Small Town Life!
I have been on Proofofbrain.io for just over a week, and guess what? I have posted every day but 1 (we all need to take a break sometimes right?). I have been trying to get back into posting every day as I did on steem a few years ago. It is hard to feel motivated when it feels like you are writing to nobody and all of your upvotes are likely automated. It is hard to watch a post that you put a lot of hard work on seemingly disappear into an abyss unseen. I look at the trending page and I see a bunch of posts that are not as good or as thoughtful as some of my posts getting large payouts and I cannot help but feel discouraged.
Since joining the POB tribe, I feel motivated again. This is not because I am getting some nice rewards (that is nice too), but also that we are small enough that people are reading and engaging, commenting. It feels like a small town. This is great!
My largest fear!
No, it is not the boogey man or Godzilla. My largest fear was watching the @proofofbrainio account grow so rapidly and the future potential.
My fear was a valid one, but has been dispelled.
OK, out with it!
The way that staking POB works made @proofofbrainio the largest stakeholder, and rightfully so. However, if that account continued to curate for the next 5 years. It would likely hold a very large percentage of stake and become some sort of mega-whale that has not been seen since the likes of Justin Sun on Steem!
As it stands, @proofofbrainio is doing a great job curating and essentially distributing the early tokens to accounts that are working to make this site one of the most robust communities on the blockchain. The large upvote is one of the best distribution mechanisms. Those that put in low effort posts don't receive many tokens and therefore, won't have much stake. Over the short term, POB'ers are earning stake in the platform by writing, curating and engaging. The POB account has been flawlessly growing accounts that are putting in good work.
For every upvote that an account makes, it will receive half of the minted tokens and give the other account half of those minted tokens. What does this mean for the @proofofbrainio account? It is getting as much POB as it is distributing.
My fear that over time was that this account would grow too big and create controversy and centralization. Over time, this could de-value the token and cause the tribe to essentially fail.
Take Bitcoin
If Satoshi appeared tomorrow with his keys to his million bitcoin, what would happen to the market? I bet it would crash. Even if Satoshi did not move any of his coins to an exchange, I bet it would crash. Now, imagine if Satoshi has 8 times as many Bitcoin as he is claimed to have now? Would we even be here? Would this space be considered legit or would Satoshi be considered a genius who solved one of the worlds toughest puzzles and then asked for too much and that was the end of it?
We cannot know for sure.
Fears Gone.
Yesterday in this post @proofofbrainio takes us through the happenings. One of the main things going on is the new POB-fund that has been developed. Now, we can add @pob-fund as a beneficiary to our posts (as I am doing on this one) to help fund development and get POB even better.
@proofofbrainio finished the post by letting us know that moving forward, all of their posts will have @pob-fund set as a 100% beneficiary. They went on to say that their account is "big enough". This is AMAZING news. The account has permanent whale status and will now be using its POB power to develop a bigger and better product.
Not only are my fears of some super-whale controlling a huge amount of stake and greedily hoarding it dispelled, but we have benevolent whale that is going to help grow this ecosystem.
Let me be clear
This was an irrational fear based solely on a "worst case senario." I think that @proofofbrainio has done a wonderful job starting a community and distributing tokens to those that will benefit the ecosystem. This is by no means any critique on their work and is based solely on my own fears that were based on the math and staking mechanisms. What could have happened did not even come close to happen.
After one month of account growth... this account is now giving to charity. Bravo!