A possible solution to the SportsTalk problem - learning from SCT and Palnet
A couple of days ago, we saw the launch of SportsTalk.Social. I wrote about why I am so excited about this project and its potential to bring in outsiders to Steem. But this morning I woke up saddened by the news that a few users have exploited the system and stuffed up the economics of the project. Hence, if you look on Steem-engine, you will notice the price of SPORTS dropping from around 6 Steem yesterday, to as low as 0.01 today. So what happened?
The issue
The issue is quite simple. A few people decided to edit their previous posts that were near pending payout by adding the #sportstalk tag and therefore managed to receive SPORTS payouts ahead of the 7 day payout cycle before everyone else. This meant that effectively the SPORTS token distribution got all skewed and prices on the Steem-engine market plummeted.
Learning from SCT and Palnet
There are two elements that both SCT and Palnet have that could have avoided this problem
- Editing of tags - On both Palnet and SteemCoinPan, when your initial post doesn't contain the #palnet or #sct tags, then even if you edit the tags after the initial post, it wouldn't qualify for rewards under their respective tokens. This would have prevented the current issue.
- Both SCT and Palnet have moderators and founders who have staked large amounts of tokens and could easily downvote bad-actors who exploit the system. So in this case, downvotes could be used to combat those who exploited the system.
Possible solutions going forward
Firstly, the loophole with editing of previous posts needs to be fixed. I'm not sure how Palnet and SCT are different... perhaps it's their distribution system using inflation rather than pre-mined tokens, but regardless, the system needs to change so that posts that are edited to include the #sportstalk tag cannot receive SPORTS payouts.
Secondly, the economics needs to be fixed. This could be done by leveling the field through airdrops to accounts who have used SportsTalk.Social in the past two days and have not exploited the system. Alternatively, a more drastic solution could be to relaunch the project with a different token.
Moreover, I'm really excited about this project, and it's a pitty that it has encountered such a terrible issue. Hoping that @patrickulrich and team could do something promptly to fix the situation, otherwise I'm afraid it could have a disastrous impact on the project.
PS. Something needs to be done to ensure that the trending page is not populated by Actifit posts. As much as I like Actifit, I'm sure that sports-lovers are not going to come here to look at Actifit posts all day.
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lol, i paid 7 steem for one sports and was given 10. Seems i missed the bargains:)
O man, that sucks. Yes, there’s quite a few people who spent a lot of Steem yesterday. That’s why this whole thing is unfair unless if the economics gets adjusted and loophole fixed.
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oh that sad to know this, I was really excited too, since sport is my passion, but that niche in the steem chain is very little valued, so I very little encourage me to share the sport, hopefully resolve this soon, that was a great initiative and managed to punish the abusers !:
Yes, hope it gets fixed soon.
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Ut-Ho, I think weed cash may have this flaw too, not sure, do you know anything about that?. I edited & added the weedcash tag after and my very first post and it showed up on weed cash anyway. This was weeks ago, but I think there may be an issue there unless it was fixed. I'm sure we will find out soon enough if it does! Maybe that is why WEED went down so big as of late?? hmm.....
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Yes there are a few SCOTs that you can add the tag after posting. It’s generally not a problem except in this instance as everyone is looking for the first payments from SportsTalk.
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It is quite easy to find out who has exploited the system... I have found some of them... Then an account should be made with a significant amount of tokens to downvote the post of the abusers, first of all. Then they can think of a solution to get the distribution fair again... Really sad story, I had a feeling this could turn out wrong, because of the very low distribution to very little people in the beginning... A neat claimdrop should be done now, like Palnet did, but with an extra bonus for the ones that were here from the very beginning... If you ask me!
Claimdrop is a good solution for this issue. Bad actors always exists everywere and steemit was full of them.
I wonder is there a list of the accounts that exploited the system. I'm sure that @patrickulrich and the steem-engine team will come up with a solution to redress the balance and cut out these people but it would be nice to know who the scum are going forward. It's accounts like these which have been holding STEEM back form moving forward as they try to cheat the community at every turn.