Some thoughts on @reward.app
I've been using @reward.app for a week or so now, some thoughts on this service and why I have been keen to give it a go. The announcement post and follow-up post are worth a read, as well as the comments in which there are some pretty cool ideas mentioned to expand on the service.
Beneficiaries have been around for a while now, and are a great way to share out author rewards to accounts. I've used them to reward people for their help with ENGAGE, as well as to send a little to the DAO. @reward.app is different as it is the future voters of a post which take a (configurable) share of the author rewards.
Below is my first payout from @reward.app, and in the memo is the amount shared to the curators of my post. I chose to share 10% of the author rewards to the curators, which ended up being 1.332 HBD and 5.844 Hive.
Although I read the announcement, follow-up post, and 'Liquified risk and reward' post from Taraz prior to using the service, I somehow missed:
When you write the post you just have to set @reward.app as 100% beneficiary and you'll automatically receive the rewards in liquid form at payout minus a 1% fee.
Ooops. What I expected to receive was the HBD and the HIVE as Hive Power, the normal payout when using 50/50. Anyway, I powered up the HIVE and made a mental note to speak to @acidyo when I returned from my holiday.
That time has now passed, and the suggestion I wanted to make was that the rewards should be paid in HBD and HP. My reasons for using the service were and still are:
- To pay me less because I do well enough
- To reward my curators more
The first point is a personal opinion, I've been told it's bs but I'm pretty stubborn and do read other (better) travel posts. Yes, I could set a cap on payout, or send a % to NULL/DAO, but that seems out of fashion at present and being able to set a custom author/curator share sounded pretty cool. More on why it might not be so cool shortly.
A comment on the first post that I used the service for, said in jest because there was no DV from this account, brings me on to another point and a post by @curangel not long after the announcement.
@curangel stated that:
the curangel upvote code was updated to prevent upvotes on posts that set a liquifying service as beneficiary.
Although I delegate to @curangel and vote their daily compilation posts, I do not expect a vote from a service which I believe is there to find newer authors putting out decent content.
So that's fine by me, apart from the fact that I have a lot of respect for the owner/manager of @curangel, and feel unsteady about being on the other side of their opinion:
While the existence of likwid has been unfortunate already, its use has been so small that having an own check for it didn't occur necessary. As reward.app "improved" on the concept by combining it with a vote buying mechanism, @curangel will step up early and work against these kind of schemes becoming the new normal.
With regards to likwid, I used the service on Steem for a few weeks while powering down. Unfortunately they got screwed with the account theft and so I lost a weeks worth of payouts in doing so. Using @reward.app for liquid rewards was never the plan.
The second point relating to vote buying I can see the argument for. It would not be hard for a coder to check which posts have set a beneficiary to @reward.app, check last memo to @reward.app which specifies the curator reward %, and auto-vote said content at a suitable time.
Also, an author might choose to highlight in the title or first lines of their post that they are using the service, and thus attract curators skimming the various feeds. Indirect vote buying?
As I said earlier, my goal was and still is to reward me a bit less and you at bit more, but it seems that it is more complex than that.
So, what do you think? Is a person using @reward.app buying votes?
Do you think the default payout should be HBD and vested HIVE?
And what if there was 'some kind of lottery, where for example a percentage of my rewards could be put aside and then be applied on a random post sometime in the future, but no one knows which post.', as stated by Taraz in a comment on announcement post. Would that be like indirect vote buying also?
I think I will continue to experiment with @reward.app but I'm keen to know if people think it's a good idea or not.
Cheers
Asher
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Lol, I like taraz's idea of the random lotto post thing.
I don't see anything wrong with it, I have been a big fan of the slider idea for the amount of curation rewards you would like to put on a post's payout and this is precisely that although a bit more manual.
You've got to be in it to win it, and so would the lotto idea still be seen as attracting votes to all posts, waiting for the big win?
I liked that idea too. I guess if you set 100% rewards to curators and took no payout yourself, that wouldn't be considered buying votes for your own pocket? If that is true, 90%, 80% - Surely any additional bonus seeking votes won't make the author any more HIVE at those %'s? Mines at 10% and looking at the pending payouts, they are down not up :)
Yeah, another thing taraz has said which is true is that it would all be gamed. Everything can be and will be gamed. More so here it sometimes feels like. I think the only reason I haven't used it yet is because it's a faff and I don't like faff :0)
I guess so. I am gaming you for more comments on my post by asking questions :P
It is a small faff (unless you can preset beneficiaries somewhere?), I guess I'll see what the human consensus is before decided to faff further or not!
For me the least faff the better... Ya gaming bastart!!! ;0)
😈
Thirsty work this gaming malarkey, time for a cold one!
I'm quenching my thirst as we speak!!
Hazy Jane by Brewdog is round mine for the night :)
Oh, I've not tried that one yet. I will be getting that!
It's rather moreish, Tesco do 8 cans for 9 quid!
That's a damn bargain!!
!ENGAGE 25
ENGAGEtokens.I'm just not sure about the term curator I guess. I do a lot of voting, but I don't go out of my way to vote specific content from specific authors at specific times, I just kind of still random vote on things I like. So I am not really a curator. I do, I suppose, get a better return on my vote if a person used the reward.app, but I am still not sure about that.
I have a hard time also with the terms vote buying. Is an author having to pay for the reward.app service? Do you give say 10 Hive in hopes of getting back 20 Hive? If it is just setting a few check boxes to give funds away, how is that vote buying? Even though I read through the post, (not fully understanding it), I did not see where an author sends them any money to get extra votes.
I use, and a lot of others use various tags that have a tendency to draw in a few more votes such as gems, oc, ocd, and there are other tags that do the same. Am I or others that use those tags buying votes?
If I understand the reward.app correctly all it really is is a blind/hidden tag that gives a little extra back to the people that vote on the post, and that those funds are coming out of what the Author would have received anyway, no real extra reward total.
And you read most/all of what you vote - I think this makes you a curator :)
1% is the fee to the devs. The vote buying point relates to something like, but a bit more indirect than, sending someone HIVE with a note saying 'thanks in advance of the votes'. But unless you've got a note in the title/image/first para, at present it's not easy to see who's using @reward.app (unless you have tools).
Tagging for votes, I guess you could consider it touting for extra business/visibility. Hmmm.
On your last point, no extra reward total unless larger accounts fancy some extra reward, but they would be later than ideal, so maybe not bother anyway?
Thanks for the comment :)
!ENGAGE 50
So the reality is it is not buying votes. It is just a hidden tag that is actually the Author paying/rewarding the voter with a little extra bonus above what they would have gotten and doing it incognito.
Not directly buying votes no, but indirectly it could be seen so as nothing is incognito to coders, and I have mentioned it at the foot of my previous posts.
But the reality is it is no different than me using ocd or oc hoping for extra votes, other than by using reward.app you are giving up a part of your reward and redistributing it back to the people that voted for your post.
For a person that is on a good curation list, (yourself), it is not going to attract more professional curation trails. (ROI is based on getting there first to maximize return). So it is not buying.
It is a way for a future coder who wants to start a more valuable curation trail to make a few extra dollars. I can see the advertising now for the list: Come follow my trail, I vote only on the reward.app users. With every vote cast you will receive an extra minimum vote reward of 4% So Billy Joe Bob can make 4% or more on their votes on that trail than Mary Jo Sue can on the vote trail she follows.
Will it disincentive people to do their own voting, not likely, will it make the vote trail followers look for new trail for more curation rewards, possibly. Will reward.app get enough users to provide the incentive for new trails? That is yet to be determined.
Still a very new system, I guess we need to just keep watching and learning what direction it will take.
This is how I feel about my account too. For a newer account with less auto-votes coming in < 5 mins then they could market the author reward share and pick up more curator votes, but I agree that it will likely not work that way for me.
A good point RE: trails, and that could happen in the future. As you say, worth keeping an eye on to see how things progress.
!ENGAGE 25
ENGAGEtokens.ENGAGEtokens.The easiest way around the whole vote buying thing is to not incentivize upvotes with monetary value past what is specifically dictated by the blockchain.
Personally I think it should be allowed at the blockchain level to be able to set the author/curator reward more infavor of curators on post creation if a author so chooses.
So long as people are fine with allowing people to reward curators, the problem is it'll still look like 'vote buying' (in the eyes of some) as you are always going to have the maximizers trying to get every penny of ROI. This can't be helped and a majority of people will use it to reward curators more and receive less.
The only people who really benefit from this are curators and people looking for maximum ROI. You can't stop the max ROI people at all. They automate everything anyway. So might as well let people have a choice in the distribution on their posts if they choose to receive less.
Alternatively, tip/upvote everyone that comments and get those curators commenting for better rewards =p
Yeah, I am leaning towards this easier approach, and would also like to see more discussion on if a slider should be coded in at blockchain level.
Very true, and it would be the coders who would benefit most, if they saw a viable opportunity.
Indeed, have a vote for your time and some !ENGAGE 50 :)
ENGAGEtokens.I’m just not a fan of:
This all leads down a road many of us where not happy with before with paying for votes. Not to mention it adds further risk to the author with them needing to trust someone else that they will get their post rewards paid back.
I could understand if someone needed the liquid rewards shorter and din't want to power down so they use a service like this and just make a couple of posts.
However what happens if 50% of the reward pool is now being set to a single account? They sure would not have the liquid to be able to honor paying out right away. Yet, once votes are added in that alone could encourage a large amount of users who plan on powering it all up anyways to just use it.
Fair enough. There is trust required for sure, and I do have that for those involved.
The 1% fee didn't concern me too much as my reasons for using are not to maximize or pick up extra votes, but as others have suggested, this could be one for blockchain level, if at all.
Not too sure I understand your final paragraph :)
There will be other options coming as well I am pretty sure that give a wider range of possibilities as well as being able to "hide" the percentages and the like, making frontrunning harder.
Sending HP and hiding the curator % would be a good start. Usage is pretty limited at present, I thought I was being nice but perhaps not?!
I wonder how the hiding would be done. Right now the default is 4% unless a memo is sent to change it, but the memo is clear text. Sure, memos could be theoretically encrypted but unless the percentage was changed for every post, people could study payouts.
!ENGAGE 25
ENGAGEtokens.I think a web page with configuration options could be the way to go.
The author could choose to randomize the % within a range so they wouldn't know until post payout what was set.
I’ve been looking at reward.app’s memos 😬 🙊
Cheeky monkey!
How to avoid it being treated as a bid bot:
I mean, I've been fairly vocal about my dislike of bid bots and why we were forced to create something like it back in that era that was more fair with a curated list of authors that were allowed to use it, guaranteed ROI for them and no cut being taken by us. So for what its worth our intentions are in no way meant for it to be used like one so the content will depend quite a lot on it and maybe it will make more use of fair downvotes at the same time if curators are trying to maximize on such posts.
Think of it this way, how many good posts back in the day (even though I know there weren't many) used bid bots and had great content so people didn't mind and even added more votes on top despite them trending due to bid bots. I remember there being some I voted either way even though abuse was rampant of garbage content at the time so as long as the wisdom of the crowd are being fair towards the content, i.e. not downvoting it just because it's using reward.app and not upvoting it just because it's using reward.app but instead downvoting and upvoting based on content then it should be a fun experiment to see what it leads to and how it can improve the current downsides of the EIP that I mentioned in the post of how curators are maximizing with their votes right now.
Anyway, like many other services on Hive it's good that the maintenance costs aren't so high and the fees can be low. Will definitely consider creating a poll at some point to see if people prefer 50/50 (hbd + hivepower) instead of all liquid by default.
re: Bidbots and 'So for what its worth our intentions are in no way meant for it to be', I have no doubt of that and my use hasn't been about trying to get extra votes.
I do remember the odd botted post that deserved to be up in Trending, but there was a lot of garbage. I think the front-running of the garbage pissed me off just as much.
It's worthwhile experiment, and the things learned could lead to a coded slider at some point.
Vesting rewards suits me, and I think it would be good to distance from likwid.
But yeah, downvotes.
I like your ability to be sincere and put the well being of the community on top of your own posts.Few people would have this strenght of character.I admire it Asher. To be able to tell I do well enough and own it....Nice!
Thank you for the lovely comment Mary. I'm glad you think I am sincere because I write honestly and openly, even if what I'm saying is garbage 😂
Thank you!
Hahaha. I always appreciate honesty over pretentious language. Sometimes great ideas can be put out in the simplest words. One does not need fancy vocabulary to make kindness and ideas get through.
Have a lovely day Asher😊✌️
I had assumed that payouts were automated but the @reward.app wallet has some long gaps between payouts and then a bunch in quick succession which would seem to indicate a manual process.
I thought automated, but maybe they are processed in an automated batch or there was an issue and the blockage was released :)
@cardboard will probably know the answer...
The payouts are automated :) the gaps are the time between each post payouts.
If there's a post payout, transfers are sent to author and curators.