Thank you for your reply and the resteem, @biophil! I appreciate it.

>... the objective of "minimize reward abuse at all costs" is often not going to give you anything worth having.

I argue that the abuse can be eliminated altogether and it would result in a much more successful social platform for readers, content providers, investors, and all kind of other stake holders. Let me explain.

**Suppose that you were the sole owner of Steemit.** 

How would you behave? How would you distribute the rewards/tips? 

I would distribute the rewards/tips to the best content I come across every day. I would reward contributors that post regularly quality content.

Why? I want to attract those capable contributors and their quality content, because I want to attract more readers to the platform, because with more readers, more people, companies, and institutions are going to come to the platform to advertise and promote their own products, services, and agendas.

That will result in more purchase of Steem to do all of those things. That in turn will result in increased Steem price, which will benefit me and attract even more investors, which will result in even more Steem purchases from regular investors. 

All of this becomes a self-feeding circle. The better it becomes, the better it becomes. Everybody is benefited, investors, content providers, content consumers, and all the other stake holders.

Am I missing something here?

Have to admit, this solution surprised me! Wasn't expecting that. lol But I think you're right @biophil that there isn't really any way to prevent abuse. As long as money exists, an incentive to steal it will exist alongside (to give the most basic example).

I was disappointed that this post didn't branch out into suggestions / ideas for increasing participation on the platform, to get those upvotes made each day. But yes, @bbilgin, this is very thought-provoking!

Thank you for the feedback. Maybe, a new platform has to come out, because around 8% of the $1 billion USD market cap is redistributed every year. That makes more than $80 million USD each year. We can hardly say that that $80 million USD is spent wisely in the current system. How long can Steemit last this type of cash bleed before investors decide a mass exodus and Steemit and all of its currencies implode?

Thank you for the feedback and nice ideas!

>We haven't thought about it greatly, but here's another thought experiment:
Make all posts via subscription or "purchase-to-read" only. Posts still get measured based on money, but that money is given BEFORE you read the full post. So more like a magazine or newspaper. If you like a writer, you can subscribe for a small fee or per-article if you love the headline.

Actually, this is a good idea and if I'm not mistaken this has already been done in patreon and lbry.io. It also resembles to some extent to Medium premium membership.

>Would be great for us if Steemit went away, as it's SOMEWHAT a competitor to this little gem.

I'd have a difficult time investing in a company like SnapChat, because I'm not interested in using it. Very tiny changes in such businesses can result in huge losses or profits. So, I prefer to stick with an index fund like SPY. 

I have some individual stocks, but I bought them long time ago. I'm not interested in buying individual stocks anymore, as I don't want to follow twelve different companies. An exception to that rule is Steemit. 

Since I'm involved with Steemit on a daily basis, I more or less know what to expect from it. If I got involved with twelve different businesses as much as I got involved with Steemit, I had to quit my job and become a full time investor. 

I don't have a huge investment in Steem anyway, because the way its system is designed at the moment, it's losing money to abusers, in my opinion.

I don't think Steemit and Snap are competitors. If I understand correctly, Snap is a mobile and video oriented platform. Steemit is more PC and text oriented. There's no way someone would use that markdown editor to type a post in their mobile I suppose.

>also, traffic would dwindle to just about zero around here!

I don't get what you mean here. If you mean that the traffic would dwindle to zero if we implement the tipping system, I'm not concerned about that at all. If we can eliminate people who are here to randomly post and comment bits and pieces to fish some rewards, I'd be more than happy, as their traffic takes more than adds to the system. I'm afraid, they'll still stick around and fish for tips in the tipping system. So, no such luck.

>Great idea, but only one problem. Where will all the money go which is eventually made from advertisements on the site? We're already seeing ads from the search, where does money go?

>What incentive would there be for the Steem price at all? It would have no value bc there'd be no "dividends" paid from owning it. 

Actually, I explained the answers to those questions in the updated version: https://steemit.com/steemit/@bbilgin/a-solution-proposal-to-the-reward-pool-abuse-problem-on-steemit-updated-version

Thank you for your feedback.

> A daily reward cap on the percentage of the reward pool that any one account could receive

I'm not a proponent of this approach, @novacadian. Once you put a daily cap on what an account could receive, you are introducing two problems.

1. Guaranteed abuse. People will circumvent the cap by creating multiple fake accounts. You will be punishing only the honest users.

2. Loss of talent. People who value their time more than your daily cap will simply not participate in Steemit or limit their time on it. I guess the original idea was $250 USD / day. I strongly believe that there shouldn't be any cap on the daily rewards, so that everybody does their best, because they think the sky is the limit and they can make thousands of dollars every day if they did their best. The challenge is how to incentivize people to do that in an ethical, moral way. I think the tipping system is a way to do that.

Thank you for the link. I'm going to check it.

>Witnesses (are the ONLY ones who get "external" STEEM for their services).

>Other Users (Posters and Commentators alike) will 'only' get STEEM from whatever STEEM is circulating from before the change happens - and from whatever the Witnesses decide to 'tip' into the system (in other words the Witnesses will, for all intents and purposes, become the faucet from which STEEM 'might' come forth (it is "their money" after all).

Exactly, you've got me right.

>... the STEEM will quickly dry up - it'll become an exclusive club of holders - with STEEM initially going up in value by virtue of its scarcity - with Witnesses towering over everybody else by virtue of monopolizing direct access to the STEEM - with everybody else languishing (let alone new users).

For the content providers, it doesn't matter how much Steem they receive. What matters is the fiat equivalent of the Steem they receive. 

Suppose that Steem becomes scarce and valuable and it appreciates from $4 USD to $40 USD. There's a writer who used to average 10 Steems per post when it was $4 USD. When Steem becomes $40 USD, that writer might receive 1 Steem instead of 10, but in fiat terms their average might be the same. 

That writer wouldn't mind going from 10 Steems 1 Steem, because they don't live in the Steemland. They live in a country where they have to pay their expenses in their own fiat currency.

Moreover, I believe the tipped amount would slightly increase as the people start to tip lower and lower amounts of Steem, such as 0.001 Steem. Such amounts would be easier to be tipped due to the psychological effect.

I don't believe we will end up with an exclusive class of holders. Think about Bitcoin. It goes up and it goes down. There will always be people who need to sell their holdings, for example in case of retirement.

Moreover, think about Steems as shares of Steemit. Shareholders of companies such as Apple issue stock options to motivate their employees. This will be exactly the same system. Steem holders are incentivized to tip for good content to increase the value of the platform, which will in turn benefit them.

New users can buy Steem from the free market, like I did, or they can earn Steem through posting and commenting. Steem is not a necessary component to use and experience the platform. 

>... "good" content would be nothing more than those posts delivered by the highest self-tipping (highest STEEM-owning) users... which is 'not' a good indication of the true quality of such works.

I see where you are coming from, but I see this differently. Self-tipping has no financial advantage whatsoever except for exposure. On the other hand, Steem holders, i.e. share holders of Steemit have all the incentive to tip great content to the trending and hot tabs to make Steemit an attractive platform for other users.

>Rewards is what makes most people come here not to reddit or medium. 

I argue that the tipping system is a much superior system than the reward system to attract new users to the system. I explain the reason in my reply to @biophil's comment above and I'm going to publish a post about that, so please keep in touch.

I'll take a look into Brave. I can't say anything about it at the moment, because I don't know anything about it.

>I like the idea of tipping, but I'm not entirely sure it will work. Would that mean people need to convert $10 USD into STEEM, then slowly tip that balance away? Wouldn't that be almost like a subscription model? Or am I missing something?

Steem is and will be a stake in the Steemit ecosystem. The better the Steemit ecosystem does, the better Steem's market price will do. That means, I invest into the Steemit ecosystem through the Steem token.

The Steem token is at the same time a cryptocurrency. That means I can use it in transactions, including tipping good content and authors. 

It's in my interest to tip good content and authors as a Steem investor. Good content and authors increase the value of the Steem ecosystem, which in turn increases the value of Steem, which in turn benefits me as a Steem investor.

>That is basically how the Brave BAT token works. You buy the token, then Brave browser splits up the amount (e.g. 10 BAT) each month across the sites you visited (if the sites registered with Brave). When you run out of the BAT balance, you have to buy more.

My proposal is slightly different than the Brave BAT business model. In the current version of the BAT homepage, their business model foresees advertisers paying the users and publishers, which makes sense if you consider the amount of money flowing to Google and Facebook.

So, in theory, users don't have to buy BAT. They are incentivized to use the Brave browser by the BAT they are going to receive and privacy.

>The trouble I have with BAT is will people continue to see it as having any value. 

If the business model explained above works out, BAT will be valuable and I'm considering investing in it at the moment. I need to do more research though.

>... a browser that very few people use (I'm one of them). In the end, I just don't see people doing that. I did it to try the experiment out. But it's a hassle ... When my BAT deposit in the Brave browser runs out in 10 months, I'll probably stop (in all honesty). I just don't need another thing to do and keep track of.

It's very early. Hopefully, they are going to improve their browser. Moreover, their current business model incentivizes users to adopt the browser. The money is supposed to flow from the advertisers to users and publishers, but I'm not sure this is the case at this moment.

>So how does STEEM in a tipping context work? Would people ever put money into reddit or Medium so they could give it away to everyone else? What characteristics would STEEM have that make it worthwhile? What would maintain its store of value over time?

Great questions. We will keep Steemit as it is, so no need to diversify to Medium or Reddit. The users will have the option to tip a post and/or an author. 

Tipping is worthwhile, because it motivates the authors to provide great content to Steemit, which increases the value of the Steemit ecosystem, which increases the value of Steem, it's a full circle.

Think about public companies such as Apple. They issue stock options to their employees to motivate them. It's a similar principle. 

**How does the increased value of the Steemit ecosystem increase the value of Steem?**

It draws more people to Steemit and make them buy Steem to influence the Steemit ecosystem, because tipping also works as a rating mechanism, which is used to populate the hot and trending tabs.

Steem's usefulness in the business model described above will maintain its store of value over time. As long as the Steemit ecosystem works, Steem will remain as a store of value, just like the shares of a company.

>(I'm guessing that's a future post ... I'm definitely tuning in.)

There'll be a follow up for sure. Thank you for staying in touch!

>Or would people simply refuse to dump money into a Steemit account each month because they'd be spending it right away. 

The idea is to buy Steems as kind of "shares" of the Steemit system. Then, if you choose to, you can use a percentage of it every year to tip content creators to motivate them. 

By the way, that percentage is determined by the system at this moment and it amounts to 6.5% a year. The calculation of that figure can be found in my post titled Can Steemit Survive Burning $65 Million USD in Author and Curator Rewards Every Year? 

For example, I can decide to buy $1000 USD worth of Steem and tip $50 USD worth of Steem in a given year. If in the mean time, my investment goes to $1200 USD, I can decide to tip an extra $50 USD worth of Steem in that year. This way, we give the decision power to the investors.

And don't worry about some people becoming cheap and not tipping at all. There are always people who would want to tip for charitable reasons and/or to promote the posts that fit their agenda. 

In the past, I donated to some bloggers and vloggers, just because their message resonated with me. With this new system, I have even an extra incentive to tip, so, tipping will be much easier.

>I'm really curious about the tipping because I think the rewards pool creates a lot of complexity that has a bunch of side effects. On that particularly bothers me lately is the 7 days to $0, where upvotes after 7 days are worthless -- $0 to the author. Plus no one else can resteem (share) that post with others. It's a real hit to residual income on a post and makes it difficult to justify providing quality content that is effectively a donation to the Steem blockchain after 7 days.

>7 days also makes a joke of curation -- where else in the real world do people stop curating content older than 7 days? Most of the time it takes at least that long to find the good stuff.

>Without a reward pool, tipping greatly simplifies the math and authors could continue to make money off their older work if the work stands the test of time.

I agree completely with you. Seven days is a joke unless they have a reason that I can't think of at the moment. That has to be let go as well.

>So I'm all ears.

Thank you, @seanlloyd! I appreciate it.

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