Neds Lay Off Post - Worst Case Scenario
If Steemit Inc Goes Down Is That The End?
No doubt many of you were shocked to read Ned's post last night about how he's had to lay off 70% of the work force at Steemit Inc.
Before we get buried in the deluge of posts that there will no doubt be discussing the rights and wrongs of all things Steem I wanted to get a quick question in, that I'm hoping some of the more knowledegable amongst you can answer.
Funnily enough I asked @abh12345 this question when we were at Steemfest and I think I concluded that it wouldn't be the end if Steem Inc went down but I might not be remembering this correctly. Sorry Asher. (Inserts blushing emoji here).
The same question was posted by @midlet on Ned's post:
What's the worst case scenario here just for clarification? Steemit development stops? Steemit.com is no longer accessible? The entire Steem blockchain grinds to a halt?
@mattclarke replied
Steem is the foundation. Dapps are built on it.
Worst case, steemit goes belly-up, they stop providing updates for the witnesses to adopt.
Dapps continue to flourish on the existing foundation. I imagine the witnesses would get together and source code improvements some other way as required.
In that case I would very much hope steemit inc would send their massive warchest to @null. If they dropped it all on the market, the price would get real ugly real quick.
Ned's reply to @midlet
Steem as blockchain would continue if Steemit.com dissapeared. However, the full and robust on-chain social experience would be likely to disappear from the ecosystem, at least temporarily. Steemit.com is supported by an expensive system of Full Nodes that we run primarily to support steemit.com that has the fortunate consequence of supporting the existence of many other social apps. Most Steem social application's companies don't appear positioned to bear these costs or scale up without this system of free to use Full Nodes.
To which @midlet replied
Thanks for the reply @ned. So if I'm understanding correctly, in the worst case scenario if Steemit.com goes down, it takes the vast majority, if not all of the social applications with it, unless those applications can fully support themselves without Steemits Full Nodes. The blockchain will still be here, so there's nothing in anyone's way to pursue this, but the immediate effect would be most of these applications disappearing. Is that about accurate?
And Ned said
Yes, about so.
OK. So I think I get all that.
Most current Dapps would go, the blockchain would still exist and new Dapps with funding could be built upon it or the current ones could continue if they found alternative funding.
Is that correct?
And . . . what about our Steem . . . does that continue to sit there? Will there be Dapps still around to access it through and if so which ones?
What about the Steem that is powered up? Is that a Steemit thing or Steem thing?
Blimey. As I write this I see I have more questions that I thought and less of an understanding than I thought too.
I hope someone can wade in and explain this all a bit better.
For the moment. I'm just sitting tight and seeing what develops from here but I am curious about the answers to my questions.
In the meantime here's a photograph I took yesterday that seems to illustrate the current state of affairs.
Even when the tables are empty and it's raining at the seaside, someone is out on the rough water enjoying themselves. 😂
If you know anyone who you think can answer these questions in an easy to understand manner, please tag them in a comment. Ta!
And . . .
No matter what . . . have a wonder full day! 💙
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
it looks like things aren't going too badly so far. The community is rallying. 😊
I'm concerned there is sort of a single point of failure here: the API server. As far as I've understood, witnesses are not required to run API servers, it's quite costly to run API servers, hence api.steemit.com is hardcoded in many "dapps", if Steemit stops this service and the cavity won't be filled up by someone else, quite much of the eco system will grind to a halt.
But if the system grinds to a halt will we still be able to access our Steem @tobixen?
And . . .
Your Steem, SBD and Steem Power balances are on the blockchain, so you'll be all-right as long as you can access it somehow. My follow-up question: would a wallet-only app be relatively cheap to run since it would require fewer API calls? Paging @roelandp.
Ah. Yes. But that is my question @edb. Which dapps would still be around so that we could do that?
Your follow-up question is way beyond me but hopefully @roelandp will answer it for you.
thanks for visiting and joining the conversation. 😁
It should be theoretically possible, but then again, does it matter if the token cannot be used and if nobody wants to buy the token?
The problem with the API server seems to be discussed in the comments in Ned's post.
Very good point @tobixen. 😁
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Hey, @gillianpearce.
Not sure if you watched the livestream by Ned today, or if he managed to answer any of your questions, but maybe there was something in there which helped to provide a better idea of what's going on at Steemit Inc and where they could be going.
For me, it was a lot of thinking out loud, which doesn't generally mean anything, until a course is settled on and then set in motion. It seems to me Ned wants to get back to the core mission of blockchain development and cryptocurrency adoption, which is what I thought they were focusing on anyway, because if it wasn't that, what was it?
Steemit the UI hasn't been updated in any substantial way in the time I've been here, so that wasn't their focus. And it took over a year to get this last hard fork out, when previously, there had been 19 forks in a single year. That was a bit much, probably, but it gives the appearance of a major drop off in production, which leads me to believe there was company bloat to begin with, and it was slowing things down, not speeding things up.
At any rate, the lights still seem to be on, there's still multiple access points to STEEM, and I'm still leaving you a big comment to read.
Hope you'll be able to sort through all of this Steemit Inc mess. I'm not sure I've been sorting, or just keeping on to keep from sorting. One of the two, though. :)
I didn't watch the livestream @glenalbrethsen but I've read a few summaries of what was said which mostly seem to say there isn't much of a plan.
As you say, I'm wondering what they've been spending all that time and money on this past year. But I'm not wondering much. it all seems as clear as mud to me and I can't predict the future so I'm not really thinking about it.
I've stopped buying Steem though and Steem Monsters, although the latter was only a couple a day.
I was already reassessing as you know so this is just another piece in that puzzle.
I have a really busy time coming up, until the middle of January. It will be interesting to see where everything is by then.
Until then, I shall just do what ever I do. 😂
Yeah. Steemit Inc.'s announcement and then subsequent livestream doesn't really fill me with confidence over Steemit's future. The question is, can Steemit go down and STEEM still go, and if so, to what extent? I don't know if those are answers that we can say until we get there. I can see some pretty good things coming out of this, and of course, there's enough bad ones to cause one to pause.
I do think we as individual users do have some say in how this is going to go. We can continue to use the platform as we see fit, keep up the time we've been spending, or we can change what we do in varying degrees, including stopping all together.
I've spent the latter part of October and all of November more concerned with my own earnings and less about engagement. I can't say the engagement didn't get me somewhere earlier in the year because it most certainly did. And it should. The problem is, the more people decide to leave the platform, or engage less, that makes it more and more difficult to engage for those of us who are still inclined, meaning wheel spinning in some regard looking for those to engage with.
So, I don't know. I've never been one hundred percent sold on the value of STEEM as solely a social media platform, because that's not how it's truly set up. We talk ad nauseum about making things better, improving discovery content, rewarding just good content, but then spend most of the time spreading our vote around to as many as people as possible who are never going to get the value of what their work is truly worth via hundreds of upvotes that manage to get to $3, if that.
So, I'm still trying to provide original, quality content the best way I know how, and engage with those who will engage with me, and try to keep up with where this flaming ball of crypto rock now as the STEEM blockchain is heading, and try to believe that at some point, the value is bound to go back up.
Good questions, @gillianpearce, I'm worried about the same things. Keeping an eye on this to see if anyone can come up with some answers! :) Anyway, hope that this doesn't happen (that Steem doesn't go down...)
Good point @honeydue I meant to add that I wasn't particularly worried about that at this point I am just curious as to how it's all connected.
There are so many great minds here, you would think the community together could come up with some innovative solutions. Agreeing on them of course would be a completely different ball game.😁
But there's a lot of interfaces already, besides SteemIt.com. I've been using Busy and eSteem. I only use SteemIt for placing orders in the internal market and even that can be done through SteemWorld already.
Wouldn't this be enough for us to carry on?
Well that's exactly my questions @trincowski. Alot of the Dapps only survive because they have large delegations from Steemit Inc.
That's one of the reasons people are so excited about Steem Monsters - because they have created a lot of "money" (not sure if that should be in inverted commas or not) without being reliant on a delegation.
Wow! Gone for a few weeks and this is what happens; although we both know it's been happening for some time.
I read through the comments, but I'm hoping you get more specific answers @gillianpearce. Thank you for starting this conversation though! (I've been away, but I'm going to safely assume we're not the only ones having it).
It doesn't look like the more specific answers are going to come @lynncoyle1 but that's fine. I was more musing outloud than particularly concerned.
I'm glad I no longer have that emotional attachement to the place that I once had. 😁
haha I totally get the emotional attachment part! With my time away, I realized that I missed the people, but I'll live to tell the tale if things go sideways with everything else :)
oh @gillianpearce what a difficult time steem and its users are facing. Let hope these cost cutting measures are enough
My greatest hope is that this forces them to turn to the community to help @paulag. 😊
I think this was like a well needed wake-up call for INC. So much potential and great people here! COME ON! Let's get it together!
Yep. It would be great is there was something the community could do to improve the situation @for91days. 😁
Thanks for digging into this and coming up with some answers. Reading the comments it seems you've pretty much got an answer to your questions. Bottom line, we really need STINC to stay up and running to pay for a lot of the infrastructure for the time being. But we clearly need to transition away from that reliance. For one thing, because it clearly is being done by them selling massive amounts of STEEM, even at these abysmal prices at which the rest of us are being encouraged to power up and hodl.
Just like corporate stock buybacks prop up the stock price, this approach to infrastructure financing naturally depresses coin prices. We are really noticing it now because of the crash of the last week or so, but this has always been a negative force at play.
So what are the alternative approaches @indigoocean? Or do we just have to hope that the price of Steem rises now the cuts have been made?
But then why would they rise? If people didn't want to invest when the price was higher and nothing has changed other than team being cut back I can't see what incentive there is for new blood to buy in right now.
Maybe there are some quietly rich people in the community and we could have a community buy out! 😁
I actually posted about this last night, and updated it with a link to an article this morning. Bottom line, I think we should focus more on traditional VC funding to finance things, and stop selling STEEM to cover operating expenses. But only STINC can do that.
Others will say, "No! More decentralization is needed, not less!" To which I would reply, what decentralization when we're already delegated proof of stake? Let's stop pretending and get on with making things work without devaluing the coin.
Thanks for the reply @indigoocean.
Here is a link to the post mentioned in Indigo's comment if anyone would like to read more or join in the discussion there . . .
https://steemit.com/steem/@indigoocean/the-business-of-crypto