In conjunction with the Steem Proposal System (SPS), there is consideration of the Steem Economic Improvement Proposal (EIP) for the next hard fork. You can read my thoughts on the SPS here: Thoughts on the Steem Proposal System.
Economic Improvement Proposal (EIP)
The latest proposal for changing reward-based protocols is something that I have mostly supported for over two years. These changes are by no means the cure-all for the problems we have with social and economic behavior on the Steem blockchain, but it’s a step in the right direction.
Some are claiming that these protocols were meant to resolve the issues with bid bots. I think they are mistaken. All of these changes were proposed – or had been in the original design – long before the first bid bot existed. These protocols are not “the bid bot fix,” although they may impact the use and effects of bid bots, just as they may affect other user behavior.
These are the proposed changes and my brief thoughts on each:
1 - Linear rewards to a “convergent linear rewards curve.”
Absolutely YES to this change. This type of curve has been the proposed solution to the voting algorithm since before Hard Fork 19 was designed with linear rewards that very few people even wanted prior to it being misleadingly billed as the “equality” hard fork.
I’ve said this countless times before – just as a superlinear algorithm (n2) was too steep, linear was too flat. It was an extreme overcorrection and has resulted in far too much damage to the economic and social aspects of this platform (along with other protocol changes made around the same time). Returning to anything more than linear is a fantastic move and I wholeheartedly support this change.
2 - Author-Curation rewards from 75/25 to 50/50.
I have been calling for curation rewards to revert back to 50/50 for well over two years. To me, this change is a no-brainer and – in my opinion – can be even further pushed into the favor of curators.
For anyone who has followed my proposals and critiques for the past two and a half years, this will sound like me beating a dead horse, but...the much larger audience and untapped market, by far, is content consumers – the people who will be simply reading and voting on content. This ought to be who we are targeting for rewards distribution and for the small/incremental purchases of STEEM. Offering a larger pool of rewards for those people evaluating and ranking content should entice more people to participate (and invest) for those purposes.
3 - Separate downvote pool.
I have little faith that this will have much of an impact overall. I’m indifferent to this but will certainly test it out myself if it’s implemented.
As I stated recently in a comment about this protocol:
Most users aren't avoiding downvotes because it costs them voting power and they get no rewards. They avoid it because they have been browbeaten into believing that downvotes are bad for the system and that those who downvote are somehow "evil." The culture here has never been great for honest curation and painting downvotes and downvoters as "toxic," "negative," or even comparing the downvotes to rape is absolutely ridiculous and more harmful to the platform than the actual votes cast.
I fully support the first two protocol changes, not because they might affect bid bot use, but because they are simply good changes for the blockchain and for long-term token utility/demand. A separate downvote pool will likely have little effect on the ecosystem overall, but I wouldn’t mind being wrong about that. It’s not a change that I believe is worth fighting for, so whether or not it’s included in the EIP makes no difference to me.
Additional thoughts on current protocols and bid bots
For everyone who believes that bid bots are causing most of our problems, let me remind you that they only exist today because of protocols that were changed in the first half of 2017. There are three protocols that have allowed bid bots to exist as they are today, to make operating these bots very lucrative, and to make using these bots practically risk-free...or actually profitable, in most cases.
What are those three protocols?
1. Linear rewards
2. Delegation
3. Daily voting target of 10
How have these three protocols impacted the system?
Linear rewards has made it relatively simple to calculate estimated vote values. This allows buyers and sellers of votes to find “fair value” and offer virtually risk-free “promotion” of posts. Prior to linear rewards, vote values could only be loosely estimated on a post-by-post basis.
Delegation has allowed for non-invested users to simply lease STEEM Power and then use it to charge fees and agnostically upvote content. These tokens acquired from the fees can then be instantly sold on the market. Those renting out their SP are also paid with liquid tokens that can be instantly sold on the market. Also – prior to delegation – users/stakeholders assumed all of their own risk when attempting to buy and/or sell votes.
Reducing the daily vote target from 40 to 10 has allowed users (and the bid bot owners) to have a significantly higher per-vote value that can move posts up on the “hot” or “trending” pages rather quickly. This makes renting larger amounts of stake more attractive for bot owners and it makes buying their votes more attractive for bot users.
If bid bots were only able to give a maximum of 25% of their current vote value, if the vote values were too unpredictable under a non-linear system, and if bot owners actually had to own the SP required to operate an attractive bid bot, we likely would not see many bid bots, if any at all. Even if only two of the above protocols were reverted, we would likely see a considerable reduction of bid bots and their influence.
Whether you believe bid bots are a good or bad thing, I’m fairly certain that these causes and effects are accurate.
I also believe that changing the voting algorithm from linear back to non-linear will impact bid bot use – I just don’t believe that’s why non-linear is needed. Changing curation rewards back to 50/50 will likely have a minimal impact on bot use, but could have a considerably larger impact on STEEM demand and powering it up. How that STEEM and STEEM Power is used will likely determine where we go from here – as a blockchain, as investors, and as content creators and consumers.
The downvote pool could have a significant impact. However, I don’t think it will be used as much as its proponents believe it will be. The culture here simply does not allow for proper post ranking, of which downvoting is an integral part.
There are so many things to fix, but so little time and support for fixing them. With the EIP, at least things appear to have a chance of moving in the right direction. It isn’t the cure. There’s more work to be done.
Witnesses and other stakeholders will need to seriously consider that many of the changes made in 2017 were not good for the ecosystem and that some of the popular but bad protocols need to be rolled back. I won’t hold my breath for that though, as many of them likely still refuse to acknowledge that major problems even exist...or they just don’t care. There probably isn’t much time left for stubbornness and indifference. The technology continues to evolve and competition continues to emerge. Eventually, one or more of those competitors will win the crowd.
We’ve tried Ned’s way. It isn’t working.
We’ve given our top witnesses a chance to lead. They haven’t led.
We even tried involving the larger Steem community in creating a community-based “foundation.” They mostly didn’t show up – including the very people trying to organize the effort.
There are still some of us here trying to get reasonable people to listen to reasonable plans and proposals. The problem is – there appears to be few reasonable people left. Unfortunately, some of us may end up going down with the ship, but nobody can say that we didn’t try to save it.