RE: Why the Whale War might be good for Steemit
The large scale crony voting risks literally turning Steem into a Ponzi scheme, as I've further explained here: https://steemit.com/steem/@troglodactyl/is-steem-a-ponzi-scheme
Partly this can be solved (or at least managed) by continually building consensus on definitions of abuse and what should be downvoted. In the long run, I think we'd be well served by a few protocol changes:
Downvotes should get curation rewards. Steem is based on the premise that most of the stakeholders will vote in the network's best interest to increase the value of their stake. This should be just as true regarding downvotes as upvotes, but currently dealing with spam and abuse is uncompensated. When a post or comment is downvoted below 0, the voters who downvoted it should be rewarded, just as upvoters are rewarded for curating good content.
There should be curation penalties for losing voting wars. Currently, shortsighted stakeholders see no incentive for avoiding abuse. They feel they have nothing to lose, because each of them think their own actions are too insignificant to impact the price of Steem. If there were curation penalties (negative curation rewards) for downvoting something that settled to net positive votes or upvoting something that settled to negative, then stakeholders who more often than not oppose what others consider best for the network would have reason to sell their stake and move on.
Increase the length of the vesting schedule. The level of abusive voting indicates that many voters don't have the longterm interests of the network in mind. The length of the vesting schedule should be gradually increased after #2 is implemented to give abusive stakeholders time to see what's happening and sell out gracefully.
Return to a non-linear reward curve. Linear rewards reduce the incentive to generate consensus on what is desirable and what is undesirable. If the R^2 curve is deemed excessive maybe we should go with R^1.5, but R^1 is a step in the wrong direction. Combined with #2, curation penalties and rewards should be calculated symmetrically on the same curve, with exponentially higher penalties and higher rewards for posts settling with stronger consensus.
This largely seems to be based on the assumption that most downvotes are deserved. In my experience, that is not always the case. Also, the reason for the downvote is disagreement on rewards payout, then why would 0 be the threshold? Just because you don't believe that a post should make $500 doesn't mean that it should make 0.
As I said, Steem is based on most stakeholders voting in the network's interest (which if the system is properly designed will also be in their personal interest). If this is true, then most of the time when a downvote is not deserved people will come together to counter it with upvotes. If that's what generally happens and if when it happens the downvoter suffers a penalty then continued abusive downvoting becomes much less likely. If most of the stakeholders are malicious and will downvote good content just to watch the world burn, no protocol change will save the network.
The change I propose would make downvoting less useful for rewards disagreement, but I see that as a much less serious issue than outright abuse. It's imperfect, but I still think it would be an improvement.
I think there is a really, really simple way to deal with this. Bring back the four posts per day rule. Before HF19 we had a mechanism on steemit that allowed all users to post four posts per day and receive maximum rewards. At the fifth post, maximum reward payout dropped I think to 75%, sixth 50%, seventh 25% etc. I think this is the best way to mitigate this type of abuse, and would be a really simple solution to this problem.
four post are too many for a whale. i think the number of posts for whales should be less. may be once a week. and there should be a limit to steem power an account. it should not be unlimited
If it's actually purely abuse this is easy to circumvent with extra accounts. Just make 10 bot accounts and post 4 times a day from each of them. A real user trying to build an audience would suffer from splitting across multiple accounts, but an abusive reward harvester wouldn't have a problem with it.
i wound not agree with any of that. And number 4 would require a lot more explanation for me to understand how each curve actually works.
I suspect that their is a financial incentive behind the creation of vote wars especially if you can use other peoples vote power.
Can you explain why you disagree?
Hi @troglodactyl i will give it a shot.
point 1. Downvotes should get curation rewards
I have been subjected to attack simply for disagreeing with people here with severe loss of rep.
I have seen other people be attacked for extended periods of time for NO valid reason.
I have seen whales make stupid up votes with alt accounts to justify their down voting behavior.
Due to the nature of the rewards NOT being distributed in a linear fashion, it seems their is an incentive for big reward pool miners to promote Flag wars. I suspect that the recent and probably ongoing saga regarding a certain whale upvoting one account consistently is being done to justify flagging wars. All the better if you tap into people subconscious pain from past injustices and use their vote power right? especially if i am going profit from my reward pool mining operations.
point 2. There should be curation penalties for losing voting wars.
Given that most of the flag wars posses all the integrity and validity of a witch hunt this thinking blows my mind
point 3. Increase the length of the vesting schedule.
The whales promoting flag wars are the abusers in most cases.
point 4. Return to a non-linear reward curve.
from what i have been told the reward curve is non-linear and favors the big accounts reward pool mining operations.
Thanks for the explanation.
It sounds like the common element in all your reasoning is that you don't trust stakeholders to act in ways that support growth. This is a legitimate problem, but nerfing stakepower won't solve it. It's not just large stakeholders who try to abuse the network for profit, and as long as it remains profitable we'll see an increasing number of people taking that approach.
To solve the problem we can either try to fork the network removing the stake of large abusive stakeholders until the network is controlled by only the most angelic among us (unlikely), or we can modify the economics to make abuse unprofitable. I'm promoting the second approach. All stakeholders hold stake, which means they're united in the positive-sum benefit that comes from long term network growth. The problem is that they're divided by the short term zero-sum competition for rewards. To make the network healthy we need to make that zero-sum competition less appealing/profitable and the positive sum collaboration relatively more appealing.
Hey @troglodactyl I really enjoyed reading your reply, thanks. You got a genuine lol with the 'most angelic' line : )
I needed to look up nerfing and it seems to me that buffing the available weapons is not desirable ether.
I have spent most of my time here observing. I suspect that their is already a financial incentive for promoting flag wars. imho we need access to information already contained in the blockchain to ether invalidate or validate this suspicion. I am computer illiterate and have no clue how to build the necessary tools.
Modifying the economics may be a positive. However rewarding flag wars would definitely propel us in the opposite direction. Right now some people are being easily psychologically manipulated into engage in flag wars that have all the integrity and validity of a witch hunt. Rewarding that will be disastrous.
The political process for changing the rules needs to modified into a system of open democracy where everyone interested is able to easily see how previous decisions have been arrived at and anyone who wants to have a say regarding proposed changes have that opportunity.
Right now a few whales literally own witnesses. This must change.
oh @troglodactyl I neglected to address your opening line directly.
'your reasoning is that you don't trust stakeholders to act in ways that support growth'
I object to being placed in a situation where I need to trust. If people are being transparent I do not need to trust them, because I know what is happening. When people are making secret deals with one another in private, they are doing that for a reason, so why would anyone trust that?
Networks and societies always require trust, it's just a matter of how much we can distribute and manage that trust to make sure the costs of being untrustworthy are high and the rewards of being trustworthy are attractive. We obviously want to avoid having to trust people to act in our interests at the cost of their own.
hey @troglodactyl thanks for replies. I really appreciate your approach. I like this sentence ' We obviously want to avoid having to trust people to act in our interests at the cost of their own.'
imho The way the rules are changed and the way decisions are made right now is putting people in a position of needing to trust that process.
And I would like to see a more open and transparent process where anyone interested can participate.
What if minnows were to be protected against whale flagging them. Might encourag them to "do the right thing"
If minnows were protected against downvotes we'd see even more new 'minnow' spambots overrunning the network, impervious to all countermeasures.
1% max on anyone share of the common pot?
Remember we can't control how many accounts a person has and how many are bots, so any effort against truly deliberate abuse that relies on a per-account or per-post limit can be circumvented with more accounts generating more spam.
1 post per day, 10 steem max on all the post. Your precious spam network is not worth the effort and more ppl can get coffee money. And a monthly vote on whose account should be closed and balance burned, like witness vote but more witch hunt
Totally agree. Minnows (like @haejin) should be protected against greedy parasite whales (@berniesanders) so that they don't have to rely on 'protection' from other whales like ranchorelaxo.
I think you do not know what those terms mean.
:D I hope this comment was on purpose.