An Idea on how to FIX the upvote Rewards Pool Issue
steem·@deanlogic·
0.000 HBDAn Idea on how to FIX the upvote Rewards Pool Issue
<center> http://eqevents.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/piggy-bank.jpg </center> If you are new to STEEMit, welcome. Welcome to the place where people with huge STEEM Power will tell you that if you work hard and put up great content, you will be rewarded and in no time you too will be making $100 per post, just like a Whale. Well, if you do work hard and put up create content, you will get upvotes. And, if you get lucky or someone likes your vote enough to get a whale to notice, then you will get a nice payout. But, if you see someone tell you something like... > Let's say you make $1.00 per post and you upvote your own post... Then first ask them, how long will it take you to get $1.00 per post? Then ask them if it is frowned upon to upvote your own post. And here is the big chicken and the egg conundrum on STEEMit. For little fish, fish who aren't even Minnows yet, it isn't frowned upon to upvote your own Article. It is frowned upon to upvote your own Comment. There is a big difference, stop upvoting your own comments, folks. That's just lame. However, for large fish, people are frowning upon self-upvoting of both Article and Comment. <h2>Why is it bad for big fish to upvote their own Article, but okay for small fish?</h2> Well, first you have to learn about the **Rewards Pool**. The Rewards Pool is where upvotes get their money to give to those who received or curated the upvote. The Rewards Pool isn't infinite, but it [does keep adding STEEM to the pool](https://steemit.com/steem/@penguinpablo/til-how-much-steem-is-added-to-the-reward-pool-per-day) automatically. > About 48,029 fresh STEEM will be added to the reward pool today, but because it depends on multiple factors it might be slightly higher or lower tomorrow. While, 48,029 STEEM daily sound like a lot, it really hasn't been. @me-tarzan has been [tracking the rewards pool daily](https://steemit.com/steemit/@me-tarzan/shallower-waters-today-rewards-pool-i-have-charted-the-waters-for-you-august-01-2017) since the Hard Fork 19 (HF19). Here is the daily graph he provides. <center> https://i.imgflip.com/1tevxx.jpg </center> As you can see, the rewards pool was draining fairly rapidly, then slowed down. It finally started refilling a few days ago, but then started draining again. It does look like, that at some point, it will go back to filling up again. <h2>That's great! More rewards for everyone!</h2> Yes and no. See, when rewards are handed out, it depends somewhat on who gets the upvotes and how the bigger the fish is that curates the article. For starters, the Author only gets 75% of the upvote rewards and the rest goes towards the curators, those who upvoted. When someone upvotes your article, if they time it right, they get a large percentage of the payout. And if they are a larger fish, which means that [they have more Vests](https://steemit.com/minnowsupport/@deanlogic/bone-fish-minnow-dolphin-orca-whale-how-do-i-get-there), they get a larger portion of the curation rewards. Simply said, those who are whales will get more of a payout than those who are plankton. <h2>Okay, that sort of makes sense, so what is the problem?</h2> Well, the upvote that you can give is determined by your Steem POWER, those with more Steem POWER can give out larger rewards from the Rewards Pool. That means, if a Bone Fish/Red Fish upvotes your Article at 100%, they might give you $0.01. However, if a Dolphin/Orca/Whale upvotes your article at only 1%, they might give you $10.00. <h2>Wow! That's a big difference. Let me go chase some whales!</h2> Hold on, it also means that if a Dolphin/Orca/Whale upvotes their own article with 100%, they can give it $100.00 or more with that one upvote. And because of the high value, it will put the Article on the Trending and Hot pages, which will attract everyone else to upvote that article in hopes of getting a curation reward from that upvote. And all of those upvotes increases the Article reward and makes the Article stay on the Trending and Hot list. This repeating cycle also makes it easy for the same people to continually be on the Trending and Hot list. And of course, it drains the rewards pool, with the rewards going to mostly the people who are already big fish, keeping the little fish from getting much. <center><h1>It's good to be a big fish!</h1></center> http://nightflight.com/wp-content/uploads/MEL-BROOKS-RAP-5.jpg So, for small fish, they might write the best article ever posted to STEEMit, but if they don't have the right followers, it may never be noticed. And then they end up making less than $0.10 for that article and every other article they post makes $0.01 or less and then they get discouraged and give up. <h2>Well, that is a bit disappointing. What can be done?</h2> I think we should do the following: 1) Remove the option to upvote your own post. 2) Give authors and automatic payment from the rewards pool for their articles based on their Steem POWER and upvotes to the Article. That payment will not be reflected in the Article upvote value. Currently, there is an option to not upvote a post. By default, it is checked, but anyone can uncheck that for themselves. This means that the creators wanted people to be able to upvote their own articles, but maybe that wasn't such a great idea. The idea is to pay the Authors for their content. So, they should get some sort of reward, just make it so it doesn't influence other upvotes. But, make the reward relative to the Author's Vests and the Articles popularity. <h2>That seems simple, would it solve the problem completely?</h2> No, unfortunately, there is another issue. Bots and Puppet Accounts. There are many Bots on STEEMit. Some are used to do upvotes and some are used to time upvotes. If a bunch of whales decided to work together, they could just setup these bots to upvote each other's Articles at a certain time and then we are back to where we started from with only certain articles getting big rewards and staying on the Trending and Hot list. Also, there are apparently many duplicate accounts on STEEMit or accounts created for the purpose of upvoting a certain account's Articles. The main account sends STEEM to the Puppet Accounts and then schedules them to upvote the articles at a certain time. This earns the Article more upvotes and eventually would create more pay for the owner of the Main and Puppet Accounts. <h2>That's a bit shady. What can be done about that?</h2> Well, there could be the unpopular option of removing the voting capability from the API. This would be unpopular, because there are accounts that are meant to help little fish get upvotes. But, I say, maybe it is time to stop that practice as well. If big fish truly want to help out little fish, then find posts from little fish and then ***give them a 100% upvote***. The other option is to have a ton of @sherlockholmes going around and checking on the activities of all large reward receivers. The transactions are open, it would just take a bunch of leg work to see if someone is abusing the system. I don't want a bot to do it, but bots are not 100% accurate. Maybe a bot could alert the investigators and they could then analyse the data for themselves. Anyway, I think the best method would be to remove the upvote from the API. That's my idea. <center> ___   <h3>Let the positive energy sing! <br /> More Power to the Minnows!!</h3> </center>