Steem $10Bln!
We all need sweet dreams, right? Admit that reading this title made your heart pump a bit faster and harder. Adrenalin rush! You won the big lottery!
Now back on Earth, I was rather thinking in terms of "total market cap" rather than the price per STEEM!
And given that currently the former stands at around $800 Mln, going to $10 Bln would "only" mean a "times 12" or so, which, while not easy, does not strike me as outlandish. STEEM at $50 - but how do we get there?
The Era of Content
Content is King! Everybody knows that, at least since the advent of the Internet!
Whatever happens, the only yardstick that the world at large will use to measure the value of Steemit (and by extension that of STEEM) is the quality (and quantity) of the content on the blockchain!
Yet what do we see around? Proportionally few accomplished bloggers and content creators and instead a lot of:
- geeks, tech afficionados and blockchain monks (like myself)
- crypto-enthusiasts
- photographers
- "almost bloggers" (people who can write and have something to say but didn't quite mustered the courage to do it before the "steem catalyst" came around)
Imagine what this platform could be if, after HF20 and the launch of SMTs, @ned and the others from Steemit Inc. decide to use a bit of their financial firepower and manage to bring some big names on the platform!
Or, instead of money, they could use an uplifting plea in favor of a new, freer and fairer model for rewarding great content creation and community building!
Imagine having these authors (which are all below the Top 20 on Medium) blogging primarily here on this platform.
That'll be then. What about now?
The main goal of this post is not (only) to get you daydreaming. It's also to point out two important things:
Positive reinforcement works better than punishment
A lot of discussions and commotion happens around "circle jerking", "reward pool raping", "bid-bot abuse", "haejin", "spammers" and other negative developments which seem to have only got worse lately. Many articles are dedicated to these issues which are indeed upsetting.
Yet hand wringing and obsessing about them only reinforces negative sentiment and drains us of motivation and energy. Instead of creating content that speaks to the people who don't know this platform, in order to attract them to come to curate and engage, we create content that is inward-looking and bitter-tasting.
Moreover, they focus on the wrong thing, on money and rewards instead of the "3 most important things" which are (of course) content, content, and content!. The kind of content that draws people from all the corners of the Internet to Steemit (and Busy, and all the other apps). The kind of content that gets tweeted and retweeted around and linked in LinkedIn and quoted in the mainstream media!
As I was pointing out in a recent comment:
You don't need rewards to have great content on this platform. Take for instance Unenumerated, the blog of Nick Szabo: he didn't need rewards to produce outstanding content for many years blogging. On his blog, for which I bet he never received a dime, he made history.
Like him there are many bloggers with outstanding content - they would produce that content regardless of the rewards. However what they do need is serenity, a creative and stimulating atmosphere and community.
Nobody likes negativity, acrymony, flame wars.
So instead of producing statistics that display the dark side of steemit, why not turn around and look at the positive figures? I would like to see statistics for the people with the most cumulative words posted (as daily average), whether as posts or as comments (a split between posts and comments would be good too).
There is a body of research showing that encouraging positive behaviour leads to better results than punishing bad behaviour.
Thus, to paraphrase the Agile Manifesto, "While there is value in fighting reward pool abuse, we should be valuing more and strive harder to encourage great writers to produce original content for Steemit".
Account Creation is the Biggest Drag
Bringing outstanding writers to Steemit is in every user's best interest so one would think that we would be all "out in the field" trying to get our friends and our friends' friends to sign up on this platform faster than Zhi Yin manages to create @zhiyin1 to @zhiyin80.
Zhi Yin, a.k.a. "The Bladder Meridian"
Yet that is unfortunately not possible. Two decades of "free" account creation, since the time of Hotmail.com have created a mental block: we cannot imagine a platform where the accounts are not free. Hence people sign up and expect to get blogging the next minute ... and the disappointment and misunderstanding are all the greater when they are confronted to an indeterminate waiting period.
Actually, if Steemit Inc. wanted to discourage people from signing up, it could have hardly come up with a more devious plan!
We are thus left with the possibility of ... buying accounts. Paying the network to create them for our friends and then handing them out. Even that though is very complex, time consuming and rather expensive. I'll list here some of the ways I know of:
- one can buy a steem account from blocktrades.us for 6 STEEM (or other cryptos)
- one can buy a steem account from Steem Connect (follow the link for instructions) at about the same price
- one can use the steempy Python API to the blockchain and create an account from the command line (even more involved, technically speaking) for around 7 STEEM
- one can also create an account anonymously using https://anon.steem.network/ for (currently) 5 STEEM or 0.1 LTC
Only part of these sums are fees, each time about 3 STEEM are converted to VESTS (a.k.a. Steem Power) to allow the new account to interact with the blockchain (so you may consider them as a gift to the friend you are creating an account for).
Conclusion
Thence my (rather logical) suggestion: what if the Big Elephants and Whales combatting spam and abuse out there were to divide the time and effort they devote to it by half (or even less)?
Don't get me wrong, combatting spam and abuse is important, if at the moment a rather sisyphean task.
What if instead the @heimindanger and @smooth and @berniesanders a.k.a. @nextgencrypto a.k.a. @ngc a.k.a @thecyclist were to spend the time thus freed to reach out to famous people from the blogosphere and offer them accounts and "put them in their steemauto fanbase" in order for these authors to feel the difference between the true (e)steem this platform can so eloquently express and the "claps" (more like "slaps") of Medium?
I bet we would be giving the salute to Steem ...
source
BTW: look at the necktie of the guy in the picture! Does it remind you of something?
If you enjoy my posts, why not optimize your own rewards and benefit from my pledge as explained in this post:
- Help Yourself! (steemit for dummies) (in short)
and in more detail in this post: - Best way to Grow on Steemit
aussi qu'en français dans cet article : - Communauté d'intérêts sur Steemit
That it's me all over the place 😂.
There's a reason to it. A very good one ;)!
Short story, nobody needs quiters and first wave has to be both, a chance for people like me and a good advertising.
Long story,
Try Audible and get it free: https://www.audible.co.uk/pd?asin=B013KCG5DA&source_code=AUKORWS071615904J
I'll try to read an abstract if I find one but I suppose it's not necessarily going to apply to a decentralized business model. I imagine it will argue from the stand point of "asset utilization" or some other very reasonable metric - in a business funded by capital from one source only - but less so in a "community business" like these blockchain-based systems
But I might be off the mark here, need to read / listen a bit first
That's the spirit 😁!
"almost bloggers" - hits the mark perfectly with me.
On a serious note. I find this post very interesting and in good way. You focus on the idea of positive reinforcements and I am on board that ship 100%. You also mention about the attention being given to negative aspects (bid bots, reward pool rapes, etc.) is distracting from what is actually the main point of us all being here - content.
Internet has been seeded with so much crap that the it is practically impossible to focus on the worthwhile stuff through the fumes. On the other hand blockchain is newly exposed to that. While with internet we never had the chance to weed out the craplings - perhaps not weed out but rather point out the way to them in a comprehensive manner; but with blockchain (thankfully being immutable and all) we need this pointing out for the sake of course correction.
Then again, too much of finger pointing would really distract us from the creation of content and thus value, here on steemit. So agreed and approved and upvoted and............................cheers!
PS: That 10$ billion really did catch my fancy :-)
Thanks :-) Thing is, the abuse fighting has been made hard from the ground up by the design decisions laid out in the whitepaper. If the HF20 (or a subsequent one) modify those in a meaningful way and erects "discouraging abuse" to the status of a principle then fighting the residual abuse that one can never completely prevent becomes much more efective and eficient
Whatever I focus my time and attention on is what I get.
Positive = positive.
Negative = negative.
Natural law.
Spot on. Hence the 3 monkeys
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I really want STEEM to moon like that!
Imagine if we all became rich like that here on Steemit, it would change the world...(For the better I hope).
You are right about content, also focusing on the positive whilst writing articles about Steemit is in everybody's benefit.
But sometimes the frustration just takes over, I guess putting a constructive and positive spin on the less enthusiastic Steemit articles could be a way to go about it.
Anyway I like your positive attitude @sorin.cristescu , since you are a blockchain monk now, lets hope your prayers come true and STEEM goes to the moon!!!
Thank you very much!
/FF
Another good article keep up the good work!
thanks!
I looked at that necktie for half an hour before I figured out what you alluded to. HA, I'm so dim sometimes!
:-)
@trufflepig
Oh, I agree! Who would want to write in a place eaten by internal wars and negativity? Or at least that's what we choose to show to the outside world, repeatedly.
You also noticed right. We are too self-centric, meaning popular writings and videos (if not the majority) revolve around steem, steemit, crypto and stats. I seem to have caught this bug too. Even in posts that don't necessarily relate to steem or steemit, I can't help but mention them or make a parallel to them.
We should always keep in mind our posts are indexed by Google and organic traffic is pretty high. But if we talk to our readers as if they are "insiders" and already familiar to the platforms and the blockchain, that doesn't help bring them over.
Of course, there are the life, photography, travel popular niches.
But an established writer won't come for either of them, I think. And until there is a strong enough community targeted for their particular writing niche, I believe they'll stay on the sidelines.
There are some accomplished writers who would come if they feel the platform will help them spread their ideas more than others now or in the future. Monetary rewards may not be their first motivation.
On gifting accounts to improve signing up process (before it is streamlined at the technical level). You already mentioned people are used to have blogging accounts for free and instantly. Do you think anyone would appreciate such a gift (I mean assign a value to it)? Maybe those who wait or pay are more motivated to continue. Although, of course, a streamlined sign up process would be better.
This post, with over $50.00 in bidbot payouts, has received votes from the following:
buildawhale payout in the amount of $112 STU, $245 USD.
upme payout in the amount of $112 STU, $245 USD.
smartsteem payout in the amount of $110 STU, $240 USD.
promobot payout in the amount of $107 STU, $233 USD.
rocky1 payout in the amount of $97 STU, $211 USD.
For a total calculated bidbot upvote value of $538 STU, $1,174 USD before curation, with approx. $134 USD curation being earned by the bidbots.
This information is being presented in the interest of transparency on our platform @sorin.cristescu and is by no means a judgement of your work.