$10 Steem in 2018?

@timcliff recently wrote this article for discussion and I encourage you to go and have your say.

https://steemit.com/steem/@timcliff/what-needs-to-happen-to-reach-usd10-steem-in-2018-discussion

It is a very good question and a legitimate one at that. I feel that $10 Steem could be achieved within a couple of months. The bear market needs to subside and the bull market needs to take over. That is the obvious answer. There are many other things that need to happen in order for the steem token to reach $10. Here are my suggested improvements and my noted issues.

1. Community

This is the real strength of Steem. NO other blockchain comes close to steem in this regard. There is a massive community that all have a common interest in the success of Steem. A real community goes beyond a common investment portfolio. Steem will flourish when communities within the platform flourish.

@steemmonsters is a fantastic example of a community that is set to flourish. There are a few major reasons that this community is going to flourish. One is that the product is awesome and people have a valid reason for wanting to be a part of it. It is a fantastic idea and has been executed, marketed and developed perfectly to this point. Bravo for that! The other reason is the high profile people involved in the project and the whales that support it. Everyone on the blockchain knows about steemmonsters because @aggroed, @yabbapmatt and @berniesanders have a huge following. When huge steempower is used to vote onto posts by @steemmonsters, it grows the brand and the community through increasing the revenue that community has to work with.

Now, because steemmonsters have sold $50K+ worth of packs and are getting large upvotes on their posts, they can afford to have community initiatives. Many people are stoked to be a part of the community because playing that game could land them huge cash prizes (as well as other really cool rewards like being immortalized in the actual game etc...).

I don't have an idea as good as steemmonsters, but I do know that if I were to get into some community building, I would do much better with the support of some more established players. If there was a community initiatives steempower pool that good projects could draw from and use as long as they were making a positive impact on their community, it could go a long way. Of course, as the community grows, it could grow to a sustainable level and no longer need that external support. That would be the goal anyway. Once a sustainable community group has launched and become sustainable, the steempower could go to building another group initiative up. If there is such a program in place, it needs to have the marketing power that steemmonsters has, because I have certainly been made aware of steemmonsters but have yet to find out about community building initiatives.

Strong communities are the major opponent of greedy scammers. Once you have friends, and another reason to exist beyond mining currency for your lonely existence... the urge to scam will go down. This will not eliminate all scammers, but it will definitely help. I think putting the emphasis on building strong communities on the blockchain is the primary concern that if met, would yield $10 Steem very quickly.

1. Gaming the system.

There are a lot of users and bots that exist solely to mine currency. They are turning Steemit into a ponzi scheme by promising high interest rates etc. This is not a sustainable model for the steem blockchain.

It does create a prisoners dilemma for the users on the blockchain. The people who are gaming the system will inevitably destroy this blockchain and cause steem to tank. We do not want that. There is a lot of money to be made before the currency tanks. If we "can't beat" the scammers, do we join them or do we fight against them. One alternative is far more lucrative than the other and that is the dilemma. @berniesanders has forfeited much gains fighting agains the scammers. Had he joined them he would have made far more money in the progress. The blockchain's life and value would be compromised by this. If we treat Steem like bitconnect though, we know what is going to happen sometime... we just hope that we can get or double our ROI before that happens. The problem with that mode of thinking is that inevitably, many people will be screwed over. Look no furthen than bitconnect for the evidence of how the ponzi scheme ends.

Voting bots are tied in with this gaming of the system. I have mixed feelings about vote bots but I feel that they are certainly being abused at the moment. Many of my posts that I just write and release into "the wild" get read by 2 or 3 people. If I pay for a big vote I get more visibility. We pay for hundreds of dollars worth of votes, we make the trending page... and in turn, throw quality and curation out the window. Steemit currently looks far to much like the old paradigm where the rich get richer and have influence, and the rest can watch it happen from their cubicles. Trending has nothing to do with good and that needs to change. It is not just vote bots, it is also big whale votes.

Currently, a good vote bot vote is the cheapest way to buy SP with SBD's. Many people are doing just that and not adding to much to the platform.

I think that vote bots ultimately need to pass a community audit where things such as whitelists, blacklists, max's, min's etc are all put in place. Vote bots may also tie into community initiatives where they help out certain communities (Eg. The Hip Hop vote bot that only upvotes posts that are tagged as hiphop posts).

The trending page should be split in two. There should be a trending page for organic posts that have been upvoted by users (not just with large stakes, but perhaps high reputations?) and resteemed by users (not resteem bots) as well. There should be a vote bot trending page (which should be more like the promoted page) showing everyone that these people are paying big bucks to be seen.

A certain number of flags should remove a post from the trending page. This will discourage the usual suspects from continuing the practice of paying big bucks for votes and encourage those that are paying for votes to focus on quality as well as to not make 8 posts a week (or day) that all trend.

1. Easy access

If you want to get on Steemit, and you are human, you should be able to register like you were getting an email address or buying a poncho on amazon. It should take 15 minutes. Robots should be here to help. @transparencybot is a bot that helps. There are many other good bots out there. There are many scammy, spammy bots that should not have a pass to run amok on the blockchain. I don't know how to stop that, but I am sure there is a way (maybe more captcha's, but I hate those things too...). There is likely a better way.

1. Conclusion

I do think that if community is the focus and community building initiatives get more abundant either via Steemit Inc or via some good whales that care, a lot of the other problems will be easier to solve. It is like a small farming community that meets weekly and celebrates often together. When raiders come to pillage that city, the community can easily ward them off because they are tightly knit and have likely already prepared for such problems. If we are all just swimming around lost in a vast ocean it will be harder to ward off raider because we don't know who is on our side or which side we are on... we might have joined the raiders for lack of knowledge and lack of choice.

Community is the key to $10 Steem by the end of 2018. I see $12 or $15 Steem if community initiatives are executed well.

Please click on the post I linked above and have your say. @timcliff et al can do much more than I. I just didn't want to bog down his comments with such a long comment. Thank you.