Anyone who's been here for more than a few weeks knows that proof-of-brain is a fantasy created as a marketing ploy to attract new users. This platform is proof-of-stake, and it will never be anything close to proof-of-brain without massive organization and restructuring.
True test of POB
If you were the best blogger in the world how long should it take you to ascend the ranks of Steem and start receiving the biggest portion of the reward pool? The answer is simple: instantly. The mechanics in place to find stellar content and upvote it to the top should work without any kind of need to build up a network of supporters. Of course, this is extremely idealistic and even unreasonable, but it's still a goal to aim for, just like POB itself. It's a moving target; a carrot on a stick that's just out of reach.
Greed ruins everything.
99.9% of new crypto projects start off on the wrong foot. Why? Because developers aren't thinking about all the cool applications that can be woven into the blockchain. They are stuck in the mindset of how an application can be monetized. After all, if they aren't going to make money off of it directly what's the point?
This is, of course, ridiculous, because anyone with stake should want to raise the value of the platform. We've been brainwashed to think that this is a zero-sum competition because that's all we've known since the day we were born. The idea that someone else might get more rich from our inventions than we would is enough to cause a feedback loop of inaction while brainstorming another project that would provide more direct capital.
The problem here is that the more value a project extracts the less sense it makes to connect that app to the blockchain. Crypto is all about disintermediation, removing the middle man, zero-friction permissionless systems. Any client should also have the option of being a server. How many dapps can you look at that fit this description?
How many dapps can you look at and say: The community owns, regulates, uses, and profits from this app, and it isn't being leeched by any other 3rd party? Literally none of them. Where are all the talented altruistic developers that want to save the world from these invisible bonds of debt-slavery?
I'll tell you where they are at; right back on square one developing the real killer-app of the blockchain: Money. Does Vitalik Buterin get paid Ethereum inflation in compensation for all the great work he's doing there? No. He does it for free, but he has stake so the value he brings gives wealth to everyone. This will be the new way that cooperative economy operates. How can we apply these concepts to the Steem blockchain?
As it stands now, DPOS is working perfectly. Steem allows users to control 90% of inflation without running a node. This is huge. We trust the stake-holders to elect trustworthy witnesses. DPOS is a republic. We leverage the efficiency of this model, at the cost of security/centralization, to allow any account to create inflation. We leveraged that again into a platform that promotes a tipping model. In short, our platform is impossible to copy without using DPOS because POS would require every user to run a node, and POW would require every user to have mining equipment.
Not only that, the 10% inflation that we don't control is returned to us in the form of Resource Credits: a very valuable asset required for posting information to the blockchain.. While Steem is experiencing scaling growing pains, the value of RCs will far outweigh the 10% inflation they cost to acquire.
We have a good setup here. The community is up in arms about price action. Some think Steem is bleeding out simply because we have extra downward pressure. In reality we are light-years ahead of the "competition". What we have now is so much better than fiat, but we don't want better. We want mind-blowing next-generation revolutionary domination. We want proof-of-brain.
POB
If Steem was actually proof-of-brain its value would x1000+ overnight. Honestly, that's probably a gross underestimation. You can't really put a price tag on paying people fairly. It's something that's never been done before. Work ethic died a long time ago. How can we get there from here?
There have been many suggestions! Most of them revolve around a hardfork that would change the fundamental building blocks of our Lego set.
- Increase curation rewards (50% is a good start)
- Move away from pure linear and into something like n^1.3
- Subsidize downvotes (cheaper downvotes, separated pool)
I've come up with many bad ideas as well. Why are they bad? Because we want a Lego set that is as simple as possible that can still build a great many applications. These ideas overcomplicate our Lego set and don't allow any new applications to be built that couldn't have been built otherwise. We are looking in the wrong direction. These solutions would just allow bad actors to game the system even further. That's how regulation works. The more rules there are the easier it is to get an edge over people who don't know how they work.
(view in night-mode lol)
BUIDL
Rather than change the fundamentals of the blockchain, we need to build on top of it to fix the problems. Bid-bots thrive because our frontends value upvotes above all else via the broken "trending" tab. Whales get away with voting garbage and anyone who challenges them gets terrorized and buried. The propaganda machine is strong here.
All problems with Steem have been created by the inferior products connected to the blockchain. The absolute biggest problem is that whales get away with upvoting garbage while engaging in terror campaigns if anyone confronts them. So far, they've gotten away with it every single time. How do we stop them?
Consensus
These leeching rent-seekers/monopolizers are not conspiring together against the blockchain to take us for all we are worth. They work alone in an environment that rewards their behavior. It's very simple: stop rewarding their behavior with inaction; make it unprofitable.
We're already more than half way there. We've already got consensus: proof-of-brain. A huge group of us believe in this subjective concept, but we can't hardcode subjective opinion, so we need to create the infrastructure to reach further consensus on the topic.
Changing our perspective about flags.
Flags on this platform are wrongfully interpreted as the most heinous thing you can do to someone else. A slap in the face, a stab in the back, the first person flags for a legitimate reason. The second person flags because they got flagged. The first person flags because of this unjustified retaliation. Oops! Infinite loop flag war incoming! This activity leads to the most unhealthy and vile acts on the platform. The first step to bringing proof-of-brain to the platform is to sever the connection to the infinite war that we seem to mimic in the real world.
What is a flag?
Strip away emotion and what do you have? A flag takes away future inflation from two people and gives it to everyone else by adding that inflation back to the reward pool. An upvote takes that inflation and gives it to one person. From this perspective flags are much more altruistic and generous than an upvote is as long is the flag is justified and people aren't flipping their shit over it.
One can only justify a flag on an individual basis. If you flag someone because they flagged you, you are wrong automatically.
POB DAO
It's very obvious to me that a proof-of-brain decentralized autonomous organization needs to be formed with these concepts in mind. The emphasis of such an organization should revolve around moral high-ground and deescalation.
How?
- Create a group that stands for proof-of-brain.
This should be easy because everyone talks about it and wants it to happen. - Set up a voting structure.
This could be simple or complex and subject to change.
This will be the hardest thing to keep from being corrupted. - Vote on the top ten worst abuses of reward pool allocations/deallocations on the blockchain.
- Offer the #1 abuser a deal.
- Flag/upvote accordingly.
Why flags? Scientific Method.
Can't we just focus on upvotes and not be so aggressive?
First of all, flags are not aggressive, people are aggressive. Secondly, no. If you believe in proof-of-stake then the platform is working just fine; don't join the POBDAO. If you believe in proof-of-brain then this platform is hemorrhaging value at an alarming rate. You can't stem bleeding with proper diet and exercise. We need to cauterize the wound using a crimson hot poker with the knowledge that causing a little bit of damage now will save a life later.
It's much easier to make the argument that an action has zero/negative value than it is to make the argument that something has value (and how much). These are the basic principals of the scientific method. You don't try to prove something, you try to disprove it. Flagging allows us to implement the scientific method on the blockchain to reach consensus on subjective matters.
Does this action have value? See how easy it is to prove something wrong?
Maintaining the moral highground.
It is absolutely imperative that a POB DAO does not become corrupted. The same is true for avoiding flag wars. How is this accomplished? By pushing the idea that a flag is not an attack. It is a gift to the entire community. We don't want the account we flag to lose money. Quite the contrary, we want every account to gain value. The only way to do that is to control Steem's inflation in a way that supports proof-of-brain. After this is all be over, we'll all be rich and living in abundance.
Conscript the "enemy". Offer a deal.
After the votes have been cast and the #1 offense has been identified, the DAO doesn't just start flagging that account blindly. A deal must be offered. Concessions and compromises must be made.
The illusion of choice is a powerful psychological control.
Say the DAO votes and decides to fine a whale $1000 for gross misconduct. The DAO should approach that whale with some kind of choice.
Hey. We all voted and agree that this is happening, but maybe you'd like to take a look at our top ten list and see if there's anyone you agree is hurting the platform.
If an agreement could be made, the whale in question would not get flagged. They would flag someone else in the top ten for a significantly reduced fine. For example, instead of being directly flagged for $1000 they would flag another account for $250. We could also throw out a protection agreement to counteract retaliatory flagging. The sky is really the limit on what kind of agreements could be made.
The point is, as long as the DAO is big enough and has enough stake (consensus) then we can bend the platform to our will. Our will is proof-of-brain, so we are justified, and the accounts that we flag will actually gain massive value because they are the ones that have the most stake. They are simply short-sighted and milking the platform for short-term gains. We see the bigger picture. A long-term strategy is required.
Behavior will change near instantly because the abusers of proof-of-brain (team proof-of-stake) know that their proof-of-stake actions no longer have value. After a very short time, simply the existence of the DAO will create a #1 abuse vote of @null, meaning there is currently no account worth flagging at that time.
Stop the corruption from seeping in.
How does voting work? Is it stake based? That could be a problem. Is it one-account one-vote? That could be a problem. If you create a DAO of dolphins who all have an equal vote, how do you stop a whale from creating 100 dolphins and infiltrating the organization? It's a good thing bots fail the Turing Test.
When it really comes down to it the power of a POB DAO resides in the scientific method concept that identifying negative value is much easier than gauging positive value. It will be quite obvious if corruption sets in because the top 10 is transparent. It should be obvious to see why, using very basic rules, that every pick in the top ten has negative value. If not, there is a problem. Good thing DAOs can fork, and a POBDAO fork would be extremely trivial. We choose our own politics.
I look forward to being a part of this system in the future. It's going to happen, regardless of who sets it up and participates, because we already have consensus. Proof-of-brain already has a majority. It's simply a matter of building corruption resistant infrastructure based the tenants of decentralization. No one can be in charge. It's a DAO.
Proof-of-brain is like life. It's a journey, not a destination. We can never reach the goal, but we can get closer and closer with the proper consensus. Proof-of-brain is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, except this rainbow has a trail of coins underneath it that we can pick up as we go. The closer we get, the more value we gain. Join me... no... join the POBDAO.