First off I encourage everyone to get involved in the discussion. For those who are unaware, there have been some instances in the community where people appear to be taking advantage of the SourceCred system. This is a summary of the concerns and potential solutions to these problems that have been discussed in great detail in the pollen dev channel on discord.
Initially, members of the Fauna swarm noticed that there were particular instances in discord where there appeared to be âemoji likingâ groups where users were essentially giving themselves cred. This became more evident when we ran the percentage change from version 1.1 of SourceCred to version 1.2 (changes detailed here: Updates to SourceCred). There were two users that immediately stood out, and upon further investigation it appears that they were engaging in unfair behavior.
Users âgamingâ cred:
The users that we documented that were âgamingâ cred are:
1. F-THV (anonmfb1 on discourse)
- Evidence: 3 accounts all created 1 day ago at the same time with 20 likes on discourse
2. Wafey123
- Evidence: 2 users consistently liking and emojing all posts/messages
- Users honey distribution has been frozen pending further investigation
There was then further discussion once these users were identified how we should proceed. There were not necessarily any rules in place, and these were not hard coded into the system to prevent this from happening. There was much back and forth discussion for both sides of the arguement. Ultimately one users (Wafey123) payment was halted for the next source cred distribution. F-THV, and the other accounts acting as bad actors have not been halted as of yet.
This poses further questions as to who should be allowed to make these decisions? Should a users funds be able to be frozen? What should the punishment be for âgamersâ?
Check-in Channel:
Check-in channel was initially disabled by the fauna swarm, & then the pollen swarm came to agreeance once both groups came to the realization that check-ins can be done in a better way. Right now there is an overabundance of cred being minted in the channel for content that is usually a repost of content that has already been posted elsewhere. For example, one post in check-in received 22 super-emojis, and 17 regular emojis. If we assume 1 emoji = 1 cred from a verified user, then (22*2)+(17) = 61 cred. Discourse posts are rated at 4x when compared to discord, and therefore 61 emojis on discord would be equal to 15.25 likes. Now if a user was able to get that every day on average, then they would be getting a very large number of cred just from checking in. It is substantially more difficult to get 15 likes in discourse, and discourse is usually original content or ideas not a repost of what you accomplished already that day.
We have considered so far opening the channel back up with 0 minted cred, or may also consider 0.25x like the meme channel (although that may goto 0x as well).
Discourse Concerns:
Right now there are some loop holes on the discourse side of things. Any user can like a post, and after the user becomes level 2 verified then all the likes will mint cred to the users that they liked. Additionally, right now the daily cap of likes is 50. There is even a badge for using them all in one day, which may unintentionally incentivize users to use them to get the badge. Some users may think the badges generate cred when they receive them. Additionally, my thoughts are that the amount of daily likes should be reduced to something reasonable, like 5 likes per day.
Pollen Distribution:
The curent amount of pollen distribution is currently 50hny per week - with 25 going to the weekly cred and 25 to overall. This amount was set early on when the price of honey was much lower. If we assume a price of $1000/hny, thats $50,000 per week being distributed into pollen. If we annualize that, thats $2.6 million dollars a year. There is no other token or network in the ecosystem that is paying nearly that much for an incentive program for the community. It may we wise to reconsider this number, and lower it in the mean time - especially with all the concerns of gamers.
How Do We Proceed?:
The way forward is not an easy one, but through further discussion we can implement solutions and fix these problems. Again this is open to the community to voice their opinion and come to a reasonable solution. I believe that the rules should be hard coded into the system so that there is no ability for anyone to game, although thats easier said than done. So what do you think is the best way to tackle these issues? Should a cafe call be scheduled to further discuss?