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Is Gamifying Curation Rewards Necessary?

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Dalz
@dalz
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5 min read

Seems like we are on constant debate about the curation(staking) rewards on Hive.

Why do we have this debate in the first place?

The reason is because of the global reward pool and gamified curation rewards. Who will get the most of that shared reward pool.

Curation rewards on Hive are gamified by the following parameters:

  • Voting window (time of voting)
  • Hive Power that votes after you
  • Number of votes (voting power)
  • Downvotes
  • Overall payouts of the post

We know the 5 minutes rule. When you vote early then 5 minutes, a penalty is implemented, and a share of the CR is lost. Next if a lot other users (HP) vote after you (especially whales😊) you are getting better CR as a reward for “discovering” that popular content first. If no downvotes comes, the CR will be unaffected. The last one, overall payouts, where a post under ~4$ (somewhere around 300k to 400k HP) votes are penalized and earn less.

There is a lot to talk about the current setup of the CR and how its gamified, but that is not the prime focus on the post. I’m just making a short overview of the things involved at the current gamification of CR on Hive and can and should we get rid of them?

In theory gamification is great. It creates competition and more stakeholders fighting for rewards, increasing the demand for the stake in the first place. Games are basically based on this. You play Splinterlands, if you win you get reward, if not you get nothing. Everyone understand this, and nobody is complaining.

But here we are talking about social. Competing for global reward pool with gamified curation can be toxic on some occasions. It puts the stakeholders under moral dilemma as well. If I do this Ill earn more from my stake, but people will shout at me.
I cannot use my stake to maximize my staking rewards!?

No gamification, equal curation rewards for everyone?

Is this possible at all? Is it the right thing to do?

What will happen if we remove all the parameters above?

  • No voting window, or max 7 days as the payout window
  • Doesn’t matter how much HP have voted after you
  • No downvotes
  • Doesn’t matter what is the overall value of the post

Everyone earns the same, they just need to vote. Stake is stake and it earns the same for everyone. No need to fight over high CR and creating toxicity in the process.

Seems quite elegant and pressure free. No need to time curation at all.

What will be the problem then?

Abusing self voting?

Yes, if all the aspects of the gamified curation are removed, even downvotes, self voting will be the most obvious and easy way to increase your staking rewards. After all the author/curation rewards are 50/50 share and when you vote someone else you gave up 50% of your staking rewards.

How to prevent abusive self voting?

In a stake based, KYC free environment, this is a challenge.

From all the parameters above (timing, HP voting after you, downvotes, post payout sum) we might want to leave the downvotes. Also leave some extra time for downvotes, then upvotes, to prevent last minute upvotes.

Making downvotes anonymous can be helpful as well, since no small stakeholder would take it on a fight against a bigger one. But limit the downvotes to only one free downvote per day, instead of the two now, to prevent downvote abuse.

In this way we will have a big part of the gamified curation removed, leaving downvotes only.
But downvotes also generate quite a lot of toxicity. In fact, they are the worst. Nobody is getting as mad because of frontrunners, early voters etc. They get mad when a downvote happens.

Can we remove downvotes from the curation game?

Removing downvotes would be possible only if the upvotes are reduced in a form of voluntary tipping.

What this would mean is that all the rewards go to stakeholders. The author/curation share of 50/50 would be 0/100. A stakeholder would have his rewards accumulated, in form of potential for curating, let’s say for a period od 7 days. If he doesn’t vote/tip someone, all of them will go to his wallet. 100% curation rewards.
If he votes/curates he will be giving out 50% of his rewards voluntarily, no need to downvote that 😊.

This is quite a radical change for the platform. What it would means for the content creators or the platform in general, can’t tell. But it is the only way to remove gamification in the curation/staking rewards, removing downvotes as well, and still remains a KYC free.

Something close to this would be higher curation rewards 😊. Quite the opposite from the @blocktrades recent post. What this means curators gets let’s say 80%.
Then they will have only 20% to give out to authors, basically lowering down the overall payouts sum to authors, and the problematic gamified share of the curation rewards. This should lower down the incentive for abuse. Leave some space for tipping based curation on the top of this might be a good option as well.

Not sure will this work, since even a 1% difference can be a lot for someone, and they would like to take advantage of that as well. But at least the level of abuse should be lower.

One more aspect is the number of votes. We know that now you need to vote 10 times per day at 100% to use your vote power. If you want to vote with less than 100% (if you are a whale) then it becomes much more votes than 10. Autovotes, or a semi-autovotes solve this. But if want more manual curation maybe to make it possible to drain higher voting power with one vote. Like drain your VP for a 10% in one vote instead of 2%? Just an example.

Final thoughts

The option for curation rewards would be the following:

  • Keep the current system and play with the parameters, voting time, curve, post payout etc,
  • Remove all the parameters, keep the downvotes only
  • Make curation voluntary, tipping with the staking rewards

How to weight this? What is the best option? Is it better to have gamified curation rewards withs some toxicity on the way, or make it voluntary and altruistic action of tipping, where no downvotes are needed?

I think that even if the option for 100% CR with optional voting/tipping is set, it won’t eliminate toxicity 100%. People will say that they are voting and the others not. Start calling everyone to vote.

Maybe some combination of higher CR, 70%, 80%, and downvotes only. No timing, post value, etc.

Some might argue that the token will not spread around enough (decentralization) with 75% CR, but HIVE has more than four years under his belt and stake distribution, that started with 75% share for the authors. A fork that eliminating the largest stakeholder as well. It has reached enough stakeholders. In fact, you don’t need millions to give the token value. Having 100 large buyers will do as well. I know a lot will say we want to reach millions, and I do as well, but we can get there with a higher CR, and a lot of apps, or second layer tokens. If you think you will lose because of lower AR, remember you will also gain with higher CR.

I think this is a logical pattern for a token. You start with higher inflation and giveaway of the token, than slowly lowering down inflation and don’t give it away as much. Bitcoin followed this pattern.

For example, the tribe tokens are all new, and they have 50/50 share as the base token. That is how they started. Its ok for them to go under this inflation few more years. Hive might be mature for higher curation rewards.

Are there other options?

All the best @dalz

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