Steem Basic Income

Steem Basic Income is a social experiment to bring a basic income to as many Steemians as possible. Members join by sponsoring others into the program. Steem Basic Income is delivered through providing regular upvotes to member content.

Managing Voting Power

Imagine a massive water tower. Each week a specified amount of water is pumped into the water tower.

img src pixabay

Staggered around the bottom are 500 spigots or faucets. Above each spigot is an indicator that shows how much water is supposed to flow out of that spigot each day. Below the water tower is an engineer whose job it is to make sure every spigot releases the right amount of water, and that the water tank stays close to full, but without ever filling all the way. If the water pressure gets too low, the water barely trickles out when the spigots are open. If the water tower gets totally full, then the money spent on a ensuring a generous flow of water into the tower is wasted. It's a complicated job...

But there's a catch. The engineer cannot activate the spigots himself, he only controls how much water comes out each time the spigot is activated. The spigots are remotely activated by people that have paid in advance for water rights. But customers pay for general access to a spigot, not for how many times their spigot is activated. Each person has an incentive to activate their spigot too frequently and get more water than their fair share.

So the engineer moves systematically around the water tower, checking each spigot to see how much water has been released. There is no way of knowing how many times the remote user will activate their spigot, but history is a reasonably reliable guide. So the engineer checks the number of times it was activated over the last week and the last month, and adjusts the flow rate accordingly.

img source pixabay

Some users never activate their spigots, and the engineer doesn't want the water tower to get all the way full. So he identifies how much water should be consumed by each of the inactive spigots, and reallocates that portion to the active spigots to keep the water tower from getting full. If it still gets too full, he may increase everyone's flow rate temporarily, to let the water drain out to below 80%, and then reduce the flow rate again to let the tank begin to refill toward full.

Now imagine that there are 5 tanks of water, and 2500 spigots, and the engineer isn't just controlling the flow rate out of the pools but also making sure that the right amount of water is flowing into each tank. He is also responding to queries from the water customers, many of whom don't understand how their water flow rate is set. And providing general updates to the customers, so that they know that the water is clean and isn't growing life threatening algae...

So now you have some understanding of the complexities of managing the @steembasicincome program. It all seems really complicated, but it's actually kind of basic. There is a flow of water in, and a flow of water out, and I'm running around the five tanks trying to make sure each customer gets their fair share, while keeping the water towers mostly full but not all the way full.

I'm really grateful that we have a plan for full automation that will also resolve some of the flow issues with the current design.

img source pixabay

Enrollment

If this sounds interesting and you want to get involved, or to increase the share of basic income that you receive, enrollment is pretty straightforward:

Just send 1 STEEM to @steembasicincome. Include the name of a Steemian to sponsor in the transaction memo. You and the person you sponsor will each receive 1 share in the program. You can sponsor any active Steemian, it does not have to be a current member.

The official currency for enrollment is STEEM. We accept SBD at our discretion (usually when they're very close, or when SBD is stronger) but you do not receive extra value or any partial refund for paying in SBD instead of STEEM. If we choose to accept an SBD enrollment, we accept the entire amount. If we choose to reject it, we refund the entire amount and request you to send STEEM instead.

It's fine to send a list, but we prefer a comma after each name. If you send a list, please specify share amounts for each or we will assume equal distribution (e.g. 15 STEEM with 3 names means 5 shares each and 15 for you, unless you specify otherwise).

As we get close to automation for enrollments, we will tighten up the transaction memo guidelines, but we will make plenty of announcements. Please bear in mind that enrollments are currently processed manually, and we are prioritizing regular updates over new enrollments right now, so there may be some delay before you receive confirmation or adjustment to your voting weights.

Steem Creators Conference

We are pleased to have been invited to speak at the Steem Creators Conference in Las Vegas next month. Learn all about it at https://www.steemcreators.com/ Mark your calendars and book your tickets, this is going to be an awesome event! (Look for our name on the registration page to get a $25 discount on your tickets.)

Questions?

We broke down the mechanics for how the program works in the complete overview. You can check your share counts and upvoting weight in our spreadsheet explained here. If you have any questions, ask away in the comments section or join us in our discord channel.