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RE: Steemit Update: HF21 Testnet, SPS, EIP, Rewards API, SMTs!

in #steemit6 years ago

Reading off that 2e12 contingent linear rewards curve...

Under HF20 a post receiving $1 in upvotes would give the author $0.75.

Under HF21:

  • The reward pool will be 10% lower to fund the SPS.
  • The CLRC will reduce the payout by a further 40% compared to linear.
  • The payout to the author will then be 50% (rather than 75%).
    I make this: $1 * 90% * (1 - 40%) * 50% = 0.27 under HF21

So broadly: $0.75 under HF20 vs $0.27 under HF21, a reduction of about two-thirds for smaller payouts.

Have I understood that correctly?

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Math checks out. Nothing like making use of bid-bots to get above $6.40 completely mandatory for every post.

But don't forget future traf will spread around thousands of tiny whale-votes instead of upvoting himself 10x daily... that has to count for something, right?

I think that there will be plenty of innovation to get around the CLRC issues for smaller payouts and comments. These will mostly rely on aggregation techniques, or as you suggest, various forms of vote-selling.

It's a pain though. The CLRC will just bring additional complexity in return for (as far as I'm concerned) no obvious tangible benefit. The "divisible account" issue could be solved through data analysis and downvotes instead.

Downvotes are still unincentivized and rely on altruism and volunteer work for effort. It is important not to allow that to be attacked by ramping up the necessary effort. Keeping rewards concentrated even if it happens via aggregation techniques as you suggest is necessary to manage the workload required for downvotes. If those aggregation techniques are used in an exploitative manner, they can much more easily be countered with downvotes than 100k or 500k comments scattered all over the place.

upvoted due to troll downvote, not that i necessarily agree with your comment, just wanted that out there.

Yep, and a comment receiving $0.08 because some 4000 SP minnow upvotes it at 100%, that now gets you $0.06 will get you $0.00 after HF21 because we still have dust level cut off at 0.02. Great way to kill social interaction on the platform.

The CLRC introduces a huge market inefficiency. If the 4000SP is delegated to a large account that can aggregate it with other SP then the 4000SP retains close to its $0.08 vote value, e.g. through circular voting / vote selling etc.

A user with 4000SP will be much better off selling those $0.08 upvotes and using the liquid proceeds for social interaction and engagement. I expect innovations to happen pretty quickly under HF21 to facilitate this approach. But it's untidy and introduces another layer of complexity that Steem really does not need.

I really wonder, with that shitty non-scaling convergent linear reward curve in place, whatt continued justification can there be to maintain the dust level treshold on 0.02 ? Move the bugger to 0.001, or at least move it to 0.006 so the same level of influence needed today to rise above dust level stays intact when HF21 hits. HF21 will screw over smaller accounts and hinder platform growth badly enough without the dust level threshold.

The dust threshold has more to do with added processing costs at the blockchain level than anything else. Every payout is a significantly expensive operation in terms of resources so there is a reasonable cutoff below which the costs are deemed to high to justify.

and using the liquid proceeds for social interaction and engagement

That's okay. People sending tips or subscribing for premium benefits or boosting each others content or whatever (as well as earning specialized Steem Engine or SMTs tokens via specific projects and communities) does not have the exploitability and other challenges of a common pool. It probably scales better in many ways.

So broadly: $0.75 under HF20 vs $0.27 under HF21

It's disaster.

It's certainly a very significant change for lower earning authors and smaller SP holders. Both groups are likely to reconsider how they interact on the platform.

With RC limited for newbies, the reward curve too is getting a lot harder. Tsk

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I remember when I started and was only earning a few cents per post or comment. It takes time to get anything moving here. I'm really unconvinced that hitting new users so hard makes sense.

Indeed it takes time sir @miniature-tiger.

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The RC situation will likely improve somewhat once this is implemented because farming via small comment rewards (some of which already does happen now) will likely stop. I don't know if it will make a huge difference but it will make some difference.

It just feels like this is going to be an utter disaster.

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The SPS is an important change (although hopefully it could still be funded differently). And from the EIP the downvotes is a worthwhile experiment. There are potential toxicity issues but it's the one change that is likely to significantly move the dial on behaviour. It should be possible to clean up trending at the very least.

50/50 could increase manual curation but there are other avenues that will still offer greater economic incentive so the behavioural impact there is hard to call. It would be interesting to see which orcas / whales are committing to pulling delegations and moving to manual curation to get a feel for the potential upside.

The CLRC seems to add very little benefit even when considered as part of an overall package. It also adds a large market inefficiency which will encourage users to work around the system, to the benefit of middlemen. And when combined with the other changes the impact on new accounts / small earners will be huge. That's the part I'd like to see pulled from the HF.

How would it work if you get larger votes?
Losing 2/3 of my rewards looks scary. It most certanly makes creating content i do less worth it.

As mentioned many times before, the key thing of EIP is in

encouraging more of the behavior that we want, and discouraging the behavior we don't want

It's change of economic model that, simplifying it to something like "this post will get x instead of y" basing on a shift in rewards is wrong, because it doesn't assume shift in behavior (which should change because of shift of incentives).

Currently, user without SP could take advantage of bit bots, go to trending, gain reputation all that while having negative cost (i.e. earning on that), because selling SP to bit bots is just the easiest way to earn. With 50/50 it will no longer be that simple, because you could earn with your own SP by voting for good content as much as self voting or selling SP to bit bots.

I expect you gtg to start liking music and upvoting me if i lose 50% of my upvotes because of EIP. haha
I just know this seems like i have to look forward to reduced rewards and if that is the case i will turn into Durins Bane and not lose this time around. :D
I will smote your ruins upon the mountainside. Or something like that. haha

It's change of economic model that, simplifying it to something like "this post will get x instead of y" basing on a shift in rewards is wrong, because it doesn't assume shift in behavior (which should change because of shift of incentives).

True. However for most users the chances of a large account coming along and upvoting their post will remain small, even if the shift in incentives does change behaviour. As such it's useful to understand how their post payout would change, as a "pre-behavioural" starting point.

Currently, user without SP could take advantage of bit bots, go to trending, gain reputation all that while having negative cost (i.e. earning on that), because selling SP to bit bots is just the easiest way to earn. With 50/50 it will no longer be that simple, because you could earn with your own SP by voting for good content as much as self voting or selling SP to bit bots.

I think that downvotes will be the change that stops the majority of the bid-bot issues. This is worth the experiment.

Large accounts currently earn around 21% of vote value in curation under 25/75, so this will probable double to around 42% of vote value under 50/50. It's still a long way off the close-to-100% of vote value that could be earned by circular voting or higher rewards from vote selling etc. It's a step in the right direction but it will be interesting to see how it actually changes behaviour. Economically, the incentives still don't align towards manual voting.

The CLRC seems to add little value, but again hammers small earning accounts / new accounts as well as comment engagement. The combination impact of the HF21 changes on such small earners is very large. This could be mitigated to some extent by removing the CLRC change from HF21.

However for most users the chances of a large account coming along and upvoting their post will remain small, even if the shift in incentives does change behaviour

There is more to it than that. An enormous portion of the reward pool is being milked out by self-voting and vote selling. Even a partial counter of that will increase the value paid out in STEEM per vshare. That also offsets the lower vshares per rshares at the low level of the curve resulting in higher rate of STEEM payout for those fewer vshares at the low end, even if no large stakeholder comes along and votes.

There are too many moving parts to do a simple calculation of payout for a particular vote assuming all else is equal and expect that to be remotely valid. It isn't.

It's true that significant use of downvotes on bad actors would cause an upscaling of rewards on all other content. It's something I should have added into my estimates. However the impact of the SPS / 50/50 and CLRC all act in the opposite direction and those impacts will dominate heavily for small earning posts.

There are too many moving parts to do a simple calculation of payout for a particular vote assuming all else is equal and expect that to be remotely valid. It isn't.

Here I would respectfully disagree. Most of the proposed changes have clear and measurable impacts and getting an initial assessment prior to behavioural changes is useful and a pretty solid starting point. People can then judge how they think behaviour will change those figures.

We can respectfully agree to disagree. A large portion of (in fact nearly the entirety of) the intent of this is to significantly change behavior. So I don't think that an assessment prior to behavioral changes is a solid starting point in the sense of being a good estimate of the outcomes. It literally can be a 'starting point' in the sense that one can start there and then make large adjustments to get from there to a good estimate, which is what I am pointing out.

It is also quite possible IMO that EIP is a complete failure in the sense that there aren't major behavioral changes, but that's somewhat of a different claim to make.

You keep on joining the others in supporting downvotes, as if the downvoters were enrolled from the most altruistic and genuine Steemit posters.

In truth?

Most of them downvote where they can, without caring who they damage or why. I've seen many posters who have their own YT or blog page outside of Steemit, who provide their articles here so as to widen their coverage...but then the 'nasties' come after them, downvoting them to invisibility...and even their comments show how vicious and evil-minded they are - just check those on this comment page and you'll see what I mean.

Steemit is handing over power to the most evil of those here....and that will bring about success for us?

How sad that even those with good intentions keep themselves blinkered.

Of the three changes in the EIP the free downvotes allocation is by far the most powerful and the only one that really has the potential to move the dial on behaviour significantly.

I would agree that there is the potential for issues, in particular an increase in toxicity and account targeting, as well as problems with cheap purchased downvotes, and I would have liked to have seen a lot more work on how such issues could be worked around.

But something does need to change. The economy of the content side of Steem is broken. Downvotes are worth the experiment in my view.

"because selling SP to bit bots is just the easiest way to earn. With 50/50 it will no longer be that simple", You are wrong, making quality content is best way to earn. This is simply communism taken to the next level, take from the real content creators. This will only piss off the true content creators, you can't build a functional Blockchain on sand, where no investments are in content creators and all the power is in random stake holders

In practice there will be more downvotes as there will be a downvoting pool which means less money to bad actors and more money for legit ones. Also bidbots will be less profitable. And the 50/50 curation split means it's now much more worth to curate content than before. So people should move away from bidbots and get back to normal curations.

Ultimately if everything goes well the space should improve a lot and your earnings with it. Would you rather earn 10 steem worth 0.40 cents or 4 steem worth 2$ ?

In the end the value of the coin in terms of market cap will have to be backed up by the value of the content platform, and quite frankly, without somehow onboarding top content creators who now reside on ad revenue sharing platforms, that value isn't going to be all that high. In fact the EIP in its current form is more likely to work against onboarding than for it.

New accounts are going to get screwed over badly by the EIP, what means you will need to be out of your mind even if earning just $20 or $30 a month on ad revenue sharing platforms to move to STEEM after HF21. That's not good, and on the long term that is more likely to push STEEM doen to 0.04 than to keep it at 0.40 or help it grow to 4.00.

While I agree with you on the earning sides, I don't think it will push people away as we'll see a much more sane environment where new users can actually thrive and not be like "most of the sp is in bidbot so I'm not earning anything"

But most of the EIP in fact favours growth of the bid bot economy. Just run a little simulation with a few weeks of old data. The narrative and the actual incentives created by the EIP do t actually match. That is, not unless there is a major shift in how the community considers flagging bid bot users indiscriminately.

Have a look at this poll and it's results to get a grasp of the general reluctance towards using flags (that way).

Just run a little simulation with a few weeks of old data

That method is completely invalid since the entire purpose is to change behavior.

That is exactly why simulation is essential. It shows who ends up getting incentives to change behaviour, and what alternatives of behavior are available.

I really hope HF20 has shown and thought us the dangers of ommitting propper "real data" simulations on a hard fork.

But will Steem increase in price because of this?
Steem is 70 in market cap and not many people care about it or know about it.
If nothing changes creators just lose rewards. That is what i fear. :(
I know i could stand on top my head and play violin upside down hanging by my legs from ceiling and i wouldnt get more votes. (haha that is some circus act)

Why think anyone outside steem will notice what we changed and decide to invest?

The reduction from the SPS (10%) and the 50/50 (33%) combine to 40% when taken together. This will be the base reduction applying to all posts before taking the CLRC into account.

For the CLRC, if your post earns more than a certain amount (16 Steem, i.e. $6.40 - according to the figure in the original post, although I'm still to run the figures on this) then you will be hitting linear and 40% will be the reduction. If you earn more than this break-even level then you will get a slight raise (i.e. less than a 40% reduction), as the reductions made by the CLRC on small value posts will end up being spread over larger value posts.

Better Blockchains that are 100% focused on content creators will be out in 1-2 years ;)

SEC cracking down hard, good luck with liquidity when binance shuts down in sept for USA .

The reward pool will be 10% lower to fund the SPS.

If this is what is actually being proposed, then I would reject this hard fork. There is other existing inflation from which funding can be reallocated for the SPS.

But reward pool is the most natural source of it. Currently to fund a project you need to make posts that gets you rewards, that's pretty gives much same effect but it takes from a source that's abused the most.

I would much rather redirect some of the inflation from "SP interest" and then eliminate the rest of it rather than pull it all from content rewards. There's more than enough tokens there to cover SPS funding and "SP interest" is an absolute joke, both conceptually and economically.

We can reduce overall inflation (positive for perception and price action), fund the SPS (positive for development), and not adversely affect the content rewards pool (positive/neutral for creators and curators) all at the same time. Why would we not do that?

This was heavily discussed, investors have much more at stake than authors, so it makes sense not to touch that.

Edit : I realize that I should write a much longer comment explaining my views but I don't have the time right now.

The “interest” is stupid and makes zero economic sense when paid with inflation. If “investors” and the witnesses deciding on these protocol changes can’t figure that out, then they’re idiots.

As discussed elsewhere it has the effect of allocating the other (real) inflation between powered-up and non-powered-up investors such that powered up investors pay a bit less and non-powered up investors pay a bit more.

It has an economic effect. We could argue whether that effect is desirable or not. I would probably be in favor of simply eliminating it, but not in shifting it out to 'real' inflation, which would have the effect of increasing the latter.

I would be OK with eliminating it entirely and scrapping the SPS altogether. But I’m pretty sure we’re getting the SPS. Since that’s going to happen, I would like to see 2/3 of the 15% “interest” eliminated and the remaining 1/3 (5% of the total inflation) allocated to the SPS rather than coming from content rewards.

It’s just a preference and I understand the arguments for directing inflation to stakeholders, but it’s still a really dumb idea that should have never been coded...just as the 100% annual inflation should have never been a thing. It would likely be more advantageous for stakeholders to have a lower annual inflation rate than to gain some small amount of “interest” that puts downward pressure on prices, especially when demand seems to be quite low.

Sending the inflation to development projects or to other stakeholders really doesn’t affect the perception of the chain/token value much. And seeing that many of our larger stakeholders are powering down (and usually selling) anyway - including STINC, still our largest stakeholder that’s receiving the largest portion of the inflation - that inflation is heading to the open markets anyway.

So yeah - get rid of most of it and redirect what’s left. Or just get rid of it altogether and forget about the SPS. Either option works for me. I don’t think we need less content rewards. Less author rewards, sure. But not less for curation too, since that’s pretty much the only reason to hold STEEM as SP. I’d rather not see less incentive to buy and power up.

Additional SP utility other than curation rewards would be nice to see as well.

It would likely be more advantageous for stakeholders to have a lower annual inflation rate than to gain some small amount of “interest” that puts downward pressure on prices, especially when demand seems to be quite low.

Well this is a reason for eliminating it as I said I'm probably in favor of that.

However, if it is coded as (made up numbers here) 5% interest going to stakeholders and that results in a 5% price drop, the net is neutral (i.e. no 'real' inflation). You can't then 'shift' that 5% to some other purpose (or even 1/3 of it) and start generating it as real inflation without that being a 5% increase in real inflation (not in fact a shift). So no I don't think it makes sense to do any 'shifting' of this. Eliminate, yes, probably.

Additional SP utility other than curation rewards would be nice to see as well.

Those are the sorts of things that at least might be built using SPS, which is an obvious benefit of adjusting how some of the reward funds are paid out.

I view SPS and content rewards as doing the exact same thing in a different way: Submit a transaction to the blockchain which asks stakeholders to vote to approve paying you (indeed many posts and some comments have also been used to pay for projects/proposals of the sort that SPS is intended to fund). Honestly I think SPS and posts/comments should just draw from the very same pool, but since it isn't coded that way and we need a fixed split for now, I view the sensible discussion as how much of that pool goes to post/comment payouts and how much to SPS payouts.

Redirecting from SP interest ends up increasing overall effective inflation. In reality, the only effect of SP interest is to allocate the other inflation costs between powered-up and non-powered-up investors.

It's kind of unfortunate that SP interest aka vesting rewards constantly ends up being described as a portion of inflation (including in the steemitblog post pie charts) because its function is really quite differently from the others.

I also agree with gtg that the content pool and SPS pool are natural equivalents. They both involve making a tranasction to the blockchain asking stakeholders to vote to pay you. The only difference is the particulars of the voting and payout rules. You could actually look at SPS proposals as being a type of post.

If you have understood correctly then we are fucked up mate. Those small payouts you are talking about are what...less than 1$? Everything less than 3$...maybe less than 5$?

Who will be affected most?

Who will be affected most?

Mediocre, and shitpost producers who post 10x / day, feeding themselves mostly from bid bots.

Mediocre, and shitpost producers who post 10x / day, feeding themselves mostly from bid bots.

I truly hope you are right. I'm looking at all the Minnow and Red Fish crew. Are they going to still want to post anymore? This new curve does not seem to be good for them at all.

Is everyone now going to focus on curation only, and the post level is going to reduce by 80%? it's going to be different, that's for sure.

Is everyone now going to focus on curation only,

In order to focus on curation there’s got to be content...and most of the content is being produced by the small accounts. I am not so sure that they will be willing to post so often anymore...This is a massacre for small accounts.

If the real purpose of this HF is to fight self voters and bid bot abusers only then how about the implementation of a mechanism that allows maximum 1 bid bot per post? And how about a couple of free downvotes for everyone so that we can fight those abusers?

Am I the only one around who thinks that these curves are not good at all ?

64% and 54% cut respectively is a major reduction. Massive...

I am not so sure that they will be willing to post so often anymore...This is a massacre for small accounts.

Yes, I get this feeling too. Is it going to be approved? From what I gather it is by vote but I feel this change it a little radical...

The bid bot economy is only going to grow larger as a result of these measures. Passive stake holders will switch from self voting to delegating to bid bots and other false curation services. Because of the 50/50 split, the price for bid bot usage will drop without a drop in ROI for bid bot owners, so the money being pumped around will end up supporting more bid bot SP. Small accounts will need to resort to bid bots even more just for reaching dust level, but most will want to aim for that magic 16.000 if they want some growth, so trending will end up a bigger mess than it is now.

I think that the reduction is approximately:

  • 64% reduction in author payout at $1 post.
  • 54% reduction in author payout at $5 post.

Although clearly these are a combination of the three reduction impacts (SPS, CLRC, 50/50) not just the CLRC.

In my view it shifts the balance of the content side of Steem away from being a social network and towards being a blogging platform. Users who currently gain lots of small payouts, i.e. the engagers and social networkers, will be most affected, as well as new users trying to get a foothold on the platform.

So instead of doing the exact opposite, we are trying what exactly?To hammer the payouts of those who earn pennies and discourage all those which we have desperately been waiting to join us for so long?...maybe we are doing things wrong....? Just saying.

fun days are ahead.
could we please just test it fast and get it over it, so i don't read about it any more and just be happy with my 10-20 cents.