I created a Blurt account with 100,000 BP to learn more about curation reward farming

Maybe I was too harsh on Blurt's various insiders, witnesses, and community leaders who farm curation rewards by misallocating the reward pool to their own content. I likened it to a blockchain version of embezzlement, racketeering, grifting. Self-voting one's own banal comments used to be very rare here - and frowned upon - but it seems times have changed. Let's investigate!

I'm a scientist and I love experiments. I've run dozens of experiments on various aspects of this blockchain and blogging community over the past 4 years, and posted all my results right here, adding immeasurable data, analysis, and discussion on important Blurt topics.

My most recent experiment was a 3 month journey into another type of reward farming - content reward farming, which gathers regular automated votes on low-effort posts. I concluded:

"With a brand new secret account, over 90 days, I experimented with content reward farming on Blurt. By getting automatic Blurtbooster votes and posting once daily, even without gaining any followers, I was able to generate about 150 BLURT per low-effort post. By automating the process, one person could bring in at least $100 USD per month, working about an hour per day. This may explain some of the spam posts and accounts on our blockchain. But this problem pales in comparison to curation reward farming, using stake to unfairly allocate the reward pool to oneself and/or friendly parties. This tactic unbalances the platform's economy, discourages new users, and drives content quality downward. Unfortunately, because it is often used by the platform's most powerful, there is little effort being made to raise awareness of the problem, let alone take steps to resolve it. My research leads me to conclude that content farming low-effort Blurt posts for small payouts is a more visible but ultimately less destructive issue. All forms of reward farming should continue to be monitored and discussed."

So why not an experiment to learn more about this other kind of farming?

Goals

• determine if such actions can/will be resisted
• find out the amount of curation rewards that can be farmed this way
• advance the ongoing discussion around reward farming

I used an old self-serve method to buy a new account, called @fastearner.

Then I sent the account 100,000 BLURT which I had purchased earlier.

I powered up 99,900 BP, leaving 100 BLURT liquid for fees etc.

Then I made a quick post (no tags or community) with a mundane title and image. The body of the post includes "@Fastearner is owned by @DRutter and is part of an experiment on Blurt reward farming."

Then I voted 100% that post (not a controversial action in the Blurt ecosystem). The result was a pending payout of just more than 3 BLURT (current value about 0.0075 USD). In other words, it would take more than 130 such votes to bring in one US dollar, or about 2 weeks of voting power. (Rough estimation with early figures.)

I started a comment thread with several replies, and voted 100% on them. This is where things get more controversial. Voting on one's own comments has historically not been well tolerated by the general community, although certain connected people have been known to do it religiously since the very start, so it's not without precedent. Blurt has no downvote button, which has numerous upsides... but also this downside. There's no quicky and easy counter to self-voters.

And let's face it, 90% of the web of insiders, witnesses, and co-founders is de facto a reward farming operation. Some of it more legit than others. Ever increasing in prevalence. Those who aren't doing it directly are often benefiting indirectly for not speaking up about what they see going on. A lot of the Blurt economy is dirty. Rotten to the core, in fact. And it radiates outward. Some of the people believing they were doing the right thing have been won over by greed, and now are part of the problem. Today, some major community members and even curation projects are heavily rewarding themselves with their stake, regardless of the quality of their contributions. Perhaps they decided "if I can't beat 'em, I'll join 'em".

Which is to say that I don't anticipate a lot of serious pushback for this experiment. Most of those who are in any position to speak up are either doing this themselves on some level, or benefit financially (votes, proposals, delegations, payments, etc) for maintaining the status quo (not rocking the boat).

Besides, I could have done this secretly if I wanted, and only presented the results afterward (or not at all).

The outcome of voting on the comments was the same as the post itself, about 3 BLURT each.

As you can see, half will go to @fastearner, and the other half will go to @fastearner. The power of self-voting! Hard to imagine this is how the blockchain economy was meant to work, but that's what's happening now. Perhaps it explains why it's becoming impossible to earn on Blurt by simply posting good content and receiving organic votes from strangers and followers.

What's next

I'm going to log in every so often, make a big pile of low-effort comments, and vote on them all. I'll ensure my voting power never recharges all the way to 100%, to maximize my curation rewards.

When the rewards come in, I'll keep them all powered up. I'll keep doing things that way for at least a month, perhaps two. I'll post any interesting results as they come in, and a summary at the conclusion. I'm interested to see the real-world growth of an account, farming curation rewards with 100,000 BP full time. That will give us some idea of the magnitude of the profits being pulled in by users doing similar with millions of BP, month after month.

DRutter