HF21 is a day away and with that being said, anything i write here wont have a long life of relevance lol. (not that any of my stuff does. haha)
So lets speculate a bit.
Ive written extensively about the EIP proposed by etherpunk. Ive written thousands lines of texts in posts and in comments. My final conclusion was always:
It doesnt change much for the better. It might make things worse. It will surely make things different.
Thats basically it. It will probably screw up a number of things and it will make a few things better but overall i dont see it doing much.
My biggest hope is that it at least reinvigorates the price action a bit due to the expectations and change but having such poor marketing means that the word about Steem will still have a hard time getting out. I mean this is above all else a Investor focused HF.
Lets see some of the things that people talk about:
1. BOTS AND VOTE SELLING.
Some folks claim that this change will somehow reduce vote buying. That is not really true.
The only way i saw bots going away was if SPS was set as a " Forced Beneficiary" on every post made and took a cut from the author side. That way you arent reshuffling the split which would mean that vote buying would no longer have a positive return. (Or a promotion cost of 0) That is apparently not happening but rather the SPS is taking from the inflation directly.
All that happens now is that the BOTS will reduce the price of votes and instead they will get higher curation payouts and FREE downvotes that they can also sell and that they can use to retaliate against those that attack their investment. (Will they actually retaliate, i do not know, but it is a possibility.)
With that they have huge upvotes and with the curve change being introduced, that will create an incentive for vote buyers to buy votes at close to maximum bot VP.
So really, this change, if anything, encourages spending as much as you can on bots.
Bots arent going anywhere. They are possibly becoming more profitable and more used.
2. CURATION.
The biggest argument those that came up with this idea was related to Curation.
Oh once you give accounts more SP they will curate more.
Thats the stupidest and most deceptive thing said during this whole discussion. That will not be the case at all.
People dont understand that curation is damn hard, its a full time job and damn boring. I know i wont change my behavior in the slightest.
If i autovote some folks i like and vote a few times on the side, by giving me more curation payout ill just continue doing the same thing and get more curation payout.
MY BEHAVIOR WILL NOT CHANGE, ONLY THE STEEM I GET WILL.
@curie will be able to pay their curators more and the autovoting will stay the same. Only maybe the greatest supporters of this change will curate more because they got their way but that will also fade after time when they get bored and burned out.
The only thing i hoped would develop from this is....
3. CURATION SERVICES:
And that is a long shot. If the SPS took from the author im pretty sure there would be room for a profitable curation service that could pay delegators and its curators enough to be competitive with bots.
Because the SPS will take from the inflation pool directly i do not think that will come to pass which is extremely unfortunate.
A curation service, potentially, could be able to compete with bots for delegations due to the following:
- Free flags which means trending page abusers could get hit with flags more often to discourage vote buying
- Curation service effect on the steem ecosystem would be a positive one which could attract delegators that care about their investment.
- The loss of profit from moving away from vote selling to delegating to a curation service would not be great.
- Curation services could always use up all the VP which means constant payments unlike with bots that would have potentially discouraged vote buyers due to flags.
I honestly dont think that can happen now but you can always hope.
At the end of the day it all depends on the community. Not the MOB which i put 0 faith in but rather the community of top couple hundred accounts on Steem that have the power to make the change happen that would possibly usher in Curation services... (Not holding my breath.)
4. FLAGGING/DOWNVOTING:
This is another change people hope will bring about change. It very well could, but i do not trust it.
Dont get me wrong.... out of all the proposed changes im the most excited about this one.
Not because i think it will do wonders for steem or that it will change anything but rather for my own personal enjoyment.
See, i pretty much gave up on maximizing my token accumulation. Ill try and earn a dollar or two but at this point i really do not care much. Having a million of nothing is still nothing and reaching even an orca status of 50k SP at my pace, it would take me about 40 years..
So i dont really give a damn about token accumulation because ill never be able to move much further then my 7000 SP i have now. It taking me 37 years instead of 40 if i work real hard is not something that drives me. lol.
But what i will be happy with is the free flags ill get. I still want to support the folks i like and having more flags to flag the abusers is something that i will enjoy.
But i think that the community unfortunately will not change its behavior.
Downvotes are inherently disruptive. Negative emotions are tied to them, negative behavior, retaliation, conflict. Egos get hurt, people get angry.
Most folks avoid conflict and most folks arent brave even when it comes to "magic internet money". Most are cowards and getting into a conflict or a disagreement upsets them. That feeling is negative and people tend to avoid it. Its taxing and emotionally draining and its really hard to get a positive reaction to your action that would condition you to continue.
So do i think flags will change stuff? I dont think the mentality of the community will change. No. Im open to be proven wrong, but outside the initial few extra flags we see, people will simply stop using them because losing a few cents from 1 downvote you would make before HF21 wasnt really the reason why people didnt use them. The reasons are those i listed above.
Theres probably a few other things i could talk about but ill end the post here.
5. IN CONCLUSION:
Passive autovoter whales will get a bit more wealthy for continuing to do what they already do. Manual curators like @etherpunk that spearheaded all this will continue to suck at manual curation but get more from it (He posted way back how ineffective his curation game was), bots will still be a thing, @curie will pay their curators a bit more, and ill be here dropping more flags on @exyle and his circle jerk, @zaku and his gang of trending spot thiefs and what ever other abuser pops up. Im calling @steemflagrewards to do the same.
Why, you ask? Because its fun and it should be fun to you reading this as well.
Making those that abuse the system pay for it just a little bit, making them feel a bit uncomfortable, reminding them that what they are doing is a shit thing to do, never letting them forget that they are kind of assholes.
;)
Ill see you around and happy HF21!!!! :D