Anonymous Post / Comment Voting & Instant Scalability Solution

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(Edited)

pexels-photo-132340.jpeg

Not rocket science and pretty much off the cuff:-

  1. Most successful social media platforms don’t show the usernames of upvoters. Facebook is the exception here as far as I know, so it’s likely okay to have transparent upvoting. Anonymous is alright as well, considering that’s generally how it works everywhere else.

  2. All successful social media platforms don’t show the usernames of downvoters. I can’t find any exception, so it’s likely sound to have anonymous downvoting.

  3. With anonymous downvoting at least, we may get a better representation of our subjective evaluation which is a key ingredient in a functional content discovery and rewards platform. And there’s less friction?

How to achieve anonymous voting?

If we stick to shoving and computing every post and vote into the blockchain until the end of time, I’m sure there are legit ways to make votes anonymous. But it may be too expensive for the chain.

Or maybe an easier way to achieve this with the bonus of great upside and little downside:-

  • Take Steem’s posting / voting / reward mechanisms off the blockchain. Funnel the current reward pool into agreed upon central layer(s) via SPS. This central layer acts like Facebook, Reddit, Youtube, etc dealing with posting / voting / reward calculations off-chain.

  • This way, we can already have the usual massive scalability, manageability, and rapid iteration-ability of successful social media platforms without too much of the unnecessary burden, bloat, and cost of the blockchain. No more account creation problems and just about anyone can immediately engage with the platform. Users can link up their blockchain account with the off-chain account anytime to have their SP accounted for.

  • The central layer doesn’t have to show the names of upvoters and downvoters. And votes are not logged and not computed on the chain. Anonymous, except to the central entity as usual. Problem solved. Virtually instant voting and posting too without that couple of seconds delay.

Shouldn’t we avoid too much reliance on trusted third parties for a blockchain project?

I’m only talking about the removal or reduction / minimization of the posting key stuff here: posting and / or voting related to the author / curator reward pool side of things. Not the active key stuff: DPOS witness voting, SPS, and the rest of the basic blockchain functionalities that are pretty much the same as Bitcoin will remain intact.

Sure, we lose the censorship resistant part of posting and voting by having it off-chain, but the transactions / memos on the blockchain will remain to be uncensorable, of course.

Perhaps the worst thing that could happen with the reward pool being funneled to a one-party central layer solution is the mishandling of funds (voting power and order scorekeeping, reward calculation and distribution, etc). But that’s just about 6% (or less in the future) inflation risk for so much upside. It's more likely the central layer will do their job properly. Plus, the community can re-vote where the reward pool goes to if the central layer is compromised.

Steem would still remain to have utility on curation rewards and Bitcoin-like blockchain functionalities on the account level, along with transactional bandwidth. And perhaps the SMT stuff. Still a blockchain with a decentralized currency. With this solution, we just pretty much decouple the app side of things away from the chain and have minimal interaction with it other than for validating SP amount and to distribute rewards, etc.

If anon voting sucks, then what about the other point on having the posting / voting stuff off-chain with the gain of scalability regardless?

Good idea? Bad idea? Everything must be on the chain? Your thoughts?

Image from Pexels.


Disclaimer: Not to be taken as financial advice.
Vote @kevinwong as witness today.



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79 comments
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Then again, most successful social media platforms don't pay you to post/comment/upvote but they steal from you. So we need to take that in consideration.

I don't want to imagine what can happen if we get anonymous downvotes. It will only give power to egoistic people who just want to downvote out of revenge and make them bigger bullies.

I am not tech guy but I understand Ego, so it feels to me that anonymous downvoting would be really bad. Dunno tho', will be interesting to see comment section of this post.

Peace yo!

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But revenge on who when its all anonymous?

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(Edited)

Let's say I commented on this post:

This is totally wrong, I don't like your thinking and your attitude will only make Steem price go to 0.

If you have anonymous downvote and you are butthurt, you would downvote me into oblivion. Then I would not know who did it, but I would probably think that's you, even tho' this is not the only post I commented on.
Then you can say you didn't downvote me which will make me question other authors of the post I commented on...

You know how it goes...

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People you disagree with

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You already can downvote anonymously by setting up a separate account for that.

Posted using Partiko iOS

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That's a good point but not everyone will do that - less impact. Still, the point is good imo.

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I agree with this. This is the case I tried to make for private voting from the start. Pseudoanonymity can reduce the risk of coercion and this can help make votes more honest but on Steem there are problems with this. Whales can create many puppet accounts to distort the market.

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Whales can create many puppet accounts to distort the market.

But how without 1 account, 1 vote? Or you meant the posting side of things?

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If you can achieve 1 account 1 vote using KYC or other means then you solve all these problems. I think maybe EOSVoice can solve it with that approach where you verify your pseudonyms.

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(Edited)

Sure, we lose the censorship resistant part of posting and voting by having it off-chain.

This is a big red flag for me. As a content creator (not highly technical) immutable control over my content is the main USP/value proposition of steem. Take that away and there is literally no reason for me to stay here.

It's a bad idea to fork out the thing that is the value proposition for the majority of the users. I also think that it maybe opens up the possibility of administrative entities pushing certain content out to favour other types. At the end of the day it seems what you're suggesting would give someone somewhere the 'keys to the kingdom' in regards to access to everyone's content. Trustless is a big buzz word in blockchain... I think for good reason!

I think there is a big discrepancy between what a lot of the devs here would like to see and what those who aren't involved in any of that (the consumers) want.

I get that these are all only ideas you're putting across in this post, but these are my thoughts on these particular issues.

To clarify, I think everything must remain on the chain.

Lol, if I've got anything massively wrong in my analysis let me know, like I said I'm not strong on the technical side of steem 👍

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(Edited)

Sure, I think immutable "posts" would still be possible with elaborate memos, or we don't exactly remove the whole part of the posting key, but minimize its functions and still accommodate immutable posts, just not in the sense of what we currently have atm that's coupled with the voting stuff. Plus there's no privacy controls at all on Steem, so I'm not sure what control you have over your content. One of the only benefit I can think of for large posts on the chain is having a timestamp for your text-based content for dispute resolutions. That can of course remain. My guess is most users don't actually care about shoving texts on the blockchain. The main aspects of the chain are still trustless.

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(Edited)

Sure, I think immutable "posts" would still be possible with elaborate memos.

Do we want to make it all more complicated for the average person? Lol, it took me 6 months on steem to learn how to do everything I needed in regards to producing and promoting my posts. I was an average person in regards to how little I knew, I'd say I've had to learn all kinds of things... but I'm stubborn. Making it so people have to use the memo section to post immutable content seems counterintuitive to decreasing the learning curve.

I'm not sure what control you have over your content. One of the only benefit I can think of for large posts on the chain is having a timestamp.

That's exactly it... a timestamp is a big part of it. I think I'm one of the few people on here who actually puts a copyright sign on some of my writing, and there is a reason for that! It's completely possible for me to retain creative rights to my work here in the instance that I become successful as a novelist, which is my goal in life.

I guess what I'm trying to point out is that for me, and I'd guess some other content creators, it's important to retain full (key) control over my content. So that I can edit it, pull it down, and still keep a full record on the blockchain. This has big implications for creative ownership and copyright claims. None of this might matter much at the moment, but if this platform goes in the direction of attracting serious mainstream creatives then it will. And it will be important for all that information to be on the blockchain so that everything can be accountable to the owner of the the keys. Importantly, this timestampped record would be invaluable in copyright infringement cases.

That can of course remain.

I don't see how if someone else had access to my posts as it's no longer on chain but administered in some centralised way. Any type of centralised data base has the potential to be hacked!

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Making it so people have to use the memo section to post immutable content seems counterintuitive to decreasing the learning curve.

This can be made easy through the front-end abstraction of course. Just like when you decide to post, you can choose either an immutable post on the blockchain or not, if that's the case.

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Ha ha, fair enough. That clarifies things and answers to all my concerns in regards to timestamps for proving digital ownership in cases of copyright infringement.

Cheers for spelling it out for me kev 👍

Posted using Partiko Android

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Indeed that can be a very powerful use case!

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To listen to the audio version of this article click on the play image.

Brought to you by @tts. If you find it useful please consider upvoting this reply.

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(Edited)

I'm all for anonymous voting; At least for the downvotes. But maybe also for the upvotes; But then for the public only, the one getting the vote shall be able to see who upvoted. This would likely open the doors to abusive behaviours. I would think, when bringing the service offchain, in an centralised entity, it should not be that difficult to create a governance body (semi-centralised, or de-centralised) that tracks whatever happens and fight abusive behaviours. Owww and such centralised service owner shall be almost 100% transparent to what it does ( I say almost, since the anonymous downvotes should still stay anonymous, forever).

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But then for the public only, the one getting the vote shall be able to see who upvoted. This would likely open the doors to abusive behaviours.

How does showing upvotes publically open the doors to abusive behaviors btw?

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(Edited)

I meant the none-public downvotes will lead to abusive behaviours, maybe different abusive behaviours as we see now happening. Public visible upvotes is not driving abusive behaviour, not as far as I can rationalise this.

Abusive fighting: What if we would get some governance bodies in place with a more-or-less decentralised structure, with the ability to hide or downvote a post to zero without the need to collect the enormous amount of SP? ie some kinda of super user accounts with high SP? The way these bodies are created needs careful design to make sure these bodies in itself will not become abusive.

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I've always treated this place like the public internet. In public, there's to be no expectation of privacy.

Here we have a name rather than a body. Seeing my name here and these words is much like walking past a crowd of people and overhearing a conversation. One can chime in if they want or they can keep going.

In public, as you walk along, maybe you'll drop a few coins in busker's guitar case. People see that. They don't know who you are, but they see you and your actions. There's nothing to hide and no reason to hide it. People might see me pay an establishment for a few drinks or a meal. People might see me rob a bank. If I was invisible, I could rob all the banks, all the shops, all the people. Who would know?

The public is the biggest social network in the world. I'd consider modeling this platform around that, which for the most part, it is.

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(Edited)

You are one of the last voices of reason on this platform.

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There's still plenty of reasonable people here though, but I do realize the place can be frustrating at times.

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On steem?

Self proclaimed community watchdogs are actually hacking and stalking people.

This group https://steemit.com/@steemspeak is ran by https://steemit.com/@fyrstikken, They are hacking people that enter this discord server https://discordapp.com/invite/sqxV63P . Once you are hacked they profile you long enough to know all of your activities. They introduce workplace gangstalking visits and bring it to your attention cleverly and discretly so only you get it. They are very covert and tricky with everthing they say and do in this server. Some claim to have worked for or are working with the FBI and the NSA. Mixed with decomisioned traders and coding criminals, Its a scary mix of creepy people and thier intent is to drive you crazy and deplete everything you have ever aquired in life, even your freedom.

My hacking started with them introducing ransomeware that has options, dump my coin or delete my system drive. They acnowledged this to me in the server as it happened.

This hacking and stalking is done so they can manipulate the target to pump and dump for them. Threating and Making victims wear head phones, so nobody in your household can hear thier dramitization towards you. In 2017 this server was sidemarked as a drama show for entertainment purposes only as en excuse to say whatever they want all the way down to killing a politician. They have a server side command called "hey asshole" making a promt come up instructing everyone to wear headphones. They want everyone wearing headphones so nobody in your vicinity can hear them mess with you. Fystikken says its because of "mic feedback" but once your a target you get exactly why they make eveyone wear headphones.

With headphones on they subliminally direct victims with very low suggestive whispers mixed into their radio shows music. Combine this with them being able to manipulate their own individual outputs sound volume, which they control on the server side, they can pick what individual people hear and what at any given time. They decide who you hear on the server and change the volume controls for them. They can make some really low or off for those trying to investigate. They control who hears what and know who is who.

This team will find absolutely everything they can about you prior to using thier sugjestive and threatning program. They Introduce pictures that mean something only to the target, inducing paranoia while they watch and listen thru all of your circumvented devices. They are very aware of what makes you tick. They know your work schedule and use it for work stalking along side of this. I received multiple threating letters to my work and home addressed to my screen name from this group.

Fyrstikken tells people to sell their houses to buy crypto then dumps it on them. He has done many pump and dump scams. Quatloo being one of the first I witnessed and was done multiple times thru 2016 and 2017 them. It should be investigated for fraud. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=655793.0

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Imagine telling the busker his music sucks and he needs you to take back some of those coins.
I'd watch that video.
It would be a good analogy if flaggers got to keep the coins.

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(Edited)

That doesn't happen to buskers though. That happens to street hustling con artists who are not homeless, yet dress the part, make a sign, appear to be desperate, place many coins in a cup to make it appear as if people have been giving them change, then holding that cup out asking for more, as they sit there making it look like they're doing nothing.

The busker is actually working, providing entertainment, asking for nothing. Nobody 'downvotes' that here or in life.

If someone busts a fraud, that's life if they lose out.

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Nobody likes a liar.
If your word is no good, you are no good, imo.

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And that's life. I kind of like to know who it was that ran by and punched me in the face as well.

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The busker is actually working, providing entertainment, asking for nothing. Nobody 'downvotes' that here...

I might have to eat those words now, unfortunately. The artist just got blasted, and for no apparent reason...

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Lol, and by a guy that creates sock puppets with known names and reposts their content making us think those folks are really here.

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I was able to explain myself and found out he can be reasonable. Problem solved. The absolute last thing I want to see is the artists walking on eggshells here. I won't have to eat the words now. Civilized discourse for the win.

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I'm getting told we are bleeding to death, too much is going to the exchanges.
The folks doing it have no intention of stopping.
Any ideas?

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Plenty of ideas that generate unstoppable demand. Embrace the entertainment business model, market to consumers, create an internal advertising market. Many ideas and far too much unrealized potential.

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(Edited)

It would be a good analogy if people gave the coins out of their own pocket (indeed, I'm a fan of tipping functionality). That's not the case with upvotes/downvotes, at least not as ever implemented on Steem.

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If I can selfvote the coins to me, but I choose to vote them to somebody else, haven't I taken money out of my own pocket?
Isn't that the line of reasoning used by the 'it's my stake' crowd?

I still favor the n2 and the self discipline required for it to work.
As long as the inflation gets voted to sellers the price drops, eh?

Tipping doesn't work among the scavengers of scarcity, apparently.
Only people that have worked for tips really give them.

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(Edited)

If I can selfvote the coins to me,

You can't, though, because others can downvote. Even the amount isn't set (exactly) only by your vote but by others votes on the rest of the pool. With n^2 the latter is even more true in practice (because highly concentrated votes elsewhere can take a LOT from the pool and significant reduce your self-vote payout).

The pool is a shared resource.

Tipping doesn't work among the scavengers of scarcity, apparently.
Only people that have worked for tips really give them.

I see buskers getting tips all the time. I've seen tips work in social media crypto communities when markets aren't down 70-90% and people actually feel like they have something to give away. Not so much recently, but maybe that is better than spewing out lots of coins to inflation regardless of market conditions?

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Depends on where the coins are going.
If the inflation is going to sellers the price is gonna drop.
If it goes into sp, steem is the petrodollar, a check that gets cashed later, if ever.

How we kick the next pump off idk, but 350m coins is a drop in a quadrillion dollar borderless monetary bucket.
It will be like expecting 15m sbd to serve one to one for all the usd in circulation.

I only see ending the reward pool as a very long play on steem, but I think the gambit gets enough blowback to kill the coin far into the foreseeable future.
Lots of very vocal people will be upset.
We are just now getting over being mad about the kneecappening.

Unless we start making some regular people happy they came here we are doomed, imo.
Bch is close enough to being free that we can't compete on just terms of fees, and because they are easier to use and more widely accepted, we likely lose.
We need to be attractive to our niche.

You can't, though, because others can downvote.

It seemed to work just fine for a number of leading lights.

I know that keeping lists to track every expenditure, publicising the lists, and organizing flags for disapproved disbursements may be a drag, but if we are to control the abusive dumping it will first need a handle.
I'd read a list of what everybody's to/from exchanges totals were, and I'd bet I see lots of the golden children with large negative balances.
Millions of usd to folks that left us zero value.

Ultimately, to be successful the largest holders are gonna have to do that, and only that.
The value in sp comes from being part of the community actively, for the masses, but the 1%, and maybe 10%, will need to keep their greedy grubbies off the pool.

Unless the crowd, or the reward pool, becomes more friendly towards the newbs we are unlikely to retain new users.

We had a chance to avalanche down the hill, but stinc took that away by kneecapping us with linear rewards and going on a two year walkabout.
I wish that hadn't happened, but here we are.
Our benefit of the doubt wasted.
Now we actually have to make the numbers work.
That begins with the top 100 accounts taking out less and holding more, imo.
Barring the top 70 accounts voting, we could bring back the n2, or at least adjust the 20steem curve to 5.

I see your name in penguin pablo's lists, you having doubts about our ability to overcome our internal moles?

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(Edited)

I wasn't proposing anything, I was just making an observation that I see tipping working in terms of real experience, and I see inflationary rewards failing. To me it resembles magical thinking to prefer the latter to the former at this point.

You can micro-analyze what this or that stakeholder did or should have done but the actual experience and observation of real behavior is the closest to ground truth to me, not previous theory or desires.

I see your name in penguin pablo's lists, you having doubts about our ability to overcome our internal moles?

I don't in fact have much confidence that doing the same thing will result in different outcomes, but in terms of STEEM stake I'm not really doing anything right now. I bought some SBD and converted it to STEEM, sent out about the same amount of STEEM stake to sell. The net STEEM should be about zero. His lists don't seem to show the former.

Longer term I've been a significant seller, yes, though mostly at higher prices. At this point there is so little value left I might as well hang on to it in case a miracle happens.

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You can micro-analyze what this or that stakeholder did or should have done but the actual experience and observation of real behavior is the closest to ground truth to me, not previous theory or desires.

You see the numbers better, are the vast majority of regular people coming here selling, or just the ones favored with enough rewards to matter?

I'd think that it would fall on distribution lines, more rewards, more selling.
Less rewards, less selling (except in Venezuela).
If that is the case then shouldn't we focus our votes on the smaller accounts?
Those earning significant rewards can only sell once, it's on the crowd to learn not to cut their own throat, imo.

If we are changing paradigms, why would those that thrived under the old rules also thrive here?

You may be right, crapitalism needs its pound of flesh.
They got rules that need following.
Only the right people are allowed to profit big.
3HaJVw3AYyXBBQkN3tCkhE2EjPPNPEEY7rZsT4k8E4aPBLjjU4T3hN4b4jQMDrkJW4bFBpk6VQNnCRnZqK2byi3ouxMgBvEX2LdjoTU.png

I guess tipping could work, it paid well enough delivering pizzas in the working class areas.
The exclusive parts of town didn't tip for s**t.

The net STEEM should be about zero. His lists don't seem to show the former.

This what I figured, not pull the plug time, just yet.

At this point there is so little value left I might as well hang on to it in case a miracle happens.

It won't be a miracle, it will be the dogged determination of those willing to put in the effort, if at all.
This place will work just fine, but the folks that brought it to here want it to work on automatic and we aren't there, yet.
It may be time for them to put down the ball and let those willing to pick it up move it down the field.

Will smteees! happen?

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(Edited)

I can't tell who is selling but I can tell: a) while there did seem to be a modest improvement in the power-up/power-down balance (suggesting less selling on net) after EIP/HF21, it didn't grow beyond modest and seems to have been a small one step improvement at best (if sustained, which isn't even clear). b) There is still a shit load of tokens going out to exchanges every day and we dropped another 50% in price despite Steemit Inc taking a temporary break from selling.

Those earning significant rewards can only sell once

If only that were true. They can crank out more cookie-cutter content and get more new coins to sell over and over again every single day.

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How do we stop that?
If we can't control the bleeding we are doomed.

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Oh one more thing.

Patreon.

A billion dollar startup that doesn't even manage the content for the most part. Just collects and disburses tips to creators on other sites. Think about that.

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Yeah, but building an audience there is even harder than here, imo.

We already have that functionality, now if we just had their connections to crapital they could play pets.com to our amazon.

How do we get our avalanche going again?

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That's life as an artist. It is damn hard to make money, but some capable and creative ones do. Here it is just made way too easy and there ain't no free lunch.

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Way too easy for whom?
@edgargonzalez?
@jacobtothe?

Plenty of people not making much.
The problem is the ganging up.
If everybody would spread their votes to posts with less earnings this wouldn't be a problem.
Instead we get 100% autovotes on the same accounts day after day.

We are building a culture here, the crowd needs better deportment skills, if we are to mold this into something sustainable instead of a money grab.

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(Edited)

Tipping doesn't create demand for the token. Tipping on the side would be beneficial but on its own, here, that adds up to say 1 million dollars in the door from the consumer base, then that same 1 million leaves. There's no incentive to hold the token if its purpose is to be purchased, exchange hands, then sold.

With some simple math here I've explained how it's possible to bring 1 million in the door, while only a quarter million can potentially leave with a tiny consumer base and minimum investment.

From a consumer's perspective, donating means throwing money away, when compared to a business model like we have here. One of the main issues is the fact this platform and the concept hasn't been marketed to the consumers. Here, a consumer can spend what they already spend supporting entertainment and online content in a year, earn a bit to treat themselves, or have their money back at any time, if they decide that's what they want to do. It's a better deal.

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(Edited)

Currently about $4 million leaves through inflation (at higher prices this year or last, the number was much higher, at one point as much as $300 million), into a market where there aren't and never were going to be investors looking to put $4-300 million in new money to work in second- or third-tier blockchain project with inherently questionable economics and plenty of reputational warts apart from its price performance. The result has been destroying 99% of the value to the point that not only has the reputation of the token as economically viable been utterly obliterated, but leaving the top 100 is a very real possibility, and making it even less likely to ever recover merely due to adding the negative effects of obscurity on top of demonstrated failure.

If one doesn't like the -99% from the peak number, one could instead look at the performance since 2016, when Steem had very roughly the exact same market value that it has today, yet Bitcoin was worth $10 billion and the entire cryptocurrency market maybe $15 billion (compared to $150 and $220 billion today). Either way it is hardly economics that have "worked", in any sense.

High inflation models that are invariant to demand just don't make sense given the inevitable feast and famine cycles of cryptocurrency markets. The crushing effects during famine cycles are just too great and likely lead to failure, which could have been avoided by just not forcing out that much supply. If Steem's high-inflation model was going to work as designed, it would had to have been an outlier from the start (when it wasn't yet a second- or third-tier project but had a chance to define itself ex nihilo) where the product was so compelling it led to massive positive feedback and unstoppable growth which forced the hand of investors into ignoring the inevitable self-destruction during a bear market (which, then, could have perhaps been self-fulfilling in avoiding the otherwise inevitable). That didn't happen for a variety of reasons, some of which (mostly clear execution gaffes) are easy to identify, but ultimately that doesn't matter in the here and now.

Furthermore, apart from the magnitude of the inflation being inherently unpalatable to investors absent some reason to view it as an outlier, the economics of wanting people to invest in a token that dilutes to pay for content they not only mostly don't want and mostly has no value to anyone (because it is produced by exploitative parasites almost entirely if not entirely for the purpose of extracting value), but even if they did want it, they could still access without investing, or, even without a formal model, if wanting direct influence, by tipping the creator.

Sorry I'm still not buying it.

(BTW, sorry didn't read your linked post. Too long and the formatting was painful to look at. But after three years of studying the economics of not only this blockchain but economic principles driving at least dozens of blockchain projects, I'm pretty comfortable I have at least a good bit of a handle on this. )

If people really want Steem to become something sustainable that further has a realistic chance to thrive they better start listening to people like @yabapmatt, @liberosist and others (including to a lesser extent myself) who have been pointing out the absurd economic contradictions long after Steem has proven itself insufficiently successful to be considered a rule maker. Absent that, well, it is certainly possible to continue to mine out more depreciating tokens via 'content' and there is always the possibility that any or all cryptos will experience absurd pumps (though with every delisting, and every further drop down in the rankings, any individual token, including this one, becomes less likely to participate). Other than that, the extent of denial at work can only make me shake my head, appreciate the lesson in practical human psychology, and focus on moving on from enormous financial losses which likely won't be recovered.

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Hundreds of millions of people already spend billions on entertainment, annually, is all I'm trying to say. Consumers. They buy units, purchase subscriptions, they donate, they tip. They get nothing in return. A consumer content with making a small purchase, knowing full well they could eventually treat themselves with the money they spent, rather than throwing it away forever, only to spend more on another treat. A consumer not trying to get crypto rich. Just your average consumer. Their money is what I'm looking at. I know there's far too much riffraff here...

You're breaking my heart, man!
LoL...

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(Edited)

Yup, consumers spend billions. But Steem and its stakeholders currently have no economic model to capture any of that value. All we're doing trying to pay for content with massive inflation is destroying some economic models that exist here and might actually work, for example, businesses with a compelling Steem-hosted product needing to buy Steem in order to power RCs, and investors buying it because Steem might someday become very large, without punishing said optimistic (and unfortunately rare) investors every day with 100k new tokens being pushed out daily (plus those being sold by Steemit Inc, around 26k more), with hardly any new buyers.

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One big mistake is how some want to see big names with large followings show up, but fail to explain the business model here. A large following is nothing if they don't consume here, plus buy in. 10000 followers is nearly nothing in this business. Yet 10000 of a massive following will donate or tip. $100 from each one of them pulls roughly 7.7 million Steem off the market today, and allows each consumer to shell out maybe $33 per year at a penny per day, more or less. Consumers like perks and benefits, yet those perks and benefits are never explained once a big name shows up. Big names come, the community is starstruck and votes them up to the moon.. then they leave, mainly due to the lack of consumers. I'd love to see a big name bring in 10000 penny votes. These numbers are so damn small and in my mind, it's not out of reach. It's simply a new way to tip over time rather than one lump sum, acts much like a subscription, but not many are familiar enough with the business model and can't explain it.

I'm not saying this is the only way to create demand and the only thing the token should be used for. Simply looking at one pile of money and saying we could use that here.

It's far easier to market this concept to consumers, yet most of the marketing is directed towards producers, and yes, that's unsustainable. I get it.

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I certainly first came in seeing the value of a totally transparent social network, for reasons that it can be very valuable for anyone who wants to be valued based on their honesty and integrity, ie, anyone can check whatever you've communicated on the chain, even the ones edited out. However I kinda find there's little network "memory" to make that work. For the most part, one can still easily get away I think, especially considering the effect of upvotes. There's also another side of users wishing to have at least some control over their privacy (think about some crazy stalker ex).

But okay, let's remain with the current setup (decentralized or not) and say if we just anonymize downvotes (maybe kinda like letting ppl wear masks), would that alone break this "public space" thing?

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Maybe we also need a home here, where we can go, to enjoy our privacy, and invite guests or kick them out if they're acting drunk and putting ham in the fish tank again.

Do we need either, or? One thing or the other? Wouldn't there be more potential in having the best of both worlds?

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I'm thinking about this anonymous downvotes stuff and my mind keeps travelling to something like being blindsided by some anti-social menace of a drive-by shooter then waking up in the hospital with most of my blood missing, not knowing what happened. This society would be full of cold cases. It could end up being like a plague, posts dropping left and right, and nobody knows the cause or the cure.

Maybe the rights of a voter could be revoked by a set of guidelines enforced by a panel of judges if the behavior of that individual is deemed unfit for this society? We're free to create our own society here. Just because billionaires who like to start wars and sell weapons to both sides exist on the planet, that doesn't necessarily mean we need to cater to that element of society here?

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The public internet doesn't pay you new coins out of thin air to do anything. It isn't the same problem space.

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(Edited)

I think everything should be encrypted and users should set public/private parameters, authorize/revoke UIs to decrypt for every transaction/operation from their account.

However, since reward pool is a public resource any action affecting distribution of the rewards would have to remain public.

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Vote selling is as old as humanity, see it in the ancient Rome:
https://steemit.com/steem/@deathcross/how-the-ancient-vote-selling-worked
But anonymous voting makes it almost impossible. Nothing new.

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Yes, for sure, but what do you mean by your last sentence? What becomes almost impossible?

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(Edited)

Almost impossible sell votes with anonymous voting. You can't sell something invisible, uncertain. If vote buyers can't know who votes them, they won't pay for it.

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Exactly! It can’t scale if thats the case.

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I see reasons for and against anonymous voting. Facebook, Reddit, 4chan, Twitter, and others have all found their niche. It really depends on what we value more in our social media

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This post has been included in the latest edition of The Steem News - a compilation of the key news stories on the Steem blockchain.

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There are some interesting ideas here but I don't really see the need to throw them all together. Removing content and removing voting from the blockchain could each be done without the other.

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Yes, that'll then be a matter of reducing the posting key function, I'll edit the post.

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(Edited)

anonymous voting, off chain? what ever works :)

With down votes, i'm starting to wish i could reallocate rewards from voters 50% payout only, in a lot of instances.

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wish i could reallocate 100% of rewards from voters payout only in a lot of instances.

What do you mean here? Able to unvote and use the vote elsewhere without effectively using up voting power?

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(Edited)

naw, meant if a post payout is $10, $5 for author $5 for curators, downvote $2.00 lowering curators amount to share to $3.00. See a lot of posts lately with high rewards based on silly auto voting

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Interesting idea! I think it'll be good in changing autovoting behaviors once in awhile, although it can go both ways. Definitely something worth considering once the price goes higher if ever

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Facebook is the exception here as far as I know

Twitter also shows the names of likers and retweeters.

These are both upvote-only systems though, not necessarily comparable with upvote+downvote systems.

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I came here for financial advices and am disappointed.

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If you’re talking about the disclaimer, it’s something I use for my crypto-related posts just in case. Hope you’d consider removing the downvotes.

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well to put it really simply ... if the transparency leaves, so do I.

I am not real happy seeing the abusive downvoting now. Being able to hide actions will embolden behaviour not improve it.

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Sorry, as @shadowspub says, removing TRANSPARENCY from transactions, voting, up or downvoting, and I am gone as well.

That is the single fastest way to make this place a violent nasty flag war!

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Hi @kevinwong

This ocean of Steemit is very varied in everything that happens, I think if it would be well seen a little privacy.

But then I realize that it is favorable for stemiants to take notice when they are given a positive vote in a specific and quality publication.

There are already accounts that are dedicated to giving negative votes and only those accounts that do so are enough.

I also think that everything should continue to be within the blockchain

I'm sorry for the late reply but your post caught my attention.

Regards

Yours, lanzjoseg

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