A few weeks back I wrote about how vampires suck as with all of their power and life, they do so little of consequence other than satisfy their own greedy needs. Now, some people made a 'giant leap' and compared what I had written to some of the behaviours that happen here by accounts that suck the life out of the rewards pool.
So, as you know I like to play around from time to time with potentially silly ideas so, let's have some Sunday hypothetical fun where people can join in the comments and add their opinions and thoughts. Remember, this is just hypothetical and should probably never happen. Probably. Maybe.
A hypothetical scenario
Imagine there was an account that was draining the reward pool. Perhaps they were posting much too often and getting massive support from one or two potentially 'bad actors' with a lot of voting power. The problem is that no one can really act against it because if they do, they will be targeted and attacked and have their reputation and earning potential severely reduced.
Remember, to flag comes at a cost in several ways that some of the newer members don't consider. Flagging costs the same amount of voting power as upvoting but, it does not get any reward at all meaning there is no curation. The flagging amount goes back into the pool however to be distributed to other accounts in upvotes, this means that a good flag against a bad actor is good for the rest of the community but, comes with no thanks. The other cost is to all the accounts that would be otherwise upvoted by the flagging account, value lost to people who may deserve the value and the good that comes from the spread of Steem.
But what if there was a hypothetical account that just didn't care about any of this. Didn't care about reputation and never needed to make any value itself. All it had was a purpose to put value back into the pool for more equal distribution.
The making of Helsing
It could be backed by Steemit as an independent arbitrator under the assumption that Steemit Inc wants what is best for Steem and the community.
It could be created by a group of whales who think that distribution is important, either through delegation or, building it up over time through the reward pool itself by upvoting it.
The top 200 (or something) accounts could all delegate 1 percent of their current value to the bot which would make it very powerful indeed.
Potential uses
Of course, using this account would come under censorship issues and it could of course be used for nefarious means to restrict freedom of speech and the wills of the community. Again, this is just hypothetical so we can still have fun and not get too worried about such things at this point. Agreed? Good.
To flag, highly voted spammers. No account here at this time should really be able to post 10 times a day and get all of them voted past 400 dollars by another account. It screams of scam and is terrible for the impression of the community. The Helsing account could null say, 5 of the posts each day in the last 12 hour window. Does anyone really deserve 22,000 SBD a week? Isn't 11,000 still very, very high for one person?
If an account is found to be without a shadow of doubt raping the pool, Helsing could of course null all rewards until it either adjusts behaviour or, leaves the community. Perhaps for highly self-voted nothing comments.
It could 'tax' Trending where insensitively it negated some percentage of the top 200 posts for the week 10 - 20% percent (arbitrary numbers here of course) or, scale taxed depending on how often one account appeared in the trending section. No one here of course likes the idea of tax but how many posts are really worth the equivalent of 5-10,000 dollars US? 20 percent would still leave it at 8000%.
It could also drop the payout on the top 1000 paid comments also in the last window as even the comments that are not spam and scam upvoted probably don't deserve some of the values they actually get.
There are of course many other ways Helsing could be used and it could also have a board of trustees who decide upon its behaviours as long as that board is actually trustworthy, which is always a problem as power tends to get abused by many who obtain it, no matter the level.
Insensitively for the good
But potentially since Helsing would be for the good of the community, is not invested in any particular angle other than sharing reward, it may benefit all of the community greatly even though occasionally it would slip up and slice a percentage off someone it shouldn't have.
Mostly though, it would be taking percentages off already highly rewarded accounts or voiding the actions of 'bad actor' accounts and returning value back into the pool. For the bad actors of course, this would hurt them but for the highly rewarded, in the long run as Steem spreads and decentralises wider and deeper into the community, their overall value will increase significantly while still not limiting their ability to earn highly.
The most highly invested in this community are also the ones who have the most to gain from wider distribution of Steem and SBD and even though many of them would take a short term reduction in reward, they will get long term growth potential that outstrips it.
The numbers, percentages and limits would have to be looked into (Something I can't do) but, having a roving Vampire killer might actually be quite a useful for the community. Of course, there are many caveats to it but I find the idea kind of interesting especially if supported by the largest and most invested accounts at Steemit as they are the ones who will also wear some of the cuts of Helsing. It would definitely be a show of faith in the future of Steem and an act of good faith for the Steem community.
As a community action tool
I think things like the 'No whale' voting experiment last year brought a lot of feedback value to the community in many ways as will @smooth's Burn Post experiment that he is conducting now.
Helsing would be an account that could be supported by all whales and used as a tool to conduct experiments in the community to improve it in numerous ways. Because it would be supported widely, its actions would be accepted by the whales even if they are sometimes wounded by it.
Hypothetical discussion only
I am sure there are many, many, many holes in the idea of Helsing but, as a hypothetical discussion topic, I thought it might be interesting to put it out into the community to think and play around with. Remember, I do not think this is necessarily a good idea nor think that it should be implemented but in my opinion, when thinking about ways to improve the community and potentials for the future of Steem, everything can be put on the table.
What do you think about a Helsing vampire killer in the Steem waters?
Taraz
[ a Steemit original ]