Growth, user retention, and user engagement are three of the main factors that will determine whether the Steem platform goes down in history as the next "MySpace", or the next revolutionary platform that we all dream it can be.
If you don't want to read all of the details, you can skip to the "bottom line" (question) at the bottom of the post.
The launch of Steemit.com, and the past several months of "beta testing" have given us a lot of valuable information about the good and the bad aspects of the platform.
Here are some of the common complaints:
- The UI is missing a lot of key functionality
- Regular users have no say in the platform. All that matters are whale votes.
- The majority of the votes on the platform come from bots, rather than engaged 'regular' users.
Solutions to many of the problems are in the works, but there is one big one that has many of us stumped:
How do we (fairly) give more influence to the 'regular' users without breaking the promise of more stake = more influence that was made to all of the early adopters / whales?
It has been suggested by many that if the whales just stopped voting, that would "solve" the problem. The dolphin and minnow votes would then be a much more significant percentage of the active voting pool, and their votes would be worth a lot more. The problem with this, is it is not fair to the whales. They all earned their stake and influence, and it is not right for the rest of us to demand they give it up.
@snowflake brought up an excellent proposal in this post, which I expanded on here. The idea has been discussed by many people now, including several whales. While there is some resistance to it, there does actually seem to be quite a bit of support.
The basic idea is this: Let's pay the whales to only use part of their influence.
Here are the details:
- All accounts with more than 250 MV of SP would be "investor class" accounts.
- All accounts with 250 MV or less would be "regular users".
- Users with "investor class" accounts would only use a maximum of 250 MV worth of their voting power.
- In exchange for not voting with the SP beyond 250 MV, all SP above 250 MV would earn additional interest.
- The additional interest would be paid by eliminating curation rewards.
- The "investor class" users would also be given a "moderator" ability, which would allow them to use their SP beyond 250 MV for downvoting abusive posts or canceling out the downvotes made by other moderators.
Key benefits:
- Regular users would feel like they have more say in the platform.
- Whales would still get to keep a large influence.
- There would be more incentive for 'regular' users to power up, as becoming a dolphin would mean having an influence in the site. (The likelihood of 10 users buying 100 MV of SP to become a dolphin is way more likely than 1 user buying 1,000 MV to become a whale.)
- The decisions on what posts earned significant rewards would be shared among whales and dolphins. There are a lot more dolphins than whales, which would allow voting/influence to better scale to a platform with significantly more users.
- Large SP investors would be able to get a return on their investment without being required to curate.
- Curation guilds could form with more users that were voting with their own voting power.
- The benefit to having auto-upvote bots would be greatly diminished.
I discussed it with @pfunk, and he suggested I ask the whales. Ultimately this will only work if there is buy-in from the major stake-holders.
So whales -
( @blocktrades, @ned, @freedom, @dan, @jamesc, @abit, @val-a, @smooth, @dantheman, @ben, @mottler, @tombstone, @databass, @val-b, @michael-b, @rainman, @summon, @michael-a, @hendrikdegrote, @transisto, @pharesim, @steemed, @berniesanders, @proskynneo, @xeldal, @roadscape, @arhag, @thejohalfiles, @wang, @safari, @witness.svk, @cloop1, @riverhead, @batel, @wackou, @steempty, @enki, @bob, @tamim, @fuzzyvest, @engagement, @adm, @jaewoocho, @alice, @kushed, @onceuponatime, @itsascam, @amcq, @bitcube, @goku1, @nextgencrypto, @renohq, @recursive, @gavvet, @glitterfart, @thecyclist, @alvaro, @blackjack, @thisvsthis, @dele-puppy, @smooth.witness, @bhuz, @arsahk, @donkeypong, @satoshifund, @c75c39f25a90, @lafona-miner, @azeroth, @fyrstikken, @datasecuritynode, @complexring, @coldstorage1, @fulltimegeek, @au1nethyb1, @steemstermon, @clayop, @creator, @anastacia, @liondani, @steemaccess, @abdullar, @firstclass, @samupaha, @imadev, @skywalker, @fminerten, @xeroc, @hr1, @bytemaster, @smooth-e, @arama, @b943863a19cf, @jesta, @puppies, @cryptoctopus, @stellabelle, @kidrock, @roelandp, @ramta, @jabbasteem, @steemit200, @snowflake, @nanzo-scoop, @freeyourmind, @tyler, @newyo, @dimimp, @someonewhoisme, @hiva, @anonymous, @benjojo, @sean-king, @delegate.lafona, @pfunk, @analisa, @bitcoin2016, @silversteem, @node1, @cass, @ioc, @faddy, @noagenda, @paladin, @figaro, @rossco99, @slowwalker )