Keep the Change

Change Cups

We all have them. We toss our loose change in there and forget about it until the day comes that we have enough to buy a ham sandwich.

What if we did the same thing with our change here, except instead of going to a ham sandwich, it went to something amazing.

I'd like to see the option to divert a small portion of my payouts automatically to certain contributors in the community. At less than a dollar, it's enough that most of us wouldn't even notice, while having the potential to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for causes we're all passionate about.

If 5000 people tipped out at least $.30 a day through this method, we would raise over $500,000! That's a lot of change!

Imagine if we could have a single account like Hive account@null that was somehow managed in a decentralized fashion through the community that could divert significant sums of money to projects that would make a huge difference for Steem's development. Perhaps witnesses could manage the account until a more decentralized method of money management emerges.

Here's what I think would work:

It could work with every post you make, simply check the box if you would like the an individual or a future community managed account to "keep the change".

When you check the box and hit post, this box pops up before actually posting it. Here, you confirm that you want to proceed irreversibly with the "keep the change option". A memo can be added so the user can specify where he would like to see the funds diverted if sent to a community account. They could also send the change directly to developers or other key people they value on the platform.

It'd also work for any replies you make. Perhaps with these, since they are generally much lower payouts, we can remove the $1 cap and simply push all change even if the reply is under $1.

I think a simple donation button would be nice, as well. Maybe have a couple preset options like $1SBD, $5SBD, $25SBD. A similar popup would appear so you could authorize the transaction. I think a nice one-click process could drive more money to content creators that aren't getting noticed, without having to take the multi-step process to send them some change.

I love the post promotion idea and I think that these options would work complimentary to this new system. I think it's important that we divert money to the people in the community who are working hard to build out both Steem and Steemit.