Hey everyone,

before I get to the point and explain my case let me please introduce myself. I'm a mid 20s guy who has been a long time lurker in this forum. In the last year I tried to learn as much about the blockchain technology as possible and that lead me to this forum and to cryptocurrencies in general. I've been a very sceptical voice when it comes to investing (aka speculating) in cryptocurrencies and ICOs, because I truly believe that 90% of the projects out there are just pipedreams trying to utilize blockchain in a project that doesn't need the technology in the first place.

Why the Merit System is fundamentally flawed

The merit system itself is highly controversial. It is dividing this forum into different groups. The main premise of the Merit system may be good. Users get rewarded for high quality content. And by gaining merit they are "promoted" and can hand out merit themselves. Now in theory that's a great system and we have seen similar systems used in other forums as well.

The main problem with the whole premise is that in this forum we have a financial incentive to NOT give Merit to new users and rather sell Merit or exchange it with other accounts. Financial incentive you ask? Yes! Signature campaigns in bounties are up to date the majority allocation of a bounty campaign. So why should I increase the competition for stakes in a bounty campaign by upvoting new users?

Furthermore the whole system creates a massive gatekeeper problem. Why should only high-ranking users decide who gets points? There are so many alternative systems better equipped to deal with this problem. One alternative could be giving accounts older than 3 months (or 6 months) one Merit to give away each day. This forum is growing every day and very often people who answer "newbie" questions are doing as much good work as someone who explains a highly technical question. It's just helping on a different level.

So to close my argument there are several points which make the Merit System fundamentally flawed:

• Financial incentives to not promote new members
• Financial incentives to sell or swap Merit
• Gatekeeping
• A lack of rewards for users answering "newb" questions

Thank you very much!

I'm looking forward to hearing your opinion on this matter.