now, I see why they are popular, and this whole thing could be replicated with the idea Tarazkp is presenting here while still making the normal users happy, those who actually want to use Steem as a platform to find good content and socialize, and this should be considered and discussed at length until we have better understanding of the pros and cons.

That's why the rules should direct the greediest to act in a way that's beneficial to us all

I don't know you but I love you!

Platforms like these have to give a lot of thought to the human psychology. These days hundreds of thousands are spent by apps to scan brains in search for the best colors to be used in apps and such.

I completely agree. Tempering expectations and user retention is one of my main targets with this.

I am pretty sure that just like the fact that if everyone used bidbots the system would fail (not everyone does), not everyone will lock stake. I don't think I would at least.

Yes, there would still be people who would want to use Steem as intended, to reward good content and doing so encourage these creators to keep coming back with more of their creations, attracting more people here. It's a positive loop that we should encourage more.

I'm not sure if some people are playing some game theory strategy here, where they try to maximize their stake before inflation lowers down with all means possible. With the money some people are making here, I'm seeing surprisingly low amount of advertisement of Steem by them outside this small ecosystem. It is quite surprising. Or are they just shamed to mention it because of the way the ecosystem currently works?
(Quality doesn't matter much). Any day competitor could pop up, which has taken lessons from Steem and has fixed the issue of content discovery.

I know that I'd like to keep some voting power for myself to keep rewarding original, and interesting content like this:

and in my mind, the best route to ensure Steem is still a worthy platform to interact in ten years, is to make sure these people get rewarded here.

I wonder what he will do with them all when no real users are left here

#metoo

"economic incentives" apart and without going into all those details (techy stuff) - if it is really truly seriously a matter of making a change in voting behavior from "content indifferent" to "Content Attentive" and Interested, about caring for Quality of Content (or at least about bothering to as much as VIEW that Content from inside the post - not from "outside", just its title in the Feed list)...
then there is quite easy and simple solution to accomplish that - IF Steemit Inc. would actually care to do so (yeah, yeah, and if Witnesses "come to consensus" etc). that solution I have explained here. it is basically, in brief: make the Upvote button visible only for those who have bothered to actually Open and Read that "Content" (post) ! :)
bots would "get tired" to open all those links, scroll down to the end of post, find that Upvote button -- all that just to press it to complete the so called "Curation process". (or perhaps bots can't even do all that)

that would help to achieve what you are trying to focus on:

being able to influence content by voting

if no one is able to press Upvote button at all from "outside" (from Feed List), but only from "inside" (from within the page of that post) - THAT would certainly INFLUENCE content by voting! and shift the voting behavior from "content indifferent" - to Content-Reading-Compulsory.

however something tells me that present state of affairs - quite perfectly FINE not only for the System itself, but also for all the "Investors" / "Stakeholders". whose main (or only) concern is not the Content itself nor its quality - but the ROI. (and for System - the long-term lock-up of the capital within itself; aka "High Yield Corporate Bonds", the "Mutual Fund" of all those SP "Stakes" combined)
Upvote button easily accessible from "outside" the Post (i.e. without need to open and actually Read its Content) and available for bots or anyone to just press it without need to click the Link (title) of the Post. therefore why bother to do any more than just trivial basic action of "pressing Upvote button"?
since System doesn't require anything else at all and doesn't care at all. then why should care all and any people who come here to Earn? (especially those who has Invested, especially quite a lot!)

so called "Active curation" (LOL! what a term! like "active pressing of Upvote button"? bots are good at that! :D) will not happen - because System doesn't care about it, doesn't require or demand it, because it is not important for it to generate the profits and to sustain itself. It keeps "minting" more and more new tokens "out of thin air" (as Taraz rightly mentioned it some time ago :) ), so, main thing of it is - "generation of connections" (aka "links from clicks on Upvote button" LOL :D) and the fact of "content discovery" aka "Curation" (= which Upvote buttons under which posts titles in the Feed List are pressed and which are not). as long as such "Business" continues - it is quite alright for the System. it is NOT at all necessary nor important to even READ the text inside - what to speak about the evaluation of Content Quality (what is normally meant by Curation).

That's why Stakeholders are being bluntly straightforward now - in making proposals of such ideas ("Lock up Stakes") - so that they don't even have to bother with such a silly nonsense as ANY kind of "Voting" at all. just Invest (= "Power Up"), "Lock Up" and get increased rewards for that (for NOT selling their votes otherwise) aka "Passive Income". funny though that at the same time "improving content" is mentioned at all. because WHAT "Content" or its quality is of any interest at all - if person is fully satisfied with "Earning on Autopilot".

Passive can stay silent and invisible...

yeah, why not! :)
desire to care about one's ROI is understandable. but there is no need to cover it with some sort of "caring about content improvement" and about "voting behavior" LOL

The STEEM blockchain has an inflation rate which is partially paid to participants who lock up their free STEEM in STEEM Power.

Now free STEEM does not contribute to one's voting power but STEEM Power does.

If I understand your proposal correctly:

  • STEEM Power would still contribute to one's voting power.
  • STEEM Power locked up would benefit from an inflation rate.

This would seem to be a simple change. Instead of sharing the STEEM blockchain inflation rate with all STEEM Power holders, the shared inflation rate would only go to "lock up" STEEM Power.

This method would still give investors in STEEM Power an incentive to hold STEEM Power.

Interesting idea!

Have a great weekend!
Steem on,
Mike

I like this idea a lot!

For investors, it's actually better than delegating to bid bots because the bid bot income is still variable (ie, if no one uses that bid bot, less is paid out to delegators) and for everyone else it's better because actual popular content could make it to Trending.

Lots of people do spend money on bidbots in order to get their work noticed... say if they're launching a new Dapp and want to get the word out... but we do have the Promoted tab that hardly anyone uses... but I think it would become far more used if that's where all the cool new Dapp info, etc was.

I think Trending would be $60 posts of people that get a couple of whale autovotes and Dtube... but still, that's far more in reach for a newbie than the crazy $1000 posts.

I still think Haejin will still get up there... only because I don't believe that deal is about getting eyes on his work, but more about squeezing as much from the rewardpool as possible... I imagine Rancho gets weekly/monthly fiat kickbacks or similar. Parys and his ilk would die off though, which is reason enough to give it a shot.

It would mean that whales would make that tough decision to either silently invest or actively invest... the active does more good but the silent earns more... which 'should' mean that more quality work is upvoted by active whales.

It's definitely a novel idea... I'd be more than happy to offer the option for silent investors to maximise... after all, they did invest sums of money to make something back on it.

but we do have the Promoted tab that hardly anyone uses... but I think it would become far more used if that's where all the cool new Dapp info, etc was.

Yep. The other thing that is possible for promotion is instead of one post getting bidbots, the content for promotion gets offered to trending authors and streamers to advertise if they choose. A banner on 50 trending author's pages paying them 10 dollars for the week will get more views and engagement than one post pushed up for a day or two.

I think Trending would be $60 posts of people that get a couple of whale autovotes and Dtube... but still, that's far more in reach for a newbie than the crazy $1000 posts.

Yep, it is hard for me to estimate in my head. I am setting a a high 'lockup' percentage for starters.

I still think Haejin will still get up there... only because I don't believe that deal is about getting eyes on his work, but more about squeezing as much from the rewardpool as possible... I imagine Rancho gets weekly/monthly fiat kickbacks or similar.

Well rancho can take 10x every day as can haejin with no post and no community shit.

It would mean that whales would make that tough decision to either silently invest or actively invest... the active does more good but the silent earns more... which 'should' mean that more quality work is upvoted by active whales.

Yep, and if there is a percentage option, many will maximize 50-80 and use the rest to play.

I'd be more than happy to offer the option for silent investors to maximise... after all, they did invest sums of money to make something back on it.

Me too. At least worth a decent trial.

I'm very much in favour of such an implementation. Even if it would kill/weaken Smartsteem's current business model.

Actually, I think I made a comment about it somewhere - I even thought I did a post, but can't find one. Separating content-producers from investors looking into making ROI would go a very long way in having a more friendly system!

As we have spoken before, I think there is space for the bidbots too but it will be a changed role and one that is far healthier and perhaps more profitable in many ways as there might be no expectation of earning by users.

Separating content-producers from investors looking into making ROI would go a very long way in having a more friendly system!

This is what I am hoping for and once this happens, user retention will also drive investment interest and ramp up the cycle.

Hope you are well mate.

I had read the post earlier, now rereading it actually is making me more convinced that it might indeed be a good way forward. Along other changes.

So here are some of the sidenotes I was writing down whilst reading the article:

If it's more interesting to just sit passive and I would get rewarded higher as opposed to actively engaging, with my vote, more accounts might sit passive. Bidbots are still seen as immoral, this solution wouldn't be, so you might have more than 30% going in there.

In my opinion big investors should be pushed to commit to improving the platform by voting / delegating content / projects that add value to the Steem blockchain. Long term this is the way to let the price of Steem rise and their own investment.

Than again if they're not willing to do that, I do prefer the passive system suggested here over bidbots.

I do think an idea like this should be implemented together with more incentives to ACTIVELY engage in content curation as a whale as well.

One part I really liked is where you said that if big accounts would lock up part of their stake, the wealth-inequality within Steem has less influence on the content curation. Which might cause smaller players to feel like they matter on the platform, this of course is a huge step forward in my opinion and one of the biggest advantages to this proposed solution!

Bidbots are still seen as immoral, this solution wouldn't be, so you might have more than 30% going in there.

There would be more than 30 indeed. At least at first.

I do think an idea like this should be implemented together with more incentives to ACTIVELY engage in content curation as a whale as well.

Let's say that there is 100 in the pool and there are 100 vests drawing from it. Say, 50 is passive locking up that 50 percent. Then, some large delegations go to 20 new application adding 20 new vest draws. Now there is 120 vests drawing from the 100 and instead of the passive getting 50% the active take ~65%. Active users target the applications to earn and power up and they will continually grow larger and draw on the pool. Introduce SMTs and oracles and they might only be earnable through active usage and decent behaviour meaning that it could be possible that the passive stake turns active again. What this does though is take the people who truly want to be passive out of visibility and influence over the content on the platform.

In my opinion big investors should be pushed to commit to improving the platform

While it is a beautiful idea that everyone on the platform actively involves in improving it, that's just not the reality. We already see it with people who are here, and outside there will be a lot more investors who are just not interested in engaging in this kind of, or even any kind of, social media activity.

There's no other investments which force investors to work for their ROI (well, real estate, but that's a very different market). Usually investors want their "money to work for them".

Any kind of work in a system like this can be automated, and over time that automation improves and becomes accessible for more and more people (often through middlemen, we even see middlemen between the middlemen on steem already, a bot usage service).

The social stigma doesn't hold off everyone, and the more users do something considered bad behavior the less pressure it creates.

Of course the "interest" here is higher than for most other investments you can get, but we're still early on and inflation will drop over the years.

So in the end, by expecting participation, we limit our possible investors to a subset of social media users, software developers, people who use the platform in ways it wasn't intended for, and some real heavy risk takers who believe the idea will outprice the inflation. Offering something to non techy investors who don't want to curate or even self vote 2 or more times a day seems absolutely necessary to me if we want to be successful in the market.

Well from an investment point of view, you're mostly looking for some kind of dividend and hopefully a price increase. At the current time I think it's fair to say that the bidbots provide this kind of dividend to investors, but are definitely putting downward pressure on the price long term.

Again, I do like the passive approach proposed here, but I strongly believe active investors should be getting more out of the platform than passive ones. How to make this a reality is a different matter and likely not easy to solve.

If we look at the whales on Steem for example, we have a lot of them who are very talented developers / community managers / etc. etc., but a lot have stopped doing any of that on Steem as the work vs reward just makes it way more tempting to use bid bots. Even though long term if bid bots remain around, they could very well be the end of growth for Steem.

Making it passive, as proposed here, won't get those people to do more again for Steem in my opinion, where they did have the motivation to do it before bid bots came along. But it would at least likely eliminate most bid bots, which is something I am really looking forward to.

I do think that the proposed solution here is a lot better compared to what we have now with the bid bots, but at the same time I think more incentives for active participation would not be a bad thing either.

I heard this at the same time as you and agree there are some obvious benefits - a purer trending page for one.

Some people may be fearful of their being much less SP to go round content, but I think that the majority that would choose this option are already delegating to places where votes need to be purchased.

For accounts like freedom which currently delegates around 80% to bots and 20% to projects, I would expect the 80% to move over and the 20% remain where it is.

As you mention, smaller accounts may choose to lock some up, but if you are earning more than 10 selfies a day through content/curation, then it would likely be best to continue as you are.

Thanks for the write-up :)

Some people may be fearful of their being much less SP to go round content, but I think that the majority that would choose this option are already delegating to places where votes need to be purchased.

Yep, for most that stake is unavailable anyway since it is purchased.

For accounts like freedom which currently delegates around 80% to bots and 20% to projects, I would expect the 80% to move over and the 20% remain where it is.

I would say the same except, it could be that it could go 70/30 since essentially freedom will take full profit from the 70 whhile at the moment it is only getting 80-90%. Essentially that extra 10% is free investment potential for Freedom.

As you mention, smaller accounts may choose to lock some up, but if you are earning more than 10 selfies a day through content/curation, then it would likely be best to continue as you are.

For most small users they would be better off using their stake to build their network, the same as I recommend now instead of giving it to bots.

Thanks for the write-up :)

No worries mate. There is a lot to think about there.

it could be that it could go 70/30 since essentially freedom will take full profit from the 70 while at the moment it is only getting 80-90%. Essentially that extra 10% is free investment potential for Freedom.

Yes you could be right about that, 10% spare for more projects - winning already there :)

Locking away everything is great if you aren't present, and of course the apps wont want to do this as they are rewarding content creators/players etc, but if you are a larger stake who wants to keep a voice, and potentially have some control of trending, then the stake would need to be available. Very interesting to think about who would like to still like to 'have a say'.

and of course the apps wont want to do this as they are rewarding content creators/players etc,

So it empowers the apps to be major distributors and onboarders immediately. SMTs are easy ;)

Very interesting to think about who would like to still like to 'have a say'.

I think there would be quite a few who would keep some out.

The lock would include SP and RC, or just SP?

Just SP because RC is required by the platform for bandwidth. It means that they could still delegate to the RC pools which would be an additional reason to power up Steem anyway.

Just checking :)

I'm struggling to see a downside to this for both the large investor accounts, the smaller accounts, and the communities trying to push the best of their content upward.

There's a lot to like here. I read the same thing over a year ago but it never saw any traction.

Yep, I am trying to get it some traction. There is a massive potential to get investors in before SMTs are launched to lock up some RCs and helpdrive users to apps.

It is such a great idea. I don't even think you need a switch. You could set it up just like they do for vote buying/swap services where you set a voting power level that if your voting mana drops below your no longer offer your votes for sale. Lets call it a steem power dividend rather than self vote. So in that case if your activity stops and your mana level rises to your preset level after your activity stops it simply starts the dividend (self vote) again. This would allow people who are active to claim the dividend if they simply don't log in while they are on holidays for a week rather than having to flick a switch eveytime you think you might not be back for a couple of days.

That is a good idea too. There are many options with this and the benefits are numerous with very little downside. Because of the flexibility of Steem, it should be relatively easy to trial.

Yep. I think the 30% is on the low side as there are lots of people selling votes that don't delegate but just vote swap. Also there is some stigma. I think you could assume that 50-60% would get locked up. This is fine however as will drive the price of steem up so 30% of 10$ is better than 100% of $0.07.

I used the basic bidbot numbers but yep, 50%ish sounds about right. I also think that it would swing back and forwards depending on circumstances.

Fully support this idea, no point in letting investors break the whole ecosystem in quest to maximize their short term profits.

Your post is #2 at trending when promoted posts are filtered out at the time of writing this comment. For those interested in checking a bit more customer friendly trending once in a while, check http://steemliber.com/

Cheers for the view... not #1? :P 50 dollar posts in Trending are a much more realistic view of organic support.

Voted stake determines into what batch your post gets, each batch contains 20 posts, and in that batch the posts are ordered through voting amount so it's a combination of both, support from stake and number of users. That's why your post is so high and it would only require 15 votes more to gain the #1 spot.

I agree, I'd take wider distribution with smaller numbers over small and concentrated. 50 dollars is still a lot for a post and it would attract masses. If only they'd feel the system is fair and working, they would stick around. Then there would be trust in the longevity of this platform and even 1 dollar reward would mean gaining a share that could possibly grow much larger in future.