RE: HF Proposal: Vote to Reduce Power Down Period to 4 Weeks
Update: I'm not exactly strongly in favor, but I find it acceptable, as long as we're working on a solution that brings a more dynamic solution in the near future.
I'm not in favour.
Reducing it without thinking further is a move without any hindsight on what Steem is supposed to be. I'm not arguing that 13 weeks power-down is a stupid thing to have at this point in time, but reducing it to 4 weeks is just as stupid.
The same goes for this post. You don't start a discussion by initiating a vote. You start a discussion by stating the problem. And the problem is that the 13 weeks powerdown doesn't provide enough incentives, but removing it would hurt Steem just as well, or at least remove an important safety feature.
It is good to have Steem that is locked away for some period of time. Both for the individual and for the currency. It gives people that have locked away their Steempower some kind of safety due to the prolonged time until the currency becomes liquid fully. And on the other hand, it gives the community leverage over big stakeholders, as well as stakeholders more time to think, instead of acting on emotional decisions.
So, to summarize my stance:
- I'm against this proposal or any proposal that simply wants to remove/reduce the powerdown period, without including future plans
- I'm in favour of a dynamic staking period of Steem (also called Steempower), with ever-increasing incentives (similar to what dan larimer wrote here) If someone believes in STEEM and wants to lock it up for 2 or 5 years (because that's how long it takes for things to truly settle), why shouldn't we let them and give them a nice incentive on top of it?
- I'm also very strongly in favour of a discussion on the future of the Steem currency. Do we need SBD? Should we have staked STEEM instead of Steempower? Should rewards earned by the rewards-pool have a longer staking period? (e.g. 1 year) Fact is: this currency was developed by people who were smart but not perfect. Removing things we don't like, without questioning the core philosophy will result in a currency that's as wonky as the tower of Pisa.
Dynamic staking would be a good idea. An investor committing to a higher divestment period than minimally necessary is taking a risk and showing their commitment to Steem. They should receive some sort of a reward for this.
The current system forces everyone to stake it for 13 weeks or lose out on massive APR, which obviously results in frustration. I'm pretty sure that investors like @theycallmedan, who is thinking in years - not months - would stake it for 1-2 years or maybe even longer.
I’m not in favour of multiple pools, as I mentioned above Steem is a different animal to EOS, we provide a simple normie friendly gateway to crypto, multiple pools with different staking cycles make the cognitive load immense, also as I said traditional shareholders of stocks don’t normally have a lockup period and still vote for the good of the company and don’t need to be imprisoned in their stakeholding to be invested.
A long lockup period shows weakness imo, even 4 weeks shows that we are scared our coin will dump so we have this 4 week buffer in place, it is however better than 13 weeks.
I like your suggestion to also think around other economic aspects such as whether we should continue to have SBD, if it remains broken and unpegged it is an embarrassment and should likely be deprecated, we should discuss that as well as a separate topic.
The vesting shares name and period were most likely created due to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lock-up_period
And I completely disagree with you there. It's the UIs job to make it as easy as possible, while the underlying tech can have more complexity to it. And having different staking periods, with different ROIs is actually very easy to understand.
No. It's just as bad. It's a different number, but the reasoning behind it is the same.
And again, you're forgetting the security aspect.
Lock-up period
A lock-up period, also known as a lock in, lock out, or locked up period, is a predetermined amount of time following an initial public offering where large shareholders, such as company executives and investors representing considerable ownership, are restricted from selling their shares.
Generally, a lock-up period is a condition of exercising an employee stock option. Depending on the company, the IPO lock-up period typically lasts between 90–180 days before these shareholders are allowed the right, but not the obligation, to exercise the option.
Lockups are designed to prevent insiders from liquidating assets too quickly after a company goes public.
Just to clarify would you be more in favour of a system where poweredup SP would have a shorter vesting period than earned SP? That would be a middle ground but unfortunately will require more coding than simply changing a parameter.
Multiple staking periods. And I'm not going to agree on middle grounds, the same way I didn't agree on your terms for the SPS funding origin.
What is the difference?
Staked STEEM would be the same currency, similar to how STEEM behaves within the savings feature. Steempower aka vesting shares is a completely different currency.
I don't think the typical end user would see any difference other than the word "Staked" used instead of the word "Power". I'm not at all convinced one word is better than the other.
Most already perceive SP to be the same currency as STEEM in the sense of 1:1 value plus a little interest.
I actually don't mind the word Steempower, but is there actually a need to have a separate currency in the form of vesting-shares?
Having that we might make the next step and introduce the internal Steem/SP market, which should remove all the frustration coming from the longer lock up period.
This seems like an elegant, and almost weird loophole, would this make Lock up almost semi-irrelevant?
Yes, that's the idea)
Less confusion for new users, I would imagine. "Staked STEEM" is a lot more intuitive to a new user than a whole different name for the same thing (SP).
I had hoped to launch an SMT with 260 week powerdown in 5 instalments (paid out annually), and nothing else liquid. Curation, author rewards and any initial airdrops and sales would all come powered up; so there'd be no opportunity to buy or sell the token for the first 12 months.
All SMTs will be 13 weeks, though; which is a pity.
Maybe next fork.
Is this idea of @thecryptodrive getting any serious traction @therealwolf?
I don't know why @thecryptodrive offered this in such a rush and NEVER addressed your valid points and good ideas.
Either he's not thinking clear, not taking time to thoroughly address your comments @therealwolf or something else that I cannot imagine.
I’ve addressed everything in my comments throughout this thread, the fact is for this HF we can’t do anything fancy other than a parameter change from 13 to 4 weeks. It is already a code heavy HF due to SMT’s being added and adding complexity can introduce critical bugs.
I am only proposing a change to the length of period, fancy stuff can be done in a future HF. Steemit doesn’t have time to code anything fancy and there are many people who don’t want to delay the HF.
If we don’t take this opportunity to reduce the stake window likely we will have to wait another 6 months to a year for another HF.
Yes this proposal is getting traction, it is #1 on the proposals list with over 17 million SP behind it. That should be a good indicator of community sentiment towards it.
Is it possible to downvote the proposal or does it only calculate the upvotes?
Btw, you said that we can't do anything fancy in this next hardfork since Steemit Inc. Is doing SMT's but what do you call SMT's?
SMT's are already "fancy" and there's no need to throw a wrench in the progress by shortening the Power Down time when investors who want to buy Steem like Bitcoin ALREADY CAN!
I mean no fancy code changes, all I propose is change from 13 weeks to 4 weeks, no other dual pool ideas and things. That can be done for this HF.
Ah okay.
I still disagree with fixing it in a rush like that but I get what you were saying now 👍
Please address more people who are not thinking this through @therealwolf.
I personally believe we are on track for a 100x to 1,000x run starting a month or two before the next Bitcoin Halvening just like last time..
But axing the 13 week Power Down instead of initiating dynamic staking could throw a wrench in it and surrender the Steem blockchain to exchanges 😧
I wish we had a 100x bullrun, the issue is we can’t rely on past data, Steem was newer then. and was touted to be the facebook/reddit killer, the market is somewhat disillusioned about Steemit.com never really improving in 3 years, and it is now longer a novel concept, as much as i wish for such a run, I’m not naive enough to believe it. A 2x run is possible but maybe after jan 2020, things will slow now for end of year.
I don't call it niave to believe that Steem will run, and even 100x its current price around the time of the Bitcoin halvening.
I think it's actually obvious that it will happen when you compare Steem's current market cap to the market cap of Ethereum at $34 Billion yet it doesn't even have its own blockchain-based social network.
In fact, I think it was naive to think that having a shorter Power Down time would have prevented the previous downturn, and I also think it's niave to think that investors are being prevented from buying Steem due to the long staking time when anyone can buy Steem immediately without staking, just like Bitcoin.
P.S. I checked @therealwolf's comments and you never addressed his statements.. there was even one of his replies that was greyed out due to a downvote. You addressed the people in favor of your "proposal" though.
Do you still think it's naive to believe that Steem will run 100x from it's previous low of $0.11 USD?