On The Verge Of A Blockchain Revolution?
Today was another example of me spending too much time on the STEEM blockchain. This has happened to me many many times. This post is different than most everything else I have posted. Some people say that this type of stuff is negative or counter productive but it was something that has came up lately in several other people's posts. I have thought of this scenario several times and for every individual on this platform or any other platform you have to ask yourself if it is a good utilization of your time to be on there or to invest monetarily into it. I was responding to one of @rulesforrebels posts and ended up brain storming a bunch of stuff and typed so much it was seriously its own post.
Now this isn't meant to be taken negatively and there are so many positives about the STEEM ecosystem right now. Today I just found out about dMania.lol which is another way to connect to the STEEM blockchain for posting memes. I thought that was super cool and entered their contest and spent quite a bit of time making the meme and doing everything. I got my typical $2 worth of auto votes and I decided to try to pump the post up a little more with some of the vote purchasing. It was basically worthless to say the least. I had posted a couple other posts as well and lots of comments. I probably profited less than $10 today on here.
This post isn't necessarily about low payouts or frustration it is questioning if any of us should have spent this much time on this platform. I mean all of us who started last summer knew the distribution of STEEM was completely screwed up from the beginning. Would I have been better off just focusing on building a separate YouTube channel for Crypto stuff instead of producing so much specific content for STEEMIT? Steemit has a quicker payout which is cool but in the grand scheme of things so far I would have been far better off focusing on YouTube.
Well we saw amazing potential in this system. That is why we have stayed and fought for it and keep hoping. And man it is soooooooo close but when I get on YouTube and see all the hate that is raining down on @jerrybanfield 's videos about STEEM and see other negativity about the system being unfair and screwed up it leaves me wondering if the reputation that started off on a bad foot can be repaired.
I have loved seeing the posts from STEEM Fest and wish I would have been able to go! Looked amazing once again but wanting to go has a lot to do with the people who were there. Like obviously I would like to hang out with everyone since we have seen so much of each others lives and experiences on here.
But that doesn't really solve the issue of whether myself or others should invest so much of our energy in this system. I don't even know the answer but every time I do the calculation on how much STEEM Power one would have to buy to have enough influence compared to the whales to make their investment back in a reasonable amount of time the numbers never look great to me. I really feel that part of this reason is because the whales on here are so far out ahead from the get go that catching them is infeasible.
I was an issue from day one and even after HF19 it is still an issue. Crypto currencies need a wide distribution to succeed. I fear that this one will never have enough distribution within this system to thrive. It will survive but we all want it to thrive.
"Well Brian...... you just need more STEEM Power and should have never powered down ." Even if I would have never cashed out anything and never powered down I would have about 10,000 SP. I have made 6844 "posts". That is 0.68 STEEM / post and at current rates that would be worth about $0.61 / post.
Ask yourself if you would write a post this long if you knew your work was averaging out to $0.61 / post.
"Well Brian..........you should have scooped up a bunch of STEEM when it was $0.07." Well Steemit Inc wasn't communicating and the entire thing seriously looked like a money grab at that point. Most of us were disillusioned by it.
If STEEM Prices jumped to $5 tomorrow it would be a party and we would forget about the frustrations or the hard math to swallow for a minute.
Regardless here is the long comment I made a little bit ago.
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It is a really tough thing like you said across all social media platforms. On this one in particular the reputation score has to do with the amount of upvotes and earnings and such so if a person has been in this community for a longer time engaging day in and day out then there is a good chance they could have stronger interactions with others. Also the X factor on this platform is that a person can bring money in and power it up and as soon as someone has more power then they become more "popular" both by being able to give their own post more visibility and also by other wanting to "suck up" for lack of a better term.
I know that for the ones that have been around since the beginning we all sort of feel like we went through "war" together or something. Because it got extremely bad on here to where it seemed like 50 % of the posts were about all the problems with the platform and @ned and @dan powering down and a bunch of other stuff. It was all legit concerns but it was like everyone who was still here was fighting for the platform and super frustrated but we all wanted to see it survive but feared the worst.
I feel like on YouTube the best equation to someone who has built a large following in a relatively short time by pumping money back in constantly would be Tai Lopez. His ads are constantly running all the time and you almost can't escape him.
Same thing with some of the bloggers on here. They have so much power on here that they can put up just about any blog post and they will be trending just from their own upvote and then naturally they are going to get the bot trails following them and upvoting because the curation rewards will be good on those post automatically. So it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy just like someone who buys tons of ads on Facebook and YouTube will probably convert a percentage of those to followers and will there for have more views on their videos.
Solutions
1) So working within this system there are a few things we could do to make our time worth more here. Connect more with powerful people, become part of some of the 3rd party projects on here, come up with other ways to make money on here besides just posting (renting power, doing other work for other Steemians....etc)
2) Get a crew together. Form a new company. Originate a new version of this same type of blockchain. (The code is open source)
The #1 issue from day 1 on this platform was that the distribution was messed up. It created a situation where it is questionable if it ever makes business sense for us to power up a ton of outside money to get enough influence to mean anything on this platform.
Hard Fork 19 went a long way in making the voting power make a lot more sense. But by the time that happened we already still had God Kings swimming around here and we may always remain the peasants.
The only way around it would be to power up like $50,000 worth if the price got down to $0.50 and then when / if it goes to $2 or $3 it would really pay off.
If we originated our own chain and everyone for instance with a reputation over 35 on here got an equal share on the new platform and we also granted top youtubers, instagram people, twitch people, Twitter People....etc an equal share reserved for them....etc. Then the system could start off better potentially.
The issue with Golos was when they did the distribution for that they made it based on how much power you had on Steemit so if you were a God King already on here you became a God King there as well.
A general thing that people were saying about Steemit from day 1 was that it was just a "whale hangout" which that was sort of true because of the distribution being messed up.
Conclusion
Being part of someone else's system will always be less profitable than controlling the system. Do you want to power up a ton of money to gain influence, keep posting for $0.25, quit Steemit, or explore breaking away and having a hand in your own system?
It is a big risk but it would be a big move that could make more sense then spending all our time in someone else's system fighting for small amounts of nourishment. LOL
Initial Thoughts On How To Execute
1) I don't like ICOs and the potential ramifications from the SEC so I would think it would make more sense for there to be about a 6 month mining window that would be fairly announced and would use Equihash. It could be set that 10% or so of the coins mined would go to the company for development of the website...bounties...etc. Then a certain percentage would be for the equal distribution of coins to current Steemit Users and other social media influencers ...etc. At various points there could be air drops of coins to users with high engagement and high reputation to inject equity back into the community.
Once the POW phase is over and the site is launched it will all be Delegated Proof of Stake like STEEM
A couple other options would be to launch the site on top of EOS when it comes out but that would take a lot more coding.
All this is just brain storming when I should be asleep and is easier said than done but is possible with the right team.
So yeah there it is. The STEEM ecosystem is getting better but it is going to be hard to overcome its reputation of unfair distribution from the beginning. I think in every investors mind on here there are pros and cons and it is always hard to know if it will ultimately make sense to power up large amounts of outside money even if you are posting everyday and can try to pay yourself back. It still has to maintain around the same price level or increase in value overtime.
So what do you say? Are you in? LOL
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Has anyone else thought it might be better to be in a similar system with a more fairly allocated distribution? What would you do differently?
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SMTs will be the most effective way for you to break away and start your own
LOL, Thanks @ned. Hahhahha,
I would still be worried about the ICO nature of doing the SMT. I do find it to be an interesting concept but it would seem that the SMT would be a better system for an existing community like Minds.com or a subreddit instead of something trying to launch.
But with the right marketing I could see investors being interested in a new platform and with the SMT the proven backbone would already be in place.
The struggle is real though for a lot of us. We aren't just complainers. We have really worked hard for this platform and just want to see it succeed. We are only frustrated at certain points because we know it has unbelievable potential.
SMTs can also be brought into existence just through voting (Proof of Brain) no ICO needed!
I foresee one day all the interface construction requirements would be taken care of too. Simply launch a “community” then an SMT.
Very interesting. So a new project / community could be funded from the reward pool essentially?
Which Hard Fork would SMTs likely be approved in and timeline wise when would that be? 4 months from now?
A new project/community/SMT can just appear “from thin air” like setting up a subreddit.
SMTs will come after the account creation costs fix by hardfork. That will be 2018 for initial launch, though test net upcoming sooner
Sounds interesting for sure and I will have to get a clearer vision of what SMTs will be capable of. Conceptually I'm having a hard time envisioning how much money has to be injected into a sub community and what kind of rewards that result in for members and how easily those SMTs would be convertible back to STEEM.
I have debated heavily with current and former users of this platform on whether this mechanism is sustainable or not. I believe it to be sustainable on a certain level and it is actually an ingenious system but I'm not sure if it would make sense more in conjunction with an ad revenue sharing model as well. Where Ad revenue was used to purchase more STEEM and then given back to community members in some fashion. I'm not sure what the answer is but it has our attention which is valuable.
Thank you for your responses.
SMTs sustainability? It’s just a token system - in which it works well even when the tokens are worth nothing
Well I was referring to the sustainability of the STEEM ecosystem. It makes sense to me and I view the purchase of STEEM Power like purchasing YouTube or Facebook advertisement as a way to gain more visibility but a lot of people in the crypto space feel that it is a perpetual motion machine or something that would be unsustainable like Bitconnect.
I heard one person refer to STEEM / STEEMIT as a new form of Ponzi where instead of false investment gains like Bitconnect claims there is "fake content" to "legitimize" the flow of money to the creators / early investors.
I don't believe that though. The system makes sense to me but I have had to address those concerns of others and they were still certainly on the fence and these were people I introduced to Monero in 2014 and who trust my opinion.
But as far as SMTs being sustainable my vision of it is that to give each token value a certain amount of STEEM is going to have to be injected into the sub ecosystem otherwise it would be kind of like Reddit Gold where it isn't worth a monetary value? While we have seen some of these systems work when worth nothing I don't have a clear vision of making something work where people earn worthless points or worthless tokens.
In my mind if a certain value was already associated with it and people perceived it as real and something they could use to gain something they wanted then it would grow.
For instance the video game scenario where someone could earn the tokens to buy super powers or unlock other levels or that type of thing. Then you would have the users that would want to automatically buy their way to that point....etc.
On Minds.com you can boost your post for the points you earn or pay US Dollars to boost your post but you can't convert the points back to real world money.
Being able to do that in this system or with a SMT is super valuable.
You clearly have a much clearer vision of what the SMT system will be able to do. I feel like there is a direct use case immediately when this is launched which is a lot more than we can say for all these ERC20 Tokens.
So again my main concern with STEEM is that the distribution was messed up from the beginning making it a non compelling investment of time / outside money for those who even came a month later than the original miners / investors.
The main question with the SMTs is if it will be affected by the same disparity of distribution because when I think about it if someone has a sub community and wanted to reward them monetarily they would have to inject millions to make the rewards worth anything from my understanding. From the ICO perspective I could see an effective marketing campaign pitching an investment into an unbuilt gaming or social media site / app and being able to raise the funds potentially. There will be some clear advantages of doing an ICO with a SMT vs using Counterparty, NXT, or an ERC20 token that is for sure. But will other people see that? I'm not sure.
I just don't know. The price of STEEM could go to $0.50 or SMTs could end up pushing it to $15. I'm just unsure to tell you the truth.
Steem isn't the asset here; followers are the asset.
Hoard them, guard them, caress and cherish and celebrate each new one.
They're the people who are going to put your posts on the trending page when steemit is adding a million new users a day.
Well there was a time when I would have agreed with you but in a lot of ways the correlation with the followers hasn't really improved the earnings for me. It really came down to a few people with decent power but at these price levels my auto votes only get me to $2 even with 2298 followers. It seems to be more about catching someone's eye with some power and if you are lucky enough to get resteemed by someone with some influence and potentially hit the hot or trending page it can build up. Otherwise a post can go dead real quick.
This one is controversial in a way so a lot of people won't want to associate with something others could consider "negative" to the platform.
Beta: = Give us feedback.
You're not whinging, it's constructive criticism.
I just know that when we hit the juicy bit of that 'S' curve, a whole lot of people who've been phoning it in, waiting for a big price jump, are going to wish they'd done more to establish themselves while the competition for eyeballs was still minimal.
I actually wrote about this a year ago.
I hear what you are saying. Things are pretty unpredictable of when everything is going to happen but I almost feel like a whole new set of people coming to crypto have to be educated on STEEM. Like each time it gets better and a new set of people come and see the "new" version of what is going on.
The SMT stuff is compelling and it will be interesting when that could be approved by the witnesses and how soon working implementations of it could be running.