You may believe me, you may think I am just a hater. I don't care.

Fact is that I like this platform, and I want to see steem back at $3 or $4, not at it's current pathetic levels. I have learned more than I thought a web site could help me to by using steemit, and I have met more incredible people than I could ever have fathomed a web site could help me to meet. These are statements of absolute fact. Feel free to ask me about it any time, any day, and I'll never deny these facts.

Today I saw a post from a friend of mine that I met on steem, @furion. It has earned a great deal of money in terms of today's steem prices, $95 or so. I felt that it was too charitable and did not actually address the issues that steem is facing, and I've copied his post, pasted it in, and will be adding in my rebuttals to the things that I think are inaccurate, and adding information to things that I find incomplete.

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I have been privileged enough to have acquired a diversified portfolio of coins and digital assets, like Ethereum, Dash, Monero, Maidsafe, Steem, Bitshares and many others.

(Good for you, @furion! You're financially smarter than I . )

While performing analysis of my digital portfolio, I realized I had strongly underperformed Bitcoin. Had I simply bought and held Bitcoins in the past year, I would have had 270% gain in the dollar terms, however I came short of that by a hefty margin. What gives?

After some investigation, I've noticed that most of the top coins from a year ago have underperformed Bitcoin. The two notable exceptions are Dash and Monero, which have outperformed Bitcoin.
(I really, really want to understand Dash's recent explosion. I had thought that Monero was technically better due to the ring signatures, but Dash just dashed right by like Monero didn't even exist. If anyone can offer technological insights or social insights into why this is, please contact me by e-mail at faddat@gmail.com or by google hangouts at faddat@gmail.com)

The core competencies of the fastest growing coins seem to be revolving around utility of payments.
(@furion, can you give some examples, please?)

As a thought experiment, lets imagine Steem was just a very practical and widely used digital currency.
8 reasons why STEEM is the best digital currency

1. Its blazing fast. 3 second block times, with guaranteed confirmation in under 45s. That beats Bitcoins 3600s confirmation time, or sometimes, when blocks are full or paid fee is too low, much longer.
   @furion - this is true, but graphene is by no means the fastest anymore in terms of block times. Tightly coupled tendermint clusters have block times of 6/10 second per block, and in real-world tests of loosely coupled global chains we do about a block per second.
2. Its FREE. Seriously, 0% transaction fees. Bitcoiners core marketing message was that you can send money to everyone for next to nothing, which is not true anymore.
3. Its super convenient. (I can send money to @ned with 2 clicks, unlike BTC where I need to ask him for his long hard to remember, easy to mess up hexadecimal address or have to scan some silly QR code or something)
4. It comes with a STABLE coin pegged to USD, which is great for merchants or people whom do not want market volatility exposure
5. It has balanced safety and convenience. You can store your money in a savings wallet, which will notify you when withdrawal is initiated. Withdrawal takes 3 days, during which time you can cancel it and change your keys or even restore your account if it gets hacked (good luck getting a billion+ USD of stolen bitcoin back). You can do all of this in an web-app, with 0 technical skills.
6. It comes with built in escrow. Seriously, if you don't trust someone to do their part (ie. in a mercantile exchange), just escrow the transaction with a trusted 3rd party.
7. It is efficient. Steem can process a couple of orders of magnitude more transactions than Bitcoin. Bitcoin side effects on the world are catastrophic - PoW consumes massive amounts of electricity that could be used to power big cities, and turns it into heat, creates thousands of tons of CO2 daily, fills our landfills with toxic electronics (mining equipment), destroys millions of hours of human productivity and all this, just to run a stupid bruteforcing program with no useful side effects other than powering measly few transactions per second.
8. Its censorship resistant. Unlike centralized digital cash, like that of PayPal or your online bank, Steem transactions cannot be censored, and no funds can be witheld from you by some government or corporation. You should be free to do with your money whatever you please, because you are free as in freedom.

I wish to make it very clear that I agree with my friend @furion on all of points 1-8.

I have always enjoyed the payment properties of Steem, however it never occurred to me that this is actually Steem killer feature, a gem hiding in the plain sight.

I think too much time has been spent on the blogging aspect of the platform, and some of us forgot how good is the payment side of things.
@furion - C'mon man, if you remove the blogging, guess what? You've just got bitshares and that's existed for a long time.

Questions
How cool would it be to have a Xapo like debit card, that is funded with STEEM/SBD, and acts as a bridge between digital and legacy real world?
It would be excellent.

What if we could pay for more things and services online with STEEM/SBD?
I would have loved that, but the API is straight-up fucked. No, it's not broken the way that I thought it was when I told the world I thought the API was entirely insecure, it's nonetheless straight-up fucked. Since you've coded against it, I think you get where I am coming from here.

Can we think of any applications, other than blogging, that would tie in nicely with STEEM as transfer of value?
Not really. You and I both Tried to build them, @furion, but the API is straight up fucked as I mentioned above, so they're prohibitively time consuming to build.

Present Issues with STEEM/SBD as a currency

SBD
SBD is being removed from circulation, for financial reasons I wont go into for now. But basically, as the value of STEEM is USD terms drops, the USD pegged SBD needs to be destroyed to eliminate the risk of systemic failure.
Lowering the monetary base of the currency also lowers its liquidity on external exchanges, and the monetary velocity drops as less and less people have and use the currency.
@furion - you're talking about the automated replacement of sbd with steem that occurs when the steem price drops, correct? I don't take issue with that, and understand why it occurs. Too bad the straight-up fucked API doesn't permit building things on top of Steem easily, as that would exponentially increase the dev pool. We can't all be great gods, people.

STEEM
And as for STEEM...who in the world would want to hold a currency that keeps losing its value? How do we course-correct, and stabilize the price?
Here are my answers:

• Fix the goddamned API instead of denying that it's a weakness.

Questions

What are some practical things we could do now, to reverse the price trend, and allow people to save in Steem and sleep well at night?

• Fix the goddamned API instead of denying that it's a weakness.

Would a long period of price stability, coupled with growing usage and utility of the network be sufficient to kickstart Steem onto a path of becoming a major digital currency?

• Not without fixing the goddamned API

How do we introduce what we have to the world?

• Fix the goddamned API and let developers take this chain to the world.

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I realize that my answers to Furion's really intelligent questions were a bit repetitive, but I've saved the best for last

Here's my definitive proof that steemit as it exists today is fucked. My post is going to earn less money than @furion's because I talked openly and specifcially about problems with steemit. Until stake-weighted voting is reformed or eliminated AND stake is better distributed between stakeholders, steemit shall remain fucked because it's impossible to constructively discuss problems with the platform.

You may say that this is just because I'm writing dawn with @baabeetaa but you'd be dead wrong. Dawn will have blogging tools, it's true, but there's a reason I have found it easier to build a blockchain development team and a blockchain than build these tools that desperately need to be created for Steemit. Steem's API is totally FUCKED and UNDOCUMENTED! Worse, its developers (publicly) state that all is hunky-dory while privately acknowledging that their API is not so hot.

Why are you building Dawn?

We're building dawn because we can't build tools that a very good friend of mine (@officialfuzzy) paid good money (well, I can't really say how good it is as as money with an API like this, but I totally can say that I turned it into good money after receiving it) for us to build on Steem, and because we liked the central concept of steemit: people's ideas are worth money, and we can use blockchain systems to credit people for sharing their ideas with others. That is both true and hot as hell. My hat goes off to Mr. Dan Larimer, aka @dantheman, aka @dan for coming up with this brilliant innovation. Really. @dan if you're ever available, we want to hire you. You're brilliant, and I mean that sincerely. If you ever, ever want to speak with me, I'm on google hangouts almost constantly, and you can reach me there at faddat@gmail.com. Weather you think of me as Friend or FUD-spreading-foe, I'll take time out of my day to talk to a man from whom such golden, revolutionary concepts flow. And I'd much rather be friend than foe, @dan. Call me any time. I will answer.

Please have a look at what my content has earned since I became an open well-intentioned critic of this platform's API (In a manner that, except for one post, which I will admit, was dead-wrong in its initial assertion ( @abit, thank you very much for the link.) that Steemit's cryptography was entirely broken. Dead wrong. I was dead, 100% wrong. Anyway, my content's earned approximately jack shit. This creates the worst kind of feedback loop: The destructive kind.

So after I gave up on Steemit fixing Steem's API, I began to think of ways to improve upon what's been built here. This is what I came up with (Please, feel free to make suggestions in the comments):

• API libraries for every language supported by grpc/protobuf (it's not all of them, but it's a hell of a lot) (I suggested this to steemit many times-- please look through my post history if you don't believe me)
• Elimination of voting - Hits and external social shares are much, much better metrics than voting, and don't require the conscious act of voting. Both can be gamed to a degree, but as I think many of us can agree, @sweetsssj's account proves that stake-weighted voting can be gamed, too. As for her, of course, I congratulate her: Systems are made to be gamed and she has gamed well. I salute you, @sweetssj! You will leave this platform both better writer and a hell of a lot wealthier! APPLAUSE! Getting rid of voting also opens the window for tipping, sponsorships, and more.
• "Propaganda machine echo chamber" - Dudes, let's face it this is the most advanced propaganda machine ever built. The cognitive dissonance around here is astounding. Sadly, what makes for good propaganda does not produce user delight.

There's other stuff, too, but I'll wait till our next test network is up to spill beans on these other things.

Anyway, those are the key differences in my mind, and I need y'all to understand: I think that THIS site should have been a billion dollar platform, and would have been if the tooling were there, but it ISNT and folks just throw eggs at other folks who try to bring the problem to light. Now, I realize that this is because the propaganda machine (the economic incentives) are driving them to do so, and that's why I say it's indicative of a seriously ill platform. Now, just because I couldn't create what I was paid to here didn't mean I was going to give up, FUCK NO I DO NOT GIVE UP, NOR DOES ANYONE I WORK WITH.

.....so we are building our own chain, and the tools we were paid to create. Sometimes I had to drag my poor friend and customer @officialfuzzy there kicking and screaming, but I'm going to take him to the one billion to one trillion dollar market cap promised land of users getting paid to create incredible content and more because he backed me even when I was just learning to code, and I'm eternally grateful. To everyone working on dawn, I want to say that my faith in our project comes from my faith in you.

@rampant - you don't just write a mean front end for some of the biggest sports organizations on earth, you're bright, hardworking, and downright ballsy. I gotta get you rich, you didn't kill me after or during China ;).
@Menta - Your Steemit SEA meetup made it all possible man. We should probably throw another one of those :).
Lov - You don't speak too much English, and I don't speak too much Khmer, but somehow you've left me with the distinct impression that you're a wonderful mom to your kids wife to Nov, and surely you're a hell of a lot more to Dawn than we've been able to pay you for thus far. Thank you for all of it :).
@travopolis - Please, remove the kickstand from your motorcycle. You're far, far too awesome to get exploded due to a kickstand malfunction. Also, how could I ever repay you for all the things you've done to help us build DAWN? Well, I could use cash, but I'd surely rather use crypto, and I guess I really can't repay you cause you've gone far beyond money sir.
@baabeetaa - We've actually worked together for quite some time now and the fact of the matter is that the day HaiBac introduced me to you, my life changed for the better. Privileged to be working with you to this day. Thanks for taking the time to understand my crazy ass, I hear it's not always easy :).
@forrest-willie - where do I even start dude? I've always been honored that you chose to come out here, hell frankly I am honored that anyone chose to make changes in their lives to join this scrappy band of blockheads. Over the past few weeks you've validated some of our core ideas, and yet you thank me-- sir, it is I who must thank you! (he and I do this thing, you see. Apparently we work quite well together, cause we're always thanking one another for the privilege, and it's SO a two-way street.)
Nov - Your hard work dedication and willingness to go above and beyond the call of duty to help us bring this project to life is incredible.
@watervapor - You're a maverick who inspired me to clean up my computing environment and eschew advertising in every way I can. You also inspire others to have confidence in themselves. So what I'm saying is that you are by far the most "got their shit together" 26 year old I've ever met, and working with you on Dawn makes every minute I ever spent at the Ally bank call center look like the world's best possible investment of my time. Don't ever stop doing you, just like you do. I, too, am glad of Buffalo's newfound sanity.

To the others who haven't come out of the Dawn closet yet, I want to sincerely thank you. Each of you has contributed immensely to our project.

Fuz, your faith in me has strengthened me as a programmer and as a person, and I'm better off because I know you. Thank you.

To steemit, inc:

Everything we've built is open source. You can finally spruce up your API, and then it'd be an actual contest between Dawn and Steem, or you can finally spruce up your API, and Dawn and steem can do things that blockchains haven't done before together. The choice is yours, and I challenge you to be bold this time around. Bitching/throwing eggs doesn't suit creators of revolutionary concepts well at all. I suppose you could also continue to deny that there are serious issues surrounding your API, and allow the community here to die, that's a possiblity, too, but I just don't think any of you is that stupid. Feel free to prove me wrong if that's what you want to do, though.

To graphene community:

Don't anyone dare give fuzzy any shit about the direction I dragged him in kicking and screaming. He's a great guy and if it were possible I'd have built it the way he asked me to. Fact is, I didn't have any choice, and I didn't give him one. We're going to finish what he hired me and @baabeetaa to do, but it sure as hell won't be using the tools he asked us to use, and it doubly sure as hell isn't just some minor code project any longer. Sadly, that's not possible, and attempts to inspire changes from the makers of those tools earned @baabeetaa and myself scorn and derision. Rather than give our friend nothing, we are going to do it our way.