Steem pyramid scheme revealed

[generalizethis]

Rocket ascent is the outlier in the graphs you used

Are you referring to Google search popularity that I mentioned in my blogs week ago?

Facebook reached 1 million users in 10 months:

On February 4, 2004, Zuckerberg launched "Thefacebook", originally located at thefacebook.com.

1 million — End of 2004.
5.5 million — End of 2005.
12 million — End of 2006.
20 million — April 2007.
50 million — October 2007.
100 million — August 2008.
150 million — January 2009.
175 million — February 2009.
200 million — April 2009.
250 million — July 2009.
300 million — September 2009.
350 million — End of 2009.
400 million — February 2010.
500 million — July 2010.
608 million — End of 2010.
750 million — July 2011.
800 million — September 2011.
845 million — End of 2011.
901 million — March 2012.
955 million — June 2012.
1.01 billion — September 2012.
1.06 billion — December 2012.
1.11 billion — March 2013.

If yes, note steemit has already peaked and is declining:

https://www.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%203-m&q=steemit

I could have said the same thing about facebook using a 3month sample from various time frames--I was referring to the graph you posted a while back that showed the large jumps in usership occurred at around the 2 year mark for most social networks--the only outlier being Instagram.

[xtester]

I am thinking there is a very easy way to determine if Steem or any competitor such as Peerplays is failing.

As @xtester wrote in his most recent blog, it is all about the rate of growth. Which is what I've been saying.

Seems Steem signups are averaging in the rough neighborhood of 1000 per day and are not increasing. Of these, about 80+% become inactive within 30 days or less (xtester claims 66% but I think he is fooled by a recent reacceleration of signups and my prior calculations showed 80+%).

So with actually about 200 signups per day, that is ... drumroll please ... a humongous 73,000 active users after 1 year.

And we don't know how many of those are bots. And we don't know how many of those will quit within a year.

73,000 users is freckle on an elephants ass when we are talking about the economies-of-scale in networking that are necessary to make a social network (and merchant) ecosystem viable.

Even if we increase that by an order-of-magnitude, at 730,000 users in one year, it is still at least an order-of-magnitude insufficient.

There is a deeper point. The Steem adoption rate numbers are indicative of lack of viral spread. The signups are merely barely replacing attrition. Intuitively I am nearly certain that the reason is because there is no compelling networking of the reason to signup.

Try to understand the reason people signed up for other social networks. It was because they did something very unique and in high demand. So when all your friends were joining, you caved in and joined too.

Steem has none of those attributes. It doesn't do something very unique that is in high demand. And not all of my friends are joining. The reason is because most people don't give a fuck about storage persistance and censorship resistance, and blogging to earn $ is not something most people can do well (and besides it is not immediately gratification and requires a lot of work, both of which are things the masses hate).

Sorry you need a new formula and Peerplays can repeat this same mistake but it won't cross the chasm.

I have a plan and a design and now I've chosen a 5 letter, one syllable name.

I think growth is critical, everything else should follow from that.

But it seems to me your analysis is missing an important point, namely, that the initial beginning of a viral growth seems to be more counter-intuitive until it reaches a critical point where, all of a sudden, lots of other unforeseen network effects kick in and it becomes obvious. It is only with the benefit of hindsight that the puzzle fits together.

Will probably write a longer post discussing the problem. I am also putting serious thought into a design and Steemit is an extremely valuable inspiration.

I had some preliminary architecture in mind, but think it can be hugely improved thanks to recent experiments with several other projects.

[bbc.reporter]

My guess it is in more in the 2 year time frame for social media success--and not in the rocket ascent of an instagram outlier.

I believe it is unlikely for Steem to make any changes that would create viral adoption. I thus believe it will peak at much less than 1 million users.

Yes I think you need a rocket viral ascent.


The Chinese appear to be coming to game Steem's curation reward system:

This has never happened before, and Maximum CPC exceeds 800%

Later they will realize they need to collude to take more of the money, as did the Bitcoin Chinese mining cartel.

But Bitcoin has a use case. I fear Steem will unravel. I don't think it can sustain at a low level of usership because the forces holding it up are expectations and later these must turn into fighting over money (Tragedy of the Commons).

All that changes perhaps if Steem has a widespread use case. But I don't see it.

I wonder what it is with Asians. They always like to cheat when it comes to money. They did the same with Stellar when they had a facebook giveaway. It is also the same in games of chance. All they do is try to cheat.

[AlexGR]

My guess it is in more in the 2 year time frame for social media success--and not in the rocket ascent of an instagram outlier.

I believe it is unlikely for Steem to make any changes that would create viral adoption. I thus believe it will peak at much less than 1 million users.

Yes I think you need a rocket viral ascent.


The Chinese appear to be coming to game Steem's curation reward system:

This has never happened before, and Maximum CPC exceeds 800%

Later they will realize they need to collude to take more of the money, as did the Bitcoin Chinese mining cartel.

But Bitcoin has a use case. I fear Steem will unravel. I don't think it can sustain at a low level of usership because the forces holding it up are expectations and later these must turn into fighting over money (Tragedy of the Commons).

All that changes perhaps if Steem has a widespread use case. But I don't see it.

I wonder what it is with Asians. They always like to cheat when it comes to money. They did the same with Stellar when they had a facebook giveaway. It is also the same in games of chance. All they do is try to cheat.

That's the point though: Cryptocurrency systems should not be cheatable. If you have gaming vectors then you must patch them (unless it involves social engineering / gaming the human psychology). In that sense, anyone showing you an exploitable attack vector is doing a service.

[iamnotback]

I have a plan and a design and now I've chosen a 5 letter, one syllable name.

My mother who is 70, former newspaper co-editor, and who is much more astute with words and language than I am, says that she really likes the new name I have thought of.

She said it fits well with the memes of Millenial generation, is also a very serious name while having a fun side that is even applicable to music (as well as blogging), and has numerous meanings all of which are applicable.

So I think the name choice is done. I don't expect any competing project to find a better name than the one I've chosen.

I wonder what it is with Asians. They always like to cheat when it comes to money. They did the same with Stellar when they had a facebook giveaway. It is also the same in games of chance. All they do is try to cheat.

Use or be used has been the reality in Asia. Asians are very comfortable with the reality of economic slavery. We in the West have had such a good run of economic success (as opposed to the time before the Black Death in Europe when every European was living at the level of rat), that we thought this reality no longer exists.

You can even see this clash of cultures on that one female Steemian blogger @sweetsssj from China, who is just milking the system and doesn't reply to any of my comments which challenge her. She makes clickbait titles and is milking the "China is cool" circle-jerk. Meaning she wants to reply only to superficial comments, and she doesn't want to frankly interact with her audience (contrast against music creator Leah McHenry below or some of the other popular western female Steemian bloggers such as @kaylinart).

...

I think growth is critical, everything else should follow from that.

Agreed, but growth comes from some underlying viral qualities.

But it seems to me your analysis is missing an important point, namely, that the initial beginning of a viral growth seems to be more counter-intuitive until it reaches a critical point where, all of a sudden, lots of other unforeseen network effects kick in and it becomes obvious. It is only with the benefit of hindsight that the puzzle fits together.

Well yeah it looks unpredictable to those who are incapable of loading everything that is going on, in their head and processing it.

We know already based on current metrics that Steemit.com (as current formulated) is not scaling virally. I am counting only about 1500 serious users on the 7 day active distribution at steemd.com.

What is less obvious is whether there are some feature changes or entirely new UI apps built on the Steem blockchain, which could fundamentally alter the current trajectory. If my analysis of the key flaws is correct, then I think the Steem blockchain is incompatible with any attempt to build a different UI on it for viral growth.

Will probably write a longer post discussing the problem. I am also putting serious thought into a design and Steemit is an extremely valuable inspiration.

I had some preliminary architecture in mind, but think it can be hugely improved thanks to recent experiments with several other projects.

I think the blackswan is more likely to come from a competitor to Steem which is not just a fork.

Btw, the following confirms everything I've been saying about the critical importance of building sub-communities (and make sure you listen to how she first failed with posting her content to Facebook). But it also points to a serious fault in Steem's design of making everything public on the blockchain:

http://tomwoods.com/podcast/ep-715-libertarian-musician-leah-mchenry-builds-an-audience-from-zero/

Click "popout" on the audio player, skip to the 12:20min mark, and you will hear the most relevant comment w.r.t. Steemit. Very insightful point about the importance of owning your followers and the danger of existing social networks. However, isn't there a problem if Steemit is making this data public, so that competitors can steal your marketing mailing list.

This is also relevant:

https://steemit.com/steem-help/@jacor/can-the-social-code-be-cracked

[iamnotback]

I've really enjoyed Steem(it), because I've been able to see what real people are up to and thinking. And I've come across some (at least above average) intelligent, attractive mothers.

Afaik, @kaylinart has been one of the most enthusiastic and artistically talented female bloggers on Steem:

I wouldn't bet the farm on Steem(it), because it doesn't appear to be spreading virally, there are only ~1500 active users who've earned $100s, and posting metrics have been declining since mid-July.

You are being paid out of a debasement (i.e. increase in the supply) of the pool of Steem tokens, which requires investors continue buying Steem tokens, and the other users don't power down. But if SP holders and investors realize the site isn't actually growing at a sufficient rate to become viable...

Btw, you were the #13 top defector from the ecosystem this past week. I was #44. You tried to sugar coat the reason you withdrew funds, ostensibly because of the politics of how you generate income from your posts. I didn't try to make any excuses for why I withdrew my earnings from the site.  That isn't a criticism, but rather perhaps an observation instructive to why some people refer to this place as a "circle-jerk".

You are talented and I hope you can find a sustainable niche in art, as Leah McHenry as apparently done in music (even after she has borne 5 children!).

I wasn't intending to imply your only possible talent is in art. I agree with what @schro wrote in a comment about your communication senses being very compatible with the current desire of the Steem community for inspiring, intelligent, thoughtful, feisty, provocative messages, regardless if that is something any significant group would actually pay for.

My point is that it is easy for people to monetarily vote to tip such, when they feel it isn't being taken out of their own wallet. There seems to be this groupthink on Steem that we can force the rest of the world to change because we are so awesome, but that isn't the way marketing actually works. You have an astute sense of the reality of the world, so even if I haven't communicated my point clearly, I assume you will understand.

Edit:

> You tried to sugar coat the reason you withdrew funds

Apologies I confused you with @katecloud who was #19 "defector" on the prior week and her excuse:

https://steemit.com/art/@katecloud/i-cashing-in-steem-hiking-the-appalachian-trail-and-body-painting-a-maxium-model

[AlexGR]

https://steemit.com/steemit/@alexgr/steemit-creators-this-is-the-best-feedback-you-can-get-go-undercover-for-a-week-as-minnows

[iamnotback]

New kind of spam might drive away females?

6 days ago

Receive 0.069 SBD from holzmichl

Thank you for the blowjob

[iamnotback]

The reputation system has turned voting into a weapon of mass destruction in the hands of a dolphin versus a minnow (as we predicted it would):

See comments of @nameles on this page:

https://steemit.com/life/@kaylinart/is-online-dating-good-or-bad-for-society

Read how ballastic she went against this user on the following page near my comment:

Regardless of  the facts of the discord, you should not have the power to drop someone's reputation site-wide, because you do not represent everyone's views. Voting is a dysfunctional paradigm, and it will not succeed.

However it should also be possible for your coterie to collectively agree that his posts are spam for your like-minded group and have them automatically be filtered.

[AlexGR]

I just encountered a game-theory-twist from the contributor point of view: If my post is considered garbage = I'm deleting it.

https://steemit.com/self-curation/@blockcodes/5zspes-content-with-no-value-will-be-removed

Mind blown at the implications...

The reputation system has turned voting into a weapon of mass destruction in the hands of a dolphin versus a minnow (as we predicted it would):

If there was a hardcap of 5 points by any individual (or "account" as Smooth corrected me), it wouldn't have happened (rep per day cap would still have caused it):

https://steemit.com/steemit/@alexgr/steemit-proposal-hardcap-any-reputation-reduction-from-a-single-individual-to-5

[AlexGR]

https://steemit.com/bots/@ygglas/upvote-follow-flags-per-0-01usd-accs-contract-price

Upvote / follow / flags / per 0.01$ , accs: contract price
1 hour ago by ygglas25
Upvote / follow / flags / accs steem market
https://steemit.com/@steemitmarket
anonymously
start price :
0.01$ per upvote and/or follow
0.01$ per flag
payment after work.
accounts: contract price.
now we have 800 bots with 3 SP , every day increases
Contacts:
telegram: @steemitmarket
skype: live:622390a9ed79e86f
facebook: https://facebook.com/steemitmarket

LOOOOL

[bbc.reporter]

https://steemit.com/bots/@ygglas/upvote-follow-flags-per-0-01usd-accs-contract-price

Upvote / follow / flags / per 0.01$ , accs: contract price
1 hour ago by ygglas25
Upvote / follow / flags / accs steem market
https://steemit.com/@steemitmarket
anonymously
start price :
0.01$ per upvote and/or follow
0.01$ per flag
payment after work.
accounts: contract price.
now we have 800 bots with 3 SP , every day increases
Contacts:
telegram: @steemitmarket
skype: live:622390a9ed79e86f
facebook: https://facebook.com/steemitmarket

LOOOOL

This arrives me to a question of will those people gaming the system massively make Steem tokens more in demand because of it? The more and more people use these services meaning the more and more people will want to hold it. It will then after make the demand for the Steem tokens higher than before. Is this a rational assessment?

[iamnotback]

This arrives me to a question of will those people gaming the system massively make Steem tokens more in demand because of it? The more and more people use these services meaning the more and more people will want to hold it. It will then after make the demand for the Steem tokens higher than before. Is this a rational assessment?

You always need greater fools, otherwise there is a net outflow of exchange because serious people only do it if they are generating an extractable profit.

So you must ask if enough greater fools will become enticed to waste their money on this activity. I don't think so. Everyone on Steem(it), appears to be there to either extract money or to be a cheerleader. Those who invested in Steem, surely don't want to basterdize it by paying for these activities (unless the reason for their investment was to acquire enough SP to extract from the pool).

So looks to me to be yet another extraction mechanism, drawing more out of the collective pool.

I just encountered a game-theory-twist from the contributor point of view: If my post is considered garbage = I'm deleting it.

https://steemit.com/self-curation/@blockcodes/5zspes-content-with-no-value-will-be-removed

Mind blown at the implications...

Nobody cares. Let him do that in his own microscopic vacuum.

The reputation system has turned voting into a weapon of mass destruction in the hands of a dolphin versus a minnow (as we predicted it would):

If there was a hardcap of 5 points by any individual (or "account" as Smooth corrected me), it wouldn't have happened (rep per day cap would still have caused it):

https://steemit.com/steemit/@alexgr/steemit-proposal-hardcap-any-reputation-reduction-from-a-single-individual-to-5

She then recruited her staunch supporters to do the same.

Also people can learn to create multiple accounts to bypass.

[iamnotback]

I didn't want to mislead @kaylinart:

But recently I became self employed and I have a lot of debt. I'm using some of the money Ive been making to go on a small vacation and to pay off my debt. Once that is done, I intend to start powering up more.

It is very wise to pay off all debt before investing in a speculative blockchain project, especially one that locks up your money for 1 year average holding period.

I should make some disclosures so that you will be able to weigh my opinion with an understanding of my biases. If you had followed my links to Bitcointalk.org discussion, and had read many of iamnotback's (my) posts there, you would come to realize that I am intending to create a competitor to Steem, that will have some significant differences.

The problem I see with Steem's voting paradigm is that it motivates producing content which appeals site-wide, instead of to a coterie of like-minded followers. But site-wide focused content is a groupthink, meaning I think Steem will struggle to be relevant to wider diversity of audiences.

Also blogging is not something most people can do well, so why will millions of others join if the only they can read of the "we are change" (self-help, libertarian principles, anarchy proponents, why steemians are awesome, etc) groupthink blogs. The stats show that 93% of signups don't even earn $10 on Steem(it), so why would they bother to stay here. On Medium there are 20,000 people who blog weekly, and 25 million unique monthly blog readers. On Steem(it), we appear to have about 1500 serious bloggers active in the past week who've earned at least $100s. I doubt that Steemit has 2 million unique monthly readers (which is another reason to think Steemit's Alexa rank is not correct or manipulated as it estimates 6.5 million monthly readers).

But more importantly, I don't see why those serious Medium bloggers would switch to Steem(it), when they can't earn  anything because their content doesn't appeal to the "we are change" mindset of the Steem groupthink.

And without growth, the monetary system of Steem will implode as it would then just be all of us extracting from the collective debasement of the money supply without any widespread viral growth to show for it, that would drive investment.

I have what I think is a better design, which solves these dilemmas. I think voting is a dysfunctional paradigm for numerous reasons. We shouldn't even be bothered with trying to discern what a vote should mean, as for example how you used downvoting as a weapon against @nameles who you felt was bad for the site. I understand the frustration with trolls and also the desire to protect the site, but that ends up as a war of attrition and no one wins if we all bind ourselves together in one groupthink and fight over who has control. Instead the solution is decentralization of groupings, so our like-minded groupings have localized control, not site-wide.

Also I think the Steem(it) name sucks. It doesn't speak to what a site like this really does and should be about, in terms of being a store of content for content producers.

I am not powering up because I must lock up my investment for 2 years (1 year weighted average price to power down). And in crypto s/w world, everything can change in a one month. The design I am contemplating, won't force anyone to power up in order to invest. Steem's design dilutes (liquid not powered up) STEEM at 50% yearly, thus it is not very attractive for medium-term speculation.

There are numerous flaws I see in Steem, although I think it has been an important experiment and I congratulate the creators on their initial success.

As in all things, best to diversify to hedge our bets. I continue to support Steem(it) and want to see where it can go, while I am also working on a competing design, so we all have options. Competition is what drives improvement.

Edit: my key point is that the groupthink of voting will discourage diversification of content and readership and thus limit Steem's upside adoption. So far, the metrics seem to support my view that Steem is topping out in a crypto-libertarian-nerd-hippie groupthink.

And to challenge Jeff:

Jeff, I don't think you nor the people you interviewed understand my reasons why I think Steem(it) will fail. Please read the following comment trail. Your anarchy theme and audience is well tuned to the groupthink, so it is misleading you as to actual appeal of this "circle-jerk" groupthink to the world outside our microscopic audiences.

Edit:

So today, @anyz posted this article The Steemit Tragedy of The Commons, i must say it is well-written and addressed most of my concerns about steemit's future. In particular, i refer to current steemit's content which is, i believe to be a race to the bottom in content quality.

It won't improve until we get rid of voting as the relevance and funding metric; and enable a way for specialist coteries to form spontaneously.

[serejandmyself]

https://steemit.com/bots/@ygglas/upvote-follow-flags-per-0-01usd-accs-contract-price

Upvote / follow / flags / per 0.01$ , accs: contract price
1 hour ago by ygglas25
Upvote / follow / flags / accs steem market
https://steemit.com/@steemitmarket
anonymously
start price :
0.01$ per upvote and/or follow
0.01$ per flag
payment after work.
accounts: contract price.
now we have 800 bots with 3 SP , every day increases
Contacts:
telegram: @steemitmarket
skype: live:622390a9ed79e86f
facebook: https://facebook.com/steemitmarket

LOOOOL

This arrives me to a question of will those people gaming the system massively make Steem tokens more in demand because of it? The more and more people use these services meaning the more and more people will want to hold it. It will then after make the demand for the Steem tokens higher than before. Is this a rational assessment?

I think we need Ip restrctions

[iamnotback]

Another major flaw in Steem:

Does Steemit want to be the Buzzfeed of the Blockchain world, because without residual payouts, that's exactly what will happen!

The way I see it, the potential for this as a content publishing platform is extremely limited if it's one or two payouts and done.

I agree!

Btw, another major flaw is there is no choice to make a self-moderated blog:

It is important to have the power to block trolls from some field of view, so there is a symmetrical power balance, which also empowers ignoring them versus feeding them by engaging them. However, it shouldn't be possible globally block a troll from everyone's view, as that is censorship.

[AlexGR]

I just encountered a game-theory-twist from the contributor point of view: If my post is considered garbage = I'm deleting it.

https://steemit.com/self-curation/@blockcodes/5zspes-content-with-no-value-will-be-removed

Mind blown at the implications...

Nobody cares. Let him do that in his own microscopic vacuum.

But this doesn't affect one person. Behaviors can be replicated and even become viral.

Another major flaw in Steem:

Does Steemit want to be the Buzzfeed of the Blockchain world, because without residual payouts, that's exactly what will happen!

The way I see it, the potential for this as a content publishing platform is extremely limited if it's one or two payouts and done.

I agree!

There seems to be a resource issue with how the graphene blockchain operates? Bloat, ram issues are cited in the github conversation for eliminating anything post-30-days and focusing on twitter-izing it to clickbait short-lived content.

I think this could be fixable by optimizing the software (I've seen some screenshots from a witness I think with ...6.5gb use on a ~2gb blockchain which is absurd - you can't require 3 times the whole size of the blockchain).

But what would be really problematic is the scaling of rewards. To keep rewards same: 100x userbase (7mn) needs 100x marketcap (20bn marketcap) and 1000x userbase needs 1000x marketcap. Now if a lot of these rewards go to old content (which I'm in favor of, btw), the problem of paying new content is worsened. A lot. Because then the pool of rewards for new content goes down significantly. Actually, the more content there is in the past, the lower the potential slice for rewards for new content, unless this is managed by an algorithm which says, only 10-30% of payouts go to old content, 70-90% goes to new.

[iamnotback]

I just encountered a game-theory-twist from the contributor point of view: If my post is considered garbage = I'm deleting it.

https://steemit.com/self-curation/@blockcodes/5zspes-content-with-no-value-will-be-removed

Mind blown at the implications...

Nobody cares. Let him do that in his own microscopic vacuum.

But this doesn't affect one person. Behaviors can be replicated and even become viral.

Nobody cares, so it can't go viral.

Another major flaw in Steem:

Does Steemit want to be the Buzzfeed of the Blockchain world, because without residual payouts, that's exactly what will happen!

The way I see it, the potential for this as a content publishing platform is extremely limited if it's one or two payouts and done.

I agree!

There seems to be a resource issue with how the graphene blockchain operates? Bloat, ram issues are cited in the github conversation for eliminating anything post-30-days and focusing on twitter-izing it to clickbait short-lived content.

I think this could be fixable by optimizing the software (I've seen some screenshots from a witness I think with ...6.5gb use on a ~2gb blockchain which is absurd - you can't require 3 times the whole size of the blockchain).

But what would be really problematic is the scaling of rewards. To keep rewards same: 100x userbase (7mn) needs 100x marketcap (20bn marketcap) and 1000x userbase needs 1000x marketcap. Now if a lot of these rewards go to old content (which I'm in favor of, btw), the problem of paying new content is worsened. A lot. Because then the pool of rewards for new content goes down significantly. Actually, the more content there is in the past, the lower the potential slice for rewards for new content, unless this is managed by an algorithm which says, only 10-30% of payouts go to old content, 70-90% goes to new.

You are starting to understand what I meant upthread when I said I don't think Graphene can scale, and that their decision for interactivity with WebSockets instead of prioritizing cached content chunks also impact scaling.

Let this be a lesson to @generalizethis, that when I say something has issues and is not yet a slamdunk, it is wise to remember that I do know a fair amount about software development and marketing. It doesn't mean I won't make mistakes (and especially the case that I will make mistakes when I get this fucking brainfog headache enjoined by stomach pain, chronic fatigue aka sleepiness but inability to sleep and numbness of my limbs from my illness)

[iamnotback]

In those comments you offer quite an interesting opinion - which I think deserves to be turned into a separate post.

Ty. I will blog post again when I have something to offer as solution. Not to just make more complaints.

What makes you think that, as time goes by, the whales will not diversify and start specializing in different areas?

1. Because they are all cryptonerds.
2. They are all (now due to Steem) rich with presumably masters and PhD education, so they won't identify with the interests of the masses.
3. They don't have time to be engrossed in "1000 points of light" content cultivation. They can't get down in close to niches the way individual bloggers could. For example, travel isn't just one niche, but dozens or 100s of niches.
4. Knowledge creation is like spontaneous combustion. It can't be top-down managed. It is a grass roots, bottom up activity. I wrote about this some years ago and we were discussing it at Bitcointalk in depth over these years.
5. Static content is not the value of the social network. The value is in the network connections and the dynamic interaction between the blogger and sub-community. A whale is an outsider to this interactive grass roots process. The whale can't even see all the information because it is happening in real-time ongoing. I refer you also to this blog on the fact that Steem doesn't understand the content must be alive.

[AlexGR]

I was thinking about the capping of rewards on posts, to make more "room" for smaller posts to get something from the reward pool and stop the useless piling of whales. I think it was Dan writing that the first whale gets something like 80% so whales don't have the same incentive to upvote when there's already some heavy upvoting beforehand, yet the piling up continues up to the thousands.

In theory this is fixable by curation (whale downvoting reducing payouts to sane levels), but in practice it is problematic (reputation, less incentives for downvoting compared to upvoting and getting curation rewards etc).

Now caps are a bit communistic, so I was thinking alternatives.

At some point I had an idea which is similar to how the local court system operates in regards to claims for damages. The courts here require a deposit of 0.8% IIRC for any claim. Like if I want a million in damages, I have to pay something like 8000 euro which I lose no matter what. So if you go too greedy you lose some money.

To avoid this, the courts allow the possibility of you asking the court what is an appropriate level that you should be asking for - and then you can adjust accordingly for the lawsuit that you'll be making (but you lose plenty of time in the process) and pay the corresponding 0.8% of that amount... so your chances are increased.

In any case, I was thinking about a similar system where if you go too greedy you lose something and if you are more humble, you gain.

Author writes a post and then self-determines what they are aiming at (max reward) in terms of rewards.

If they are aiming at 10.000+, they get a multiplier of 0.35x on their earnings. So if they really hit 10.000, they get 3.500. But if they hit 100.000, they keep 35.000. It might sound a ripoff but if there were caps involved at, say, 1000 or 5000, then that money would be lost anyway. This is a cap-alternative system - remember.

If they are aiming at 5000-9999, they get a multiplier of 0.5x on their earnings
If they are aiming at 1000-4999, they get a multipler of 0.6x on their earnings
If they are aiming at 500-999, they get a multiplier of 0.75x on their earnings
If they are aiming at 200-499, they get a multiplier of 0.85x on their earnings
If they are aiming up to 199.999, they get a multiplier of 1x on their earnings

The range acts as a self-imposed cap. The incentive to impose it on yourself is an increase on your own multiplier. The lower cap you use, the higher the multiplier you are getting.

So if you declare a post in the 500-999 category, and you get upvotes for 1500$, you are still at 999 max - you don't get to make more because that's your desired maximum. (To hit 999 you'd need 999/0.75 = 1332$ worth of upvotes.)

In a way you have created a mechanism where users try to "self-penalize" themselves the least possible while also aiming to what they consider realistic. This could also be "rebranded" with a positive spin (multipliers bigger than 1 so that instead of appearing negative, it appears positive and users try to "self-reward" themselves for not being greedy) but you get the idea.

Do you think that something like that can work and if no, why?