Yeah! That'll solve our problems!
At the risk of sounding like a broken record I'm still flabbergasted by the shear magnitude of the changes being proposed.
https://steemit.com/hf21/@timcliff/hardfork-21-steem-proposal-system-sps-economic-improvement-proposal-eip
- Worker proposal system (10%)
- Moving to a convergent linear rewards curve.
- Increasing curation (50%)
- Create a separate “downvote pool.” (15-25%)
I suspect most users will translate the changes into:
- More power for whales
- More money for whales
- Less money for authors
- More downvote abuse
Before you go down that path though, I suggest you ask yourself: Does it really seem like Steem is working well the way it is today? I feel that pretty much everyone that has been here for long enough knows that the system we have in place today is not working.
Does it really seem like Steem is working well the way it is today.
This same logic is what doctors used to justify putting leeches on their patients as a cure-all.
Every one of these ideas is a HUGE change.
It's one thing to implement these changes one at a time, but to propose the best course of action is to make all the changes at once is downright laughable.
What if someone in the Bitcoin community suggested hard-forking to stop the block reward from being cut in half? They would be laughed off the stage and possibly spit on, metaphorically. What if, in addition to that, they suggested that the block reward be returned to 50 Bitcoin? That would be even more laughable.
The changes that the whales are pushing here are 10 times more aggressive than the above thought experiment.
- More power for whales
- More money for whales
- Less money for authors
- More downvote abuse
I don't agree with these bullet points at all (except maybe the last one). The damage isn't going to be done from attempting to change the economic incentives. The damage is caused by completely undermining Steem's credibility as an immutable contract. Who's going to want to invest in Steem when they know a few dozen people have the power to change it in any way they see fit? This fear is intensified by orders of magnitude when we have a history of actually doing it.
Steem is a tipping platform. It doesn't matter how much you tweek these percentages. The entire foundation of this platform revolves around giving money away. There are a lot of stake holders out there who don't want to give money away, and that is the core of the problem: greed. Greed doesn't lessen from any of these changes. In fact, it gives even more opportunity for bad actors to game the system.
The more complex the system, the easier it is to game. Users who are doing the right thing (trying to find trustworthy users who bring value to the platform and pay them for it) aren't going to change any of their habits in the face of these changes. It's the people exploiting the system who are going to pivot and take advantage of the platform even worse than before.
Separate flagging pool.
The military industrial complex has "defense contracts". America spends more on military than the world combined. Because of the way the system is set up, it's actually financially foolish to not utilize warfare and domination to turn a profit. Gotta get that ROI amirite?
Give all the whales a 25% flagging pool and see what happens. It's the same concept. They are given a resource that they basically now feel extreme pressure to spend. Depending on supply and demand for flags, don't be surprised if it costs someone $1 to flag someone else for $10. Clearly, the flag pool won't be as valuable as the reward pool, so anyone looking to buy flags is going to be given an extreme discount. Good luck dealing with that shit-storm.
Moving to a convergent linear rewards curve.
My understanding of the convergent linear rewards curve is that rewards start out parabolic and then shift into linear. This is the poster child for Sybil attack. Want to get more rewards? Create thousands of posts/comments and upvote them just enough to capitalize on parabolic rewards while avoiding linear rewards. In affect, the users who are paying rent to appear on the trending tab (vote buyers) are going to be punished even more for attempting to acquire visibility. Anyone who has a post that starts getting linear rewards will be punished by all the garbage being upvoted to extract maximum parabolic returns from the pool.
Curation 50%
Anyone looking to capitalize on curation now has the opportunity to exploit it even further. Again, it's the bad actors leeching money from the users trying to reward quality content. Honorable Steemians will upvote content no matter what the situation is. Bad actors will upvote content that hasn't been upvoted yet in an attempt to leech as much curation as they can.
Again, Steem is a tipping platform based on giving money away. The amount of money being given away isn't going to magically change based on the curation percentage. Users are going to tip what they're willing to tip; transparent curation doesn't change that.
There's also absolutely no reason to force curation on anyone. It should be a variable determined by the content creator.
Worker proposals
This could be a great idea, however, the governance of such a system will obviously be controlled by stake holders. We already pay 10% to the witnesses to secure the network, doubling that tax to 20% to include worker proposals seems pretty outrageous to me. Regardless, as far as I'm concerned, this is the only idea that has any merit whatsoever.
Conclusion
If Bitcoin reset the block reward to permanently be at 50 coins this would be a totally legitimate economic move. I would support this change. 50 coins every 10 minutes is not a big deal. Getting rid of the halfening event would make Bitcoin far less volatile and more consistent with a real currency that has a solid unit-of-account.
However, it doesn't matter if this is a superior economic change for Bitcoin. What matters is that the trust of the community has been broken. They were guaranteed a certain rule set and now they're being showed that the rules can change on a whim. This same concept applies to modifying the inflation of any cryptocurrency.
On the other side of the coin Bitcoin is known for its immutable nature. Changing it is far harder than any other platform. Sometimes this is seen as a feature while other times it is seen as a nail in the coffin when looking at long term sustainability. A coin like Steem is obviously much more flexible to change.
My worry is that these changes are going to blow up in our faces and we'll be forced to change inflation again and again. At that point, Steem will become a total joke that no one wants any part of. At the risk of sounding like a conservative maximalist, modifying the inflation of a currency is not an activity to be taken lightly. This is a community decision being made at the hands of Stinc and the witnesses, and that should give everyone pause.
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