The committee has been meeting to figure out which delegation renewals and under what terms we would suggest Steemit continue to provide the delegations. Our primary objective in this endeavor is to use the delegation process as a way to attract and maintain businesses, communities, and projects on the Steem blockchain.
Below you can find our current ratings of the different projects and our recommendations. You'll notice that several of them have not completely concluded. They have been providing answers to questions we've posed, but still have open questions. For those accounts we're providing 1 additional week to finalize a few reponses. Failure to provide those responses will result in us suggesting a termination of the delegation.
We're using our 3 tier system of 1M max, 500,000, and 100,000 SP delegations.
Max (1M SP) delegations are reserved for projects that are well developed and fit with market needs. The projects create new use cases for steem, facilitate powering it up, or burning it.
500,000 SP delegations are for projects that are well developed and fit with market needs, but need to demonstrate how their product provides a unique use case for Steem,and/or facilitates burning or powering up steem.
100,000 SP delegations are for projects that are in their infancy, that show some potential, but need to do more to demonstrate a unique use case for Steem or how the project will lead to Steem being powered up or burnt.
Haircut
Delegations have been awarded previously for the misterdelegation account to the tune of nearly 18M SP. Our first goal was to look at the existing delegations and make sure they all met standards and reduce delegations so they did not exceed the new 1M steem cap. Projects have been scored, earned a tier, and in many cases the amount of Steem Power to inidivual projects is shrinking. It's not shrinking all at once. A haircut is applied over 3 quarters such that now, 3 months from now, and 6 months from now the delegation in excess of what they are approved will be cut by 1/3.
Scores, and suggested actions
The committee has completed a rubric for each of the different projects. We suggest the following to Steemit. Projects that are incomplete have been marked with an "incomplete" and have 1 week from this post to clarify their answers. We'll provide an updated scoring sheet once the remaining answers have come in.
Project Score Recommendation with notes:
Spaminator - 58.2, approved to 1M SP down from 2.8M SP for fighting spam, phishing, and fraud. Haircut adjustment to 2.2M SP.
Steemcleaners - 65.7, approved to 1M SP down from 1.5SP for fighting plagerism. Haircut adjustment to 1.33M SP.
Steemhunt - 71.7, approved to 1M. No haircut necessary. Steemhunt and Rewardhunt are approved.
Steempress - 62.0, approved 1M.
Dtube - 64.8/incomplete, 1 week from now to continue their delegation, 8 questions remain open. @starkerz recused himself from scoring dtube due to being a part of a competing platform 3speak.
YooDoo - 82.8, 1M approved for YooDoo, Andrey Grays Football Academy, and 3speak. Down from 2M SP. Haircut adjustment to 1.66M. Andre Grays Football Academy not to exceed more than 10% of the vote. @starkerz recused himself from scoring this project since he is a part of it and we would like to avoid any potential conflicts of interest.
Fundition - 59.6, approved for Fundition to 1M SP, not approved for Drug Wars. Drug Wars has 1 month to remove the voting pattern. Haircut adjustment to 1M. Note: Fundition activity seems slow. We're looking for an increase in activity to continue the high tier delegation going forward. We'd like to see a stronger revenue model for Fundition.
Esteem - 59.8, approved for 500k steem. Haircut to 834,000. This is a great project that has a lot of solid development behind it. It offers something different than Steemit.com in that it's a mobile app and mobile first.
What we can't isolate is how eSteem leads users to powerup Steem, burn Steem, or bring new use cases to Steem.
For example, Steem can't be directly used for advertising on the site. So, we're placing this in the middle tier.
Tasteem - 55.6, approved for Tasteem at 100,000 SP. Haircut down to 700,000 SP.
Note: TaSteem has promise as a business that's not currently being achieved. We don't see how, in its current state, it's doing anything other than distributing rewards, and there are plenty of interfaces that facilitate that (which don't get delegations). In order to reach a higher tier the committee has to see a way that the project facilitates burning steem, powering up steem, or creating new use cases for steem. For example, promotional oppportunities for restaurants, which was mentioned, but the project needs to be farther along to justify the top tier. When use cases, burn cases, or reasons to power up are more evident we're happy to revisit a higher delegation.
Moving Forward
Now that we've established some baselines on the previous projects we're going to open up new projects to apply for delegation. There's essentially two phases from here on out. A technical round and a commercial round. The technical round is simply to determine if this committee thinks that the project meets the bare minimum standard to receive a delegation. If they do then they'll move on to the commercial round.
The technical round involves going through the basic application process. What is your project, how does it make money, what are the benefits to Steemit and the Steem community? If it passes it'll move onto the commercial round.
The commerical bidding round
We have a commercial round because there are more projects seeking funding than we have funds. So, we decided they have to compete for it. During the commercial round projects that have passed technical muster will make offers in exchange for the delegation they seek. Offers can include services, fiat, crypto, utility tokens, or equity.
It's the job of the committee to come up with guidelines for how we evaluate the different offers and then rank them. This committee acts with complete independence from Steemit, and Steemit has not exerted any influence whatsoever over this process.
Projects offering what we consider to the have the highest value will be filled first up to the maximum tier of 1M SP delegated. And we'll move down the list until all of the Steem Power has been awarded.
It is the hope of this committee that after some time has passed and the projects can stand on their own that the thing of value that has been exchanged for delegation can be put back into this process to help fund additional businesses and communities coming to steem. We want this to be a perpetual fund bringing new projects to the Steem ecosytem!
Note: For example. Projects that have had a 1M SP delegation for a year have gotten 10,000 Steem per week for 52 weeks. That's 520,000 Steem. Today that's worth $50k, but over the past year it's been worth as much as $500,000. Let's roll that back into bringing new businesses and communities here.
For projects seeking delegations please look to YooDoo and Esteem applications as examples of projects willing to exchange things of value for the delegation.
Application to be announced shortly
New projects will see an application for Delegation from this committee within the next few weeks. Projects will have a specific time to get their application in by (expecting November). We'll score them to see if they pass technical muster, and then host a commercial round (we expect this in December/January).
ALL projects will compete in the Commercial Round
When the first commercial round starts ALL projects will be required to compete for the delegation. Projects may receive delegations even by offering just services in exchange for the delegation, but we think that's highly unlikely. The projects most likely to receive delegation are the ones offering the most value in terms of a mix of services, fiat, crypto, utility tokens, and equity.