I missed the town hall meeting because I had some offline work to attend to this morning. But since I have time at hand today I decided to listen to the recording of the meeting which was very informative by the way. You know if not for these meetings people like me wouldn't know shit about things happening in the Blockchain. I started by hearing about steempress witness being shut down like a lot of other steem projects. I thought I would look into it and I saw that the project was really nice, holding the top 20 spot over the years and finally shutting down at this point… Well, I never really knew about it (a lot I don't know about lol) . It's just strange to hear a project that long is shutting down.
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THE REWARD POOL
According to r0nd0n, this is a discussion that has been going on from way back and it seems to be resurfacing every now and then. I think what I understand about the idea is bringing in more value to the Blockchain and liquid hive. But then again in my personal opinion, I think instead of moving the reward pool a layer two, which might cause an uproar in the system and destabilize it a bit Even though it comes back strong, it's better to redesign the system by which curators earn from the reward pool. Now I will get back to this in a bit, but just like Eric said all these are ideas, which I call stipulations and discussions that come up every now and then and nothing is being worked on at the moment.
Back to what I was saying. I feel instead of moving the entire pool to layer two, it would be better to continue working on a process to see only hard work is compensated duly. This would bring more value to the Blockchain as authors who do not put much effort into work but earn high curations will be overlooked. Many of the authors with these privileges which often come by being part of a community or winning upvotes from a whale without putting out standard content feel like they know how to navigate the system for upvotes and keep on doing so because the system supports it.
Just like the Blockchain has a strong stand on AI-generated Posts, it can create a system to the standard a post should meet under any niche before it is curated, and this standard is not just the normal 500 words thing many communities do but real standards showing the values and ethics of both the communities and the Blockchain. The InkWell community is one community I have seen with such standards. They make an active assessment of every content that comes into their community which reduces the number of low content and low efforts authors in that community. I'm not saying this because I make only high-standard content, even though I try the best way I can, but I must admit sometimes I put in low content, and communities like Ink Well have helped me work on myself and think twice about not making enough effort.
Another thing I would like to highlight is something Eric mentioned about stakes as the only thing considered in this current reward pool. He suggested that it would be better if attention is given as much value to stakes. I mean it's easy for someone with 100k HP to get upvotes than someone with 100 HP even if the 100 HP vote is more valuable. I agree with this, but I also think stakes are hard work. Someone with 100k HP is adding value in stakes to hive, and the other is adding value in content and both deserve commendation, none should be overlooked.
This brings me to another interesting point R0nd0n made about the seven-day payment threshold on hive. In fact, I have been thinking a lot about it myself before listening to this podcast and I must say it's kinda limiting seeing how it has made great content irrelevant to the creator. When contents lose their value after seven days, they become almost useless. I think it would be better to redesign how content should be paid after seven days, maybe giving 30% to the author and 70% to the community so that the author can continue earning royalties from great content. It's not easy to create content of value, so it shouldn't be overlooked. Take the hive learners community for instance, and the value they give with contents, especially the newbies initiative courses that are used every year. The creators of those contents deserve royalties for their work and not just a seven-day payout.
WITNESS VOTES
Someone asked a question about voting outside the top 20 witnesses which in my opinion still boils down to the issue of stakes and value. It's just like asking if you should roll with the big boys instead of the ones hustling to make a name… I mean who wouldn't want to roll with the big boys lol. But then again this should be a matter of individual value and not just what others are doing. I notice many who vote for these witnesses don't even know shit about what they are voting for, but I guess it's the advantage of having a big name in the Blockchain. This is where I would drop the pen, and I will end by saying what a podcast this was, intriguing and enlightening topics for discussion.
