My Role in Steem

This is just a short post to describe what I feel my role in Steem is.

My account @demotruk is among the top 150 accounts measured by Steem Power. So I am certainly one of the larger stakeholders, even if I own only about 0.05% of all Vests.

I am not formally employed by anyone in Steem, but at the moment the network pays me about 600 Steem per month (about $1,400 at current price) for my curation and a varying amount for my blog posts. So this is like a well paying second job for me, one which I would like to become my primary job and source of income. Aside from those rewards, the network pays me much better in terms of the value of my stake. What had fallen in value to less than $7,000 earlier this year, was worth over a quarter of a million dollars at the high point yesterday. In my regular career, I would have to be at the top of my field to earn that much money in two years.

I honestly see the value of my stake going way, way higher. However it won't just happen on its own. It will take work from stakeholders of all sizes. Everyone who joins the network can add value to it merely by being present to facilitate financial transactions. People who contribute socially, by reading posts and writing comments can add more, and people who create compelling content which brings in more attention to the network, can create even more value than that. And there are a whole range of other services people can provide, which add value and the Steem Network which may not even be noticed by most users, but the Network is willing to give compensation for those too. I remember talking with @fubar-bdhr in a chat channel in July 2016. He didn't think that the Steem Network wanted someone like him, who wasn't a top blogger, and didn't have the social capital of the people getting to the front page at the time. Now he's a witness, formerly a miner, he helps to run @steemcleaners and his account is worth over $32,000 at this moment.

Getting to the point, this network will only be valuable if we make it valuable. My role in this I feel is twofold threefold.

1. I try to allocate funds to where they are best served for the growth of the network. This means supporting great, consistent content creators as a kind of patron, especially those who provide value on other networks yet are barely rewarded for it. It means supporting developers who build the tools of the network. It means making new users feel welcome and rewarded, that they didn't just waste their time. Etc.
2. It also means supporting people in non-financial ways. I try to help those same people who add value to the network on Steemit.chat, to give them a good experience on the network. I can intervene when someone is having a bad experience, although my ability may be more limited there. I can't do as much in the second role, in that I have only so much time to do it, but I try nonetheless.
3. I am trying to help bootstrap a local Steem community jointly with @eroche, with the account @steem-dublin. I believe local networks of people who know each other in-person are also a key element to the network's increasing value and social cohesion.

I hope in the future to go beyond those and start building useful software tools for the Steem Network myself, but that won't happen until I've quit my day job.