The Market Has Spoken
The market can tell us some very interesting things if we are willing to listen. However, sometimes it can be very hard to listen to the truth that the market has to offer. Many of us have risked our assets (time and money) into Steem, and we've been burned (at least temporarily). Does that mean we should have put our effort into other endeavors? Maybe, maybe not. It's pretty much impossible to know until more time has passed and we see what happens in the future.
But what is the market saying right now?
Pretty obviously Bitcoin is still the top dog, which implies a lot of things:
- We don't need smart-contracts.
- We don't need scalability.
- We don't need efficiency.
- We don't need speed.
- We don't need privacy.
- We don't need decentralization.
- We don't need dapps.
Of course, we need all these things.
But the market is telling us these aren't really a primary concern, yet. First, we require a foundation. The absolute biggest concern is simply creating a currency that can't be diluted by inflation; to make sure that it's easy to run a node so that thousands of nodes all around the world are in consensus and can't be shut down by anyone.
The killer app is boring AF.
Honestly, this is why a lot of us are here. We've got our heads in the clouds with big pie-in-the-sky dreams of the future. It would be wise to come back down to Earth every once and a while, however difficult that may be.
No one really cares about Steem except for the people entrenched in the community. That's fine... for now. Can we really say we've earned anyone's respect? Not really. The vast majority of this community is primarily concerned about what's in it for them rather the good of the whole. Our complete and utter lack of a reputation system ensures that bad actors go unpunished. It's hard to justify the inflation being created given the value generated by it. At the same time this isn't that big of a deal because we control the vast majority of inflation of our own staked coins.
Personally, I'm a bit biased when it comes to Steem, because I have a developer's background. I don't see any of the devs whining about price action and how Steem is "going to zero". What I do see are a bunch of diehards grinding out code no matter what happens, and that's inspiring.
For the most part, it seems like the people who bring the least value to the table are the one's complaining the most. Again, this is fine and totally predictable behavior; no one can stop it from happening. Most citizens of the world are living under a fear and scarcity model that governs their every thought. I'm no exception.
Conclusion
We should all believe in the tenants of decentralization. If that was the case, very few of us would be in the red at this point. The most decentralized networks are continuing to hover at a good value. Perhaps it's time to reflect on what a greedy and overextended position we put ourselves in. We have no one to blame but ourselves for that.
I strongly agree with a lot of what you say here, and particularly in the tenets of decentralization. I don't think I understand what you mean by overextended ourselves at the end, but I'm used to not understanding some things people smarter than me say =p
I am concerned about EIP and HF21, and discuss that from my viewpoint along with such facts as I have ascertained. While that's not unremitting boosterism, I don't think disagreement along those lines on those issues qualifies as complaining as much as it is seeking to influence the direction we take, and I have almost desperately sought to get my recommendations implemented.
My massive stake does indicate that I am not perceived as imparting great value here, but I measure value in other ways than financial, so I'm kind of ok with that. Not that I hate money, but it's not what I most love. This leads directly to the reputation system you mentioned, and I also agree strongly on that point. I am struck by the fact that we each grant repute to others in varying degrees, for myriad reasons, such that an account must be held in different reputation by each of us in reality. I have respect for your views, and if you held someone in high regard, I'd be likely to be interested in them, but wouldn't take your regard as able to be my own. Such variety would be necessary to a functional and forthright reputation metric, and would be useful to our community as a reflection of actual human values far more than the mere reflection of financial regard and time the extant reputation metric is. UA, while better, still doesn't reflect individual values and regard, leaving it also a little flawed.
Basically, a real reputation metric would have to be a slider that each of us would just choose where to set for each account we regarded. Just a thought I had I wanted to share with someone that could do something with it if they thought it useful
Thanks!
I like the points you make here very much, especially with respect to reputation. I think the tribe construct may help here, if we follow the examples of steemleo, creativecoin and stem where the focus of the group is maintained by moderating the content (as well as the tools will let them). If the proper discipline can be maintained in such tribes, then they become an asset rather than a distraction as I see many of the others to be. Improving the tools to support those goals would be a step in the right direction. If someone doesn't like the control a given tribe chooses to enforce, then they can go elsewhere. Then we need to 'market' those tribes to 'outsiders' that would be interested in them.
A shortfall I see with Steem in general is the difficulty (at least for me, perhaps because I haven't stumbled on how to do this) in finding material of interest that may now be deeply buried in the blockchain because of time and a multitude of posts. This would make the platform some much more meaningful (as well as useful for research), especially for groups like stem, tunes, and creativecoin. The information is there, just not easily discovered, filtered, and presented.
I would also like an effective way to filter out specific tags (I found a setting for it, but it doesn't seem to work, at least on iOS where I spend most of my time on steem-y stuff). I really don't care about peoples activefitness and such.
To me, the nature of the blockchain as an enduring repository almost demands that its contents should be of a more timeless nature or a snapshot of us as a people/culture/society at a given point in time. (though I must admit that I may have departed from that goal on occasion).
Finally, bitcoin has been successful as you pointed out in the beginning because it does one thing well - it provides a medium of value exchange securely, inexpensively, and (relatively) quickly. These are things commerce values. Steem can do that as well, but again the tools are not as well suited for that (like integrating into a third party shopping cart). But then again, few of the non-bitcoin systems have done well at this, either.
Steem can be many things to many people, but not all things to all people (at least not yet :). We as a community need to decide what things we want to be for what people, figure out where our shortfalls are to do that and start focusing on resolving those. Along with that, we need to figure out how to differentiate ourselves from other like projects and articulate that to the world. This is starting to happen, but if the roadmap for that was posted a while ago, I haven't figured out how to find it yet ;)
we need all those things above my friend the people just have not realised it yet and they are all coming regardless of what anyone thinks
everything takes time even our brainwashing by the establishment does not happen overnight
have a great day bud and good post even though i dont agree with all of it lol
cheers
Let's rip this ship around and make one of the greatest tools out of it: open knowledge and organization!
;)
maybe it's too late
when you can upvote yourself and you are an orca/whale or even a minnow it's all about me. I mean Steemit say's get 'paid'..
So you are right we have nobody to blame but ourselves. Sometimes surprises come. I know there are a lot of guys working behind the scenes like mad trying to promote and on-board people onto steem. Having my head in the clouds it just might take one killer dAPP to get interest. It's all about product and what it offers; otherwise it's just speculative. I cannot go to the corner store and buy anything with bitcoin.. so even bitcoin to me is speculative. It has to boil down to utility and personal value in the end.
Great post @edicted. Damn you nailed it.
I am going to use a part of this in my post in the morning. You are going to love it.
Aligns with the sentiment expressed here.
This is one of the concerns I have for EOS as the "if you build it, they will come" mentality is not necessarily a great approach for disruptive technology.
Maybe steem will never be the blockchain for the mainstream that many would like.
The market can also change its opinions with time. The world might not be ready for speed or smart contracts, but this does not mean they will not become more necessary in the future.
The problem I have with most Crypto is the inflation. Some projects have such a high inflation rate than it's best to stick with €, as it has a much lower inflation.
I think these projects which have a high staking return are going to be terrible investments for everyone involved. Sure, you'll grow your stake through the process but at what cost? Is it really smart to stake something for a 6% return, only to see it devalue way more than 6% a year?
good comment bud