My current thoughts on the economics of the SPORTS token.
The Sportstalk Social tribe has grown and evolved significantly since its inception. Many new users have come on board, and there is actually a fairly good (in my opinion) distribution of stake. However, there are a few issues arising, that I would like to share my thoughts on.
Token Abundance.
When it was originally launched, SPORTS tokens were added to the reward pool at a rate of 10 tokens per block as per the original launch post. Then, in response to an attempt to game the system, and gain an unfair advantage by a few users, part of the solution to that problem was to increase the tokens flow into the reward pool by 10x to 100 per block - see this post for details. This had the desired effect at the time, and the community moved on and a fairly even distribution happened fairly quickly.
Where we are currently is that (I presume) 100 tokens per block are still being added to the reward pool. There is an abundance of SPORTS, and the price has been attractive for users to sell some, or all, of these tokens to diversify or cash out. 100 tokens per block means that there is 2000 tokens every minute, or 2.88 million per day. Is that sustainable?
My first main point is that maybe this token issuance per block needs to be revisited and reduced
Reducing this back to 10 per block, or perhaps somewhere in between, would reduce the size of SPORTS payouts proportionally. While this would obviously reduce the STEEM value of peoples payouts in the short run, scarcity of supply should assist the price of the token to recover. The other side effect of this, in my opinion, would be that some or the reward farming, self voting (particularly comment self voting) and shit-posting may subside a little. I don't think this is a major problem, although I have not had much time to curate lately to see for myself.
Changing this may make it hard for new users to earn much SPORTS, however there are ways to work around this. Many of the new tribes have a section for featured posts, mainly being about developments or tribe matters. Sportstalk could do featured posts differently. Users could nominate posts from newer members to curators for review. A simple set of guidelines could be used (like number of SPORTS posts, SPORTS token stake and so-on) and the best posts from newcomers pinned as featured posts. This would give new members that produce quality posts visibility, and a chance to grow.
The Bid-bot issue.
The concept behind the @sportsvoter bot was great. A portion of tokens goes to SP delegators, and the tokens sent in to "buy" a vote are burnt. Great in theory, but it hasn't quite worked out. Please correct my if I am wrong, but the number of tokens going to this bot's delegators comes out of the reward pool. Changing the "tokens-per-block" back to 10 would dramatically drop the size of payments to SP delegators. Some of the maximising delegators that are not otherwise involved in the sports tribe would be disincentivised, and would probably move their SP elsewhere. However, that would also mean that a huge selling pressure on the market would also stop, allowing the token supply and demand levels to reset and find a higher base.
There have already been discussions around this topic - most notably in this post
My Second main point is that the rewards for SP delegation are unstustainable, changing the tokens per block would fix this
Please note that this is just my understanding of how this works, I may be incorrect, let me know if I am.
Over-inflated Market-Cap.
As an investor, one thing many people would look at is the market cap of a token. The SPORTS market cap looks way too high. Even after the significant decline in the price recently, it still sits at over $32 million. At first glance, that looks ridiculous, and many investors will see that and think the price is too high and move on. The reason this cap is so high is that there is almost 100 Billion tokens sitting in the @sportsprojects account. I am guessing that the intention for these is to fund the building of add on features for the tribe. If you exclude these tokens from the Market-Cap calculation you get a very different picture. Total supply currently is 100.074 Billion, minus 98.997 Billion Sportsprojects account = 1.077 Billion. Times that by $0.00032 (current dollar value at time of writing) and you get a market cap of $344,640. Much more realistic for a start-up and attractive potentially for investors.
Maybe this is just the way I think, but an unrealistic market cap puts me off a project. Without deep diving into it, I would just move on.
My third point is - does the @sportsprojects account need this many tokens? Could most of these be burned to improve the token supply economics?
I'd love to get lots of feedback on these talking points I have raised. I really want to see this tribe succeed, and grow and flourish into an advertisement for what is possible on STEEM. Without some fairly significant changes, I fear that may not happen.
Thanks in advance for your input,
John, AKA - @jk6276, @jk6276.sports, @jk6276.leo
Man, I am so lost on the whole thing, this is taking to much time for me to keep up anymore.
Don't stress, this is just me trying to deep dive a bit to look for ways to stop the price sliding.
If its too confusing, im sorry, didn't mean to scare anyone off. Just keep talking sport, and hopefully we can improve the economics here along the way.
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No worries,
I'm just catching my breath!
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I think the same sportstalk needs to sort out things to improve value or I feel this project will die and none of us want that to happen.
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Yup, some things are not working at the moment, but its definitely fixable.
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Yes, the economics of the project needs a relook. As they are, there's too much SPORTS being printed and not enough demand which is resulting in that massive sell wave.
You just perfectly summarized my post in 2 sentences. Something does need to change, definitely. Thanks for the comment.
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If we really break it down what is the purpose of the token? To essentially convert to steem then keep or sell ultimately. There is no use case for it at all. If they can create a use case for it people will buy it. Personally don't think they capable of it the bid bot and a miner were the 2 copied ideas and the miner won't work coz it would be pointless on here. So they have to think of something else will they? Are they capable? Are they bothered? Remains to be seen. Hope things change as it is the best tribe topic - wise for me
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I know for sure that an awesome use case is in the works, @patrickulrich is working on legalities mainly for it.
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Which will be gambling. Which is obvious and a cool idea. Will it work? Brutely honest no. There are endless sports betting and gambling out there. It could attract other tribes or steem holders I will give you that. Then all your doing is circulating money. You need new fresh money from outside to make a mark. Noone is gonna open a steem account then buy sports to gamble a token work 0.0000000xx lol if it's not gambling and some other genius idea which noone has done before then I apologise in advance ✋
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Not quite gambling, a fantasy tipping site I believe. Legal issue is would regulators consider it gambling (pay tokens to join - win if your picks are good). This info comes from a discord convo with Patrick a couple of weeks ago. Yes its been done before, but still a worthy use case.
I'd love to see an online store for licensed team merch or memorabilia.
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Easier way. They have x billion token sell a million to stakes at a set price. Convert to steem/ convert to eth/btc place a few bets on existing sports betting sites. Make money bring the money back buy up as much tokens as possible burn them. Obviously they will say the sports betting bit is risky but if you can't make money from sports betting you really shouldn't be running a sports related platform lol
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Online store would be awesome but you would need 1 million sports to buy a pair of shoe laces lol
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Maybe online store accepting major crypto's. Put half the profits into a "buyback and burn"
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Hi @jk6276
Is there any chance I could DM you? Do you use telegram? or discord? I've some questions I wanted to ask you (outside blockchain).
Yours
Piotr
Hi @crypto.piotr I am on discord with the same user name as here, not using telegram.
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hi buddy
Could you add me? I cannot seem to be able to find you without those 4 digits required.
My account: crypto.piotr#3426
ps. I've found discord so much more complicated than telegram and I'm wondering why most people still prefer Discord ;)
Cheers
Piotr
@quam2121 post breaks down what a lot are feeling. He hit the nail on the head. I think this post is quite good but I am not putting one red cent into this place with what I've been seeing especially lately. It is getting toxic real quick and the ones trying to even it out a bit and make it more of an ecosystem versus a freaking pyramid are under the thumb of a few with god complexes imho.
I like this type of posts. Economic perspective is what we need to make this last over time. Too many tokens and the printing press keeps going.
I came in the sports talk for two reasons. First I love creating content so I took the challenge to write different things besides business, success and motivation which are main main topics. Second, the rewards were massive so my time and effort was being well invested / rewarded, but now the token is dropping extremely fast and along the way of these two reasons, I discovered we have a very ALIVE community so I think we have a chance here to fix things.
I think we gotta work together to make this tribe one of the best. its really hard but I think it can be done.
So much adjustments needed and I am guessing it is gon' take a long long time for Sports to recover and stand erect but I can handle long. We have to work together to make this work.
I strongly believe as times goes, things will become to stand normal and more understandable
Yep, that pretty much lists all the on-going concerns.
This sounds like a good thing but could actually backfire, but like you, I'm not 100% on top of the economics (although you have a better idea than me). The SP vested into the tribe is of benefit in some regards I think, but the leakage from the promo account to delegates and then to market is certainly causing major selling pressure.
It has been reduced, particularly with regards to comments farming. However, the usual suspects have decided to just up the top level post count each day in order to maximize stake. This is where community moderation should come into play - is the post worth the sports, is the account being a selfish greedy sod, etc.
I think this is a fine idea, and should be explored further. Cheers!
The featured posts could also be used to bring in sports journalists to produce some exclusive content here. Target freelance sports writers and hopefully all the big stakeholders will curate... like @theycallmedan is doing with 3speak.
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I enjoyed reading your thoughts and am thankful that members of the community are coming together when issues occur!
In time I think we will see a good portion of the @sportsprojects tokens being burnt in some fashion. They are intended to act in the needs of helping develop projects to grow the community but as things stabilize they'll be removed.
The 10 SPORTS was the preferred distribution for the platform until the initial exploit against the SPORTS token happened. This forced us to inflate the token economics to offset the growth the initial abusers had over the platform.
This creates a situation where it's tough to go back down. That's because anyone who has used the platform over the last 30 days would now have a 10 month advantage over any new users that started today at the lowered distribution rate. This will dissuade new users from joining the ecosystem as they will have little way to excel in comparison to the early adopters.
The recent changes with the addition of @sportsvoter and the redistribution of inflation towards Steem Power delegation is likely the biggest contributor to changing market conditions. I say inflation but what's actually occurred is new tokens have been decreased to 80 while the 20% are being paid from @sportsprojects until this idea pans out to be worthy of distributing actual inflation. Since rewards have been paid out to SP delegators as liquid SPORTS it's created a large downward pressure on price as new supply is being directly introduced to the market.
To remedy this we will be deploying an update as soon as it can be coded into the system where earnings will be rewarded as SPORTS POWER instead of just liquid SPORTS. In the short term this will lower the supply being distributed to the market as users will need to power down to liquid SPORTS to move to the market.
More importantly this will force delegators to decide if they should be foregoing powering down and instead join the SPORTS community by using their new SPORTS POWER to curate content. I feel this will encourage delegators to be more aligned with the long term vision of SPORTS as opposed to be merely being a financial tool that they use to print more tokens.
In addition to the change towards only SPORTS POWER we'll also be changing the amount that's distributed to 10% of the token's inflation. This will better align the value of @sportsvoter's upvote and thus burn to the number of tokens being distributed through @sportspromo to delegators.
These are still early thoughts so would love to hear your thoughts on the potential upcoming changes in this regard. If you have any suggestions for a better path or are not clear why we'd choose to go a certain path please let me know. The more minds behind this the better it will end up!
Right. And no new members will certainly be a major blow, perhaps even worse than a depreciating token value - the token will find a level though, where as it could be impossible to attract new members if they have no chance to grow.
Hurray! 50/50, 75/25, or even 100/0, SPORTS POWER/Liquid has to be the way to go to counter the free-fall we are seeing (mainly imo due to the largest delegator cashing the lot out instantly as they cannot believe how good the deal is v's Steems other bots). Hopefully the delegates will then use this vested SPORTS power to curate and promote good content from newer accounts as an indirect way to grow their investment.
How is one person to blame? If one person who is selling a lot in a FREE MARKET brings us all to our knees then the stress test failed. There are trillions of tokens, there are issues that run deeper and I see blaming one person on what is probably more of a market correction than anything sorta a red herring. my two pesos
I don't blame them at all, just stating they are the main reason as they earn the most SPORTS each day and are selling them all.
The lesser the user of the community, the lesser is its activities and could result to a much less market activity/transaction.
You mean you're planning of giving payout in 100% SP without any liquid?
Also, will this be temporarily or permanently?
Its so cool anyway. I hope given payout in SP or either part in liquid. All is fine and good. I'm the community will continue to grow and flourish!
at a 9 month powerdown (please correct me if I'm wrong), A LOT can change including legalities and regulations within Crypto. Taking away liquid further consolidates power into a very few and will attract very few people who want to take the risk of either powering up or investing or even joining.
I've been on the fence on many things which are getting more apparent to quite a few lately. Taking away liquid or making it so that the very concept of a free market are changed will be more disastrous then someone using their stake to "dump" every day. The ones moaning the most about it are not the average user btw. my two pesos
Taking away liquid or making it so that the very concept of a free market are changed will be more disastrous then someone using their stake to "dump" every day.This makes sense to me.
is there a timeframe when those changes will kick in? round about?
I am all for making it happen quick as we can readjust still on the way if needed.
We have already deployed a portion of the updates and anticipate the rest to be deployed tomorrow. I'll be paying delegators bonus liquid rewards for the unexpected change.
https://www.sportstalksocial.com/sportstalk/@sportstalksocial/announcing-changes-to-sportsvoter
How about giving users a choice to powerup the reward’s post like the choice we have on steemit where we can decide to where the rewards goes, power or liquid.
I have to tell this @petrickulrich.
where earnings will be rewarded as SPORTS POWER instead of just liquid SPORTS.It is very good. And I saw that happened a few hours ago. I am really for it.
However, that actually happened without a notice? That is too bad and disappointing. I am not disappointed by the change, but by the way it was done without notice or more discussion.
I was wondering what happened to my payouts. Some proper notice needed to be made so we can prepare for the change etc.
I completely understand your disappointment. It was a miscommunication that I was responsible for and will be rewarding delegators their intended liquid rewards over the coming days.
https://www.sportstalksocial.com/sportstalk/@sportstalksocial/announcing-changes-to-sportsvoter
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Wow! What's in you is greater than sportstalk.