#steem

Rejecting HF21 in its current state

Firstly, let me be clear that I'm a low ranked witness, and my opinion is largely irrelevant. Nevertheless, I'll do my duty as a witness and state my sincere opinion. If I reject a hardfork that everyone else accepts, it'll mean that I'll be kicked out of Steem and no longer be an active witness.

I support the general idea of the EIP, overall, but I do not think the current implementation proposals being chucked around are justified.

I have discussed the pros and cons of each proposal in the EIP, in general, here.

Addendum: Before commenting, please see my full thoughts in the comment linked above. This post is but a follow-up from there.

However, I'm yet to see any data, simulation, or evidence, to justify the dramatic changes, all rolled into one hardfork. The change to 50:50 is a 100% increase in curation rewards, a 33% pay cut to the content creators without whom there'll be no curation; giving abusive whales 10%-25% free downvotes is drastic etc. Remember, one abusive whale can effective now vindictively kill off hundreds good content creators at zero cost. There's a greater cost for minnows to unite and start a flag war with whales, whilst for whale it's pretty easy to set up a bot and just take a bunch of people they don't like down to $0 forever. Self-voters can simply set up a bot to revenge flag anyone who dares downvote - it'll always be minnows that'll be forced to retreat from a flag war. I'm also concerned about the convergent linear curve hampering the few genuine minnow content creators, but overall I'm in favour of it. Finally, SPS is going to be introduced without any funding committed by anyone. You can read my detailed thoughts in the comment linked above, and alternative brainstorming in my blog.

I was expecting better implementations of the EIP concepts, but these are simplistic and naiive. Have we learned nothing from the past?

To conclude, I remain in support of the general concepts of EIP, but disappointed by the facile implementations proposed thus far. I will, of course, change my opinion based on further tweaks to HF21, and I hope there'll be some.

PS: As some have correctly pointed out, there has been no official announcement about all of this being included in HF21. Nevertheless, my opinion on all of the above is contained here or linked elsewhere. I will, of course, reevaluate my opinion based on the final HF21 proposed by the developers.

PPS: In a follow-up post, I explain why moving to 50% curation rewards will not see any significant changes.

Comments · 21

@arcange(79)· 2646d
Congratulations @liberosist! Your post was mentioned in the Steem Hit Parade in the following category:
- Comments - Ranked 2 with 69 comments
@travelersmemoire(58)· 2647d
I’d like to see a consensus to try this new system and if the abuse becomes rampant have a rollback plan that can be implemented in under a week. I think we need to keep trying to fight bad curation and this just might be a step in the right direction. I completely get your concerns though.

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@guruvaj(67)· 2647d
I liked your post and the numerous discussions here about HF21, this deserve an upvote and a resteem from a plankton.
@valued-customer(75)· 2647d
I note we disagree on the EIP, but we have honest reasons for that. The downvote proposal is cancer. I'll let the votes and comments of others on this very comment make my argument for me. I'm confident they will prove beyond a rational doubt that free downvotes is a bad idea, and may be the straw that breaks the camel's back regarding Steem value, user retention, and censorship resistance.

Thanks!
@streetstyle(72)· 2647d
I agreee that for now 50/50 is too soon for the STEEM blockchain. If you look at @penguinpablo stats You will see that Steemian voters OUTNUMBER content creators.... so to give content creators a 33% "hair cut" makes no sense right now... maybe maybe a 60/40 but 50/50 I don't think makes sense if you will lose content creators and give UPVOTERS less to up vote.

And for FREE FLAGGING, Bernie already does a great Job of it without the FREE, JUST ask Kawaiicrush or lyndsayBowes or anyone else who has watched the BOT WARS between various Steemians......oh boy!

I say NOT TO THESE CHANGES but I am not a witness.... maybe WE need a Witness POLL to see where they Stand and WE STEEMIANS can then up vote them in or out as witness if they support this madness about to be unleashed!!
@therealwolf(77)· 2647d
I can understand that you've got concerns about the effectiveness of the EiP, but doing nothing is not an option and seeing the results of EiP is not possible in theory. At least not completely.

Of course, you can chip in your opinion as a backup-witness, but I'm wondering why your opinion should be valued while you've sold pretty much 99% of what you've earned here on Steem. Isn't this clearly a sign that the current system isn't incentivizing people enough keep their rewards aka Steempower, instead of selling it?

In comparison, many proponents of the EiP (e.g. @kevinwong, @trafalgar and myself) still have the majority of their stake on Steem. Which is why we want to make sure Steem becomes a success, as we've got a pretty big incentive.

Now, I'm obviously not arguing that risks are involved with these proposed changes and that discussions are important, but just talking will result in no progress => and doing nothing will be the death of Steem.
@geekgirl(80)· 2647d
While nobody really knows the outcome of these changes, I remain optimistic that these changes may move things towards positive results.

Changing rewards split to 50/50 is the only thing that makes sense to me. The other two components of the proposal I don't care much about, however, if the whole bundle is what it takes to get 50/50 I am for it.

Honestly, I am surprised that you are opposing 50/50 rewards split. I might be completely wrong, but here is my attempt to convince you that 50/50 split will have positive benefits for participants:
1. Organic voting vs vote selling. Over the years more and more SP moved to passive income that is generated via SP delegation and vote selling. Reasons are obvious, it is a choice of 25% in curation rewards or 4 times more than that. At the current state, SP will keep moving to delegating and selling rather than upvoting authors for free. 50% curation rewards will give organic voters a fair chance to compete. Moreover, it will bring some of the SP back to organic voting.
2. Rewarding those who have been rewarding/supporting authors. While some chose to delegate and sell SP, some remained true to organic upvoting and continued supporting authors. They didn't have to. They could have gone a full return passive income route. But they didn't, because they have a long term vision. So these stakeholders, I think, deserve better rewards on their curation. I will be glad to have less rewards on my posts if that means those who have been upvoting my content get more. More SP these folks have better for authors.
3. Will encourage authors to engage with their audience. Authors are also upvoters. They don't have to solely rely on the author rewards. They can meaningfully reward those who engage with their content, and receive 50% curation rewards. Many authors do anyway. While they may be losing on authors percentage, they will be gaining in curation rewards. This also will encourage authors to power up more SP.
4. Will make Steem a more attractive investment. At its current state those who buy Steem, do so for speculative reasons, passive income via delegation or vote selling. Rarely you would see people buying Steem and powering up because they want to reward authors. 50% curation rewards will make Steem more attractive to buy and power up. If more people are interested to buy Steem, prices will go up. Authors will see increasing value in their rewards, stakeholders will see the value of their stakes go up.
5. Majority of social media users are content consumers, not content creators. The way Steem works is, it heavily rewards authors and not content consumers. This in return turns content consumers into creating content to take some share of rewards. 50% curation rewards will let content consumers just focus on what they do best, consume content. This will encourage content consumers to buy more Steem and be rewarded for consuming content. I know quality authors put in a lot of time and effort to create content. But those who buy Steem, also put in a lot of time and effort to earn their money elsewhere and then invest in Steem/SP. Steem needs more people interested in putting their hard earned money into Steem.
In conclusion, I think 50/50 split will encourage more organic voting, divert SP from vote selling back to upvoting for free, improve content discovery, increase interest in buying Steem, increase interest for authors to power up instead of selling earnings, and give Steem a better chance to succeed.
@cloudspyder(60)· 2648d
This proposal have been in history of tax reform. Remember, how tax is created. Government say before, that the tax is made to punish the only the rich or whales.

A reason why this minnow or the poor and the middle class agree for tax reform and the law is made.

Now look what happened, the minnow or the poor and middle class pays more tax and the rich don't.

HF21 is somehow in my own understanding is exactly alike how tax is made. Correct me if I am wrong.
@shoemanchu(75)· 2648d
Sounds like witnesses have to much power and all users should be able to vote on any changes. Minnow to a whale..... Also we shouldn't have a downvote button. Just a flag but if you flag someone it should only be because of copyright issues. If your flag on someone isn't warranted then you lose your MANA for a month and cant transact nothing......
@kevinwong(77)· 2648d
I wish we could run some simulation though. But it’s just not like running a purely engineering simulation to see if a tower or bridge will collapse. With the economy, there needs to be stakes at hand and enough people taking it seriously, which a live environment can only likely do. It doesn't mean we can't attempt to make some intelligent guesses as to what should be done though.

We can apply the measures one by one, but will it achieve the intended effect that was hypothesized in the first place? I don’t necessarily see it as multiple changes by the way, as they’re in effect, just one change. For example, we can simulate the 25% downvote measure and see how things turn out (still not sure how to simulate properly). If we roll out just that.. there are other ways to circumvent the goal of the EIP, hence the other measures.

Personally I'd prefer DVs on the lower side if its delegatable. I think 25% is a yardstick proposed for something sufficient enough to turn the status quo around, accepting that it'll definitely create a lot of toxicity, while being low enough that it can't be used to push rewards in any meaningful way. If we go too low on this then it might be insufficient to turn to this place around to a new equilibrium while introducing similar levels of abuse / toxicity as 25% DV would have, rendering it a bad move.

I've tried to explore the topic more in-depth here: https://steemit.com/steem/@kevinwong/what-will-likely-happen-when-steem-s-economic-improvement-proposal-eip-is-put-into-motion
@eonwarped(70)· 2648d
The issue of simulations has been brought up but there's really no good way to actually do so. They will run the numbers based on the current distribution but this tells us nothing about how the equilibrium shifts. Simulation in SMT doesn't give the same effect either. Maybe when AI is good enough we can have them mimic us :P

What have been discussed is exactly what you have noted, relative incentives. Many people have varying opinions on what is too much or too little but this particular configuration already appears to have growing support.
@glenalbrethsen(71)· 2648d
Hey, @liberosist.

Based on atleast one comment, I guess I'm not the only one wondering who HF 21 became more than just the blocktrades worker proposal. I did take a look at github, and while I really have no idea what I'm looking at, I did find some mention of a convergent linear curve being worked on. So, there's that.
@donkeypong(76)· 2648d
I agree it's not the right approach. Overall, these changes probably make Steem slightly better, so I do not oppose them. But I also think they are not well considered and that most of them probably will not solve any problems. Implementing a basket of new things without simulating them is purely reckless.

EDIT: After further consideration, I've turned against this set of proposals also. They are a bad idea.
@bluerobo(70)· 2648d
Agree. These changes will not improve Steem.

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@rishi556(72)· 2648d
But EIP isn't HF21(unless I'm mistaken), thats DAO(the steem proposal worker thing by @blocktrades).
@vikisecrets(80)· 2648d
While reading your post, I got an idea how to fight bid bot abuse: add a small "fee" for delegations, devalue delegations a bit, while creating an incentive for manual curation: https://steemit.com/steemit/@vikisecrets/hf21-eip-solution-proposal-for-bid-bots-and-delegation-abuse-add-a-small-fee-for-delegations
@lordbutterfly(80)· 2648d

Remember, one abusive whale can effective now vindictively kill off hundreds good content creators at zero cost.

Again, share the same thoughts.

And my witness vote since i forgot it last time.
@lauch3d(66)· 2648d
This is why dPOS Systems need effective democratization of the social layer.

Decentralization is binary, they have technically no central authority, but they are highly clustered to their permission set of BPs. They only can play their advantage, when you distribute the power on the social layer. If not, they are nothing but a corporate-consortium and corporate consortia are BS and not Crypto. But once a System like this is running, you can't change a damn thing, because you have to convince those in power to give up their power. This is why Dan left Steem. Even if you are one of the 21 super representatives, you have to convince the majority.

First, build, then test, then run. Since Steemit was an experiment and one can simply move on it does not matter...but to us, if we want a future, it should matter.
@southernwolf(54)· 2648d
Thank you for standing up for what is right for the Steem network! <3
@buggedout(77)· 2648d
Thanks for speaking up. I share your concerns, particularly around the downvote pool. The potential for bad behavior stemming from there is substantial.
@ddrfr33k(71)· 2648d
Low ranked witness or not, your opinion is just as valid as @aggroed or @timcliff. We're all in this because we want to see Steem as a whole succeed.

What I would encourage you to do in the case of HF21 would be to propose changes that you think would be a better use of the HF. You probably did that in the post you linked; if you did, pardon my effrontery for not reading it. But you might be able to rally others to your ideals of you provide an alternative solution. Even if it's an idea you think is terrible, someone else might find value in it. They could help you refine it into something better. And I, for one, would gladly support a witness who comes up with solutions or at least tries to find them. Even if they fail to find a solution, a little effort in the right direction is better than none at all.

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