One is guaranteed to always win.
When running a contest on steemit, the organiser always wins!
insert inappropriate whale joke here [image source]
Don't worry, I'm not going to be ranting about contests that may look like they are just about making profits.
Contests are a great thing for steemit and for engaging its community. Organising a contest can be a lot of work and if an organiser takes their share for that, it's fine by me.
No, what I wanted to say is:
As an organiser of a contest, you get to build a community around it, you get to talk to a lot of nice people, your efforts will be appreciated, you'll get a lot of exposure and you get to enjoy all the wonderful original content that is being entered.
You're always winning like that!
So, I think, it would only fair to pay-out the whole 100% of post rewards, earned with awarding the contest, to the contestants themselves. Unfortunately, that is not as straight forward as it may sound.
Here's how I developed my 100%-fair prize-pool strategy for the #GooglyPrize:
The Initial Problem: Post Rewards in Steem Power
At least 50% of post rewards are always immediately powering up your account.
Awarding the Steem Dollars is easy, but unless you are rich in liquid STEEM, you'd be required to power down before being able to pay those SP-rewards forward. Powering down isn't possible in fractional amounts (yet) and without going into too much detail: It would be a nightmare to manage!
The #GooglyPrize had just been announced and I was eager to award the first winners, when a brief exchange with @trevorlyman helped me to the idea of solving this with a continually growing SteemPower-Delegation-Prize.
Not only was this a way to properly forward all gains, it also meant the prize would keep growing in size and make the contest even more attractive as it progressed.
A true win-win-win here, bigger prizes, happier winners, a growth strategy for the contest.
Everybody was happy and that's how the #GooglyPrize has been awarded since then.
But the Devil is in the Details
Little did I know about the 7 day blocking mechanism for delegated SP.
It turns out, when revoking a delegation, the delegated power is being blocked for 7 days.
As I've learned, this is a necessary measure to prevent reward attacks. It's a bit technical, but if you're curious you should read @twinner's snarky post on the matter. He even argues that a 10 day blocking period may be neccessary to eliminate such attacks completely.
So what does that mean for the #GooglyPrize?
As of now, I am awarding all SP earned since the beginning as a 1-week delegation to the latest winner. When the next winner is selected, I'll revoke their delegation, add the latest rewards to it, and delegate that away to the next winner.
Unfortunately, now it will take another week before the just revoked delegation is credited back towards my own Steem Power.
We're still in the early days of the #GooglyPrize, and the accumulated SP (currently delegated to @ewkaw) are only 27.822 in sum. But as the prize continues growing, this may eventually get me in trouble. The Prize Announcements are generating a lot more rewards than my usual posts, and one day I might not be able cover the difference out of my own pockets anymore.
It's better to change the game now than later.
Here's my Solution to Making a 100% Fair Payout
In short: I'll maintain two delegation pools.
To avoid having to cover the difference myself while a revoked delegation is in Limbo, I'll start maintaining two sequentially growing delegation pools. In each new week, the latest SP rewards will be added to the delegation that had been awarded to the winner from 2 weeks ago, which has thus, just been credited back to me, before being delegated on to the new winner.
I've tried to visualise how this will work in the sequence above. You may notice that this mode of operation leaves us with 2 independently growing pools. Should they start differing in size too much, I'll have to think of something again... but until then, or until steem changes some of the mechanics, I think we've successfully squared the circle!
Does that mean the next #GooglyPrize delegation will be smaller?
Yes, we're kind of cutting it in two halves, but @minnowbooster is coming to the rescue!
The next #GooglyPrize award on Sunday will contain a special @minnowbooster price. They believe this contest to be a great way to give minnows a boost and a 250SP 4-week delegation will be awarded to a selected entry from someone to whom this makes a difference! If you already have hundreds or thousands of SP... sorry, you're only eligible to win the normal prizes ;) but I'm sure you'll understand.
YES!
You can win a 4-week delegation of 250SP next Sunday by sticking #GooglyEyes on things! [read more]
thanks to @minnowbooster
credit where credit is due: The #GooglyPrize would be nowhere as cool as it is without @krystle and @ausbitbank suppoting it since day 1. Without the educative content by @timcliff [delegation tutorial] and @twinner I'd probably still be scratching my head about how to pull this off. @trevorlyman, your thoughts have been essential to finding this solution! And of course, last but not least, all the wonderful contestants who bring this contest to life with their lovely googly creations! THANK YOU ALL!
everything is better with #GooglyEyes
follow @fraenk
... it's free!
steem-on and prosper
Did my explanation make any sense?!
I know, I'm sorry, it's kinda hard to explain!
Have You seen other contests that attempt to pay out 100% of their gains?
If not, I'd like to claim the #GooglyPrize as the 1st 100% fair contest on steemit! ;)
Have you ever ignored a contest because the conditions looked too "selfish"?
Yeah I know... upvote, resteem, follow, and then 15% of the SBD... pffft, sure thing bro!