RE: Steemit.com - Coding In The Community
So, this sounds like exactly the job that the Steem Proposal System (SPS) was created for. In theory, the effort could be funded entirely by the blockchain, with no out of pocket cost for Justin Sun or Steemit.
The problem is that (i) the SPS has been abused in the past, because accountability is difficult; and (ii) As the largest stakeholder, I have no idea whether Steemit intends to ever open the SPS up again, and it probably can't be leveraged without their support. Steemit can answer the second point fairly easily.
If Steemit is willing to give clarity on the second point, it might attract creative ideas on how to solve the first. My thought is that an interested developer could break their proposal into many short-term standalone deliverables. Maybe it could even be done by using the SPS in conjunction with a formal (on paper) statement of work between Steemit and the developer(s).
The counterargument might be that when the SPS is blocked, 100% of rewards are going to content creators and curators, but when we see that projects are being funded by upvotes, it really just means that an engineered SPS has been replaced by an informal one.
That sounds like the ideal incentive to get Steemit moving again. Maybe if we're lucky, Steemit will read this and respond on the subject - on this point in particular.
There's little advantage in 100% of the rewards going to content creators and curators when the value of that 100% continues to decrease ☹️
Agreed. I think I misremembered how things work when making that point, anyway. Thinking about it some more, I am pretty sure that rewards are still going into the proposal system regardless of whether any proposals are funded or not.
So, I'm not sure what the counterarguments would be. Concerns about selling pressure on SBDs and/or accountability are the only things I can think of.
I wonder if there's any chance of tapping into this proposal system or if Tron even know it exists! If it was run by old Steemit, it wouldn't surprise me if the keys left with them!
It all works by votes. I'm pretty confident that it's technically possible. Basically, during the Witness Wars, Steemit/Tron voted the return proposal to the top of the list, which means that none of the other proposals are being funded. Funds are disbursed (every hour, I think) to a proposal that just returns them to the SPS.
I'm fairly sure that they still have keys to the accounts that control those votes, so from a technical perspective, I think someone would just have to submit a proposal and receive enough votes to get it past the return proposal. I haven't looked at the numbers, but as a practical matter I assume that a vote from Steemit would be needed to get up that far. Here is the 2019 announcement/explanation. And there's a little more here.
To me, the big question-mark is whether Steemit might be willing to start using it again. I suspect that this mechanism is how much of the hive development gets funded.
Thanks for explaining this to me. Suddenly, so much has become clear now that I understand with the DAO is. I've heard it mentioned with the suggestion that it might be opened up again. No surprise nothing has happened then. Developers are (rightly) waiting for the DAO to open up before working again. Steemit are hoping that they'll get it done for free. It's clear what needs to happen and I suspect it's only a matter of time then before it happens.