Image source: Maxpixel.net
With hardfork 20 on its way, we can expect many changes to the steem blockchain and the steemit community. I’ve heard and read about some of these changes, and I want to give my ideas about some changes to the curator system, most of us know the issues we have today, but we don’t give solutions to these issues, and instead try to exploit these issues to the fullest. I want to make a debate proposing real solutions to some of these issues, if these changes are good and make sense, I’m sure our witnesses and blockchain developers will implement them for us. An improvement on the services offered will also increase the monetary value of steem, so let’s be serious about this. Let’s start by seeing some issues and possible solutions:
Vote selling and vote reciprocation
Image source: Maxpixel.net
Cause: Self-vote is less rewarding that giving others my SP and having them vote for me, or establishing contracts with other people to vote their posts and make them vote mine.
Solution: As ridiculous as this may sound, there is no real solution to this, and there will never be one either unless we remove the monetary awards from voting, which would pretty much kill steemit. Since everything is on the blockchain, hiding info such as the value of your vote, or what bot should you choose to sell your SP to isn’t going to solve the issue. I propose that self-votes don’t receive any penalization at all, with the change I explain below, the capacity of an author to self-vote won’t diminish the value of future votes and thus shouldn’t be bad, instead it would be just like basic hourly income, you earn more the greater your SP (and thus your investment in steem). We would need to keep a stricter control over bad posts that are being created just for the sake of self- voting but maybe we could reduce the amount of votes sold and the abuse of bots. There just isn’t any way to stop people from banding in communities and vote between themselves, and that’s fine too, we have our own beliefs, and if those beliefs lead us towards that road, it’s fine. What I would like to discourage is bot abuse, and that should also be discouraged a bit with the next proposition.
Curator bots and curation awards system
Image source: Maxpixel.net
Cause: With enough SP, money earned from curator awards is several times more than money earned by creating posts (even with vote selling).
Detailed explanation: Rewards are divided on a 75%, 25% basis as of today (July 14th, 2018). Suppose I’m a dolphin or an orca, I create an amazing post and self-vote and sell my SP for votes; but ALL votes I get are from my own SP, no one else votes for the post. Assume the post makes 5$, meaning that all my SP is worth 5$; all the rewards go back to me, so by spending some time and effort I can make 5$. However, if I see 4 posts with 0 likes at min 30 and I vote for them, I’ll be giving 5$ to each post and pocketing 1.25$ per vote as curation awards + other potential rewards from other people who may like it as well, and with near 0 effort while also looking at good posts. This caused all sorts of bot creation in order to abuse the system; but real humans interested in giving a vote to a post they like but see that a post has 12 or 13 votes already (and thus most of the curator awards are already given since it follows a logarithmic formula) may hesitate to do so.
Solution: I think one real solution here is to have special “curator votes”, or something similar. Reverse auction system favors self-voting and vote selling and reciprocation; fixed time voting favors bots. As a human being I would like to see a post I enjoy or was helpful and give it a vote without giving consideration to whether it’s 2 minutes old or 2 days old and the actual curator system makes me think twice before voting. I propose to separate normal votes and curator votes and to change the rewards system to accommodate those changes. I want everyone to cooperate with me and help with the math or to propose better changes but the idea I have now is to change the rewards to the following way:
Post rewards: Author rewards (65%); Curator rewards (15%); Popularity rewards (20%).
- Author rewards remains unchanged from the current way, except it earns 10% less in order to accommodate a better distribution to the other rewards.
- Curator rewards would only be given to those who use their curator votes, in a first come, first served manner; with exponential preference to those who use their curator votes first, this is similar to the system we have today too, but without the 30 minutes restriction. If I see a content I’d like to curate and support, then no matter the time of creation I can use a vote for it.
- Popularity rewards: This is a fixed reward pool for everyone who likes the post to profit a bit to help people consider giving votes to content that is some days old instead of posts that are just only a few minutes old, assume you vote a post with a 100% upvote worth 0.20$ two days after post publication… you’ll get a 20% of that 0.20$ back, a 0.02$ while the author and the curators get the remaining 0.18$.
What about the curator votes then? I think the curator votes should be very special, a user should have 2 or maybe 3 curator votes per day, and those votes should be worth like 3 or 4 100% upvotes (again, I would like help with the math here), or maybe have a separate SP for curation votes worth more than your normal votes (again, just ideas). This means that you can vote as many posts as you’d like (and get the 20% from popularity reward depending on your SP and voting power), but you’ll only want to give your prized curator vote to a post that you really like and believe it’s going to go viral. The curator reward is 15%, but since your curator vote is 3 or 4 100% upvotes, giving a curator vote to a post is a 60% reward in comparison to the 20% you’ll get from a normal vote if you give it first, plus all the other rewards you’ll get if the post goes viral. This prevents competitions between human curators and bots, especially if there is a separate SP for curation and for normal voting; since bots would be used for normal voting instead of curating (due to vote limit), allowing true human curators to reap the full rewards of their curation.
Image source: Maxpixel.net
Now, what if you give a curator vote to a post that’s already viral and no one has used a curator vote yet?, I think in practice this won’t happen often, but there are two quick ways to tackle this problem:
- All curator rewards go to the rewards pool until a curator vote is cast (best way, but harder to code?)
- There is a time limit to cast a curator vote (simple way, but won’t fix the issue)
You also can’t vote and use a curation vote on the same post, if you vote normally a post that you’ve curated, your popularity reward will be forfeit and go back to the reward pool (Or just code it so that you can’t vote normally a post you’ve curated). This also helps authors (even though they may earn 10% less total from the reward pool) because posts two or three days old could still generate profit and they can gain more followers or receive powerful curator votes at the 1 hour or 2 hour mark; as of today when I see that a post of mine has 20 votes or more and it’s worth less than 0.10$ I know the post it’s doomed since no one will waste a vote and earn very little curation rewards (unless you have friends or serious people who will vote the post thanks to the value of the post itself). People will feel more compelled to spend a few days creating an ageless post (something that will EVENTUALLY happen on steem; that 7 day reward pool restriction WILL disappear one day, maybe by 2022 or 2023) instead of creating small posts a few lines long every day to get some cash to get by, because a post could still give profit many months later, due to people giving their vote and receiving their popularity reward (When the 7 day reward pool rules changes).
Curated posts could also appear in the profile of a person, since they’re limited; they won’t clutter the interface and while you can resteem any amount of posts you can only curate as many times as curation votes (and they should be 3 per day at most), those posts you’ve curated are posts that (in your opinion) are truly exceptional and worthy of your curation vote. Your followers would get a feel for what you truly believe is to be exceptional, increasing once again the value of great posts and following just for following and vote reciprocation may diminish a bit too, since leaders of some communities can resteem the posts of their entire communities, but they can’t use a curation vote on all of them, only the best of each community would be curated by them.
Final words
I haven’t seen any other issues I would like to see solved on steemit yet, and I strongly believe that this new rewards system distribution will help alleviate some existing issues and help those who create good content reach a bigger audience. Maybe the numbers need tweaking, maybe some serious infrastructure work is required… maybe new exploits will appear, but we need to think together to give serious real solutions to the problem instead of hiding it in the closet…
Image source: Wikimedia Commons by L.M. Glackens in the public domain
My closet is already full of skeletons, let’s not keep adding more to it, all right? The way I see it, authors can get more followers and more votes without spending a lot of cash to get into the hot pages in a few hours, since posts with 2 or 3 days can still provide rewards. Curators won’t need to keep fighting against bots for those votes in the reverse auction system and can focus on curating content they see it’s good, even if such content is 1 or 2 days old (depending on how curator votes are coded). At the same time, people can just vote normally for the content they like, since they will earn the same amount of money no matter the post (except their own posts, which would give them 85%).
Please vote (if you’d like), comment (if you’d like), resteem (if you’d like), and spread the word of this post however you can; I’ll be expecting tons of comments telling me why this approach won’t work and many other issues that need to be solved, but don’t worry, if we join our heads, I’m sure we’ll find a way to make sure everyone wins and we enjoy steemit more.
Kind regards
Eilder Jorge