Steem has a major vulnerability that will eventually crash the economic value of steem. This same vulnerability makes it difficult for new authors to get started on steem, which is the single most important factor for mainstream adoption.

The problem is that steem users are not incentivized to consistently find new authors to follow and upvote. In fact, the system seems to encourage users to focus entirely on upvoting their own posts, and the posts of friends that return the favor.

Since there is no penalty for building totally automated likebot networks, it is encouraging investors to put money into steem for the singular purpose of upvoting their own content to gain a ROI. The more investors that use steem in this way without interacting with the rest of the community, the less value steem will hold in the global market. Eventually, if enough investors are turning their accounts into ROI bot-cows, the market will become flooded with steem that not enough people want, because normal users arn't making enough money..... because the whales with the real steem power are mostly giving it to themselves to resell.

How do we solve this? I have an solution that will fix this vulernability AND give more funds to starting steem authors. This solution is a new steem variable..... For this example, lets call it "Steem Influence".

Steem influence would act as a multiplier to steem power. If a user only upvotes their own content and the content of their friends, their influence will slowly drop. To regain influence, the user must upvote the content of other users whom they have never interacted with before.

Here is an example formula to implement this solution.
-5 out of every 20 upvotes must be given to users whom the upvoter has only interacted with at most 5 times in the last 3 months.

-1 out of every 20 upvotes must be given to a user whom the upvoter has never interacted with before.

-For every 20 votes that the user makes that do not meet the above criteria, the users Steem Influence Score drops by one point.

-Every user starts at 100% influence. As their influence drops, so to does their steem power. Down to a minimum of 40% total voting power.

-To regain influence the user must interact with new users whom they haven't interacted with before.

These numbers are just an example of a functional algorithm. I'm sure all those numbers can and should be fine tuned before implementation.

I want to hear your solutions for this problem. My solution is not the only way. I'll be upvoting my favorite solutionary comments to this thread. I invite you to do the same.

I also invite you to tag any developers you know. We wish to talk to them.

We represent a media alliance with over 10 million followers. We are very interested in bringing steem to the mainstream, and we have the channels to do so. We want to know if the steem developers will work with us to bring steem to the point where we can post about it on sites like https://www.facebook.com/CollectiveEvolutionPage/.

It's an honor to be here with you my fellow Steemian. Lets bring Steem to the Mainstream! Together!