I don't see this at all as "terrible for everyone but bid bots". There's plenty to suggest that the equilibrium will shift a bit. Every component to this EIP is assuming maximizing behavior to boot, so not sure where you are getting this conclusion from.
50/50. +Curation leakage, +curation bonus. Less delegators, less upside for bot.
Convergent Linear. Small bids become useless, less demand. Also upside for curation. More effective to downvote higher posts. Less profitable to split votes on many posts.
Downvotes. Risk for bidders, less demand (hence profitability).
I am tempted to say you must be joking, but I will assume you are serious. There is no possible way that the downvote pool can exert negative pressure against bidbot use. The amount of SP controlled by the "pro bidbot camp" if you want to call it that - the amount of SP controlled by users who directly delegate to bidbots, own bidbots, and/or use bidbots, is far greater than the amount of SP controlled by accounts that actively use SP* and oppose bid bots. Good luck trying to win a flag war against bid bots. If you think for one second that any kind of organized campaign to flag posts that use bidbots wouldn't meet organized counterflag opposition, then you obviously haven't been paying attention. The rest of the measures could all have been carefully crafted to create even more perverse incentives to use bid bots. 50/50 curation... you may not have looked at the big picture of curation, bid bots already earn the vast majority of curation under current system. Bid bot operation will be instantly far more profitable. There will be zero change to the incentive to delegate to bid bots, that is currently and will still be the optimal strategy even over 100% self-voting, so predictably, it will be the strategy that the majority of SP holders take to optimize investment. And the worst thing is the reward curve change, which actually incentivizes users to use bid bots. Anyone who can't get a post organically past the threshold where the new curve passes the old curve, will make less than they used to (which is... everyone except whales and the small number of users lucky enough to get whale votes). Anyone who uses a bid bot to get their post past that point in the curve will make more than they used to. Add it all up and we should see a large increase in the use of bid bots and a large increase in the profitability of bid bots.
*The "actively use SP" distinction is drawn of course because of the huge amounts of SP held by Stinc and not used. If Stinc wanted to use their stake to flag big bot use it would be another story of course, but that wouldn't require a hard fork. Stinc could end bid bot use overnight if they wanted to. They don't.
I am not joking, and I seem to have a very different analysis and I'm hard pressed to find a way that will make you see it the same way. You didn't address any of the points I made, but to be fair I should have pointed you at a starting point since I was summarizing the arguments.
See for example https://steemit.com/steem/@tarazkp/50-50-curation-and-bots-getting-more. Double the curation, double the leakage. Bots have to work to mitigate that, for starters.
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Part of the problem with this HF is with so many changes at once, they all impact each other. The likely impact of 50/50 curation on bid bots in a vacuum is different (IMO) than the likely impact of 50/50 curation combined with reward curve change. But even in a vacuum, I totally disagree with tarazkp analysis. Even under current system it is easily possible to earn curation returns far greater than 50% by front running bid bots, and yet the sum total of SP spent in this manner is a drop in the bucket compared to the amount of SP that bidbots are voting with and the total curation they get. Change the curation % (IMO) isn't going to change the big picture there. A small number of savvy users will see an increase in the return they get front running bots, but in the big picture this isn't even noticeable. If you haven't already, run a query to bring up the top 100 curation earners on non-self votes. It will be populated almost exclusively by bid bots. The big picture is so big that the amount of SP thrown around to front run bots is not even visible next to the mountain of bid bot SP that you can see from space. But more importantly, this isn't happening in a vacuum. You can throw out all the numbers in that post, because the new reward curve changes the math considerably on bid bot profitability - in the wrong direction! A huge swathe of users who are currently able to earn (small amounts) of SP through posting and commenting without using bidbots, will now find almost all of their earnings falling below the dust threshold. In terms of user numbers and not SP, we are talking about a huge majority of the active users on the platform who will see significant reduction in earning. The incentive to use a bid bot to boost your post farther up the new curve is going to be huge.
Hard to say the degree in which this will happen. Even a small nudge can easily change the balance in who delegates, who snipes curation, and who bids. The data may point to total dominance in earnings now, but it also obscures key points including the returns to delegators. It's also at the extreme of what the current incentives pushed forward. And of course it will not reflect what happens with downvotes.
I disagree with your assessment that downvotes won't happen against bot voting, because it's clear that it will. The curve assists here as well because it is more efficient in an impact/rshare to downvote larger posts, and that is where it will be directed. It is admittedly the largest unknown in this mix of changes, as well as the most critical part, but any increase in downvoting behavior will already affect things for the better.
One thing also to point out is that all bot voting essentially needs to go big or go home. Low to Medium size bot bids (in aggregate across bots) will simply disappear. Increases the risk as well as the reward. I don't have the numbers here but it's hard to say how many will continue with it.
There is a danger here as you say. If downvotes don't happen, this behavior could crowd out everything else, although the convergent linear caps the degree in which this can actually happen. I would say that it's also an incentive to downvote the other posts that are now crowding you out, if you are one of those bidders. (Or a bot owner that wants to make it more attractive).
Interestingly, I was treating the system as one big bid bot but the reality is also that they can no longer promise guaranteed returns, and revert back to models where they just do raw bid pricing instead of their min/max ROI parameters. Which can get very weird. There's quite a lot that bot owners will need to do behind the scenes to make sense of this environment, that I even think some may simply just drop out. In which case it may just be a handful of competing large bots at the end.
The smaller authors and commenters will see an immediate impact as you say, though I don't think it goes below dust. You can see in the parameter they chose that it's at worst halving the amounts. And I believe that after all the incentives shift, it will reflect a better distribution overall, which is conditional on the above, which we disagree on. Because as you say, the lion's share is dominated by bots. If you manage to chip away the incentives, you can slowly unravel it to a degree.
Anyway, what you are saying highlights a situation that I admit is a possibility, but I suppose I have a better feeling about the downvote behavior and incentive structure than you do.
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WE had DOWNVOTING Communities before but what did it changed ... ah YEAH NOTHINGG, only a few get holded for a moment... but shitty posts are all around STILL and they still get paid for it... so this THEORY isnt worthy... i understand the HOPING of this CHANGINGS , but all i can see is, the SOLD VOTE will be more worthy than before because the payout get doubled, and they CREATOR will get LESS... so where is the MAGIC... what will it drives into a better thing ... i cant see it
Your reasoning doesn't follow. 25% Free downvotes is a big difference compared to what we had before.
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okay then i really missreaded this downvote way... but at the end we will see what it will change... because when i use it, we will see in what kind of war its maybe end...
Very true @carlgnash
ps.
Would you perhaps consider using "enter" from time to time? To separate blocks of texts? It would make it much easier to read.
Yours
Piotr
LOL my fingers are on a direct connect to my brain, I type super fast and tend to spill it all out in a big block. Feedback duly noted :)
Run a bit of historic data through the new rules. It is very likely the bid bot economy will get a huge boost from the EIP. The narrative for the EIP is interesting, but based more in wishfull thinking than in actual data or simulations. But anyhow, there is no stopping this at this point. Best thing to hope for is a contingency plan for when the wishfull thinking turns out not to pan out and the EIP turns out to hurt the economy.
Historic data is meaningless because it does not take into consideration new incentives appearing from the new rules. I fully admit here that if the downvotes don't occur, it will be a disaster. But I have a good feeling about that just based on the economics of it as well as various levels of commitment, and the fact that some already do it even though it costs them right now (obviously, talk is cheap).
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I had high hopes for the down votes, but after runningthis poll, now I no longer do.
Based on this poll and actual data of downvotes and retaliations from the analysis's I used to run from @pibarabot, I'm pretty much convinced there is verry little economic insentive to make use of free down votes.
There is pretty much a culture of fear and retaliation surrounding the use of down votes on this platform.
There's not much stake represented in that poll. What's the analysis from @pibarabot? There's definitely an economic incentive to use all of the free downvotes, and it doesn't even matter who you are (although obviously the more stake, the more impact).
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Actually there is a tangible economic incentive not to use the free down votes:
retaliation!
I used to run a daily script that processed all flags done on one week old posts, until Steemit Inc killed my code by implementing API rate limiting a few months back (here is a sample graph of one day. One thing that stood out was that the same accounts kept showing up in different roles, either as flagger or flagee. On closer inspection, a substantial amount of down vote weight could be attributed to some form of retribution for earlier flags against accounts with likely relations (voting proxy or non-standard recovery account) with the flagging account.
I don't know what to make of it except that people flagged despite being retaliated against, and despite the current opportunity cost from doing so. I get that retaliation is a deterrent, but I'm pretty sure free downvotes will be flying in different ways than what you are analyzing. (Whether it holds or does something productive or is ultimately detrimental overall all remain to be seen)
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Retaliation isn't all bad. Alice and Bob get into it with each other, and that means that Charlie walks away with the money. Maybe Charlie was actually doing something right by not being seen as downvote-worthy by anyone.
Point is, if Alice and Charlie both behave exactly the same, both notice Bob does something bad, like calling in bid bots on a post tagged for one of the top curation initiatives (something I've used flags for myself a couple of times, and have been retaliated against a couple of times as well), and Alice was the only one acting on it by attenuating the bot votes with a down vote, then behaving like Charlie is incentified above Behaving like Alice by the retaliation by Bob.
For the flagging to truly work without negative incentives, I think we would need some kind of flagging SP that can be delegated separately from regular SP to semi-automated services. Without something that can shield those who for example want to use their free downvotes for attenuating false curation bot upvotes against direct retaliation. As the EIP comes with nothing that shields us from retribution down votes, I'm afraid the incentive to act is still negative.
That is harmful nonsense. Old data will show what the new insentives are. You can than middel second iteration data accordingly, rinse and repeat, but you need to run the new rules against the old data just once. If you don't, the whole new incentives narratives will be nothing but speculative fiction.
And that's exactly what it is. You can run the new rules on old data, and that's exactly how you get the immediate distribution at hard fork time. But after that, you can't predict anything. I don't see how you can claim that this has any predictive power. After all, you aren't going to be able to estimate how many downvotes are going to be issued, for starters.
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