Precisely! It's very simple mathematics.

I shall digest everything later, as need to go to work. To look closely at the whole economic system is something I have said for over a year, but the 3 proposals are, yet again, tinkering with the most obvious parameters and ignoring some of the deeper problems within the core code. Returning to super-linear is a whale-feast, for example - what's the point in that? What are the newbies going to think? Gotta dash.... more later.... probably much more :-)

The issue is that unless we have communities to test these economic theories, no one really knows if what they are doing to 'fix' the economics is going to work.

I disagree outside of having more attention it didn't work any better except for a handful.  A very small handful.

However, I do appreciate the opinion though.

I support the changes in this post, but I would also not agree necessarily that it was "better" in 2017. It was certainly "different" but there were other problems which were still very serious. 

Since there is no suggestion to go back to the previous rules, I don't think it actualy matters. You have to evaluate this new proposed set of rules on its own merits, as they are significantly different from both the current rules and the 2017 rules.

If I had to score them out of 10

Hyperinflation - 1/10
n^2 - 2.5/10 (this appeared to have worked better because people weren't as sophisticated back then and abit and smooth were incurring some of the costs of making it work better than it otherwise would have)
our current system - 1.5/10

I think we can do maybe a 5.5-6/10 on our next attempt if we frame the problem correctly and identify both the benefits and costs of each of those measures to reach sensible numbers.

Omg, this hurt to read due to the truth in building a second layer protocol to fix the first layer.  I had never thought of it that clearly...

It's painful

Plus the post literally says...

>We cannot eliminate such behavior entirely, but we can make it less economically viable.

Are people deliberately skipping this part? 

I'm supporting a 50/50 split

Exponential curve is likely too strong because n^2 means someone who has 100 times more SP than you has a vote that carries 10,000 more weight than you. Now that people are more sophisticated, this perhaps would open up to even more abuse than the current system

But indeed some level of superliniearity is necessary. I like the convergent linear curve proposed by vandeberg as far back as 3 years ago. It has a superlinear head that forces all profitable spam into the light, and a linear tail so no collusive piling on between whales/bid bots

I also think a moderate amount of free downvotes are necessary. Basically every measure helps, but every measure has their own downsides if you tune them up too much. This is mostly an optimization problem. 

I broadly agree with your points and think it's better late than never. I share your frustration as I've been proposing this for over a year, and I'm grateful that recently @justinw, @andrarchy @vandeberg and other inc members became receptive to these ideas

>"...exponential curation curve and around a 50/50 split."

This does not even impact curation for content quality at all.  It merely changes the financial equations governing how profitable corrupting curation is.

We can eliminate financial incentive to corrupt curation altogether.  We should.

This is a good idea in theory but in reality whales eventualy just vote for the same people because they think other whales will as well, in an attempt to maximize profits from curation. This ends up a few lucky authors getting most of the rewards as everyone piles in to get curation. We saw this happen when this platform first launched. In my opinion they are trying to solve a problem that may not be fundamentally solvable. I don't think stake based voting can work. Sounded good, but when money became involved, it changed everything.

I agree with this comment!  Read Vanderburg's post also

Traf doesn't want the vast majority of active stake taking part in mindless self voting or vote selling just to get staking returns, because that's seen as the norm now.

Traf can't afford/is unwilling to not do this to defend his own stake, but would much prefer a system where everyone is incentivized to act honestly with respect to voting behavior.

That's what these suggestions are designed to do

That quote is factually incorrect.  Code is infinitely mutable, and all financial incentive to corrupt curation can be eliminated.  While some people will continue to act irrationally against their financial interests, currently it's irrational to not degrade curation for financial gain.  Eliminating, rather than merely tweaking that incentive, can be done, and I propose it below in reply to the OP.

I can no long bother to explain to you the incentive to downvote is the value of your stake.

If no one has put that together yet watching the price and current activity.  Nothing is going to teach them.

Yes, by the way, I fully understand that the stakeholder's INVEST in the end users to make the whole thing work.

Yes, if you don't give me a reason to vote for content I consider good rather than my own, I'll just vote my own

Now you can't give me 100% curation or there's no reason for anyone to create good content. So that's why we need the other measures. I need not just more incentive to vote others, but a deterrence to vote myself (or sell my votes). That's where some free downvotes come in.

A little bit of converging linear curve brings all profitable spam into the light to get downvoted.

Every measure helps but have diminishing returns and increasing costs. That's why a combination of measures is best, it provides the maximum utility, assuming we get the numbers in the right ballpark

yes they are leaving something to the  small people to hope for and by doing so keep this place with at least some number of users. so they are thinking abut the greater good or thinking that they will benefit in the long run. one that are not doing that are thinking just about themselves, they never build their sp to reward others, and are here for here and now.

Posted using [Partiko Android](https://partiko.app/referral/bil.prag)

As you'll soon note from my votes on this comment, that downvote pool will just be gamed.  You're a gamer, and probably looking for ways to profit from said downvote pool.  

The fact is that most people cannot pile stake into Steem, because they don't have it.  Your stake immunizes you and enables you to profitably ignore this reality.  You do so to the detriment of society, for your own profit.

I consider your facility with financial manipulation potentially beneficial to the community with the right incentives in place to encourage your profiteering to promote improvement of the investment vehicle that creates capital gains.  This is why I propose replacing your current business model with dividends from funding development.  You're agile.  You'll quickly maximize your returns from new incentives that don't degrade curation and the market for Steem.  The only reason you do that now is that the incentives make that the most profitable business model today.

We need to change the incentives that drive you to benefit the community, rather than continuing to degrade our market as you do today.

it's easy to circumvent by creating multiple accounts etc.

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"Imagine how good SMTs or Communites would have to be in order to turn this place around if our economic incentives continue to force people to spam, self vote and sell votes. Realistically, what are the chances of Steem based SMTs taking off to the point where they're not just successful themselves but can carry the failure of the entire ecosystem when Steem is spirally down in CMC charts and Steemit is dropping Alexa ranks because there truly isn't any reason to be on a platform whose front page is a dumpster. SMTs and Communities would need to be impossibly, unfathomably good."

Those words are gold. I actually starting to question whether Steem has to compete with other social networks. They do know blockchain exist and will do their best to stay in the trend. The worst part is that people don't really like being on all of those platforms. They fight for those that deliver the best features and unite people together to share unique and amazing content. Steemit was those things in the beginning, then it faded somehow but why? I'm still trying to figure it out. It seems like the level of hype is correlated with the number of quality posts which is weird and shouldn't be like that.

I believe Steemit as a website and company is missing very critical point and that is strategic marketing. I've never seen Steemit doing that and that could be a problem. People outside of crypto are not aware it exists unfortunately and that's not cool.

Those things are pretty obvious but were not addressed yet so decided to share. Thanks for starting this conversation. I know you create lots of cool posts so I know how you feel to produce great content and simply having 0 feedback because people are not on this platform. There are lots of people playing games built on Steem and that is an advantage. So maybe that what Steem in particular has to be focusing on? Your thoughts?

Thank you @trafalgar. Im a steem newbie of just 16 months and I have earned every steem I have, rather than buying in.  I curate manually for both @ecotrain & @freedomtribe.  This EIP excites & encourages me - thank you! Im a single mom living in Chiang Mai, Thailand & MAKING SURE to get a flight to BKK for SF4.  Hope to thank you in person for all you do.

>"What would appeal the most to investors..."

Is reasonable development that imbues the investment vehicle with increased value, producing capital gains.  

Content isn't their focus.  ROI is.  Presently ROI is able to be extracted immediately from rewards, and cash is king.  That needs to end, and ROI enabled from funding development that improves and imbues value in the investment vehicle, Steem, needs to replace it.