Steemit Inc.'s Recent Troubles/Failures are a Good Kick in the Ass to Wake Us Up and Get Things Moving Ourselves
As many know, Steemit Inc. (the company) has had to let go of 70% of it's workforce in order to cut costs. The price of STEEM (the token) has dropped fast in the past month, and reached near all-time lows. But the price drop started before Steemit Inc. announced the lay offs.
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Regardless, the news of Steemit Inc's troubles and failures to manage the company through a declining crypto market has greatly impacted the mood of many here. It's all happening at the same time, and it amplified the negative sentiment being felt. They've also said they won't be focusing on developing the flagship dApp steemit.com that they made anymore.
But, things are looking brighter than ever at the moment for the future of the Steem blockchain. The negative we're experiencing is a good kick in the ass to help us move along, do better, and reach higher.
As much as were hoping for one company to do it all for us, it's time for those of us who can to take up the mantle of responsibility of trying to forge a new way forward for the Steem blockchain. Rather than relying on a centralized company to do it all for us, we should empower ourselves to look beyond a dependence and attachment on them. By looking to ourselves, we can better take hold of the future of Steem and make it what we want it to be, without needing the approval of Steemit Inc.
Steemit Inc's site, steemit.com, is one of many front-ends that now exist. With the decline in development of a better steemit.com user experience (UX) by Steemit Inc., others can take over to push changes in the code themselves, or make their own front-ends to rival and surpass the limitations being imposed on steemit.com.
They (Steemit Inc.) may not want to let others take charge of the development of steemit.com or of Steem itself, but that's not up to them to decide. If they don't want to support changes that people want, it doesn't mean we have to follow their lead and stay stuck where we are.
All it takes is people, coders/developers, to make the changes and get support from the witnesses. The witnesses can support changes and adopt them. If a change is desired to Steem, yet Steemit Inc. doesn't approve of the pull request, there are ways to get the changes applied. A fork of Steem itself can be made. This can then be supported by the community, and by the witnesses who will apply the new code to their nodes.
Steemit.com will a domain remain in thee control of Steemit Inc. Getting around the failures of Steemit Inc. developing more features for steemit.com requires other front-ends doing so, and gaining popularity within the community to surpass the use that steemit.com has. A new main front-end for the Steem blockchain can emerge. If we want it to. It depends on the community; on developers and users making it happen.
Steemit.com may have been the first, but it's not the only one available now. @busy.org (busy.org) came along shortly after, and @esteemapp (esteem) as well. Now there are many general front-end dApps for desktop and mobile uses, like @partiko (partiko), @steeveapp (steeve.app) and @steempeak (steempeak). And there are others for particular use-cases like @dtube (d.tube) and @dsound (dsound). There are more out there.
Steemit Inc. doesn't have to hold all the power in developing Steem or in what dApps we choose to access the blockchain. The admission of failures in developing steemit.com and in Steem itself has been a good kick in the ass for many in these past few weeks. It made us realize that if we want Steem to flourish and succeed, we will need to step up to the plate ourselves and make it happen. Not depend on Steemit Inc. to do it for us.
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It seems to me that now we're really waking up and getting things moving ourselves. If you've been paying attention to all the talk recently, you know what I mean. Now we need to take that talk and walk it into action. Despite the gloomy atmosphere on the chain and in crypto, the future is looking bright for Steem.
This kick is the ass is going to help make Steem kick ass ;)
Thank you for your time and attention. Peace.
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Doesn't kicking snowflakes in the ass, result in a crushed snowflake?
This ecosystem is not a meritocracy unfortunately.
People seem to think the bigger the stake, the more intelligent...
When hierarchies are not based on merit there will always be a problem , houston...
Yeah, so much for merit when you can just buy votes and everything is rules by money-power :/
Hey, wasn't it Roosevelt who said, "There's nothing to fear but fear itself?" Lol questionable president, but a good quote. ;) What advice would you give someone who is not a developer or programmer? I've already evangelized everyone I know, and most reject this platform.
This is still a beautiful place. The income was nice in the past, but if that's what was most important, people wouldn't still be here, and I wouldn't return from my break at this time.
That said, people are giving up and getting demoralized, and rightly so. I appreciate your call to action.
I read a post from @abh12345, and he mentioned that people are more real now, not worrying about offending others as much, because it won't have an impact on their wallets. I believe this is a silver lining as well, because we are starting to get to know people for who they really are. Of course due to glitches, I couldn't upvote the post or comment lol.
I think the recruiting and evangelizing always needed to wait until the problems were worked out. Or at least soft recruiting. Most people will only join when it become easy to join with a signup, and have better tools to connect like other social media. Waiting, and the lack of chat or other interactivity seems to be a drawback. Plus the scammy behavior that many engage in...
I don't know what non-programmers can do. Support the projects and people that resonate with your higher goals maybe. I don't like to support those who support the bidbot crap. It's against my values to see Steem deteriorated from an actual social-evaluation platform where ppl just buy their votes. That's what makes Steem look like a scam to most outsiders IMO.
You have a point about waiting until it's more appealing.
Yes, even when people have evidence to the contrary. When I told a close family member about Steemit, don't know what her sources came from, but she looked it up and after researching it, came to the conclusion that it was a scam. When I started making income, she continued to tell me it was a scam lol. In many ways we have earned this reputation.
I am uncertain. I have read a lot of people say that the top witnesses are there because of the backing of the creator accounts, and nothing is done here without their approval. That witnesses would be replaced if they ever grew to bold. Some said the recent hardfork was more proof of this.
It is all outside of my meager power to influence, so am holding tight hoping to see a move so strong by others taking up the mantle of leadership as it pertains to nodes and apps that I feel comfortable without Steemit.inc running the show.
You can go here to see who has what votes: https://steemdb.com/@gtg/witness
Then click on Votes Received.
Pumpkin holds a lot of sway, but no one really knows who that is.
That account is the essential top19 witness maker.
It's probably @freedom's account:
https://steemdb.com/@pumpkin/proxied
As that is the main proxy to it.
but again, no one knows who freedom is... They have been accumulating SP for a while. It was over 8 million 2 years ago.
Even after a year, I am still new to blockchain and cryptocurrency. I do not know if there are other real standalone social blockchains out there like steem. I have joined a couple of other type sites such as trybe, (not for me), weku,(Carbon Copy/cheap knock-off to me), and whaleshares. I guess they all have their own "blockchain". Kind of like the AOL,Genie, and Compuserve days of old. Then there came the free web browsers. Which is sort of what many of the front ends you just spoke about, and what steemit is. A blockchain browser. With support I can see some of the newer choice that are more open minded becoming the next Netscape of the blockchain wars. Netscape did not care if it was an AOL page, a compuserve site, or a genie roundtable, they poked their nose and toes into that tub of water and found it to the users liking. Will it be steamspeak, or busy, or esteem, or a newer one that one day allows people to surf other blockchains? Things change, but there are also cycles to everything.
Trybe sucked, it was all about crypto only. Scorum, sucks hard, all about sports, boring. Weku was BS. Whaleshare is just another knock off with even more lock in of stake than Steem originally was. Things change, but Steem has lots of investors in it compared to the others. There is just too much crooke shit going on that isn't or won't ever be dealt with. Centralized platforms can get shit done better, weed otu the bad better, but are more prone to totalitarian rule as we've seen this year with FAANG.
I pretty much agree on most of what you said in reply about the other sites, Eventually though there will be other real blockchains similar to steem, and used in a similar manner, like AOL and Compuserve and other early internet portals. and someone will come along with a real blockchain browser one day that will not care what blockchain a post is on, but will make it viewable to all.
Yeah this situation reminds me of a video I watched the other day by Andreas Antonopoulos
When communities get stepped on they evolve and become squish-resistant. These bear markets only serve to toughen the resolve of the survivors.
Cool, good to know he sees that emerge as well. I hope we survive and thrive as well ;)
I agree! I've always found the relationship confusing and looking back it is very clear to me why.
Anyway, forward and onward!
Forward we go, but it takes time to get there, and putting in time to develop is time we don't put into others things in our lives, which is why it has worked out well for Steemit Inc. to do the developing. Much like the other crypto projects, they raised money and are paid for the development, not doing it for free ;)
I wish I could write code and pitch in that way but instead I can offer to make some noise for people who can.
Let me know anytime if I can help on air at all bud.
Posted using Partiko Android
We can always learn to code hehe ;)
Thanks for the offer. I may take you up on it when I get my app running to promote it's utility.
I’m starting to get away from using Steemit the website itself and using busy. I’m still getting used to busy but the less people go to Steemit the more we can break free of their hold on the chain and it’s development.
That's a good move. I still use it myself. I wish busy had a list view instead of the big block view. I post from busy, but I do my upvoting from Steem because I can better look for posts in a list view.
It's nice to hear your thoughts on all this! I tend to agree with your sentiments and I think it looks positive longterm, but.. Then again I could be wrong I admit I don't know much. Heh. What do you think about Whale Shares if you don't mind me asking? I've had quite a few people tell me about it though, I'm so busy as it is I find it difficult to try another new social media.. ;\
Yeah, who knows eh ;) But it's good that we're moving away from Steemit dependence, I hope anyways :P At least ppl are talking about that.