What is SteemSilverGold? What is SilverGoldBotty? These are important questions and while many may think they have simple answers, the devil is always in the detail and that detail has perhaps been lacking. Lacking to the point where misunderstandings and controversy of some kind or other become inevitable. Misunderstandings and controversy like we’ve seen this week.
Let me start with SteemSilverGold because it came first. It started out as just a tag that some stackers were using to post with on the STEEM platform to talk about, show off and promote physical Silver and Gold holdings. It was open to anyone and it was totally informal and unregulated – just like everything else in the crypto space. Over time it started to consolidate into a membership of stackers who started building a community and supporting each other. To my eye it became like a Club or Association in the physical world. There was some talk of setting up a Committee to represent the members interests, but to my knowledge there was no formal constitution or proper governance established (a criticism I have of many STEEM communities – but I digress).
I have been involved with Team Australia since getting into STEEM where there is also a solid community as part of the Minnow Support Project. It is a community that has a number of voting bots that were set up to support the membership and encourage regular content creation and engagement. @phelimint is also involved with that community and I can remember talking to him about setting up a similar bot to support #SteemSilverGold. I believe I was the first person to delegate power to @silvergoldbotty and I also donated some SBD to help promote it in those early days. My expectation at the time was this was a charitable enterprise and I thought it might run in a similar fashion to the @centerlink community bot that supports #teamaustralia.
My contribution was dwarfed, however, by guys like @raybrockman and @thedamus (among others) who saw the potential of the new @silvergoldbotty to support the #steemsilvergold membership and started donating VERY generously. I believe these guys saw the bot as a not-for-profit club support bot and when it transitioned into a subscription model with membership tiers the suggestion that @phelimint draw a wage was probably seen as the equivalent of the club paying him for his efforts in building and maintaining the membership owned bot. For me, the writing was on the wall from this point, however, and I have been uncomfortable with the developing bot situation for a while now yet have been reluctant to make waves by voicing dissent about it.
There is an old saying amongst experienced stackers that “If you don’t hold it, you don’t own it” It is used frequently to explain why people should hold their wealth as physical gold and silver rather than some kind of paper derivative or money in the bank. The same saying holds true for Crypto. If you don’t hold the Private Key to the crypto then you don’t own it. Here emerges the Grey Area and the Genesis for this current controversy. The #steemsilvergold membership did NOT own the Private Key to the @silvergoldbotty and thus they did not own it. But many members (including some of the more generous ones that were still donating and promoting heavily) perhaps had the false understanding that it was a community owned bot. See recent posts from thedamus and raybrockman
The @silvergoldbotty as it currently stands seems to be more of a Business venture. Gradually over the last 3 months, the ROI for members has been dwindling, while the profitability for the owner and manager has been growing. It has got to the point now where questions are being asked and the truth of the situation is coming out. I personally have been treating it like a business venture since the start of the year and that’s why I stopped donating and it’s why I promote #steemsilvergold rather than @silvergoldbotty it in my post footers. I was very reluctant to renew my Gold Membership for March and when I saw the Qurator deal was struck for a vote swap between these bots I immediately regretted my membership renewal as I could see this was another 10% drain on the daily voting power and it would even further degrade the ROI for members. I personally decided to walk away from my Gold Membership at the end of the month but it seems I was not the only one who was not happy with the way things were going. So it’s time for me to say my piece because maybe there is enough strength of will from the senior members of #steemsilvergold that the situation could be saved.
I don’t have a problem with people making money on STEEM, or even making money with bots if they are up front about things. I see a number of community bots being run by volunteers who don’t get paid at all for their effort and if you do the math, the 100% vote for @phelimint has been a VERY decent pay packet for him to reward him for his hard work. But what I do have a problem with is the way that @silvergoldbotty seems to have been masquerading as a community/membership bot even though in essence it seems it has now turned out to be a privately owned For-Profit bot. In my opinion the only reason this has blown up now is because the ROI for members has been squeezed so hard and so consistently that senior #steemsilvergold members are getting fed up and are now asking the right questions. The truth of the situation is now coming out.
I realise I am not making any friends with this post and it will piss a few people off. I do recognise that @phelimint has put a lot of work into building up @silvergoldbotty but I do also believe he has been extremely well compensated already with the 100% vote. I also recognise that guys like @raybrockman and @thedamus have also contributed substantially to building up the bot and that was at least in part because they thought it was a community owned bot and didn’t realise it had become a privately owned business venture. I completely sympathise with these guys.
I’ve personally been thinking about how to establish proper governance of a community bot for a while because this is not the first incident of this type on the STEEM platform. Unfortunately there are no easy answers. One possible solution is to put the Private Key into escrow and have community representatives collectively control it, but that is technically problematic. The easier short term solution is to keep the bot powered down and measure its success via growth of membership and total leased STEEM POWER rather than retained STEEM POWER. This means the Private Keys can be individually owned/held but other than the brand, there is no value retained within those keys so there is no incentive for the individual holding the keys to try and personally benefit.
I know it’s probably not going to happen with @silvergoldbotty, but if the #steemsilvergold membership does want to establish some proper governance around a true community bot AND it’s membership then I would be happy to try and facilitate this. I do have experience with volunteer organisations and I have the technical expertise to set up a bot for the membership and I would be prepared to donate some time and funds to help get it going if that’s what the broader #steemsilvergold community wants.
