HF21 and the Steem Vision
Image for the sake of having an image
The next proposed Hard Fork of the Steem blockchain has two parts - the Steem Proposal System (SPS) and the Economic Improvement Proposal (EIP). @timcliff did a great job of explaining what those two parts consist of in this post so I am not going to go over that here and instead recommend that you read his post to learn more about the issues and the proposed changes.
The Big Picture
When deciding what changes to implement, or not to implement, I think it's important to start looking at things from a high level perspective. What are the grand goals and vision for Steem? How do we get there? What is currently holding us back?
Steem is an application-specific blockchain. We are not and should not try to directly compete with general purpose smart contract platforms like Ethereum, EOS, and Tron. Instead we should strive to be the de-facto place people go to if they want to build a user-friendly website or app that rewards users for contributions utilizing cryptocurrency and blockchain technology. This is the vision for Steem. This is what Smart Media Tokens are all about.
I look at Steem as being something like WordPress whereas platforms like Ethereum and EOS are more like Amazon Web Services. Sure, you can build a blog site hosted on Amazon Web Services, but it usually makes much more sense to build it on a platform like WordPress which is specifically tailored to what you're trying to do.
There's been a lot of noise around here about the recently announced "Voice" project (for obvious reasons) but while that may be a competitor for steemit.com, it doesn't seem to me to be a competitor to Steem. Voice may be very successful and attract a lot of people, but it does nothing for the brands, businesses, or communities who want to have their own experience tailored to their specific use case and reward their userbase for their contributions in a decentralized manner. That's where Steem comes in.
The best part is that we've already gotten a decent amount of market validation for this concept. There are a significant number of organizations that have either forked the Steem blockchain since SMTs aren't yet available or that are still waiting around for them. That tells me that we're onto something and that it's worth it to continue down this path.
How do we get there?
Obviously, we need to actually build and release SMTs. Steemit, Inc is supposedly back to working on them, which is great, and as stakeholders and witnesses, @aggroed and myself have been working on Steem Engine and SCOT to try to allow the organizations that are waiting for SMTs to get started and stay on Steem until the real SMTs are ready.
But achieving that vision requires more than just building it. Ever since I have been involved with Steem it seems that it has had an "if you build it, they will come" attitude. But I've found that things rarely work that way. I've seen many great products fail because people never even know about them, and many poor products ultimately succeed simply because they are good at marketing.
When I look at Steem, I see a platform that is on par or better in nearly every applicable metric than almost every other cryptocurrency platform in existence - except for the token price.
I believe that's because people just frankly don't know about Steem...even within the relatively small cryptocurrency community. I go to a large number of blockchain and cryptocurrency events and it is extremely rare to find anyone there who knows much of anything about Steem. You're lucky to get an "oh yea, I've heard of that", and even then half of the time they're thinking of the game platform.
If we want to achieve our vision, we need to make sure that everyone knows about Steem, understands the vision, and believes that Steem has what it takes to make it happen.
What Is Holding Us Back?
Up until recently, everyone has pretty much been looking to SteemIt, Inc to do everything that Steem needs from core development to app developpment to marketing. This makes sense since they have by far the most resources of anyone on the platform and the most stake in it, but, regardless, it hasn't happened.
In 2019 they have been doing much better from a development perspective, but as I said earlier, it will take much more than that to achieve our vision. The Steem community is doing its best to take on the other pieces necessary to get us to where we want to be, but without adequate funding the chances for success are very low.
This is why I believe that Steem desperately needs an adequately funded worker proposal system. If you think that there's a lot of great development happening on the Steem platform now, imagine how much more there could be if there was funding available for it.
We need to compete with all of the other blockchains who are actively going out and offering funding for app developers to come to their platforms. We need to fund partnerships, integrations, and initiatives that get the word out and make sure everyone knows about what's going on here and share in the vision for what Steem can become.
The Economic Improvement Proposal
I was one of only two top witnesses who voted "NO" for the EIP in this unofficial poll. It's not because I necessarily believe that the changes are bad (I do believe that a separate downvote pool would be good, for example) but because I just don't think it's what we should be focusing our time and effort on right now.
While we're spending time messing around with parameters that a very small number of people actually understand or care about, Steem will continue its steady decline as the rest of the world flocks to the platforms that understand user experience and marketing.
In a grand vision of Steem where millions of people are playing Splinterlands, sharing pictures on Appics, posting reviews on SteemHunt, logging their workout on Actifit, and so much more - all of which are using their own tokens with their own individual economies powered by Steem - does the curation split or reward curve of the STEEM token really matter? Does it help us achieve that goal or does it distract from it?
That being said, it seems clear that the vast majority of the top witnesses are in favor of releasing the EIP as part of the next hard fork. If that is the case, I will fully support it and do my part to ensure it's tested thoroughly and rolled out smoothly.
In Conclusion
I've talked to a few large crypto hedge funds and investors in the past and their general criteria for investment is pretty simple and fairly consistent - what is the vision / potential for the project and, more importantly, do they believe there's a good chance it will be realized.
Steem has years of history behind it showing a lack of clear vision and a lack of execution that we have to overcome, but if we focus on the vision and put our resources and funding where it is most needed, I firmly believe we can do it.
If we can show the world that we have the potential to become the leading platform for websites and apps that want to take advantage of blockchain and crypto, I believe that the valuation of the STEEM token will quickly rise up to where it should be in comparison with other blockchain platforms with similar metrics.
With that in mind, I will continue to push for an HF21 that includes the SPS and not the EIP; however, if a super-majority of the top witnesses chooses to implement both then I will support their decision, work towards a smooth rollout, and then continue working towards achieving our vision.
Fully agree!
We don't need downvotes or optimize them.
We do need vision and execution thereof as well as better communication.
But without vision, the communication/marketing is also not effective and worthwhile.
Thank you for your leadership.
Thank you for speaking up as the current #1 witness and probably as one of the best ones we got. The above doesn't matter at all in the bigger picture and it's distracting from current goals Steemit inc. explicit said have more priority.
One other point on the EIP is that it might make content discovery better. But considering this is an app-specific blockchain I fail to see what that has to do with apps.
Also, nobody knows 'for sure' what will happen and the 'hope' is that people will change their behavior. But none of this matters long term because apps will have their own token and economics.
But what if instead of making the current economics better it turns out to make it worse. Is this thought even considered in the decision-making process? Wouldn't that be something? What kind of message would that send and how much time will be spent fixing that.
Predicting human behavior by changing rules is extremely difficult. Just because we can control computer code doesn't mean we can control irrational/emotional human behavior.
With Splinterlands you guys are sure showing that. Thanks for that and thanks for being a witness for Steem.
I didnt understand how that is going to happen? Will people upvote better content more? Will the bigger accounts stop upvoting friends and upvote other people? I have only ever seen a few curators do that and it is not easy being a curator. And ofc the curation teams like Dtube, Curie, OCD.
Why will normal people start curating good content now instead of just voting friends that will vote them back?
I was a curie curator for a couple months and even though it was fun at first that job is very hard and can get very boring.
It will give extra incentives to properly evaluate content. Don't really want to get into details here, but it's not really throwing darts at a board as many people are claiming. The steem system needs tweaks to motivate better behaviors, and a functional system will actually get us very far. Everyone is so anchored to their ways and resist change. To be fair, many believe the changes may be too much, but I think that they are in the right direction and well motivated. Equilibrium will shift, and will attack the behavior it is designed to attack (you can read some thoughts about the specifics in my blog if you want).
To reply to a specific comment in the main blog,
It does matter. Proponents of EIP are saying exactly that better economics will get us a better platform. Yes, we are building good bridges into other types of systems and that can happen in parallel, but the biggest one of all: Steem, could use some TLC. We can push for changes that improve both the main system and encourage SMTs.
Keep in mind, it's not actually that much more time to incorporate these changes, compared to other goals. So I say tweak them. The whole mechanism is a game, and like any other game, it needs balance changes over time to correct the meta.
So in essence, please don't bring new people to the platform, because only thing they will be able to do is leave. big acc, that we want to change their behavior, will not vote for them because, well why vote them when they know it could be that only few minnows will also vote for them. minnows should find 10 acc that have a decent content with a bit of organic votes, and some whales votes and just autovote for them. minnows voting for small acc will just be impossible, with a lot of 0 if they do.
in short term, punishing thousents because of hundred.
Even after reading all bunch about this, and reading your posts that are really well written, i could be wrong, and i would really want to know why am i wrong. because i only got 1 answer on this, and it was everyone will benefit with more curation, how do you not see that, you are just blind.
So because of how curation works, auto voting 10 popular posts is not a good strategy in general. If you are not first, the share of curation you are getting is not going to be that great. And you can auto vote earlier and earlier to sacrifice curation to find a sweet spot. But if everyone is doing it, you may really find that you're not left with much. You'll get something, but actually you get more if you discover a new post, and share it with others and get them to vote too.
The problem with thinking about 50/50 and lower end cuts is that even though on paper it just sounds like a pay cut for the little posts, it may not work that way once people actually start seeking out content due to the increased incentives (the curation curve is key here, because "just auto vote" is really not that great of a strategy), as well as penalties for keeping lazy behavior (which is what I've focused my posts about).
I'm not sure if I've fully addressed your concerns, because it's not going to be perfect by any means. But essentially, penalizing "lazy behavior" forces alternative considerations, and that will have cascading effects. Is it enough? Will it work? I can't guarantee it.
It's not obvious at all, and even worse is that it's not guaranteed, so you do have a point to be concerned.
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so the premise is that people who now just upvote themselves will now look for new undiscovered content and also share it with other people to convince them to vote. not really seeing this, but hope i am wrong.
i suck at this nevertheless and vote for things that i like when ever so i will probably just get less, but who cares... need to stop reading about this.
Thanks for the effort.
You do not suck at this, except if 'this' is ignoring common sense and believe BS.
Common sense reveals that almost all the rewards pool now goes to profiteers, and not content creators, and this easily explains why Steem has such a dismal retention rate. Since extracting the rewards from the business of Steem, which is creating content that attracts a market for Steem, that in turn creates capital gains, instead extracts the value that would create capital gains, all the proposals in the EIP will make that profiteering more profitable more rapidly, by creating a modified rewards curve that increases the rewards for bigger votes, and doubling curation rewards, which only matter to whales.
Common sense, which you have, tells you exactly what is going to happen under EIP. Only folks bemused by code instead of actual business, or rabidly intent on profiteering, can miss this common sense.
Trust your gut.
i feel that this change heavily depends on downvotes and if everyone will downvote the "bad behavior" it could maybe work. but then when you think about the downvote you will think about "judge not if you are not ready for judgment" "before you point your fingers, make sure your hands are clean" and the throw the first stone thing.
I dont know. Im just not convinced by this change. I would love if bots would stop and people would curate more but it feels like it will cost too much. I heard there will also be something called the SPS that will reduce author rewards even more.
I would love for curators to earn more but losing 30-40% of my rewards plus the 10% dtube already takes is scary to me. I dont want to lose motivation now that i started posting consistently.
You say to Bil.prag:
If that is true, and to earn as much as now i would have to have 30$ posts instead of 15$, how can i expect that it will increase that much if curators wont want to upvote me because the curation share will be bad?
Well that's the balance. They have to predict what will be popular, that isn't popular already. If they see it should be worth more then it makes sense for them to vote on it. So if you are already popular I don't really see that as a worry.
Also, big picture: if the reward pool is being used more efficiently, then it is producing value and everything will be worth more. So it really is hard to say.
This is how i feel after reading everything. :D
But honestly, i really dont want to lose what i have now. I dont use bots and i work hard on my content. I see someone say i will have my rewards reduced by 40% and i cant feel happy with that.
Even you write about what is popular what is not, what is efficient and what is not but i only know for sure that i will have reduced earnings. :(
I can't say that that's true "for sure". But I also can't deny that it's possible. But the efforts to adjusts incentives is an honest one, and it's just not accurate when people paint it as "stealing from the poor" or "stealing from the authors".
It is not stealing because how reward pool functions but it does look like "changing where river flows."
Oh well we will see how it goes. ☺
Trust your gut and don't be baffled by BS. The principles of business and investment are simple. Profiteers today receive almost all the rewards, leaving creators such as you and I less than 10% of it. EIP will increase the profits of profiteers by 40%.
What does you gut tell you will happen?
Even more of the value of Steem will be extracted before it increases the value of the underlying investment vehicle, Steem, and the price of Steem will crash. Millions of Steem are now being powered down to sell before the crash.
You know what will happen, because you have common sense. EIP is designed to extract as quickly as possible all the value from Steem so that it can be sold as quickly as possible. @steem is powering down.
Trust your gut. Don't be baffled by BS.
That is a very bleak future you see. I will wait a bit and see what happens. I dont think those that proposed the system would want to destroy their own investment.
The value of the time of whales is better spent on their business than fine-tuning their rewards. All they have to do under this - or any tweak to rewards along these lines - is delegate to a bot and exert 0 effort to fine tune their profiteering to extract almost all of the rewards from the pool.
The bidbot owners take care of everything for them. All they have to do is sell their profits on the market, and continue to crash the price of Steem.
That's what will continue to happen, only it will happen faster with a modified exponential rewards curve, and doubling curation rewards. EIP is the last rush to extract the value left in Steem which there is presently a race to sell before the price crashes. Then the profiteers will move on to the next target.
That's what profiteers do.
They can, but they still lose compared to now with the new rules. There's a lot of shifting that will happen especially with 50/50 and dealing with the leakage to external curation votes, and incentives to move away from bid bots, and the potential downvotes is even more motivation. Yes, they'll do their best, but they are actually being penalized compared to now.
They're going to get ~40% more of the remaining rewards they don't already extract before it increases the value of Steem. Almost all rewards now go to whales, with creators splitting less than 10%. Double curation rewards, and create a modified exponential rewards curve, then add a tax on rewards on creators, and, oh, hey, let's give flaggots free downvotes too.
The downvote pool doesn't acknowledge that what keeps most folks from flagging isn't VP cost. It's retaliation. Small stakeholders can be crushed by flaggots, and i've seen it happen more than once. Bernie will get more flags for free though.
None of that addresses the fact that investors are encouraged by potential capital gains, and with almost all the rewards being extracted by whales before the value can increase the price of Steem, there is no reasonable basis to expect capital gains. Hedge funds aren't in the business of self voting, or delegating to bidbots for their returns. They seek capital gains, and Steem can't give them any as configured, and EIP is making that worse.
{Keep in mind, it's not actually that much more time to incorporate these changes} cool i like your answer,
hey , can anyone explain this ?
https://steemit.com/steem/@smidge-tv/after-exposing-berniesanders-kawaiicrush-suddenly-lost-all-rc-credits-wow
Great to see a witness agrees with most smaller and mid-sized accounts and NOT support the EIP! You got my witness vote, and unvoted everyone who supports that. I really believe the reward curve change and the 50/50 split has a high risk of messing up a lot of the dynamics everyone built upon the last few years. The linear reward curve even though it has it's flaws, gives a high sense of control and predictability. This idea that it all needs to be about quality content discovery in my view won't work. None of the bigger social media platforms are abou that. What it looks like is that this EIP will make it even harder for new accounts to get something going. I hope some witnesses still change their mind on it.
Hi @yabapmatt
I just went to the poll to see if I could see who the other witness was who voted against EIP and it looks like there were actually 17 who did so and 22 who said "yes" to it.
However, you said "top" witnesses so maybe the people who voted were not the top witnesses.
If the are though, I'm wondering, how does the decision actually get made. Is it simply by majority. Would this small a margin be enough to carry it through?
Also, is there any easy way to see who is pro the changes or will there be a way to see who is going to vote which way closer to the time? Or are we reliant on individual witnesses making posts about it?
17 out of the top 20 witnesses have to run the updated code for a hard fork to "activate". You can see who the top 20 witnesses are currently at this link: https://steemd.com/witnesses
When it comes close to the time of the hard fork, you can see which witnesses are running the updated code by looking at the "version" column in the witnesses page linked above, but by that time the decision will already have been made and even witnesses who may not have supported the change will likely be running the new code too, otherwise they will no longer be part of the main chain once the HF happens.
So long story short, the community relies on the witnesses talking or posting about their positions on these matters, which is why it's important for witnesses to communicate.
You got my witness vote.
Thanks for the info @yabapmatt. I'll check out the top 20 from that link and see what they are saying if they've posted. 😊
The hardfork will be accepted if at least 17 witnesses vote yes. You can't see the choice of each witness but most of them will write and share their opinion.
Thanks for the info @marki99.
Steem needs to be that magic star that other blockchains want to be. Lately its been feeling like at any moment its going to take off like a rocket, but stalls out.
You my friend from what I've seen have been busy programming your way to greatness and I appreciate what you do. I know whatever HF21 has instore you will make sure its A Okay for us!
On a side note
I have a open spot for a Best Friend if you want it! Just let me know! Its very rare!
Great write-up on all this Yabapmatt!
I think a lot of people around here would agree w/ this:
I like to think we all can walk and chew gum at the same time. It will great once we can double our walking and an double our chewing gum and produce many times great things on this blockchain. I think we'll get there. Thanks , for all your hard work on everything!
It's clear we can barely do either... Are you serious?
lol
I was trying to draw you out and it worked! :P
I guess I was hoping this would be the case , but you are right lol
Well said. If two years ago, someone described where the STEEM blockchain would be in 2019, I wouldn't have envisioned this. Perhaps I'm just optimistic, but envisioning the STEEM blockchain in 2021 is a beautiful thing to behold.
It's basically the future of the internet.
Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts, Matt! First off - I want to mention how refreshing it was to read an update from a top witness that was succinct, convicting, and not overly technical.
There is one point I want to offer a different perspective on though. I used to think that a lot of the crypto community just didn't know about Steem - and if they did, things would be different. Basically, I just thought we needed to get the word out.
I've been getting out into the greater crypto community a lot more lately at different events, meetups, and online and have found most people I meet (including investors) are well aware of Steem. I know they aren't mistaking it for Steam because we usually have a conversation about it and they'll mention Dtube or blogging. The general consensus I've found from people is that they looked into Steem once and were super unimpressed... so they moved on. A quote I've heard from a few people is...
As you point out in this post - we need to show the greater crypto community that we do have direction and develop a differentiating factor from other blockchains that can "seemingly" do similar things.
So I've changed my perception that we "just' need to get the word out. That is obviously still important, but I think we also need a major PR overhaul with the crypto community to show what we are really capable of. I have my own ideas of how we could do this - but that's a conversation for another day!
Well in either case I doubt the reason that they're not using or investing in STEEM is because of the posting reward / curation algorithms and I don't think any amount of messing with those algorithms will get them to start. If we get a whole bunch of cool, well funded apps on the platform and show serious growth and potential and make sure everyone knows about it, the price will start to follow, and that will get more attention and attract more people and development and it will continue from there.
We can't just tell people that Steem will be great, because they've heard that before and it hasn't panned out, so now we have to actually make it happen.
Maybe “Show not Tell” should me our motto right now. lol
I think you are spot on that just talking more about Steem’s capabilities won’t do much - but showing actual development and traction of cool dapps will do a lot of the talking for us.
your problem is not lack of dapps . your problem is greed , corruption, lack of transparency, bullying ...
any explanation for this ?
https://steemit.com/steem/@smidge-tv/after-exposing-berniesanders-kawaiicrush-suddenly-lost-all-rc-credits-wow
Steem will never be great , the whole system is way too corrupt and people don't want to be part of it PERIOD . You can tweak what ever you want , it is not going to help
at the end of the day , platforms that do good/honest job will be successful . the ones who lie , steal and cheat (steem) will go away
What a fantastic write-up! This is what I've been waiting to hear from the top-20 witnesses, and you are also obviously very in touch with what the Steem blockchain actually needs. Real, palatable, marketable features and additions! Not small mathematical equations that honestly reflect poorly when said out loud...
You, good sir, have (re)earned my vote for you as Witness! :)