Vlog 407: Steemit inc? what do you want to be?
I thought Steemit inc. was a blockchain development company.
After yesterday's post about changing the reward model or 'economics', I don't know anymore.
Maybe they are a social media company instead.
It's easy to see Steemit.com has a renewed focus for Steemit inc. Why? Well, it generates revenue and that's great. Every business needs to generate revenue.
But after 2 years of 'sunsetting' this place and not doing much with it, they seem to now have realized to grow this place it might need a different content discovery model.
And I'm talking specifically about steemit.com and not the Steem blockchain.
But at the same time, they say it's not a priority and SMT's have more focus! But why mention it then with two blog posts?
Right now our focus remains 100% on improving steemit.com, Communities, MIRA, finalizing the Steem Proposal System Hardfork (HF21 or the “SteemDAO”), and preparing to switch to SMTs. We do not have any plans to begin working on any code relating to these economic changes. But we do believe that this is a conversation worth having and one that we would be happy to participate in.
Linear rewards might not be the best for the content discovery but it's silly to say it's bad. Just look what's been build on Steem (the blockchain) with linear since it was introduced.
We have games, lots of apps and cool tools like Steem-Engine and freedomX and some apps are now considering jumping ship to get on board the Steem train.
If we didn't change to linear back in 2017 would we still be looking at the same authors trending as in 2016, today? Man, that's the stuff of nightmares.
STEEM as the base token should be linear. It's what you use to pay for the usage of the network in the form of RC's.
It can't cater to everything everyone wants to do with the blockchain.
And that's why we need SMT's. Catered specifically for what people want to do. It just makes so much sense.
I talk about it more in my vlog.
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I'm surprised to see so few comments here on this important issue.
Businesses have spent several years building based on the current reward model. Investors have invested based on the current reward model. Will they be ticked off if the "rules of the game" are now changed? I'd be!
I got the sense that they want to "punish" self upvotes but not all self upvotes are created equal.
I've spent $23,000 buying Steem and I can't give my posts an upvote worth $1.50 or so?
Most of my posts are about the contests that I run and I have given away 1,000's of Steem in prizes. I do this and I'm not allowed to upvote my own post?
I donate Steem to the accounts of plankton fighting to become red fish in order to empower them, build up there confidence and encourage them to stay active and I'm not allowed to upvote my own post?
I hope that your vlog reaches many eyes and ears and that we can have good dialogue on the merits and dangers of changing the reward system.
The question is if businesses were built because or in spite of the current reward model. :)
A convergent linear rewards curve would still allow everybody to upvote himself - it just would be a little bit less beneficial.
I also upvote myself and good friends, but at the same time I would see an incentive for everybody to spread his upvotes on as many different accounts as possible as step into the right direction. Too many new user earn nearly nothing, even if they deliver very good content, while many more established ones mutually upvote themselves and get the biggest part of the cake (apart from the bid bots which I consider as harmful, too). You may reply that the ones who have invested money also deserve the biggest rewards ... However, I would happily prefer to get a smaller part of the cake if then at the same time the cake was getting bigger (the STEEM value higher) again, instead of smaller and smaller ...
And that's the crux in my opinion: the more satisfied users are on STEEM the worthier it is for potential big investors to use STEEM (and not any other platform) for advertisement purposes, to offer their products or utilize it as communication channel, which longterm would make the STEEM price raise again.
Apart from that we should not forget that the high value of Facebook is due to the huge amount of its users. The value of a (social) network is measured among others by the number of its users. I would be more than happy about a somewhat weaker self-upvote if at the same time my STEEM would have a higher value again.
It's completely OK, if you disagree with the above, but I felt I had to contribute my opinion here. In case you like to read more about my ideas to improve STEEM, you may read my last article.
Wow, they want to forbid that? I always thought that when I had enough steem power for my vote to be worth something, I could at least give myself some votes, after all I should be able to do what I want with the SP in which I have invested
No, they don't want to forbid that.
I keep going back and forth about changing the reward 'economics'. I'm coming to the realization, that as long as you change it from one fixed model to another, the gamers will adjust to exploit it. I'm not an economist, but I think if you made the ratio a variable chosen by either the author or curator, you make it more difficult to game the system. I lean more towards a slider for the author, since they technically 'own' the content. Curators could then decide whether or not they want to engage with that author depending on what reward balance is being offered. Stats could be gathered, and authors can be categorized based upon curator friendly or not. Tools can then be built to readily identify them. I think there should be a slider from 0-100. This would cover 2 edge cases. The case of an author wanting to give 100% of rewards back to curators to reward them, and an author capturing 100% of the rewards (think a charity or steem developer account).
I read somewhere that when a slider is introduced all/most votes will ultimately go to the authors that have a slider at 100%. I do think that can happen.
You would have to make it very visible so authors must succumb to social pressure. If you for instance consistently set your rewards to 100(without justification), I would just stop following you(no offense ;-)). The same way I unfollow people who use promotion bots now.
Can't the slider be limited to let's say 75-0%?
The slider idea sounds interesting.
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I totally agree with your view @exyle. We have the same vision in mind...this is my take on the situation.
I don't think this will be accepted and Steemit needs to focus on the right things and bring SMT alive instead to create FUD to change the economic model.
I agree, I think they need to take care of one thing at a time and just get SMT's out of the way first. Steemhunt vs. Musing is a perfect example of how and why SMT's are important and can make the difference between being successful and not. Then in the future if they want to look at the reward scheme with much more input than just a proposal from one Steemian, so be it.
There is nothing wrong with the system of economics we have in place right now. It would be sheer madness to change it at this point when businesses are getting more interested in this blockchain. However, I do believe plain old common sense will prevail and we will stay as we are.
Cool stuff @exyle thanks for your insight, every minute of the vlog does make sense the way you broke it down.
It all boils down to where Steemit inc's interest lies. Is it for their sole benefit or for the community at large?
We have a gift of a blockchain (STEEM) chain here let's not kill.
It will be of great benefit to leave those censorship agendas out of the STEEM Blockchain.
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I think what they have is enployees who can work on different things. Not everyone is capable of making SMTs, they probably leave that to Vanderberg and one or two other devs to do once they are done with MIRA.
The rest will take care of steemit.com. It’s not only important because it generates revenue, but because it’s the flagship of the blockchain.
We have hundreds of Dapps on steem, but for outside investors (retail), they link steem and steemit.com together. They like the website, they buy the coin. They don’t like it they don’t. Same for swing traders, and maybe some big investors who look at steem as an altcoin to diversify into and potentially make crazy gains (without too much research).
Steemit.com needs to be the “hype” of steem. It’s our marketing. We don’t have a Justin Sun that can bring investors with litterally nothing, so we need a strong flagship. It has to push up the price of steem, and with a high coin price there is no limit to what steemit, inc can do.
They have 25% of the supply, this is huge. At 5$ their holdings were worth about 400 million usd
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I am trying really hard not to be confused. Lol. I really wish there was a forum where the management of steemit inc with the witnesses could seat back and really have a talk before making a post. I say this because I believe both parties should be working to make the blockchain a great one. I don't understand how things are mentioned but seem to never be done. I believe we should be working on agreed targets so that collectively we can make this place great.
I agree that the change does not make sense nor will it be implemented but if changes were to be done, it may very well be a good time to them now given the engagement levels.
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