For me, it is a question of capital.
At the moment there is a significant amount of surplus capital floating around the Steem ecosystem. Passive investor whales, orcas and dolphins who hold large amounts of Steem Power want to put that capital to work.
The capital flows to where it can obtain the best return. Currently that would be 100% self-voting but since that attracts flags the next best return is bid-bots.
In order to move the capital away from bid-bots one of three things needs to happen:
- The existence of a better offer for passive investors.
- The existence of an offer that approaches that from bid-bots but with strong marketing that promotes the overall good of Steem.
- The reduction of the existing return passive investors obtain from bid-bots to a level below other current offers of return.
1. A better offer for passive investors
There is potential for SMTs to offer a better return for passive investors over the long-term. All dApps need capital to function and provide upvotes to users and as the number of dApps increases so will the calls for capital. Whilst the short-term returns are unlikely to match those of bid-bots, the potential return from owning a piece of a successful dApp could far outweigh the short-term return from bid-bots.
An alternative here is ocdb, a better bid-bot with higher returns for investors but better control over how the upvotes can be purchased.
2. An offer that approaches that from bid-bots but with strong marketing that promotes the overall good of Steem
The proposals for the move to 50/50 curation fall into this category. The attractiveness of higher curation rewards could tempt passive investors away from bid-bots, or at least stem the flow of new capital into bid-bots. This could be combined with the message of how manual curation can lead to better organic content discovery which would encourage better content which would raise the price of Steem.
However I'm unconvinced that the underlying numbers really stack up for this option, even if it could represent a step in the right direction. It also impacts dApps that are currently working well under the 75/25 split.
3. The reduction of the existing return passive investors obtain from bid-bots to a level below other current offers of return.
For me, proposals for a separate downvote fund fall into this category. The threat of people collectively downvoting bid-bot posts boosted to trending, or repeat bid-bot users, could reduce demand for bid-bots and have a significant impact on the returns available for passive investors. If those returns fall far enough then there is potential for that capital to move to other projects. However it is not clear whether this would actually occur in practice. Bid-bot owners would also have a strong hold over the level of downvotes available.
A combination of 2 (raise returns available elsewhere) and 3 (lower bid-bot returns) underlies the proposals to rebalance Steem away from bid-bots towards active manual curators. However it seems unlikely that this will be implemented before SMTs arrive.
For me, SMTs remain the best hope for a change to the overall Steem economy. Fingers crossed.