Bid bots have become a controversy among Steemians. This could be the solution.

Overview

Instead of Steemians using bid bots, humans can partner with other humans to barter on an auto-upvote exchange. The exchange works by exchanging upvotes between Steemians for an agreed upon length of time. The upvotes exchanged are guaranteed equal by the system (unless otherwise specified, see below) and occur at the rate in which each Steemian creates a post. As many exchange partnerships can be created as a Steemian’s voting power allows.

By doing it this way, time is saved, and true bonds are formed between humans based on the quality of content. The middle man is cut out and all rewards can be mutually beneficial. See below for a detailed outline and flowchart for such an exchange program.

Benefits

The most obvious benefit is the removal of the middle-men and their fees. Regardless of the ROI promised by bid bot owners, using a bid bot almost always constitutes a loss of actual USD, even if SP is gained (see example below). By making exchanges there is no need to “purchase” an upvote. Those who make 50/50 exchanges benefit the same as if they upvoted their own content, however, a Steemian may only upvote their own post once, whereas with an exchange program a single post will get all eligible upvotes from exchange partners. An unequal exchange can be made, possibly between a whale and the minnow they wish to support. A Steemian also benefits by making exchanges with other Steemians who have a higher influence, thus helping to raise their own status.

The entire Steemit community benefits from an exchange program because humans are much more likely to form exchange partnerships with other humans that provide quality content. It’s becoming more and more obvious that bid bot owners do not care what kind of content their bot upvotes, causing a proliferation of spam accounts that use bid bots to upvote scraped/copied content. By making the exchange interface a deterrent to spammers through the use of captchas and other methods, each exchange will have a much higher probability of mutually upvoting content made by non-spammers.

Caveats

Such a system would have to be secured using SSL/TLS and hard drive encryption and be regularly maintained and watched using an intrusion detection system since it would have to store and use private posting WIF keys. A lot of extra time and effort would have to go into hardening the server, as well as creating back up systems and fail-safe routines. Fortunately, only the posting key needs to be stored, so in the event of a compromise a Steemian’s money would not be at risk.

As an alternative consideration, SteemConnect might be used if the API is compatible, which could prove to be considerably safer. The biggest concern being that the amount of traffic an exchange like this might generate could be too much for SteemConnect servers.

Witness, Seed & Steemd Nodes

A witness, seed and steemd node configuration will be created in order to effectively and efficiently operate and maintain such a large-scale exchange program. Before work can begin on the exchange interface, either all nodes must be fully operational, or an agreement must be made with the owner of a public steemd node for the extensive use needed for testing and development.

The code for the exchange will be released as an open-source Steem Blockchain project that anyone can use to implement a similar service. The only compensation for coding the exchange and maintaining it will be the Steem Power generated by running a witness node, something that comes with its own expenses.

Project Development Goals

Mock-ups and flowcharts for all process will first be created so that anybody interested in contributing to the project will have a clear idea of its function and goals.
Steem witness, seed, and steemd nodes will be created and fully functional.
A basic command-line driven algorithm and database will be created to handle the upvoting.
Mock-ups will be converted to actual GUI which will then be connected to the back-end algorithm.
Quality assurance testing will be carried out on all major features before release.
Beta release will be limited to a select number of accounts.
Final release.

Project Code

This project will be coded using the Steem-Python library using Python3, Perl5 and MySQL on Ubuntu 16.04

Steemit Auto-Upvote Exchange Walk-through

A Steemian can send an invite to another Steemian asking for an upvote exchange. This invite would come as a memo in their wallet containing an invite link, and of course will cost at least 0.001 SBD/STEEM to send.
Once an invite is accepted both accounts will auto upvote the other account’s every post for a predetermined amount of time (perhaps in intervals of weeks).
The platform for such a service will be a single web page interface.
To initiate an invite a Steemian visits the TLS secured, exchange web page and enters their account name, the account name of the Steemian they are inviting to do an exchange, their active posting WIF key, and the amount they wish to exchange expressed as two values. (The WIF key may be replaced with a portal to authenticate on SteemConnect.) Those two values are:

A) The value of the upvote they wish to exchange calculated using the users current Steem Power. This would be entered in as a percentage. For example, the user has a current Steem Power of 1000, giving their upvote an STU dollar amount of $0.13 at current Steem prices and at 100% voting power. The user then enters a percentage of this value, let’s say 25%, giving a total upvote value of $0.0325 to be exchanged.

B) The second value would be the ratio of the exchange between the inviter and the invitee, expressed as a percentage. The default setting for this will be 50% / 50%, but can be adjusted accordingly. This can allow disproportionate exchanges, perhaps between minnows and whales.

Only values that can actually be exchanged will be allowed by the exchange web page. In other words, a Steemian with a much higher upvote value cannot initiate an exchange with a Steemian that has a lower upvote value, unless one of the two values above are adjusted.
After all values are entered, a unique “exchange ID” is generated, and the inviter must then send $0.001 SBD/STEEM or more, along with the unique exchange ID in the memo, to the exchange’s Steemit wallet. Once this is received, the exchange then forwards the same amount to the invitee along with a link back to the exchange web page platform.
When the invitee clicks the invite link they are taken to the exchange invitation acceptance page in which they must either agree to the initial offer, decline, or start a new offer as a barter on the initial offer.
If the invitee accepts the offer, they will be requested for their active posting WIF key, then the auto upvote exchange will begin as was agreed upon, and according to the rules below.
If the invitee starts a new offer, they will still be asked for their WIF key and the two values (A & B) used above for making the exchange. A new, unique exchange ID is then created which the invitee places in the memo when sending $0.001 SBD/STEEM or more to the exchange’s Steemit wallet. Once this is received the exchange will forward the same amount back to the original inviter with a new invite link to accept the new offer.
This process can go on indefinitely until an offer is accepted or declined.
If an offer is declined or expires all records are removed including posting WIF keys.
If the offer is accepted, the auto upvote exchange begins with the following rules:

I. Every upvote is a “tit” for a “tat”. In other words, an upvote is exchanged only when both parties have made an eligible post (see below).

II. If both parties have an eligible post at the time the exchange is accepted then those posts that are most recent will be upvoted. All remaining upvotes exchanged will occur as both parties make a new post.

III. Only the most recent post made since the last exchange is eligible for an upvote exchange. In other words, if the most recent post on an account has already received an upvote from a particular exchange between Steemians, then those particular Steemians will not exchange upvotes automatically until said account creates a new post.

More rules might be added for the sake of equality and anti-spam.

Conclusion

Bid bots have created an imbalance in the Steemit ecosystem by providing a way for spammers to upvote scraped/copied content. Bid bots also allow whales to upvote their own content to the extent that it appears in the Trending category without any outside influence. Although an exchange program is not an effective end to these practices, it does open the door to an alternative means of promotion, one that might eventually replace bid bots, if it does prove to be effective.

A Human-to-Human Auto-Upvote Exchange Program