In the 2017 Roadmap, Steemit Inc pledged to decentralize their stake. Here's what they had to say.
Of course, Steemit Inc will continue to invest in initiatives like SteemFest, developing the Steem blockchain and Steemit.com, and hopefully soon, marketing. However, while all of that seemed like a significant portion of the ~$7 million stake at the time, today, Steemit Inc's stake is closer to ~$350 million. Increasingly, there are calls from the crypto community in general, and the Steem community in particular, to achieve a better distribution of Steem tokens. To be clear, I'm not fussed either way about who holds tokens, but if this leads to greater adoption, as an investor and witness I agree it's something that must be done.
Indeed, it might be beneficial to Steemit Inc too - if a large number of crypto whales refuse to buy Steem because of the distribution issue, Steemit Inc may yet leave with a higher valued stake in USD / BTC terms, even if their Steem holding is down to less than half.
First, let's get through some things that must happen either way, then we'll discuss some options about further measures.
Faucets - While Hardfork 20 is set to bring a limited number of free registrations, Steem will still be needed beyond that limit. Steemit Inc has been working on an universal faucet for registrations, and I expect to see not just Steemit.com, but any app on the Steem blockchain be able to use this to register accounts. As an added bonus, all Steem used for registrations will be burned, reducing the supply of Steem.
Marketing - There needs to be a massive, multi-million dollar marketing campaign for Steem in general and Steemit in particular. It's a killer product, and would be a relatively easy sell post-Communities.
Continued research and development - Steem is one of the most advanced blockchains on the planet. Considerably resources must be invested to keep it there. The startup mentality is all well and good, but at some point, the team needs to expand to execute on the next level. On a related note, contribute to research and development for apps built on the Steem blockchain.
Community delegations - Steemit Inc has been investing in delegations, though this is currently too biased towards developers. Never forget that the content creators and curators are whom Steem is built for, and even developers are ultimately a means to that end. I hope to see delegations go out far and wide to the best communities on Steem. Mind you, however, there should be a limit to total Steemit Inc delegations - too many delegations from Steemit Inc will mean less demand for Steem Power as other users will be squeezed out of the reward pool. Currently, far too much is being delegated to too few people / initiatives.
Community events and community building - SteemFest is great, but ultimately too niche an event. Community building needs to be expanded far and wide.
And of course, keep Steemit.com running as one of the more reliable websites on the internet.
Alright, so that's a few minimum expectations of how Steemit Inc's stake could be expended, but that still leaves a vast majority.
Burn - This one's the simplest. Just send dozens of millions of Steem to @null. This directly addresses the distribution problem. Everyone left with stake now owns a significantly higher percentage of the Steem network. With a significantly lower supply, combined with the PR win a burn always brings in crypto world, will inevitably lead to strong buying pressure and a much higher price. [Addendum - As @onthewayout points out, since the reward pool is tied to the inflation of supply, a burn would lead to significant reduction in the reward pool in Steem terms. However, I do believe the increase in demand / price caused by a burn will more than outweigh this drop, in BTC / fiat terms.]
Sell on exchanges - Of course, do so responsibly, to add volumes at higher prices to entice crypto whales. Liquidity has been a problem with Steem, with very little available on the markets. The drawback, is of course, it could artificially keep price at a low level while the decentralisation of stake is happening.
Sell directly to institutional investors - A riff on #2, but potentially with the same drawbacks. It could also mean a few institutions continue to dominate the stakeholding. (Of course, that's not a problem, and the norm for any capital enterprise - but somehow frowned upon by crypto traders.)
Airdrop existing Steem Power holders - Existing Steem Power holders will increase their stake proportionately. It'll also drive significant demand for Steem, and lead to the price skyrocketing in the short term. As we have seen before, there's always a frenzy when there's free coins on offer, whether it be forks or airdrops. The drawback here is, the supply remains the same, and a medium-term dump will follow as people start powering down following the airdrop.
Airdrop the "best" Steemians - This will probably be the most controversial, and one I don't support at all. However, it'll probably be the most efficient way to really improve the quality of content in this place overnight. Of course, power may corrupt the most honourable, so that's a risk too.
Addendum - 6. Airdrop existing Steem and Steem Power holders - As suggested by @smooth, this is similar to #4, but airdrops on both Steem and Steem Power holders. (Will need exchanges to co-operate, of course, but that shouldn't be an issue) Crypto traders tend to favour liquid over lock-in, so this does make more sense to me than #4. It'll perhaps lead to a steeper dump short-term.
This is, needless to say, a quick and incomplete list. I'd love to see you add to this - what do you feel would be the best ways for Steemit Inc to decentralize their stake?
ok. this powerfully stimulated some thought, and just spun out into a sixth possibility, elaborated on here:
The $1 Billion Steem Development Fund: How Steemit Inc.'s Stake Could Be Best Allocated To Grow A Thriving Network Of Applications And Users...
Would appreciate your input - and if you dig the idea and might be in a position to share it with any of the parties capable of effectively advancing it, share where / with whom appropriate. 🙏
To my mind the biggest problem with Steemit right now is that the site still needs a lot of work. Good content gets buried fast and easily and becomes very difficult to find minutes after its posted. I'm pretty getting off-topic a bit with this. But if a decision here can be applied as resources in some way toward site improvements, then that's the option I'd favor.
Communities are incoming - that'll vastly improve discoverability. Granted, development on that has been achingly slow, but I do hope to see it on Steemit.com by mid-2018.
It's basically akin to Subreddits. Much more effective than tags.
@ned
himself has said that sadly, this is as good as Steemit will be. As they are focusing on the development of the Blockchain itself an an interface is something that can be left for entrepreneurs to come create.If im not mistaken of @ned's vision, he forsee that Steem will be the backend infrastructure of which thousands of social media will be built.
He intends for steemit to be dwarfed by other sites.
Edit: I've been corrected by both @roadscape and @ned himself that it is not true. Steemit will continue to be developed by the wonderful team at Steemit .Inc with a dedicated and large team. I am actually very happy that I was wrong.
This is not true, there is a dedicated steemit.com UI team and planned enhancements.
There is? owh I must have been mistaken then...
Steemit is continuing to be developed with a large development team - The Steem ecosystem will also grow and may grow larger than steemit
True. The rate at which steemit community is booming is mind-blowing.
i guess the question is: is the "user directed inflation model" any good.. since its inception the rewards have largely gone to those who manipulate the system the best.
Define "manipulating the system". It's really a free market and anyone can do what they want with their Steem power.. And its up to everyone else to decide whether a person's upvote is justified. or should it be countered by a downvote.
The current iteration of user direction inflation model may have it's flaws but it's the best one we can work with.. I have my hopes up for the potential it can go.
Manipulating the system: the original intent of Steemit was to reward quality content, not increasing your own payouts just because you can. It is the content creators who make the platform interesting, not the bots, voting schemes and 1000s of sock puppet accounts.
You see, as it stands, Steemit is promoted as one thing, but in reality is another. This is what leaves a bad taste in people's mouths.
They are in effect, "duped" into participating on the platform, only to realise at some point later that simply creating good content does not win you a fair share of the rewards because others are gaming the system. This is no better than Zuckerberg and FB.
You hit it right @leoplaw!
There are some great sites created already, like Dtube and Dlive; it us actually rather exciting. I wonder if anyone us creating more steemit readers like esteem. Perhaps they can figure out some more useful filters.
It's to come i guess. Any entrepreneurs who wants to seize the opportunity offered by the steem blockchain can come up with an app to take a shot ..
.
Oh, that's the first I've heard of that. That'll be great. The tag system isn't a super effective method of separating content.
I think a solution that would support exactly those communities would be ideal. Maybe through some sort of voting amplification that would distribute some extra Steem among creators adding the most value to their respective communities.
I do hope to see Steemit Inc delegate to many communities far and wide. Curators can earn curation rewards.
This is a great idea. Building a community is very hard work, and it would be very nice if Steemit Inc could incentivize it.
At steemit, communication very important
I would like to see a semantic search, apache stambol or even solr.
I've built a large music community called Open Mic that supports hundreds of musicians a week and onboards lots of new users. There are even Steemit meetups of musicians happening around the world that center around that community. Any development that supports bringing more people to the platform deserves support.
No, that's directly on-topic, and one of the many reasons why people are averse to adopting the use of steemit as their regular social media destination. Normal people just don't feel welcomed here.
On the contrary, you have a far higher chance of gaining an audience on Steem than anywhere else on the internet. This is because curation is incentivized, and you have plenty of great projects like Curie, steemSTEM and OCD (in addition to many individual curators) looking out for the best posts by new authors.
See, that's a huge problem in itself, the system is so broken that we need super-powered groups to curate, when it's something that could be done by the community itself if it wasn't for the fact that new users' attempts at curation are next to meaningless because of the math. As far as content creators go, I do admit that because of the dearth of talent on the platform it's quite easy for incoming star writers and content producers to get noticed by the groups you mentioned.
I can name dozens of great individual curators if you want. I named the groups because they are easy to recall. As for new users, they are free to power up and curate.
Yes, of course there are also individuals who curate. That's the issue, your recommendation is that they throw money at the problem, why would any sane person do that when they already have other social media accounts where their vote has equal weight by default and their social circles are already hooked in? Everyone on steemit is either heavily invested or trying to make money, turning steemit into a workplace more than a recreational site.
Another side note, VC never has the users in mind, I hope a large share isn't chunked off to some assholes who just want to flip it.
Because other social networks don't pay you curation rewards.
Ganging up to get more rewards is reward pool rape.
It disadvantages everbody that doesnt join in.
The owners won't give up control until they start losing money lets get real ned is making way too much doing this
Yeah, for sure. It's hard to have a system that is "free" but also isn't full of endless garbage. It also seems impossible for any content to be lasting in any way with the payout scheme.
Anyone could make their own site, we don't have to rely on steemit inc for this. There's just not much incentive to do it at this point
Yeah, decentralization is good for innovation.
But you still need to invest time and money to come up with something better.
Not forgetting the cost of the new sign-ups.
That's a good point. It would be really cool if @busy.org or someone else actually became a real threat to being more used than Steemit as one point. I suppose that would lead to faster development for both parties.
eggsactly, couldn't have said it any better... or maybe I could, It's kind of the problem with the social media... Like 9gag for example... There're so many memes... That most times, the good ones get over-shadowed and are never seen.
Amen to your statement!
Yeh improving the site is what all the friends I have recommended come to Steemit say.
And they're not wrong. We still need some more features if we want to compete with other social medias.
True
If only there were some incentive system for people to dig through large amounts of content and upvote them.
Oh, wait.
I'm working on a project that would make your feed show you posts that have been voted on by people that tend to vote similarly to you. (I found this post using my test version) That way, everyone becomes your personal curators. This is the way that most social networks work. It has really improved my experience on steemit. I explain it more in this post. Sorry for the link spam but it is past payout anyway. I just thought you might find it interesting.
I'm the newst kid here and I don't have much saying on this matter, but I do agree with you @alangrant . One surely can sell part of the house, or enlarge it by investing harder on development. But resources tend to be the most crucial part in any company at long term, that's why so many end up selling and no, it's not just about money nor the lack of it. If we spend as much time finding funding instead of thinking where to fund. One could find a better solution, because like I said, it isn't just about selling nor modifying, but to have any power and means to do so. Cheers!
Good points. As others have pointed out, the site still needs a lot of work from a user perspective. Markdown is not mainstream; it is very difficult to find content; the very idea that Google is STILL used to search the site is mind-boggling.
I could list more, but I really believe that the UI needs work - and maybe not that much - to make it much more user-friendly.
As Steemit is more a Blog platform than a social one like Facebook, I'm surprised at the lack of organization with regards to topics. You would think the landing page would have say 5 or so main topic categories and then subcategories within. Plus where's the ability to follow certain topics, not just people? This is why posts get lost so eaasily and are hard to find with the current search method.
Is there a way to prevent people from gaming the system by upvoting just to participate in a pool? or post a one word comment just to register as actively participating? So much spam, cutting and pasting news articles and garbage to get through to find the good content. Certainly a good start but lot's of work ahead to improve the platform.
Following 'topics' isn't a part of the blockchain.
So you would have to either re-follow, every topic, every time u use another website. Or make changes to the block-chain protocol.
Spending money to make Steemit a functional modern site is hard to argue against. I think the word "beta" in the logo speaks for itself. Economically, Steem's not in beta anymore, and its primary front end shouldn't be either.
Yeah but $350m can rewrite the UI platform 20 times over.
Scaling down their holding shouldn't threaten development.
Yeah, definitely some priorities to work on. I'm hoping we get changes in a timely manner as adoption increases.
it's amazing that you say it @tomkirkham
Development on Steemit.com has been very slow, but ongoing. Their focus seems to be much more on the Steem blockchain and SMTs than Steemit. I do hope they invest in more high quality developers to speed up the process as well as improve quality.
I think steemit has developed a lot but there are still certain areas where it can be improved.First of all as u already said it's very difficult to find content. Good content gets vanished after recent posts. And also there must be a separate application for steemit with no bugs.
See my comment below, Communities are incoming. It'll be a feature like subreddits, so content discoverability will improve significantly.
I saw your comment dear. But I think mid 2018 far away. Still a lot of time to go
It sure is a long time away, but it been a year or so since they first announced it, so you've got to learn to be patient for updates here in Steemit! :)
Yes, thank you sir. Appreciation
wow words that deeply touched my heart, an inspiration for me
Thanks @tomkirkham
I would oppose airdropping to the "best" Steemians, since that would likely ultimately boil down to a centralized body determining who qualifies as "best". Since the "best" Steemians would probably end up being those that already earn significant rewards (and therefore probably already have connections to one or more whales), this could actually have a centralizing effect, rather than a decentralizing one.
Just my opinion! :)
Not necessarily, there can be a democratic vote on where the airdrops go. But yes, this will be a messy process that's best avoided.
Even if they make this process as fair as possible, certain members and communities will feel like that got screwed, making Steem very sour for them. I don't see how this process can be done without anyone feeling left out and diving the community.
This democratic vote does not work so well here when there are people holding over 20 accounts. Just saying :)
It could be stake-weighed, just like how voting for witnesses is.
Yep, but this will lead to the same old behaviour when few whales will control most of the airdrop. I don't think that there is a clear solution to this yet.
I think it would generally be helpful to get an update on the Roadmap 2017. I've heard that Steemit Inc's working on an announcement, so I guess we'll be informed shortly. According to last year's roadmap the community feature was supposed to be launched in Q3/2017, and since it was one of the most celebrated parts of the roadmap, an update would be highly appreciated. I guess the idea to focus on SMTs completely changed their overall strategy, that's why most things that were planned for 2017 haven't been implemented yet. The Steemit app is just one more product to mention here.
Communication is key :-) Thanks for bringing it again into spotlight.
I get the sense that there would be no more long-term roadmaps. It's obvious they couldn't hit many of their key 2017 targets, and in this world it's pretty much a vague guess. No one's done this stuff before (i.e. social network on a blockchain) and they have faced many challenges along the way. It makes sense, of course, and is a part of maturing as an organisation. After all, you don't see Samsung telegraphing their plans for Galaxy S10 now. They'll only announce Galaxy S9 when it's done and ready to ship soon.
Thing is that stakeholders of Steem have actually a right to know what Steemit Inc's plans are since that's what they're actually investing in. I'd rather compare it to a classic relationship between a stock corporation and their shareholders than a corporation like Samsung and their B2C end consumers who have actually no influence on the business at all.
I really think transparency is the key driver to trust here, and trust is fundamental for investments.
They might give less details on their plans, but I really don't believe that they should try to sell a black box to their partners.
On that note, Samsung doesn't telegraph concrete plans to their shareholders either, till they are confident about it. Samsung shareholders will know Galaxy S10 is in the works for 2019, but they won't know the exact price, release date and feature set, because Samsung Electronics themselves don't have that information yet. Anyway, all of this is irrelevant :)
There should absolutely be transparency, but only about things they themselves have knowledge of. There's transparency in their GitHub - it's easy to follow the development of Hivemind (the backend that drives Community) on GitHub. It's fair to announce that they are working on such a feature, and publish the specification (which again they have done to GitHub). However, saying something like "Communities will be ready Q3 2017" is naïve and self-defeating, and causes wholesale disappointment and lack of trust across the board. Instead, give out concrete details, including release dates, when you actually have the necessary knowledge to be confident about such a statement. Traders and shareholders alike will have far higher confidence in an organisation that delivers their stated goals on time and with the announced feature set.
I fully agree on what you said here. Also actually nobody needs so concrete release dates. Knowing that they're giving priority to certain features or projects already provides a lot of confidence. In the end it's the direction we agree or disagree on and the overall vision that might motivate us to invest or not.
Thanks for the valuable talk :-)
There is transparency if you look for it. Check out github to have an idea what they are doing. You can see what part of the SMT's is already developed and what they are working on.
https://github.com/steemit/steem/projects
If you are a developer then this might be of help. If not (and that applies for the majority of these 370,000+ active users), then it won't.
https://github.com/steemit/hivemind/commits/master
Interesting response.
I kindly invite you to watch the interview between David Pakman and Andrew Levine where Andrew (who is part of Steemit Inc - what I actually don't need to mention) says that you can follow the whole process of all these projects on github but a normal person would never understand what's written there.
Timestamp 04:47 min:
I really don't believe that your purpose is keeping the majority of the community out of your communication.
I would say definitely the burn solution would be the best thing to do. 50% I think would be great.
Then airdrop another 25% to Steem Power holders. These are the ones who really believe in Steem. And with this you get a good distribution as well of this other 25%.
I agree burn would be the ideal solution, but that will obviously see a lot of friction from the Steemit Inc management.
I get why they might not want to burn their Steem, but I believe that this will create a much bigger demand for Steem, ultimately leading to it rising a lot in price. I'm fairly confident that this will be a good financial solution for the long-term thinking. However, that's easy for me to say, and I might feel otherwise if it were my millions that were on the line.
Doing the right thing is not always comfortable. Burning them is the best for everyone.
I think after doing it the price could go up 5 times... So Steemit Inc. would be better off by doing it... although they might feel not comfortable because there is of course no guarantee that the price would triple at least...
Agreed, It would help keep the price of steem up and reward the loyal users. Also selling some to get more developers working on Condenser would be great investment.
Burning the stake of the steemit account will reduce the author rewards by about 1/3. Remember that the rewards pool comes from inflation and the amount of new steem is a percentage of the total supply.
Since the stake of the @steemit account is not part of the actual circulating supply burning it will not have any direct impact on the price of steem while reducing the marketcap and size of the rewards pool.
You don't and can't know for sure what is the effect on the price from the steemit account. Investors know that 41% (based on quoted number, probably not that now) is out there and may be sold, so it weighs on the price. Looking at the worst case scenario, that is potentialy a huge pile of STEEM that may continue to be sold and depress the price (and/or limit price rises) for years to come. That is absolutely something that matters to the price. If it is burned, it can't be sold and does not weigh on the price.
Of course, no one can know for sure what the price will do in the future nor what the effect of any action (such as a burn) might be, but to suppose it has no effect is an extreme claim and unlikely to be accurate.
There was a volume last week of about 500 million dollars in a day... they could have divested 50% selling it easily... this would have hurt the price temporarily, but then no one party could hurt the price anymore like they can do now..
You are correct we can not predict what reaction investors will have in that hypothetical scenario. In the short term we will see a small reduction in the supply (after all just between Poloniex and Bittrex there are is already about 45 million steem that can be traded which amounts approximately to 1.8 years of inflation at the current rate).
Inflation is less the issue than 41% of the total supply which is always going to be a massive amount with enormous direct and indirect effects on the market. Inflation is currently about 8.5% per year so 41% is more than 4x as much as one year's inflation. That is, if Steemit decides to divest by selling over a 4 year period that is more than doubling the inflation. And that is not implausible, as they have been selling regularly since the start.
I agree, divesting the stake will have a direct effect on the tokens available on the market and therefore on the price. Even if most of it is powered up it will effectively dilute everyone else (depending on how it is allocated). The real issue is the existence of that massive stake. To be honest I would prefer that Steemit burn their stake even if it means a short term reduction in the rewards pool.
In Steem terms, yes. However, I'd wager there'll be a massive pump shortly following a burn (that's just how the crypto markets work). It'll stabilize somewhere, no one knows where, but I'm fairly confident it'll more than offset the drop in reward pool in Steem terms.
That is a great point, and one that I had overlooked.
On the other hand divesting that stake will effectively dilute everyone and probably depress the price in some scenarios. Either way this only proves that having such a high percentage of the supply is a liability to the whole network.
That's a very good point that I have not seen anyone make before. But it's certainly very interesting that it will lead to a lower reward pool.
While it might not have a direct effect, I believe that a potential burn will give faith to investors who might be skeptical of investing because of the huge stockpile held by Steemit Inc.
This reduces the total amount of outstanding STEEM, which reduces the overall market cap - an important figure for marketing purposes (and ranking on the large index sites). It's probably not the best route as a result, because it makes the platform seem less important to an outsider.
That is certainly true if the price is constant. However, news of a burn can drive significant demand, and could easily offset the reduction in supply. If the price multiplies several times - not uncommon in the crypto world, as we all know - the end result could be a market cap that's far higher, despite the lower supply.
It's not clear to me as to which of these methods will be considered favourable by the wider crypto community, but burning does seem popular with the Steem community, judging by the many comments to this post. Personally, I'm leaning towards #6, though I'm aware realistically there'll be a bit of #2 and #3 as well.
Suggestion: give some to the @steemstem user who supports the #STEM and #CTIM communities. I would look at some communities that have started to grow and consider giving some of that stake to them with a condition that they cannot power down the charitable given stake (so they can use the charitable stake to support people who post quality content).
I like the other idea of burning the stake, only because it does equally reward all users who've taken a risk so far. However, some community members have done a fantastic job of helping their communities.
UPDATE: wrong user!
I absolutely agree @steemstem should get a massive SP delegation. What you're talking about is basically a delegation. The delegatee can vote with the stake, but it is still owned by the delegator.
A condition like that is not enforceable if they donated the Steem Power directly.
@null should get it all, all but a portion for a group of developers that can be awarded through winning a contest, a contest for developing the best interface for Steemit.com, one that includes a way to bend reward pool rape into a dating game where no means no and at the same time turns abusive whales into eunuchs.
There are mainly two kinds of people on Steemit; the investors and the content creators. Currently Steemit favours only investors. When I invite people to join Steemit, I always tell them that they might get no rewards if they do not have money to invest.
It's difficult for curators to check the common tags, let alone new tags that newbies may be interested in. So for Steemit Inc to decentralise their SP, I agree with you for them to support communities that create contents or organise Steemit campaigns not only development communities.
There should be an application form for these communities, because it's really difficult for a community to get the needed visibility on the network. Recently, I started a community to bring creatives to Steemit. I'm glad some users liked the idea of the community though, was wondering how existing Steemians may react. I would like you to check out the intro post of the community project here and let me know what you think.
I read some time ago that the amount of a coin in exchanges influences the price of the coin. I'll suggest they put at least 25% of their SP (after powering dow) in exchanges, it's just my opinion though. The price of Steem itself will definitely bring new members. In December last year, the influx of persons to the blockchain was really high due to the prices of SBD and Steem. If something like that happens often, Steemit will even need more servers.
I agree that there should be a transparent way for communities to apply for delegations.
Yeah lot of changes needed
There is an alternative that is not being considered here.....
Give control over the majority of the steemit.inc Steem to the Steem community for the purpose of moderating abuse of the inflation and to carefully structure a massively scaled up positive curation effort.
To my mind, this is the only option that is by far the least likely to cause negative unintended consequences and is by far the fairest.
To be fair, they have done this with a fairly large delegation to Steemcleaners. Of course, it's not enough, we need many more Steemcleaners and a lot more delegations to clean up the site.
Of course, that's just delegations, and it doesn't address the decentralize-the-stake issue at hand here. Steemit Inc still owns the stake.
We need an army of steemcleaners with the power to compete with whales and with the support of the community.
I agree some of these whales are not only abusing their stature as wealthy whales they are abusive to the community.
We do, indeed. I saw a comment by sneak hinting that they are working on something to incentivise abuse fighting for stakeholders. Or at least he acknowledged it's a real problem that needs a solution.
I don't understand why they are trying to engineer a more complex solution, one which involves only a handful of accounts. That is obviously part of the problem. The solution cannot be found there.
The only serious stake that can do anything meaningful, stake that had an original purpose befitting a community based solution is Steemit's. 95% of the Steemit.inc stake should be gifted to the Steemit community with a rigorous set of guidelines for it's use. The more I think about it, the more I believe it's the only way.
This wont stop spam and abuse. I agree though that a much better stake distribution is esential
Steemit.inc could award stake for quality curation over time and tied to performance....gradually divesting the stake into the hands of the people that maintain integrity and reputation and who's actions enable steem to function.
Thereby empowering anybody willing to brown nose stinc and disadvantaging anybody not willing to sell their soul for money.
You jumped right past the main point....the community decide the criteria for awarding effort, not steemit.inc obviously.
Yes, if the community wasn't mostly sycophants of stinc, et al, that might be a good way to do it.
Not many contrarians are gonna make the popularity lists and leaving them unrewarded skews the effort towards brown nosers and feel gooders negating the contributions that keep us from inbreeding.
How do you propose to rank curators?
ROI?
Really?
Without dissent it is all a circle jerk by conformists, imo.
Not rewarding those who are unpopular, and contrarian, guarantees that the circle inbreeds and only gets smaller.
Which will be very popular among the sycophants. 0.o
Remember the primary goal is attenuating abuse of the inflation by the handful of powerful accounts. I think positive curation can be structured in such a way that all points of view can be accommodated and nurtured. It requires a significant scaling up and enhancement of current efforts.
Yeah, I think the proliferation of more content policing would probably one of the biggest boons we could have. An easier way to sift through low quality content would be really nice too.
Yep!
As discussed earlier, a roll-out similar to last August but this time with perhaps a little more planning and monitoring of the delegates to ensure own pockets aren't being lined.
If the aim is decentralisation, I don't see how the burn option would address this effectively, surely what we need is redistribution downwards, away from the whales.
Surely selling on the exchanges - options 2 and 3 would similarly just create an influx of new Whale accounts...
Similarly, with option 4, airdropping to everyone based on SP - we'd have the same level of concentration in the hands of the few.
The only aspect of decentralisation these first four options address is taking 'power' away from an account that NEVER uses it, and effectively giving most of that power to a minority of Whales who do use it - NOT necessarily to upvote the best quality content either!
Thus, logically, the only way to guarantee decentralisation is to 'airdrop the best steemians'... it's not especially difficult to trawl through people's accounts and find who the 'team players' are. Of course I do appreciate agreeing on what constitutes 'best' is more easily said than done - then again that is what decentralisation is about - there is no elegant, technological, algorithmic solution that you can just 'click to enact' - you have to go through the messy process of dialogue to get some sort of consensus, IMO.
And of course there's a risk that power will corrupt, but as I see it IF decentralisation is the plan, that is real decentralisation beyond just killing Steemit Inc and leaving the current Whale domination intact, then surely airdropping the best (non-whale steemians) is the only options, even if there are risks...?
To be blunt, the only think keeping me going on here is a few community minded Dolphins I've connected with, we need more of that sort of thing, but I don't see how options 1-4 will make that so.
Note, this post is about decentralising the stake held by Steemit Inc accounts, not decentralising the entire Steem network. That's never really going to happen, there's never been a free market in history that has not seen rampant inequality. But yes, the situation can improve. Airdropping select users is a can of worms in itself!
Point taken, but given that Steemit Inc controls such a huge stake, if that SP is divested, it will have a pretty huge impact on the platform as a whole!
As to the free market, I agree and steemit's no exception to that for sure!
Airdrop to steem users based on reputation!?
True distribution based on trust.
How do we address bot accounts that belong to whales that would have the ability to absorb a huge amount of this redistribution?
I agree this would in fact create more whales as I believe that an influx would also drive the price down where whales can purchase huge lots of it and power up.
Who gets to decide who are the best Steemians? Many think @BernieSanders is a Team layer. Many think @Joeparys and @JerryBanfield are team players however the 3 appear to be playing on different teams with very different views on STEEM and the way the reward pool is manipulated. So I have to ask again. Who decides?
The last two paragraphs I agree with and have no other input.
I never said it was going to be easy!
In fairness the bot accounts are something I hadn't even thought about, but if we were redistributing to the 'best' steemians, this wouldn't be an issue.
As to what counts as a 'team player' - totally right, that would have to be operationalized - as to who decides.. I wish I had more time to flesh out a few ideas... but if it's possible to figure out a way of ultimately getting people to vote where we can guarantee equal weighted voting and just one per genuine human that's interested in the long-term future of the platform that'd be great.
Finally, my own personal opinion is that these things are best discussed face to face as far as possible - I'd actually quite like to speak to Parys Banfield in person, assuming he has legs.
Not so much an answer as a very utopian wish-list I'm afraid.
On the selling point, what is your definition of a whale?
According to this post it's someone with over 50K SP - https://steemit.com/steemit/@crypt0/steemit-whales-dolphins-and-minnows-the-importance-of-steem-power-on-steemit
I like the idea of burning some, while airdropping the rest on SP holders.
Have the Steemit account delegate the airdrop. Instead of the tokens dropping in all at once, have it trickle in over time at a steady rate. That could at least stall people from running to the exchanges in the short term. SP holders can then still take advantage; when curating, for example. The current dolphins would then be able to support many more new minnows so even those who benefit the least from the airdrop can still be rewarded.
I don't like the idea of dropping it on the so-called "best". Even though I've done quite well here, I'm sure even someone like me would be excluded from the list of best dressed.
I'd recommend the top tier whales receive a smaller percentage than the middle tier dolphins. Not because I'm a dolphin and feel like being rich, but because we have enough problems with power being in too few hands. Spreading more around in the middle would help resolve that issue as well. I bring that up because I heard STEEM was recently rated a B+ by some group who grades cryptocurrencies and the only thing really holding us back was the concentration of wealth at the top. Even though I'm suggesting they get a smaller portion, they'd still see the greatest gains once the entire picture becomes clear; as in, STEEM mooning.
Have a nice day.
I prefer a combination of Burning and Airdrop to existing STEEM Power holders. Whatever Steem.Inc will decide at the end, the important thing is that they do something soon.
More serious / professional investors joining the crypto space and the current STEEM distribution is surely a red flag for many and reason to park their money elsewhere instead.
I don't feel this will be done, but I feel you're right as far as distributing rewards to people who've taken a risk on the platform. Either reducing the supply or equally distributing to those vested means that everyone is rewarded. Burning the supply benefits those without SP too, while SP distribution rewards only those with SP.
Yes let's see what / if something will happen regarding the distribution. I am happy that many high reputable steemians voice this concern.
It would be interesting to see a discussion on how this is different than just burning the STEEM. If they burned it, they'd increase STEEM and SP holders' proportional holdings in a very similar way that an airdrop would. In particular, it would be in a way that didn't force tax-paying steemians to incur a tax penalty.
A summary of some comments on this matter -
(Obviously, both can be offset by a higher price, which is something I've pointed out in response to those comments.)
Of course, there's a different psychological effect to each. One could lead to better PR than the others, though I don't know which.
I had forgotten of its effect on the reward pool. True.
The psychology is a really interesting bit of it. The airdrop wouldn't immediately change the market cap, but it would almost certainly result in the price going down as people sold off their new "free" stuff. Wouldn't be too quick if it were airdropped as SP, I suppose. But its eventual effect would almost certainly be to make the market cap drop.
The burn would drop the market cap, but then possibly make the price rise. But I'd bet it wouldn't really make the price rise much, because the utility of each STEEM wouldn't actually change at all (because @steemit isn't using their stake for voting). So it could actually make the price of STEEM drop, because now each STEEM would be controlling the same fraction of a now-smaller reward pool.
Interesting.
Have a look at @misterdelegation. It's an account controlled by Steemit Inc that has delegated out 8 million SP, with several more million to come. This, plus freedom's 7.5 million SP, and other delegation services means nearly 20 million SP that has hit the reward pool. The end result is net influence is 1/3rd what it was a couple of months ago, per Steem Power. The price is inversely correlated to this change, in fact. Of course, not causation, at all - that'll be the booming market and greater adoption of Steem in general. Indeed, the whims of crypto whales outweighs everything else. So if a burn or airdrop is favourable to them, the price will rise regardless. As for which method of the above (and others) they like best, I don't know.
Great suggestions.
This is a company and needs to be run with that in mind. Lots of work to be done and lots of Steem to pay people with.
I'd happily work for Steem and I've a number of skills that could add value to the network and I know a number of other folks on this platform have as well.
Lots of opportunity. Just need to start organizing and pulling the trigger.
Iron is hot. Twitter is getting (rightfully) slammed for censorship and general fuckery. Facebook is becoming MySpace. Cryptocurrencies are on the rise.
Sorry, couldn't resist.
"because 1 day wide windows offer the best perspective"
sorry, couldn't resist.
Great post! I believe this is a discussion that needs to be had more consistently. I did a post a couple days ago where I put forth a suggestion (albeit more of a fantasy) where every account was required to use at least 25% of their voting power to curate other peoples posts and comments. There could be some form of requirement baked into the cake (blockchain) that prevented you from giving your required portion to the same people over and over and forced you to take curating more seriously. Seems like a pipe dream and something I'm not sure I even support, but I did seem like it would help the community through supporting the newbies and increasing adoption and stick rate.
Delegation distribution among all the active members of the community will ensure better adoption and will also reduce the need for marketing.
Ofcourse, by active I don't mean "nice post dear follow for follow" kind of active but engaging people of the community. When members have enough SP to be able to give votes worth something, they would definitely try onboarding more of their friends.
Edit: IMO, this would also solve the problem of good content getting buried before getting any exposure. Sure, there would be some people misusing it too, but there are always loopholes.
What about air drop? Has it ever happened on Steemit before? Also what do you mean by "best" Steemians?
No, there hasn't been an airdrop before. We have seen some SP delegations, but that's something else.
As for "Best", it's subjective, so I left it in quotes :)
Nice post dear ;) I could not resist myself.
Hahaha! I bet you must be getting a lot of those :P
Nah! I am way too small for spammers love and attention ;P
There should be a way to reward posts older than 7 days, based on hits/views alone. Something similar to Youtube, since steemit searches on google is on the rise and attracting alot of hits on steemit content.
Authors should be rewarded for direct views. And that I think is as important as distribution of stake.
For the stake, just distribute to active users and also for sign up of new users.
Yeah it's really odd how they used to have 2 payout windows, one at 30 days, and just got rid of that and put in the single 7 day instead. Really hurts the idea of writing for longevity.
Something like over 90% or 95% of votes happen within 7 days of posting. The 30 day payout window was computationally inefficient as a result of the votes-over-time-since-post distribution that is actually observed on the blockchain. That's why it was removed. (I, too, disagreed with the decision until I learned that fact.)
As charitybot points out before, there used to be a longer payout window, but it was not really sustainable computationally. Remember, it's a decentralised blockchain holding all the data across servers all over the world, it's much harder to make it work.
This argument is pretty weak when there is no real limit on the ability of authors to just keep churning out posts and getting rewards from those new posts. The computational burden of one post that can earn for a long time vs. a series of posts one after another is mostly the same, and even favors the former.
It is more a matter of how the code is structured than inherent computational costs. And indeed that does matter in that there aren't infinite development resources and many improvements that are strongly desired (communities, SMTs, etc.)
Make being a witness more lucrative for witnesses that are out the top 20. I have substantial financial stake in STEEM as witness that owns a SEED and a Witness server and I am in process of putting together a full 512 GB ram RPC node for public use. Yet my daily reward is less than 4 STEEM. Better payouts would mean more witnesses willing to put up more hardware & bandwidth infrastructure providing the ability to span a longer payout window. This is something that is doable and would attract more quality content producers in turn groin STEEmit.com as a place to go to get good content.
Witnesses were paid much more before Hardfork 16. It was a unanimously popular decision to control inflation and make the Steem token more attractive to traders. Witnesses, Steem Power holders, the general reward pool alike took a pay cut, to limit inflation under 9%. All I'd say is, witnessing is a political position, and you have to campaign diligently to get higher up the ranks. It doesn't come for free, nothing does.
As for the multiple reward windows, it's not actually a question of having more witnesses, but rather runaway computational costs for each witness. I'm not a developer, so I don't know the exact details, but you can track down the GitHub issue for that to the know the exact reason why this decision was made. It was part of the Hardfork "Simplicity". 0.17.0 and 0.18.0, I think.
Creating a new account requires 0.1 steem and 10 delgated SP. So whales with, for example, 1million steem can create 100 thousand accounts that vote for themselves (or a proxy account). Am I misunderstanding something?
That's true currently, however the account registration protocols are changing soon with Hardfork 20.
https://steemit.com/steem/@steemitblog/hardfork-20-velocity-development-update
I absolutely love this article. Been in steemit for barely ten days and I'm not gonna talk about love at first sight (this time). I would rather give love to the ones that matter: People growing and improving the content marketing in any way possible. Having said that I also think that my original thought would be to spend not money, but time on as many people we can, not just by asking their opinions. Instead we can work together more efficiently every time.
My biggest surprise on this network is how many people do work for the present and future of steemit. And if it's that good how can you even grow beyond that. There's always going to be another possibility but we have to work and point it every time that we can. I'm really driven toward the fact that even thought we can be doing well, we still have a bigger road ahead, and it's not about looking just at the path nor the landscape, but to think even bigger and improve it as a highway that cannot afford to have weak links, dangerous ones.
Having said that, I did learn a lot reading this post, I think that this is where the blockchain and the people working on every aspect of the platform excel at. Steemit isn't good in one specific area; It's amazing in at least a couple of three or four really good ones. It's also really captivating how can something this big be above let's say an Instagram or Facebook platform, because it's not just about the users being happy, sad or thinking about something. The quality of the content, and I'm not even going to explain how brutally effective the comments can be to ones and specially steemit's growth. I'm thinking this revolutionary network finds every day a way to be really god like to the present time. We're always thinking about making money but this; Steemit is the perfect tool to now start to think about working on development and fullfillment as communities, and very hardworking ones. This is by far the best example of a great company I can think of. It may be not Google, but instead we have a very attractive and pockets friendly platform! The goal doesn't have to be all spending but taking the time to invest on new (and raw) material as well.
I wanted to just say a nice thing and get out, but really found myself caught on this awesome thinking as well. Like many others have said before me, this kind of networking really makes me think that there are a lot of people trying to be successful, and this is the best approach we have found, a fresh breath of air while earning the best reward: other people's investment. Keep the great content coming! Kudos to you and everyone reading this. Have a nice weekend everybody!
I feel as if focus needs to be directed at building out onto further platforms such as mobile. A clean full featured app listed on the App Store with built in paid functions like auto vote or auto follow with some detailed settings could really bolster income for the project aswell get a lot of visibility for Steem.
When it comes to staking I read somewhere about linking staking rewards to activity rewards, so those that do not participate in the community on some level can not benefit from the staking.
A mobile app for iOS and Android is in the works. Meanwhile, you can check out eSteem.
I much prefer busy.org, esteem is clunky and doesn’t sync my activity for review just wish I could get notifications on reply’s.
I think burning is the best option. It will help the price go up and you avoid all accusations of not being fair or whatever if you decide to airdrop or donate or whatever.
Hi @liberosist
Whilst I agree with many points in your post, I'll pick the one I'm not 100% with so I don't just reply with 'agreed, good post!'
I presume here you mean @utopian-io? Or are you talking about all the applications that have appeared over the last 6/8 months?
Also, there's always someone who asks for more meat on the bones when 'best' Steemians are mentioned. What do you see as the criteria to even start with this?
Cheers!
Just generally speaking of all the delegations apps have received. Well deserved, of course, but content creators, communities and curators have been left behind. Without content, apps are useless anyway.
"Best" - I put it in quotes for a reason - it's subjective, and I don't have the answers.
I actually posted recently with a comparison of @curie, @dtube, and @utopian-io. The data I looked at showed that @curie is still ahead (and likely to remain so) with regards to continually rewarding the up and coming talent here.
It would be a positive move I think to provide delegation to each of the main curation teams. After all, they have the experience and time to find the content worth reading.
Thanks for the reply.
I dig your ideas. A lot can be done to decentralize Steem more, all those solutions mentioned wouldn't be that hard to achieve.
couldn't agree with you more! now i have known about steemit for some time now but i wasn't a user, i only joined this week and had to spend a few hours getting my head around everything. the average user won't be willing to do that and until steemit is as easy to use as facebook then i don't think we would see mass adoption.
Steemit will never be as easy as Facebook. It's more challenging technically running a blockchain social network. On the other hand, Facebook has the right to censor your content, riddle you with ads and not pay you a single dime for your content. So, it's your choice...
with time and developers, everything gets easier, think how hard it was to use the internet back in the 90's, nowhere near as easy as it is now so i do think steemit will one day be as easy to use as facebook but we're along way off from that.
I love steemit that's why i'm willing to learn as much as i can about it. And clearly everyone here loves it too.
All good points. I live in fear that the demands of this blockchain is made to support is so high that it would fall on its face. It just keeps going somehow.
The easiest way will be your points 2 and 3 about selling the tokens to other people.
The air drops will be difficult to be objective about which users deserve it, and the null option could also work, but the will probably don’t be very happy doing it.
The best option I think it’s fair to say it is simply to sell.
I did leave an objective airdrop option - to all Steem Power holders. But yes, the other option would be difficult and controversial.
FWIW, the objective air drop is almost identical to burning except: a) psychological factors (which may go either way, it is not really clear); and b) airdrop to SP-only disadvantages STEEM holders, which on the surface might seem good but remember that it is STEEM holders/traders/speculators who determine the price. One of the problems with the original hyperinflation model was that it advantaged SP holders (who were protected against inflation) over STEEM holders (who were not too much). The result was STEEM being largely rejected by speculators (who didn't and don't want to lock up their coins) and poor price performance in the markets. In general I don't think too much advantage to SP is really good for Steem.
It is also possible to air drop on both STEEM and SP (which IIRC was what Golos did), making the airdrop actually identical to the burn except for psychological factors.
Agreed, an airdrop to liquid as well as SP does make more sense than just SP. (On a related note, I still fully support getting rid of Steem Power, but that's a topic for another day.) That would indeed make it identical to burning. "Psychological factors" play a substantial role in the crypto world, so the option which leads to better PR is the one to go for. I have no idea which one would be better psychologically, but both burns and airdrops do often lead to significant demand for the tokens that execute them.
Wait, I though SP and steem were the same token, aren't they?
Man I still have a lot to learn.
Yes, but SP are a subset of the total STEEM supply.
I'm new here, and as such, still figuring out the finer points of Steem - so take this for what it's worth - perhaps an airdrop would be the most beneficial for decentralization. It would also create momentum...and in the world of crypto, as in life, momentum is vitally important to any organization, community, or movement.
It might be time to invest more into cool projects as well as to invest into a big marketing team.
The coin burn is also a nice option. Very effective.
They are indirectly investing in projects with Steem Power delegations. However, at this time, it seems to be largely biased towards apps rather than content related projects.
Very valid points. It seems to Steemit inc is leaving most of the work to the community, which is the essence of a blockchain community. I think their approach is befitting, but I personally would like to see some more support to communities and marketing.
In case of marketing we have the #promo-steem movement with as main account @steem-ambassador. The idea is that the the main account will be the hub for promotional activities.
Marketing + Community: SxSW is coming up. Steemit Inc sponsoring a Block Party for Techies and Creators is a smooth move in the right place and right time. I saw a post from @The.Blockbusters relating to SxSW but it seems to be an Unknown event to most steemians.
Development Projects: Investing time and talent into SMT is in the long run a strong move. It opens development opportunities for existing apps and projects that want to retain their brand.
Research + Community Projects: I might be Biased but @BellsX1 Movie Chain seems like another strong move forward.
I think you had some interesting views in your post and I read in one of your comments that you mentioned communities. In my opinion that is the key. If you give away SP to single users they will most likely abuse of it and only their closest users will benefit, not the whole platform. You can actually help more users if you delegate SP to accounts belonging to communities. Delegation also will act as a motivator to use the SP responsibly and communities should be able to automanage themselves. Maybe they could come up with objective criteria to establish which communities are more likely to benefit the largest number of users. It's not an easy task but more should be done to improve distribution and prevent abuses. It doesn't feel very decentralized if only a handful of users get most of the rewards, leaving just some change to be divided among the remaining thousands of users. Just look at the trending page and you will see the same users have multiple posts ranking high (with ridiculously high payout) while the vast majority of posts never makes it even to the bottom of the page. A better distribution may attenuate this issue. Placing a cap to how much of the rewards can go to a single post may also help to distribute more fairly.
Make it so I do not have to read anymore $400 dollar bitcoin reports on the top of each list.
As it is now if a new person posts the true meaning of life or a cure for cancer it will vanish into the deep pits of forgotten and lost posts in 10 seconds.
Eliminate trending, hot, promoted - they only mean the poster has more steem to entice comments vs content.
To truly decentralize you will have to figure a way to change the backing from governmental currency payouts to barter or marketplace barter systems or have a stable holding in value in terms of backing being it gold or porkbellies that = the value of the chain at it current total value. Otherwise the governments that hold the value of steem at anytime ( the currencies at which steem can be sold at) can say its illegal to trade within that country that crypto. Poof gone.
Just fried another million cells of grey matter I was saving for the rockin chair days .. 8 }
Interesting points, I just can't see how the last option is plausible, it goes against the whole decentralized mentality that crypto is so fond of. Burning seems like the most stable option but I don't know if that particularly means it's the way things will go. I'll be really interested to see what is done, personally I think it will set the tone for the whole platform moving forward. Could be a make or break decision!
I am strongly against (3) a private sale to investors, that will lose a lot of trust in the platform if influence is being sold through back channels.
Obviously some of should be (2) sold on exchanges to fund the development and marketing but too much of that makes me nervous - if the majority of trade volume on exchanges comes from steemit in the future that puts them in effective control of steem's price.
Burning (1) is something that creates trust and i'm rather indifferent to it.
Airdroping the existing Steem Power holders (4) in proportion to SP would make whales happy, but would just further consolidate power in fewer hands in my opinion.
(5) would be ok if there was a way to determine the best steemians. The only objectively deserving steemians i can think of are witnesses, and maybe they could use some of their stake to reward them, but not all of it.
My own suggestion is that they add a way of donating to the reward pool to the STEEM blockchain code if at all possible, add a special user like @null, but if you send steem to that user, it will be distributed as curation and author rewards. And then have them keep sending their stake to the reward pool.
It’s clear that when STEEM starts tanking they prudently sell most, hodl to some; eventually buying much more at a lower rate. To suggest they refuse to buy would be like shooting a hole in their wallets. They have too much to lose in this dire scenario…refusing to buy.
First, let me say, this is a great post, filled with great ideas. Forgive me for my nervous lol; no offense, but, on behalf of the hundreds who have offered great ‘ideas’/suggestions, that landed on deaf ears (lol)…I have nothing.
Best regards.
Peace.
i don't know what is happen with @dan and @ned they are not together what will be the future of steem its worried
This comment has received a 30.72 % upvote from @whatsup thanks to: @jassi.
Not bad!
This speaks to the irreconcilable dichotomy of Steem as a global decentralized blockchain and Steemit as its first centralized proof of concept. Steemit Inc's stake exceeds over 25% of the entire market cap of the blockchain itself, for crying out loud.
Perhaps redistributing some of the SP in its possession to users of the platform contingent on their SP stakes will help level the playing field and mitigate the rewards pool exploitation that has been ongoing.
However, this issue is further exacerbated by Steemit's predominant influence given that the daily inflation of the Steem blockchain's currency is inextricably tied to content publishing on this site, irrespective of what other apps may be built on the blockchain. Perhaps in addition to a burn of existing SP, the inflation rate of steem should be reduced, to allow for systemic solutions to be implemented.
In my view, the erratic price fluctuations of steem in the market place and its diminished market valuation relative to other crypto projects which it has had a multi-year head start on demonstrate the market's unease and dissatisfaction about the direction of this site as its premiere proof of concept.
The above highlighted will help boost the development of steemit. Also, in proposing a decentralized steemed, the system could also look up into the following.
Coin Exchange: This is can be a sector among the decentralized unit where members of the community can willingly give out their coin in exchange for their country currency. This system will also help in keeping the coin value in circulation and thereby eradicating any potential fear of loosing the coin during sales.
Advert and Marketing: There can be an option in which a steemit user could be able to showcase his/her entrepreneurial skills to the larger community without probably making it as a post. If a sector can be carved out from steemit international for this purpose, then more and more people will join the community and it won't be about the coin alone but also about individual development.
Creating steemit app: A steemit application will make the platform more user friendly. Of course, there is an existing app on it but a better and more lighter application can help boost the economy of steemit community.
There's an Internal Market on Steemit already. Currently it has only Steem and SBD pairs, but with SMTs incoming, we'll probably see a full fledged market. That said, I don't see Steemit getting into fiat or BTC exchanges - there are enough exchanges that do that well.
Marketing is of course key.
Steemit apps for Android and iOS are in development, and due a release soon.
I am looking at a direct exchange where steem/sbd will have a direct autonomy of exchange to local currency instead of converting to bitcoin before eventually turning it to any local currency or probably using it to buy goods directly.
It is possible to create SMTs along the tether or openledger (from bitshares) model where placeholders (IOU) for fiat, BTC, etc. can trade on the internal market once SMTs can. I don't see Steemit Inc doing it (though who knows for sure), but it doesn't have to be them, anyone else can do it such as blocktrades or a new player.
These are great recommendations here and I think Steemit Inc should consider adopting most of the recommendations. We must deliberately drive steem price up and these are sure ways to achieve it.
As a community builder who involve in promoting steemit through @credo community and has recorded a huge success with 100s of account registered, I think the point in number 4 should be considered;
To keep these newbies going, community account like @credo needs some reasonable delegations to support these new users. I hope Steemit Inc considers this soon as this will help improve retainership on the platform.
I like the suggestion from @smooth but would be cautious about the planning. There are a lot of accounts with steem who never contributed anything - investment or engagement. I would suggest that low volumes of steem be excluded from an airdrop like this, so that people don't continue to benefit from their farmed accounts that more than likely won't have any intentions to add value; or include some kind of proof of intent to use the stake.
I appreciate the sentiment, but this is not really possible to exclude. A majority of liquid Steem is on the exchanges. There's millions of Steem traded every day, and there's basically no way to track who owns what on the exchanges. So it'll have to be an objective airdrop to everyone, and the exchanges will have to participate.
Great write-up!
+1 follower!
Resteemed to BestOfSteem!
Great post, with a ton of relevant information. I learned a lot from this.
I agree with others, in that Steemit does need a large marketing campaign eventually inorder to start getting Steem into the mainstream.
We also need to move on from this Beta version, onto the new shiny version. Newer users might not be inclined to take Steemit seriously seeing that “Beta” next to the logo.
Steem has a lot going for it, and a lot of key roadmap milestones to meet, which will bring a lot of value to this community. HODL and think future growth!
Thanks for sharing.
I think that a marketing campaign would be a great idea - an even stronger message it would be if this could be paid for in Steem.
Coming into Steem has been extremely confusing and somewhat off-putting. From trying to understand STEEM, STEEM POWER AND SBD, to the curation, to the stakeholder and bot game advantage....There needs to be somewhat of a simplification and more user-friendly, "fair" platform because it is impossible to follow anything substantial the way it is set up. Marketing to people coming from traditional social media platforms will only deter and scare them off unless the interface is more mainstream.
they should use it to delegate to minnows whatever amount of steem power is needed so they don't get shut out by the bandwidth issue, nothing makes you want to quit like not being able to post. They should use the rest for marketing and to improve the capacity so that we can accommodate the new users. For example right now I can't post because of the bandwidth thing and that is infuriating. I have 4 times the SP as a new account, I know that is still not shit, but I should be able to post without the bandwidth problem. That is basic and something that needs to be addresses, it is neither good as a social media site or as a currency if you are locked out of the system by bandwidth restrictions.
This.
Unfortunately, it’s too late to do a SuperBowl ad buy.