Who is Best Suited to Manage a Community and Make Decisions?
I will be focusing on Steemit.com as the main platform for the Steem blockchain for simplicity, since it was the first and is still the largest point-of-contact for interaction in the blockchain. Looking at Steemit.com, the site itself and what happens there as an imaginary "company", will be used to try to understand how Steemit.com work as an organization and community.
This is the current idea about how Steemit functions is: "The platform of Steemit.com/Steem is like a business. I have a stake, just like a share in a company. That means I have a vote for each share, and if I have more votes than you it means I have more power because I have more shares. That's the way Steem/Steemit was designed, that's the 'law', deal with it."
Does a company create more stock every day and give it out people who create the content, those who create the product or service that is put out through the company for others to consume? No, not usually with shares, but they do pay people to work to produce those products or services. It's just not with shares usually. Steemit.com pays for work done with shares. The workers who create the content products are the "employees", and the employee workers evaluate each other (curating). For Steemit.com, consider all users who contribute posts or comments as providing work. They are the community that create the content and give it life. They are the people who actually use the site, not simply viewers or bot-curators.
Currently, the employees don't have much power to allocate payment for content products created to give value to Steemit.com. The power to decide who gets most of the pay/rewards for work done, is determined by a concentrated of power in the hands of a group of shareholders. Some of those shareholders think they can do whatever they want because "they have the power" through shares. They only have the concentration of power because that was the original idea that Steemit Inc used to create Steemit.com/Steem. But has this idea panned out? Is the concentration of power to make decisions and decide how things work, really working?
What is Steemit.com Trying To Do?
Steemit.com isn't like a regular "company" where you have to buy-in to get your shares. Steemit gives out shares every day to people who produce products and services to be hosted on Steemit.com in order to give it visibility and reputation that would reflect the products or services being offered, freely in this case. The more that a content or product is created that can't be found elsewhere and has lasting value into the future to attract people to get it on Steemit.com, the more the visibility and reputation grows for people to be attracted to Steemit.com for them to get there, as they can't get it elsewhere. Those who create product content of lasting value into the future give the most opportunity for future influx of viewers and consumers of the content products that are available on Steemit.com (or elsewhere through the blockchain, yes, but as I said I'm sticking to Steemit.com for simplicity in explaining things).
Steemit.com isn't only a company that pays people with shares for producing work on Steemit.com that it uses to gain visibility and reputation. Steemit.com is a community of people that do work and create the content or products and services for that visibility and reputation.
The community is what builds Steemit.com and the blockchain. The community does all the work to build that visibility and reputation to reflect Steemit.com. The developers are the ones that build functionality and also develop more functionality and features in the blockchain that is attractive outside of Steemit.com. If there was only the developers working on the blockchain alone, there would be no Steemit.com and no community of people working to create content to attract more people to that community. The community who work to create content for others to want to access over long periods of time, is what builds the visibility and reputation for Steemit.com, and that reflects as a form of promoting the value of the STEEM token and the blockchain technology itself. The face of Steemit Inc and the Steem blockchain is represented through the visibility of Steemit.com and the content work produced on it.
If the stakeholders want to have all the power to control how things go, and think they cant do whatever they want because they "have the power", then they will alienate the importance and empowerment of the individuals who make up the community and the decision making capacity they have to affect where the direction the community goes. Ignoring the community that creates the products that gives value to the Steemit.com platform will result in Steemit.com failing, not succeeding. Individuals aren't obliged to stay on a platform that is mismanaged by the concentration of power from stakeholders, and they will leave. Why waste time on something that isn't working right? So they leave for greener pastures and more fairness in how things work. The concentration of power is a problem. The real world isn't so easy to simply pick up and leave, as people are coerced into compliance in the chain of obedience of concentrated power and centralized authority that the government wields.
Those who use the site, and those who create the value therein, are the ones who make everything turn. Without the content creators, there is no new content on Steemit.com that has the potential to attract people from the outside. Relying on an flawed model of concentrating power in the hands of stakeholders, does not work when you're trying to establish a community and a desire to stay through being empowered. If you are alienated from the decision process, you are disenfranchising and disillusioned from the platform that isn't really being community driven in how things function. The stakeholders make the choices because they have all the power, and they want to keep it that way. This will not work when people are told about "come for the rewards, stay for the community" if the community of individuals aren't self-determined and self-governing the collective community interdependently. The community isn't empowered when all or a select few of the major stakeholders are running the show.
Management
Steemit.com has a community, with stakeholders and witnesses, and the developers in the Steemit Inc company are developing the site and blockchain.
The management of the way things are done on Steemit.com is decided not by the company Steemit Inc alone. The way things go isn't like a regular company where the bosses make changes and sometimes care to get feedback from employees to change things. If things don't go well, the employees can quit. Some people have left steemit for various reasons, and this can be looked at as an employee quitting.
The Steemit experiment thought the stakeholders could be managers to make decisions that have the majority of concentrated power over the community and decide how things would work in the community and platform of Steemit.com. This has been a failure that some people can recognize.
The Steemit.com community, as a metaphor to a company that pays out shares to people who work to create content products, should be run by employees who do work, not by shareholders. That's not how a regular company is managed. The shareholders don't make the decisions in a company, the management workers do. Workers themselves, the overall employees, can manage an organization as well, just like a cooperative does.
The stakeholders don't run the company, nor should they run the community of workers that create the products. Why would shareholders who have the most power be the ones that run the way the Steemit.com community operates and how things function within it? Shareholders can have their shares apply in various ways, but for the decisions to determine how things operate in the organization and community, that's supposed to be based on competency, not simply on having the concentration of power to decide how things work. Just because corporations work with a flawed model, doesn't mean the community of Steemit.com neesd to work the same way.
Shareholders can decide to sell off a company because all they care about is the $$$ money they will get. Shareholders, new or old, can break up a company or organization and sell it off in parts to make money money. There is no care of concern for the community of individuals that make up the company and work to create it's success. Putting someone's personal self-interest to make money for themselves as they see fit, above the interests of others, like the workers in the organization, is not right, despite it being accepted in society. Money for one or a few who have the power, trumps what is right for everyone involved. People end up losing in the long term because of this lack of inclusion of everyone. If people feel alienated and have no power to affect decisions or change within an organization, that leads to a chain of obedience for those who stick around to do the work and get paid. It doesn't promote the empowerment of self-governance or self-determination.
In a society as community, the community derives consensus on what to do. Steemit.com has a community that uses and creates the product and services as the company that's offering it for free for the internet to consume. The creations in the community are the products that give visibility and reputation for value, in the short or long term.
Do shareholders determine what workers productions should get paid more than other productions in the community of the "company"? Does one or a few shareholders with a concentration of power decide that for themselves? Or does the actual community that evaluates each other decide what products they value the most?
It not up to one or a few power players who have the concentration of power to determine how the community operates. That's up to the community itself. At least, that's the way to empower people to want to be involved. Otherwise, many just don't bother even getting involved because they realize they have no power anyways... it's all concentrated in the hands of a few. This disempowerment doesn't promote individual intrinsic motivations to help the community or organization succeed. People need to have the power to affect change, or they fall into learned helplessness and just accept things the way they are. Decentralization of power in to the hands of the people who make up the organization or community is required for them to determine their own fate together.
The Failure of Concentrated Shareholder Management
From The Peter Principle, Ortega y Gasset and the Self-Determination of Steemit
Turning to steemit.com, the Power Struggle has become an unhealthy and messy display being played out upon the platform.
The ‘whales’ determine the rewards structure and the whales have to look at their results. The results include:
- The price of steem.
- The number of subscriptions.
- The rate of retention.
- The rate of decentralisation.
- The ‘feel-good factor’.
- Steem has gone from a high Market Capitalisation of $380million down to $26million, losing 93% between July 2016 and February 2017.
- The number of subscriptions is stated as being over 130,000. The system itself only follows 61,873 and there are about 3-6,000 active accounts, of which it cannot be known how many are multiple accounts in one owner’s hands and how many are in fact robots set up to profit via systematic algorithmic processes.
- Retention figures are hard to know as there are so many accounts which appear bogus. A lot of actual ‘people’ have left because of how the rewards structure treated them.
- The rate of decentralisation is zero.
- Frustration and anger is at all levels of the structure.
The first steem was at basement prices. Mining brought massive instant rewards.
The purchase and mining of steem has put these people known as ‘whales’ into a position of management.
The Peter’s Principle would suggest that they are in a position which displays their incompetence.
Ortega y Gasset would suggest that they are unwilling or incapable of seeing that: “We accept fate and within it we choose one destiny”.
Self-Determined & Self-Governed Decentralized Community Management
There needs to be a more rational way for the Steemit.com community to operate that isn't based on a concentration of shareholders. A good place to start would be to do it based on how it already works in reality.
The employees in a cooperative community, a cooperative enterprise or organization, are the ones that manage themselves. This is a self-governing and self-determined optimization of individual empowerment to guide the collective community direction. They are equally represented in don't have representatives to represent them incorrectly. Everyone gets information and shares it in order to arrive on the same page of understanding to move forward with the betterment of the community in mind. There is no concentration of wealth. No amount of wealth gives one person more power than the other.
If steemit.com wants to be a bastion of decentralized self-governance and self-determination for the individual, then it really needs to be the community on the ground that the sides where things are going because they are the ones that make up the platform and drive its success through the work they do to create content for the platform. The blockchain or code is one part, and not the determining part of how things operate in a community. The community and the people within it are the ones who can decide how the code will change. The community of employees that work to create the content product are the cooperative of workers that can properly self govern in a decentralized manner as a community to make decisions.
Steemit Inc. makes proposals, witnesses approve them or not, but the community also has a say if the proposals go forward as well, or are reversed as per the effect that these changes have on the platform that the community lives within. The community is the determinant factor for how things will stay or change. If the community is ignored and alienated about their concerns, some will leave and abandon the platform that ignores the issues they raise, and leaves them feeling disenfranchised and disillusioned through being disempowered in the decision making process that can effectuate change.
The community can also propose proposals for change as the workers in the cooperative community. If the workers understand an issue then they can succeed in changing that issue. If community members do not want to get involved, then they depend on others to make decisions for them instead of being active in developing the community. If the overall community believes everything up to witnesses, steemit Inc. or the concentration of power in the hands of the stakeholders, then the community is not in charge of the community is being directed by a select group that decides what happens for everybody.
The concentration of power doesn't work in a community that want something other than what the few power players decide to do simply because they have the power or wealth to do it. Real communities are cooperative. The best communities are self-determined, self-governed and decentralized in power.
A community that follows the chain of obedience of a centralized power structure isn't embodying the "spirit" of what a community can be. It's only a shadow or shall of what it can be.
This is why a cooperative based decision process for how the steemit.com platform and site functions, is optimal in required to propagate greater inclusion of the people, workers, employees that work to create the content product on the platform for others in the world to come and get. That is, if the goal is for self-governance, self-determination and decentralization of power in the community and the societal decision process, and not just the blockchain or staying in the chain of obedience that the code = law.
We are all decentralized individuals who cooperate in the community. At least, that's the optimal ideal functionality of a community which humanity has more or less failed or succeeded in accomplishing at various times and places. It's a long struggle to get consciousness to understand how to maximize individual empowerment within a cooperative community focus.
It's not just about our own self-interest, our own wealth, and trying to maintain and grow our wealth as an individual. Focusing primarily on the money and trying not to lose what we have, is how other more important things are ignored. When we are trying to figure out what the best thing to do is by basing it on money, and not on what is the best thing to do, then we aren't going to be doing the best thing because our focus is on money.
A centralized power as government, or stakeholders, to have more power to do things that others can't, creates an imbalance of power in the decision-making process and also creates injustices in the social cooperative model.
Some people think decentralization is in opposition to what a community is. Again, this is a confusion due to not understanding what these two words mean. Learn the true meaning of words to empower your ability to understand reality. Words reflect reality. THe limits of your understanding words limits your understanding of reality.
A real, true, optimal community, is decentralized! They are not opposites. Using the current model of how society or communities work, is not the optimal understanding of how communities can function taking more information into consideration, such as the importance of respecting individual empowerment and autonomy.
De-Centralized Common-Unity
Prefix de-
Meaning reversal, undoing or removing.
de-
Latin usually meaning "down, off, away, from among, down from,"
centralize
"to bring to a center;"
- To cause something to change from being concentrated at one point to being distributed across a number of points.
- To reduce the authority of a governing body by distributing that authority among several bodies.
De-centralize, is to go away, down or off from a center that would have the concentration of control or power. One database haw the control of information and can manipulate and change that data, but a distributed database like a blockchain prevents this and maintains information integrity. Instead of one person, or one group, having the concentration of power to decide what happens for everyone else, decentralization distributes the power and authority, ideally, among everyone. This is how to empower the individual in self-governance and self-determination to control their own lives.
A community, is a common-unity. If all you care about is your individual self-interest, and are trying to shape the community into your own self-interest because "you have the power", then you're not working as a common-unity. There won't be unity when you use your wealth and power to centralize decisions around yourself alone, while ignoring the common-unity of individuals in the community that doesn't like what you're doing. A community is truly a community when people share a common understanding to form that common-unity based on being on the same page of understanding.
Individuals in a community group together as interdependent units to form a larger whole. If one individual thinks they can decide what does or doesn't happen in a community and acts in that thinking with their power to do whatever they want, this person is not working as part of the common-unity.
Decentralization isn't about an individual being separate from the whole. It's about empowering the individual to be a part of the whole and integrated with how the whole functions. No one is an island to use their power to do whatever they want or "think" is "good". There are others that are affected. This is part of understanding morality. The common-unity is achieved when all individuals are represented equally. There isn't a real "community" when there is a concentration of power to one individual or a group that has power over the rest of the individuals. This is not decentralization, but centralization of power. Individuals can have wealth, but their wealth doesn't determine what is right or wrong in a community or give them more right to control the lives of others.
In a real common-unity community, individuals can't simply use their wealth to go around and control how things work in the community. It's not up to that one person how things in a community really work, it's up to the community to decide. Individuals can work towards common-unity by decentralizing the concentration of power that prevents the community from being able to make decisions fairly and equally. The amount of wealth, money or shares does not determine common-unity, nor what should happen in a community simply based on the whims of one or a few individuals who have the concentration of wealth that they think gives them power over others.
When the power of deciding what goes on in a "community" is centralized, there is less of a common-unity and less of a real true community to do things together based on common understanding. Decentralization of social power is required to empower the individual and truly achieve common-unity.
The ones that are best suited to manage and make decisions in and for a community, are the actual individuals in the community to form common-unity, not a concentration of power in the hands of one, or a few. The wealth someone has should have no impact on the rightness or wrongness of a decision that impacts of affects the community.
A choice needs to be made: repeat the same mistakes that regular society has constructed, or create something better.
It's up to us -- the individuals in the community -- to decide if we want to be part of either, and work towards creating it. Without the community that makes up the driving force behind Steemit.com, there is no Steemit.com. We have the power to create change if we want to. We can make things better if we want to. Learning about the issues and understand the problems is required before we can apply a solution.
Decentralization towards common-unity is the solution as I see it. What about you?
Thank you for your time and attention! I appreciate the knowledge reaching more people. Take care. Peace.
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2017-03-01, 12:01pm
Satoshi Nakamoto
First, I have a few questions.
Am I correct in concluding you are frustrated with
one-share-one-vote?I’m curious about the use of the word
disenfranchising. If we are operating underone-share-one-vote, where is the marginalization underone-share-one-vote?What would that be?
STEEM governance is stake-based. If Satoshi Nakamoto wanted to use his Bitcoin stake to force the community to implement BIP62, he’s out of luck. Under Bitcoin governance, it’s up to the miners to decide.
But if Steemit, Inc. wanted to force the community to implement a hardfork (to fix an exploit, for example), they could, though they usually choose not to, preferring cryptographically verifiable consensus.
Under the Bitcoin governance, the people with the most stake are impotent unless they also have the hashing power. Under DPOS (delegated proof of stake), actual progress can be made to improve the platform.
DPOS can even allow for
line-item-vetoon certain controversial changes, as we’ve seen. It’ flexible. It really is the best governance model. It may create frustration, but it’s nowhere near a failure in any way.Power and quantity of shares means nothing. 1 share = 1 vote gives all the power to those who have the most shares.
Steemit.com is not just a company/corporation of Steemit Inc, or a blockchain Steem. Steemit.com is a community that makes it work or fails.
Do you want to run it like a corporate centralization of power, or a community?
If you want things to stay centralized in the power and decision making of those who have the most shares ok, but that won't succeed for a decentralized vision of society that I see Dan having the vision to make in the long term.
Anything but the place where things aren't right = greener pastures. All anyone has to do is remove themselves from an undesirable situation where they don't need to deal with it, and that becomes a "greener" pasture for them. There doesn't need to be another option as you seem to be implying.
Code was created for a certain effect. If the effect desired is not manifestable given current code, it can be changed.
Shareholders and the wealthy don't decide how things function within an organization and daily operations. That's what employees know how to do, and are in charge of making work. The corporate model is not a community model. A choice has to be made of which success you want. Disenfranchise the community by keeping them disempowered in hope the shareholders know what they are doing and can manage the community (not working), or actually give the community the self-determination to organize how the community works and create something themselves that will be built on a solid foundation of common-unity decentralized empowerment to each individual and not centralized concentration of power to rule over and decide for everyone.
Make the community aspect work, and then you get success and the money comes in. If the workers are disempowered then they community isn't intrinsically motivated to thrive for success of the overall organization. Everyone is just in it for themselves. Get out of the corporate mindset.
I agree it's far too early to label the current model a failure. It seems to me that stake is continuing to be distributed and while it will take a long time to achieve more balance, we need to work more toward achieving that end within the current framework rather than constantly changing the rules.
When I look at the accounts of a handful of the most controversial whales, I see them making very little rewards proportional to their current stake. They do not take exorbitant sums from the author and curation rewards pools and some are actively powering down. As the rewards pool is distributed each day, their stake is getting more and more diluted, lessening their influence on the platform.
Dolphins and minnows who are active writers and curators are consistently outperforming their current level of stake, thereby growing their influence on the platform.
What is slowing this process is that most smaller participants are not using what influence they do have to good effect. I see many accounts doing very little curating, thus abdicating that power and slowing the distribution of Steem across the user base. Perhaps Steemit needs to look to integrate an autovoting system directly into the site and educate new users on it. It could even simplify such tasks as delegating a certain percentage of voting rights each day to a particular tag category so that users can simplify the task of supporting the communities they are interested in. Trails and delegating votes to manual curators do the same essential task, but how many minnows use these? Simple, straightforward, integrated solutions for exercising voting stake would be great. The witness voting system is already a model. Applied to curation voting rights, with a clear interface and documentation, we could really start seeing the platform properly rewarding the will of the stakeholders each day, organically distributing Steem into the future.
I've also long encouraged showing the "minnow math" and integrating smaller payouts into the UI. Busy does calculate out to a third decimal place and while it's not much, it is more encouraging to see a vote move a post by a couple tenths of a cent rather than not see it move at all. New user retention and activity may be greatly improved by such a simple change, as people can literally see that their actions are not worthless.
User participation is first and foremost. I'm always 100% Steem power, and voting. That's the basis of the grassroots movement we need to distribute the stake to a wider world.
I see the main problem: giving huge amounts of power and money to people who don't know how to socialize, build communities, write, read and create. This is the central problem that continues to plague the entire ecosystem.
You raise very valid points, however, Dan has designed this system and chose to initially reward miners who for the most part illustrate exceedingly anti-social tendencies, that we are still suffering underneath.
Yeah. Ideas can be bad, but are tried, and fail. Like the HUGE daily inflation rate prior to HF16. It never made sense to me that one could simply create so much currency without negative consequences. Mistakes are made. Now we need to face them, and correct them. The concentration of power needs to be addressed once and for all, and resolved to empower the individuals who use the platform and create this community of people. Thanks for the feedback.
my biggest question is, did you watch my video? I think you can appreciate it because it deals with everything you've been discussing...
I watched it yesterday. I didn't quite understand what you were alluding to, maybe vaguely that the whales are sharks that take what they want/do what they want? I found the end the funniest with your horse head and the ominous quotes.
This is what happens when power and money have been given to the wrong people:
I think pretty much everyone agrees that the current concentration of power is not workable for Steemit to go mainstream. The million dollar question though is how to actually address it in a way that is fair to the original stakeholders (who earned their share based on the defined rules of the blockchain) and also cannot be exploited by "bad whales" just dividing their stake into lots of smaller accounts. Are there any workable proposals on the table that can address this?
No solution can be perfect - what about...
Ask all whales to accept a freeze on all their rewards so there is no further accumulation of SP. Instead they will be working to raise the value of Steem and allow others (whose efforts they appreciate) to catch up.
Ask witnesses to burn or recycle excess Steem earned as a witness....is there is any....into minnow / new account reward initiatives.
Identify all the accounts that are still active and have contributed to the Steemchain (content, comments or curation) and reward all of them with SP from the Steemit account. Again ask really big holders to pass on this bonus. Also, ask the active accounts to freely identify additional accounts and not accounts if they are willing and make a best effort where the are not.
Announce a date in the future where new proven individual accounts that join Steemit and actively contribute to a threshold level and receive a threshold level of votes will receive a bonus in Steem from the Steemit account.
Do the above for existing accounts and yet again ask the whales to pass on the bonus.
I think you get the idea. I accept this is not perfect and I do not own the Steem in the Steemit account! ;) The objective would be to supercharge the distribution of Steem and create a much larger number of dolphins, incentivise a lot of growth, raise the price of Steem, show everyone that the whales can work in everyone's interests.
(The whales were their front and centre into an experiment. All of them have tried their best...even those who have exploited certain unintended realities of the system.)
If we can work together to pull this off....imperfect though it is....what a remarkable expression of the effectiveness of this community. What a magnanimous act it would be for all the whales to agree. What an incredible example and what a story.
Now because I have faith in the whales, I think Steem can give us all a better future and because I'm putting forward an idea that requires sacrifice, if something like this is implemented and the whales all agree to not accept additional rewards, I'll do the same.
There is no need to fracture this community, it may not seem like it and it's a bit of an effort, but if we stick this out and solve these problems for ourselves, we'll be that much stronger in the end. We can give up any time, that easy.
Way to be constructive :)
I think continuing to discuss ideas and solutions to the problem is really good. As I said above, I think most people (at least the ones I talk to) all seem to agree that the disproportionate stake is one of the largest things affecting user retention in a negative way.
Isnt it worth asking the question and finding out who is and is not willing and what their reasons are?
I think we are talking about either the top 25 or top 50 accounts and in the main, they are very well connected. The only reason I'm suggesting this is kind of action is because it has the potential to give them more in the end. Why squabble over scraps when if we set an example to everyone looking on and make moves that address the most important reason for steem being held back, they'll have so much in return, they may struggle to know what to do with it (bit like now ;))
We could be on our way to bitcoin's market cap if it were not for the present distribution of Steem. It is the fundamental issue. At the moment we have the edge in tech and community. The time to act is now on this particular issue.
All the whales have to get their heads around is that instead of occupying a pinnacle, sitting on between 50 and 600k relatively alone, they can be occupying a nice plateau sitting on a hundred million with thousands of others.
We need to minimise risk of failure by dealing with the distribution issue asap, even though the present redistribution rate is impressive....it's still too slow given the effects on our core community.
Agreed. Getting consensus from all the whales and devs is not a simple task though.
A lot of people are waiting to see how the upcoming HF changes play out, since they will be flattening the rewards formula. If it is still an issue in a month or so (which I assume it will be) I'll write a new post on it.
Not getting all of them makes it much more difficult, but not impossible to implement. Good idea....let's give the HF a chance then when it fails to address the primary issue, which is quite likely, we can try to get (what is seemingly) a great act of sacrifice off the ground! :)
Of course you are absolutely right about the witnesses!
Moving to another blockchain is probably the best solution for those not yet fully invested in the STEEM blockchain. Then the current stakeholders can have their share. A full share of nothing potentially.
Perhaps they might consider coming to a more affordable compromise if they consider that, not unlikely, scenario?
They may claim it is not probable, but I think that most outside investors would agree with the reality that there is no purpose in filling the pockets of those who have taken the lions share of the pie for themselves in the mining phase at the beginning. Especially when, in doing so, they empower those same early speculators, to have authority over the direction of the platform, and ultimately control the destiny of their investment.
The current whales have demonstrated considerable ineptitude in their conduct on the platform. Smart money won't follow dumb money.
It is not possible to create a new blockchain based on the Steem blockchain, without explicit written permission from Steemit, Inc.
That I hadn't realized. I just read the license on the steem main source and these are the relevant conditions:
So while technically possible it could land some people in court 😓
Not necessarily. You could start a new, nested blockchain inside the current one and still adhere to all the conditions listed.
It wouldn't even be that hard. Im sure i havent thought of everything, but here's a basic model.
You post a genesis block. Make a whole different coin. Call it Meets or something. Meets transactions can just be specially formatted replies to the block post.
The next block is a new post that includes all the transactions. The one who gets to produce it is the first one to achieve a signature that is less than some predetermined base 58 number (i guess it would be variable like BTC mining difficulty).
The cool thing about meets is you could use it on the steem blockchain... you could have (if you wanted) your own meets reward pool. And vote on posts on the steem blockchain with it. this is the way golos would have done it if they were smart.
Seem like it could be technically possible to do that. I'd love to read a more detailed proposal of it, even just as a "what if" scenario. Get some debate going from the more technically savvy than I because I have a niggling feeling there's a catch there.
Interesting idea, thanks! 😁
Kind of off topic, but do you know the licensing status of steemit.com / condenser? There's no usual license file there
Sorry, I don't. I believe it is open source / OK to replicate, but I am not 100% sure. If you contact @sneak (email: sneak at Steemit.com) he should be able to tell you.
Thanks for the reply
Mr @timcliff, I have now replied to you twice. On both occasions, I have replied to your reference to the 'Rules'. You seem to be something of an honest cop. I had a message from one of the founders yesterday. He was nothing short of rude. So, sod him.
'Rules' are there for the betterment of the situation(s) in which they are applied, whether it be Rugby, Traffic or Government. These rules, when they become obsolete or they cause a trend which is contrary to the intent of the rules as a whole, get changed.
It seems amply evident from the current 'Rules' of steemit.com that they are obsolete and require a complete overhaul.
I am currently looking into a post I saw this morning which lists the actual investors into steem and, hence, steemit. I notice that there is not one financial investor in the top 25 accounts, yet it is these 25 accounts which have brought steemit to its knees. Meanwhile the investors have lost an average of 72% of their money.
Gaining leverage through mining has given the whole of steemit.com a smell of Greed. These miners have also decided that the well-being of all others, investors included is of absolutely no concern. I can hear Marie Antoinette (though she did not say it): "Let them eat cake." The problem is that the top 25 accounts have all the cake, Marie!
If the early miners did not sacrifice their time, knowledge/expertise, and resources at the time when the platform was just getting started - there would be no Steemit.
Ah, the nice policeman ... thank you. Yes, I hear what you say, they do deserve acknowledgement - very much agreed with your viewpoint. There is, unfortunately, the ledger of performance which has cost investors a lot of money - in the millions of dollars. The responsibility for this can only be placed at the feet of these people who have acted like school children.
So, a realignment of power and responsibility is needed and that can only be done from the Company it seems. It would be helpful if all the miners acknowledged their performance as being lacking in any substance. I called it immoral and it certainly appears to be the case that investors have been treated like dirt.
Give it a few days, you've already got more than many have in weeks, dan has said nothing btw, he just whizzed by :| It's a interesting point on the investors, I wonder how they are doing indeed, many stats are needed
Just posted the start of it - not pretty!
Thank you @j3dy - By the way, I am a bit late for the money, I am studying the organism. It is fascinating.
Correct. This fact does not preclude what I described from occurring. Steem is not the only blockchain to choose from, and as I have already described and you alluded to, it is unworkable in its current state.
It could even be possible for Steemit to fork to a new Steem blockchain (minus problematic stakeholders), but I wouldn't expect that to be a discussion carried out in public. That discussion would probably happen behind closed doors.
Well, I can't say that I agree with it, but destroying the entire blockchain and screwing over everyone that has bought or earned stake up until this point is one solution.
They are doing it to themselves now. There is little difference really.
There are many solutions who have been discussed at lenght in the past couple weeks.
I proposed the user/moderator thing, dan atstarlite proposed to create 2 type of steem power ( steem stake and steem power), smooth proposed a system where users who vote would be penalized by receiving less inflation and I've seen others like you proposed modified version of my proposal . Those are all workable, the million dollar question is do people care enough to want any of them?
Another thing that could be done is to remove curation reward so that whales have more incentives to delegate their voting power. I think many won't even bother voting if there was no curation reward, this and removing the curve will probably improve power concentration. Whales understand that if they give up their power the retention will be much better but most are too greedy so if we remove curation many will probably refrain from voting.
Address it in a way that is fair to the original stakeholders? But the original stakeholders have not been fair and taking advantage of the community.
That is a very unhealthy narrative and I disagree. How has there been any taking advantage of? Everybody that is here is here of their own free will, and has participated based on the rules of the blockchain.
They still keep all their STEEM, and can keep earning more. It's about shifting from a primary focus of a corporate mindset, towards including more decentralization to empower the individuals who build the community and are the community (shareholders, and everyone included, but money doesn't make one have more power to decide things in the community). The investors invest to make money. Put the power to direct the community in the actual community's hands of everyone, not the concentrated power of 50 accounts. Steemit Inc is heading towards non-profit organization, that's away from purely corporate model. The community that builds Steemit.com needs that same shift, with the decentralization and community becoming the primary focus, not the corporate mindset.
Hi @krnel - thanks for your reply. How do you convince the whales to give up their voting power / influence, and along with that their curation rewards?
Why curation rewards? Where does that come in to need to remove them? Check this out:
https://steemit.com/witness-category/@fyrstikken/voting-power-to-the-people-and-curation-rewards-to-the-investors-please-bookmark-and-read-later-if-you-are-busy
Like I said, they still keep doing the same, but with fyrsts idea, I think it's better. They can still vote, its voluntary, buts its the best for platform. Negative incentive can be introduced to promote delegating power to community like picokernel posted about:
https://steemit.com/steemit/@picokernel/a-brief-note-on-community-building-and-the-role-of-government-interference
Sorry, as a developer I have a hard time translating these ideas into concrete changes. I'm not saying they are bad, I just can't completely wrap my head around what changes they actually are proposing.
Is the main idea behind @fyrstikken's suggestion that users could delegate their SP to another user but retain a portion or all of the curation rewards?
To resolve the imbalance in reawrds allocation being concnetrated int he hands of a few, delegate the power to the whole community that has certain metric met that indicate a real human to filter bots and users who haven't proved themselves yet. Then all votes have a global delegate key applied at the same time in addition to their own keys. Whales can also vote for posts on their own, but possibly with a negative incentive to avoid doing that and promote the power remain int he majority of the userbase. Curation from users goes to users for their SP applied, and then curation for whales go to them. If a globally divided curation pool for whales isn't acceptable, maybe delegate to several communities so that specific curation can go back to specific whales that delegate for those certain communities to curate.
Investors then would not have to do anything. They invest to grow their money. The user base would grow the money for them all equally like a real corporation dividends as well, since it would be a global curation pool for the global delegation key all users use.
Users who invest their time and develop the platform and community will be empowered with intrinsic motivation to be involved, as the voting power isn't concentrated, and this can apply to everything. This will create a decentralized empowered community that will self-direct and self-govern, not be directed by a small pool of power players. This is where things need to head for people to really want to be here. The power imbalance needs to be corrected and this idea allows investors to get what they want, money. Just because someone has more money/wealth/stocks, doesn't give them more power in human relations. To build community people want to run towards, make it empowered this way, Steemit will blow everything away!
It kind-of seems like the steemit community might be a good fit for a holacracy , as described in the video I embedded and summarized in Order in Business Without Top-Down Control. I'm only familiar with the concept in passing, but I believe step 1 is to establish a constitution.
@dan posted something about the need for a constution a while back, too.
This reads almost like the operator's manual for the Steem Blockchain.
This will be bookmarked and revisited over and over again I'm sure.
Thank you for all the information and thank you to all of the commenters.
Quite a remarkable post in my humble opinion.
Hehe thanks for the glowing review. I really want people to get this understanding of decentralization to empower individuals with intrinsic motivation to feel like they matter and belong and invest their time to build the platform/community. Centralization of power can do the opposite.
Well you've done a remarkable job. I've been saying for a while now,
"The Disruption will continue until disintermediation improves!"
And I'm also of the opinion that Hierarchy is breaking down and the default is natural Heterarchy.
Steem is an experiment that is barely a year old... for a Blockchain, that's almost like ten human years. It will be going through it's Terrible Teens pretty soon. I'm ready... Been ready for awhile.
I think it's a remarkable platform and I'm an adaptor. As the world's first, scientifically fictitious character, living on a Blockchain, I have some "Skin" in this game... If you know what I mean ; )
Thank you again for this deeply involved piece.
For those that thought they were building a powerhouse of power bloggers this is a difficult time, they are realizing that social media has a lot more of the unwashed than they had in mind when they opened the doors.
Not all of us can blog like you, @krnel, nor should we, somebody has to do the voting,....
Steemsports, imo, was shut down due to rampant wealth speading, most of my sp comes from them.
Now we have a new redistribution scheme and I am looking for the ban hammer to fall just as quick as it reaches the mainstream,...
When a whale votes everybody else loses, perhaps whales should lighten up on the little guys, for the good of the platform.
80% of nuthin' is still nuthin',...
As long as sp sharing doesn't pass, and a new reward curve does, Steemit will make sense to the small fry, and maybe we can keep some of them from leaving soooo fast.
so that's a problem, half for the creator and the rest for the minnows, I never liked the concept, or resteeming and upvoting something I didn't care abut that much just for the rewards :|
Resteeming doesn't get you any rewards, clogs your blog, and annoys the folks here that value original content.
I do it rarely.
And I agree, if I don't like it, I don't vote it.
The problem is that the upper echelons of the hierarchy doesn't like their influence getting watered down, and I was making bank by voting for the right teams.
SS was making bank, too.
Their sp was gonna make them a super whale, I may have called it first, but I certainly called it.
My idea was to start powering it down and add it to the reward pool, but instead they just took it offsite and put it behind a pay wall.
Now there is another, I won't out him because I am again making bank, but the issue is gonna come up again, I'm sure.
I will keep it to resteeming :D
https://steemit.com/steemit/@williambanks/i-m-changing-what-i-resteem-and-here-s-why
Yeah personally I support authors I like newbies and resteem to brig some light in and add to the conversation hopefully(still building up that following :) )
But yes I try to keep a theme going and not resteem 10 stuff a day.
Maybe Maybe , politics :D
I do remember those whale banks, so you say they "failed", it's a complicated issue I suppose. But there are some vote guilds that function like a whale vote, bot armies were on the rise for a while too :D the concepts need to be fleshed out more I suppose.
Well I'm following you now. So I hope that helps!
I really need to remember to log out of @tradeqwik before commenting.
xoxo so it was you :D yu guys running multiple accounts, come on no fair :D
Still have to read the VIVA post
Cheers @williambanks !!!
I'm out for now :)
I will be posting hopefully soon enough, the tide has calmed down so I can ride the boat again I suppose :)
what's that about steem sports has it been cut already?
It used to be that you could vote the post and vote the comment of your choice to win and share in the rewards pool.
There were issues in that ss didn't want to share the sp, and was taking over half the money the post gathered.
Also they were powering up toooo many minnows,....about half of my sp came from them.
Resteemed! Thanks for that a very good way to sum up some of the hard truths about Steemit.
nice followup to @fidelity's post