An Argument for Long-Term Rational Self-Interest Versus Short-Term Irrational Value Extraction

onetin84 (62) 6 years ago

Many many points to think about. I read also many comments here. I'm now here for about 10 months and draw my opinion on that based on experiences, decisions made, my journey. To get it structured i wanna make a list:

initial distribution, non-linear rewards: it created something like superhuman in my mind with huge amounts of SP out of almost nothing.. good and evil kings, like a Mr. Manhattan from the movie Watchmen - we call it whales here, i have always mixed feelings about that huge inequality since the beginning - i creates devotees, especially under new Steemians and it is something which is set in stone, like Titans who formed and control the world. They could upvote you massively they could downvote or flag you until you're in hell.. i had a case where someone was desperated because he was haunted by a whale because of religious reasons.. that is something what should never happen.. but it does.. one wrong word or sentence and it could happen, sadly.
your voice is worth something - for sure something, more or less depending on your visibility, popularity, sympathy, boosting, trending - from the beginning i talked to myself - let others decide what's worth what you are writing and the community did. Because there is no algorithm who decides what is valuable. You can see the whole crypto market sentiment in the payouts. We had this incredible pump Dec/Jan my payouts rose, we had this terrible decline after that my payouts crumbled (not just because of the price) and nowadays i'm constantly around over $1 per post average. Is that good or bad? Honestly i have mixed feelings. The best strategy if you wanna improve something is to ask good questions. I'm thinking now for months about that since @freiheit50 wondered why i have in his eyes such low payouts for my content.. my answer was i'm not so good at networking. But i ask myself sometimes is that true, there are other reasons? I get more followers each day and i'm thankful for that, it's a good feeling even you don't know why someone follows you.
self-upvoting - i stopped that completely now months ago - it felt bad at some point even i did it just once per post. It was a moral decision for me to use my VP in other ways and hope it helps.
Minnowbooster delegation - currently i delegate to others since a few months i think with @minnowsupport is among, but also on the market without checking in detail who is behind more looking for a high ROI - i'll change that because of similar reasons like 3. and your thoughts, but i'll finally wanna point out something fundamentally about human beings in my last point..
Minnowbooster vote-selling: i do that to use my SP when i not active at 75% percent randomly. I thought more than once about the impact on Steemit if i see who bought my vote. I don't know who is behind and that is also an moral issue for me, because i support others boosting their posts now, but like 4. i have a strong opinion my personal feelings are mean nothing. I use it until now because it generates good rewards for further powering up long term and i have also some liquidity for other purposes on hand. I admit, yes it is selfish in some way and my idea is to use my VP more for selected authors in the future via Steemvoter (Streemian doesn't worked reliable).. if i'm not active. It is never a substitute to get in contact with an author, commenting and discussing, that's the lifeblood of such platform.. bots should be just emergency helpers but are misused too often for completely automatic voting
generosity - i would say im not generous enough in comparison to people who give all their money to others. I give my full upvotes to great comments and posts, even if it need days to regenerate my voting power sometimes after a special campaign or realized idea and don't benefit from Minnowbooster vote selling at that time. I don't know if this is enough but i'm glad if i find a gem of a post or seeing the efforts in a valuable comment under my post.
Excessive use of bid-bots. I know a case and don't wanna call the user name who massively boosted his posts. The thing about that was we were something like friends (in terms of a social media platform) til the day i realized behind his double-digit payouts were just bid-bots where he figured out the best times to bid with his bucks and then got huge payout. I was very disappointed and broke off contact immediately. Honestly i tried that too with Minnowbooster which is a safe and fair way in terms of paying and receiving additional value where you just gamble with bid-bots.. or you found loophole.. but i personally stopped also boosting my posts months ago and i'm always a bit angry if i think of the fake value of posts which someone generates in the eyes of others.. it is a dangerous distortion of public perception!
money doesn't bring happiness, money is just a tool - 100% agree - we need the feeling of contribution, that we worth something or like Einstein said after the question what is the purpose of life: We are here to serve others, what else could that be? Giving is much more satisfying than taking. I invested a greater amount of money for two reasons to have more influence and participate on the value appreciation long term. With the influence it shows also your character if you belong to the good or evil kings.. or between in my point of view.
the value of STEEM - often it's not so obvious if you using Steemit for granted, don't thinking about the technology behind.. and that's the great thing also, because a user should not think about the technology behind, he should use it like a natural extension. Big achievement for the beacon project Steemit i think. When i see also other projects like DTube, DSound, DLive, DMania, DPixify, Super 8 Ball Club it's an amazing ecosystem. I'm excited to see the impact of SMT.
human nature - yes.. and this is now the worst part for me to write about, because my opinion is that your long term approach on a social media platform is something which cannot work for the whole community. That is something which works for a handful of people who have this vision, these long term goals.. but look at typical social media platforms we must accept that there are many people who just wanna post a picture of a strawberry cake and get their rewards.. AND if a system like Steemit provide the army of bots they will use it.. they will excessively use it until death of the platform.. until the whole reward pool is wiped out! The sounds harsh even in my mind.. but i think the only solution to avoid this long term harm for the platform is to prevent with a HF who permit the use of such things completely. We cannot convincing millions of people to do not what is offered by the system! If i see the misuse (or the effects) of the trending page this is another topic. But my conclusion is.. we should change some parameters in the Steemit ecosystem, avoiding massive abuse with code not just with ideals, it never works in the real word!

That my thoughts from my perspective currently, overall i'm optimistic. My hope HF20 can do something good with code for the long term success!

$11.59

lukestokes (75) 6 years ago

I’m camping at the moment, so I don’t have time to give you a detailed reply, but thank you for your comment. I’ll try to remember to come back and reply further in the future.

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freiheit50 (70) 6 years ago (edited)

Thank you for supporting my friend @onetin84 ! I wish he could get more attention from the steemit community.

P.S. And I wish you much fun for your camping holidays.

$0.77

onetin84 (62) 6 years ago (edited)

Nice to meet you here and many thanks for the great time and support here.. I'll stick with the Steemit community and will use my small piece of influence further shaping our platform.

Schön Dich hier zu sehen und vielen Dank für die tolle Zeit und den Support hier.. Ich werde der Steemit Community weiter treu bleiben und werde meinen kleinen Teil des Einflusses um unsere Plattform weiter zu formen.

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onetin84 (62) 6 years ago (edited)

Many thanks for your support! I'm looking forward for further discussion and wish a great time while camping!

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fatkat (71) 6 years ago

Some interesting ideas like the discussion of Nash equilibriums. Ultimately all fiats, seem to be part of the Thomas theorem, that perceptions even if inaccurate are real in their consequences. I think you raise some important dialogues that would benefit the steem network if the community invested in collectively addressing these issues and ensuring actors continue to find utility in these coins.

$3.58

5 votes

fatkat (71) 6 years ago

gotta get through Rifkin's "Zero Marginal Cost Society" at somepoint, "End of Work " is amazing

$4.44

6 votes

raselkhan566 (49) 6 years ago

I respect you @gentlebot sir.

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fulltimegeek (67) 7 years ago

Cool story bro ... Let me know when you start flagging Haejin ...

$1.93

6 votes

charitybot (63) 7 years ago

Didn't delegating SP to people who doled out the VP to good people net benefit individuals who were in turn acting selflessly and helping others who were also doing good on the blockchain in a direct, targeted fashion, creating tiers of generosity, whereas attacking 1 person returns some steem/sbd to the reward pool but that is just then shared in a blanket way by everyone else, including those who are themselves exploiting the reward pool, which at this point probably represents a majority of the voting activity anyway?

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lukestokes (75) 7 years ago

It's all a matter of degree. Abuse on a small scale is different from abuse on a large scale. The "probably represents a majority of the voting activity anyway" is not a good argument unless the goal is to watch the platform die. The point is to make improvements and move towards a better shared goal, right?

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charitybot (63) 7 years ago

I guess I am just cynical towards it because most of the damage to his rewards will have been done after the period of peak profitability has already passed. There definitely would not be enough VP to combat all those who self-vote 80%+ and those delegating only to bots, though.

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lukestokes (75) 7 years ago

You gave me an interesting idea for a regular report on who is self-voting and bot-voting the most and a call-to-action for those with significant VP to downvote the content (much like the "Operation Clean Trending" post I referenced in my original post).

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lukestokes (75) 7 years ago

My vote is only worth about $14 right now, but I am certainly considering using it regularly to bring Haejin's reward down a bit. I personally think that job lands to those who have far more Steem Power than I do as his actions are impacting their investment more than it impacts mine (meaning, they have far more to lose and they can deal with flag wars much easier than I can).

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kabir88 (60) 7 years ago

My vote is worth $0.14 but I flag that mofo. If we do not build the type of ecosystem where everyone can have a place, then STEEM will lose momentum and go into decline.

It's all about the community and network, that is the true value of STEEM.

$0.27

5 votes

anthonyadavisii (70) 7 years ago

@lukestokes, would ask that you check out @flagawhale if you have a chance. It's a flag incentivization project tailored to address whale abuse.

If we come together using strategy and tactics, we will accomplish a lot more than if we go it alone or wait for whales that care to do it for us.

There may be a lot more people involved than you think. It's all spectrums of SP also, not just whales.

$0.04

6 votes

smooth (70) 7 years ago (edited)

So everyone except freedom can just pass the buck up to some bigger stakeholder who can better afford the downvoting, has less to lose from flag wars, and has more to lose from the system not thriving?

Sounds to me like a recipe for more of the same.

EDIT: I'm not blaming you by the way. I indeed think we will see more of the same until the economic incentives built into the system are changed.

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hashcash (63) 7 years ago

Let me just admit and say this from the beginning. The people who started riding the crypto train like me after mid of 2017 aren't the most faithful of the believers. We sway too much and act hypocritically.

It is like a panic syndrome that has settled in our brains that we want to ride the crypto train when it goes up but get out as soon as the downtrend begins.

Same idea can be extrapolated for Steem. We are here but do not believe in it. We want to extract as much as possible in the shortest amount of time and get out before the Armageddon is brought upon us by the government.

Weak faith of newbies can be too a large extent attributed to lack of knowledge. Sure mainstream is against crypto, but we as newbies don't understand that how much potential the mainstream sees in the blockchain and how much they too want to get in on the action.

Several points stuck with me as I listened to you:

Short term value extraction vs long term thinking
Separate pool for downvotes - a potential idea
Bot voting to get visibility - Trending page is...........Let's just say that I only visit it when I accidentally click the trending tab (so almost never)
Bots are rarely profitable.
Token holders have the responsibility need to take up initiative on projects that have long term potential in helping the Steem blockchain grow. A responsibility shared on a volunteer basis
Read this book 'Towards a zero marginal cost society' :-) Just joking

You also mentioned something that is very close to my heart - Comments (from 10:35 onward). I just wrote a post about it yesterday and have been writing about the importance of meaningful comments that add value to the post for past two months.

Thanks for sharing all this man! It's good to hear from you :D

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smooth (70) 7 years ago (edited)

This is a good explanation of one of the reasons that expecting everyone to just "work together, we're all in the same boat" is not realistic nor a useful approach in this context. Because we are really not all in the same boat. We have different backgrounds, perspectives, different goals and time horizons, different investment views and objectives, etc.

To get people working together toward a common goal requires an economic system where working together is viewed as rewarded, even by people with a short term time horizon and longer term skepticism. Because there will always be such people and we can't even say objectively that they are wrong.

So the economic incentives need to be direct and short term, not relying on a particular long term vision that not everyone shares. Only by getting those incentives right (or at least, more right than now) can we coordinate a large group of people with diverse perspectives and goals to actually work together, not because they want to or are told to, but because their individual self interest unambiguously depends on them doing so.

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hashcash (63) 7 years ago

Yeah diverse perspectives play a big role in individual participation level. I was listening to @lukestokes during the video where he mentions the idea of volunteerism. People need to come forward to take up responsibility. The system is not perfect but we are trying to approach the idea of just rewards.
Greater the voluntary participation the more is the long term reward.
There is also the fact that reward is not just a one time payment, it's a stake in the system which incentivizes further participation.

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lukestokes (75) 7 years ago

Way to be an example of what you're talking about! Great comment, thank you.

A lot of new entrants in cryptocurrency haven't gone through the regret of selling and missing the boat. I've heard so many stories of people making 100x returns, selling, feeling like a genius, only to see things go up 1000x+ after that. Can you imagine selling Bitcoin at $2 after buying for pennies? Seems like a good trade at the time, but later you'd deeply regret it. That's why it's important to have a solid future valuation for cryptocurrency in order to trade it.

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hashcash (63) 7 years ago

Thanks for the appreciation man. I still remember your "Digital Time Capsule" series - one of the greatest series that I have followed on steem. The idea of sharing those past tweets on BTC prices and related events was so epic. It really put things in perspective for me. To buy at $30 and sell at $150 might have looked good for a few months then only to turn into regret a few months later.

Personally I have not experienced this kind of thing till because of my relatively short time in cryptosphere but I have an inkling about the extent of that regret. I am hoping to get as much knowledge and experience I could under my belt this year and see if I am suited for this space for full time.

Once again, thanks a lot dude.

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lukestokes (75) 7 years ago

To buy at $30 and sell at $150 might have looked good for a few months then only to turn into regret a few months later.

Exactly! This is why I'm trying to help people get a different perspective and think like a long-term investor.

You're very welcome. I'm glad what I'm posting is helpful. Thanks for the encouraging feedback.

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hashcash (63) 6 years ago

A pleasure and an honor!

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flauwy (73) 7 years ago (edited)

Ok, you finally got me. I also played with SmartSteem for about a month and I have now undelegated all my Steem Power. The aspect of responsibility was pointed out by you in terms of witnesses in an earlier post of yours. The same obviously applies to give back to the community. I will invest my dolphin power into people and projects again and use Smartsteem only for idle time or when I am in urgent need of quick money. And that is a big deal for me as I have been a full-time Steemian for over half a year now but leaned back on my success and did much less than before. So that forces me effectively to be more active again and create better content once more.

I feel very good about that. So thank you once more for inspiring me. You have done that very often in the past few months. I certainly need to check up on the EOSDAC idea and DACs in general. SmartCash goes a little bit in that direction as well. I think this concept will be the future for a lot of creative power. And it all requires people to give back in form of time and work and passion rather than extracting as much and as quickly as possible - who are then greatly rewarded by making the project work and find investors pumping it up ten times and more. I am excited to put more work into my Steemit career again.

$0.94

lukestokes (75) 7 years ago

I'm really happy to hear this post inspired you to think in terms of your long-term rational self interest of promoting and creating value on STEEM instead of just delegating to a bot to extract value.

I think if more people consider things this way, we'll see more thought put into voting on content with quality (and hopefully investor value) while at the same time downvoting content that hurts the overall perceived value of Steemit and, by proxy, STEEM.

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mountainjewel (68) 7 years ago (edited)

I can really appreciate your perspective and I’m listening to this conversation to learn more. Obviously there’s a learning curve here. When I first got on the platform it seemed like an “of courseness” to self vote. 5 months in I don’t self vote any longer. I’ve seen incredible displays of generosity here and people going out of their way to boost others and this ecosystem. Just today i started a contest to delegate around 200 sp to someone. This isn’t a lot to a person who has more than 1000 sp, but the majority of the people using the platform don’t even have 500 sp and this little boost can encourage them so much. It can even boost user retention. I encourage others to delegate even small chunks like this to Steemians who are really adding value to the platform but who don’t have a lot in their wallets. It ripples outward. Thanks so much for your delegations listed above! I personally have been very blessed by @tribesteemup @ocd and @curie— my experience would not be what it is without them.. and @ecotrain. Blessings. Let’s create this long term world we want to live in!

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lukestokes (75) 7 years ago

I’ve seen incredible displays of generosity here and people going out of their way to boost others and this ecosystem.

This is some of the best stuff about this whole thing. Money alone doesn't bring well-being, joy, or happiness. It's just a tool and how we use it is what matters.

I'm not familiar with @ecotrain! Thanks for the recommendation, I'll check it out.

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charitybot (63) 7 years ago

Bad initial distribution, big first pump and dump that preceded the recent market frenzy for other coins, the platform didn't attract any interest because people thought it was a terrible site filled with boring people who controlled too much. We are just living in the aftermath of all of that and the prices were still dead compared to other coins right up until the point of their listing on Upbit.

And now, logically, many have a leave-it-for-dead mentality about Steemit and STEEM, they extract as much of the windfall from Upbit traders as possible because they know there is little to no organic reason for anyone to choose to invest large stacks in steemit when there is so much competition on the horizon.

Because it would be nigh-impossible to change the minds of most of the biggest whales and their collusion to keep a few witnesses in place it's impossible to change the code to anything other than what steemit inc and the whales wants, they're overly friendly for any "decentralized" system's tastes, so people see right through the charade and know that this place is centralized to all hell.

When you come to a place and see that your vote or voice don't matter much and all the largest players are the bad actors themselves, why would anyone stay? I get what you're saying, we need to change, etc. etc., and yes that would be the healthy attitude to have for anyone that wanted such a thing to survive and actually grow, but we've seen how little many of them care about actually risking some profits now to make the place a passable destination for people on the web.

Who know, clearly the best route for individuals in raw $ valuations was cashing out/powering down/self-voting like crazy over the past few months, maybe some of those who are doing so have good intentions and will buy back in later and not be so selfish. Or not, lol.

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lukestokes (75) 7 years ago

The initial distribution is certainly a concern. It's one of those things which can't easily be fixed. I'm hopeful SMTs will allow capital to flow into other areas and result in a dilution (to some degree) of STEEM while also giving it more value (just as ETH has seen value from supporting so many ERC20 trading pairs). It wouldn't surprise me if STEEM moves to more of an underlying support token for bandwidth and everything else with a social component like Steemit is done on an SMT.

The leave-it-for-dead mentality, to me, is very short-sighted. If they are wrong, they will sell into the buy orders of those who get it (or those who hold) and stick it out to see this blockchain get the respect it deserves as the most active blockchain on the planet (at one point more active than all the others combined). It has free, three second transactions with account recovery, a stable asset (somewhat), built-in time-locked savings accounts, and more. STEEM is amazing compared to most any other coin out there and STEEM is far more valuable that Steemit.

As for the competition, I've yet to see anything substantial. Most are still pay-to-play which I think the STEEM white paper rightfully explains won't work as well because of loss aversion.

their collusion to keep a few witnesses in place it's impossible to change the code to anything other than what steemit inc and the whales wants

This... sounds a little off to me. Do you think there's some grand secret conspiracy going on or something? Yes, the @freedom vote is significant for determining who is a witness, but what does that really impact? What is being prevented by the current consensus witnesses? What significant code changes to STEEM itself are being submitted and being rejected? It seems to me no one other than Steemit, inc employees are currently submitting any code changes. Until Appbase is released, I'm not convinced outside code changes would make things any better either.

What are some examples of code changes you'd want implemented that you think Steemit, inc and "the whales" wouldn't want?

What do you mean by "centralized all to hell"? Do you mean in terms of code commits, Steem Power holdings, DPOS in general...? To me, it's more decentralized than many POW systems, but that may be a separate discussion.

your vote or voice don't matter much

How should it matter beyond what stake holders in the system value it at? There's no free money generation system here. Every single bit of value distributed is because of investors buying STEEM to support the price. Those who don't understand that and get some confused entitlement attitude really confuse me. It's like tweeting to no followers and then getting all upset at the lack of meaningful engagement. Or getting mad at someone who builds a huge social media following and then brings them here to Steemit as well.

I hope more people making posts like this will help people to think differently and risk those profits.

The "clearly best route" was to sell Bitcoin at $1 if you bought in at a penny to gain your 100x returns. It was still the wrong decision. I have the perspective of being invested in BTC for more than five years. Most people don't have that. So, they sell. That's fine. Those who buy, understand, and think differently will, I think, do very well.

Thanks for your detailed comment.

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charitybot (63) 7 years ago

Well, stake holders aren't currently leading the price action of STEEM or SBD. They've done so in the past pre-Upbit and haven't been able to get it over a dollar for most of the coins' histories.

I don't think they have to do any sort of 1933 confiscation to anyone in the west, once they've gathered enough data on people trading crypto and once the fiat situation gets bad enough they can always just pull the plug on tether and all usdt-trading exchanges in overnight raids.

There doesn't have to be a grand conspiracy, although there are accusations of pay 2 win as far as voting goes, freedom is probably another story all on its own. Self-interested parties, colluding or not, arrive at similar conclusions when it comes to protecting wealth.

It's fortunate for us then that most other social media crypto plays have hesitation about the longevity of crypto's elevated prices, this means that their attempts are also greedy, with them front-loading their profit-making and making things transparently bad for the end user in terms of possible equity shares they can get and how useful they ultimately are.

Which is why I agree with the nature of your original post, because STEEM could change, but that would require the entire SP distribution and lots of the witness's complacency to change. And if a player enters the field and is equipped with the right team and mindset from the start and is willing to forgo those sweet, sweet ICO moneys in return for more support from a broader audience base and a more involved, active community led by existing popular personalities on the internet then we'd really be dead in the water.

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lukestokes (75) 7 years ago

the entire SP distribution

(to change)

How so? There is the problem with all the "wealth distribution" schemes I've ever seen. It just sounds to me like jealousy and theft. If SP distributes voluntarily, sweet. Other than that, what right do any of us have to tell others what to do with their own property?

I think SMTs will create a lot of new and interesting opportunities for many different approaches. I'm hopeful for that, anyway. Would be cool to see airdrops of new SMT tokens based on reputation and with a cap (meaning, for example, the airdrop only goes up to, say, 10k). Keeping things more evenly spread would be very interesting to see. I imagine you'd still get to the 80/20 distribution eventually, but it would take time and in that time someone might create a new competing SMT.

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charitybot (63) 7 years ago

Wealth concentration is a big problem when it delineates who is a tastemaker on a social media platform. It's not like STINC selected a bunch of people who had an eye for how to spot social media trends or anything to receive the first batch of STEEM in the premine.

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lukestokes (75) 7 years ago

I see that more as a problem with content discovery than with wealth distribution, which is why I'm hopeful Hivemind will fix this specific concern as will SMTs which allow for fine-tuned control of who participates in the rewards pool via SMT Oracles.

As for "tastemaker," is that really your lived experience here? I rarely look at the trending page. I'm mostly engaging with my followers and people I follow.

Maybe it's more a problem with new people who show up and see crap content on trending because of Steem Power votes from people who don't spend time curating quality content which might be interesting or valuable to investors. I don't think we'll ever see rich investors spending all their time curating. Maybe they'll delegate to curation services and earn rewards that way. If curation rewards were increased, as many are suggesting we should do, that might help. The problem there is those without Steem Power who don't really earn much curation now anyway would complain even louder about the wealth distribution issue and the whales getting even more of the rewards through their curation.

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charitybot (63) 7 years ago

No, what the whales want to see does not dictate just what content gets seen on the trending or hot pages, but also creates incentives among other users to create material that is suitable to their primary target audience, which is going to be other supporters with high vested amounts of SP and not just ordinary people who might stroll in from outside of steemit, you know, the kind of stuff that might actually see the platform grow in user numbers. The problem is, in a dpos system where most of the wealth has been distributed, and future wealth's distribution is determined by existing stakeholders, those new eyeballs don't really mean shit so no one catered to them in earnest.

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smooth (70) 7 years ago

A lot of your points are good but the point about witnesses blocking code changes is dead wrong. Many of the witnesses would like to see code changes but have been presented with none to even consider.

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charitybot (63) 7 years ago

I mean, aren't some of them supposed to be coders?

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smooth (70) 7 years ago (edited)

Possibly, though it isn't necessarily a requirement of the role that witnesses personally develop and release code, assuming they can at least evaluate what is submitted and represent stakeholders in deciding whether to approve them or not. In theory, anyone can submit code and maybe witnesses approve it, maybe not.

In any case some are coders and have even written some modifications to the core blockchain code, but there is a lot more to it than the actual coding for code changes to reach the point where witnesses can consider approving it or not. The way the steem blockchain repo is run in practice, the entire process (meaning not only coding but planning, scheduling, reviewing, prioritizing, testing, etc.) is pretty much locked down by Steemit. It is very much unlike other open source projects I've been involved with and a lot more like a proprietary development process a large part of which seems to occur effectively behind closed doors (i.e. not on github, although the code itself is). For a long time it was explicitly stated that ideas for changes should not even be submitted to github and should only be discussed on steemit.com (which in my view is a horrifically bad UI for development discussion). Although that has been loosed up in theory, in practice, most if not all change or enhancement ideas that aren't on steemit's own (mostly internal) roadmap are still closed anyway.

In the case of condenser (the web UI that runs the steemit.com web site) there have been increasingly a few outside contributions accepted, and that is a positive development although I would still say that most of the process takes place within the context of just Steemit the company. Witnesses have little to nothing to do with the UI in any case.

In order for there to be real change where code changes includng consensus rule changes from other than Steemit are considered by witnesses would requires Steemit to revise its overall development effort to be based on open source methods where development and coding work can realistically come from outside the company and be considered through an inclusive process on equal footing, or alternately the repo would have to be forked, essentially "firing" steemit as its keeper. There has been some 'long term' discussion on the former happening, but only a tiny bit of actual motion.

Anyway, that was a bit of a diversion, but my point is that witnesses are in no way blocking changes, and in no way are whales voting in witnesses specifically for the purpose of blocking changes. It is simply not the case that the issue has even come up.

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charitybot (63) 7 years ago

So in essence everyone is depending on Steemit Inc's large share of stake as a sort of proof that it and its process and roadmap are in the interest of shareholders in general, right? And at least at this point, things like golos aside, there isn't a large enough reason to fork and do things independent of them and compete against the main chain, probably because there is a very uncertain future with that as far as the ability to get any kind of traction going if the reset button is hit, and then issues with liquidity and getting the new coins onto any sorts of exchanges of note are just more variables that no one can be sure of.

I think that the wait and see approach most must be taking in being patient with Steemit is what works for now given the relatively high price compared to the rate of new developments coming out, if prices are high and you're already invested in this chain then the alternatives are much less attractive than if, say, steem were totally a near-dead coin and got delisted from upbit or binance etc. and there was more upside potential in starting something fresh.

I think that part of the reason for outside development being scarce other than the process being very much private and internally-driven as you've stated is the obvious issue that anyone submitting game-changing changes to steemit would probably rather take their ideas and skills to another upstart where they have a shot at getting a much larger share of stake in the project, considering that is how steemit itself was kind of arranged at its inception. And I don't think we'd get many open-source enthusiasts who code for ideals over money if this is how code changes are handled here with the past processes.

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smooth (70) 7 years ago (edited)

So in essence everyone is depending on Steemit Inc's large share of stake as a sort of proof that it and its process and roadmap are in the interest of shareholders in general, right?

I can't speak for everyone. People likely have different views.

And at least at this point, things like golos aside, there isn't a large enough reason to fork and do things independent of them and compete against the main chain ...

There have actually been several Steem forks, not just Golos. There are probably a number of reasons why none of them have really gained traction but I'd guess that the lack of dramatic success by Steem itself (at least in the terms that the cryptocurrency market cares about, which is mostly market cap) is a big one. If you fork a #30 coin, how many people will actually care? Yes there are issues with liquidity and such, but a lot of those are secondary to the primary issue of people caring enough to pay attention to a fork.

if, say, steem were totally a near-dead coin and got delisted from upbit or binance etc. and there was more upside potential in starting something fresh.

Hard to say. If you fork a #300 coin, do people care about that more or less than forking a #30 coin? And there have been and continue to be numerous "social-crypto" projects being launched. Again, I would say until someone shows at least one of them being a clear and dramatic success, interest overall will be muted.

submitting game-changing changes to steemit would probably rather take their ideas and skills to another upstart where they have a shot at getting a much larger share of stake in the project, considering that is how steemit itself was kind of arranged at its inception

Probably so. However, even modest improvements or incremental changes don't go anywhere. Steem/it does have a community and some in that community (including witnesses, but not only witnesses) are interested in contributing to the code. There just isn't a mechanism for it.

I don't think we'd get many open-source enthusiasts who code for ideals over money if this is how code changes are handled here with the past processes.

You are correct. The process is hostile to open source involvement.

$0.06

geekgirl (72) 7 years ago

I used to think that long-term vision of making Steem a better and more attractive product would return higher profits for investors rather than focusing on short-term smaller gains. I am not as optimistic as I used to be. Maybe short-term gains can coexist with long-term vision?

Recently I watched this video:

I always thought there was a place for ads on Steem and it could happen in the future and might beneficial for the platform, instead of solely relying on reward pool. Afterall, ad revenues are what make mainstream social media platforms highly valuable companies.

It seems this will not be that case for Steem. What are your thoughts on long-term sustainability with only relying on reward pool?

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stabilowl (63) 7 years ago

Good on you for donating to meanful projects like that
Unfortunate not all steemit users are long sighted and many are blinded by the short term gain from spamming. Really unfortunate...

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lukestokes (75) 7 years ago

It is unfortunate mainly because, from my perspective, they are just harming themselves. They could earn more if they acted differently.

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smooth (70) 7 years ago (edited)

Collectively, perhaps. But that requires some actual coordination mechanism, such as downvotes which aren't both so hideously expensive and socially discouraged. Individually no one stakeholder (even freedom at about 3%) is large enough to make a real difference, and failing to maximize individual short term gains largely means those gains to go others who continue to do so. (In some cases such as downvoting, it literally does shift those rewards to the others. Using something like @burnpost, while also self-sacrificing, at least has the potential to drain the swamp and not actively increase the profits to the others.)

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stabilowl (63) 7 years ago

Yeah I think the requirement of coordination and acting as a community is the biggest issue. Let's face it, the people who are just spamming the system is obviously only in for the short term individual gains, and so doesn't really care if steem goes to the moon or bust in the future as long as they can get their earnings now.

In regards to downvoting, I think for a lot of minnows (including myself) the major reason that is stopping us do it is retaliation. You never know what connection a person has, and if you accidentally step on someone with a solid backing you are toasted. I know someone who tried to stand up to spam and just got bashed by retaliated downvotes because it was an account with lots of SP.

I had a look @burnpost. I think that self-sacrificing aspect of it is hard to grasp especially for new comers. Also, it feels like burning is not as constructive as upvoting good posts though. Doesn't burning the reward pool decreases the payout of all posts, including high quality posts? But I do understand it is much harder to manually curate for good content especially it's so hard to find nowadays, and the @burnpost method is probably effective in that sense.

$1.07

4 votes

The Steemit Betting Community

beat-the-bookies (63) 7 years ago

As you said, this conversation is not for me (low SP), but I think that I have a project to pitch to you guys with high SP. Here's something that may appeal to your long-term rational self-interest:

We have a community upovte bot and a discord server: https://discord.gg/SAEf6nV

You can read more about it in our mission statement (it's the latest post resteemed by @sbcbot)

In short, we are trying to accomplish two things:

Lower the attrition rate (new users quitting)
Increase the quality of the content being produced

We are just a month old, but the response has been great. There are 40+ members on discord server and 30+ whitelisted by our community bot.

The nature of the content that the betting community produces is such that it will never get featured by @curie/@ocd/... hence the need for the community such as ours. I invite you to check this project out and if you think we are contributing to the platform, do support us. Cheers!

$0.60

3 votes

fullcoverbetting (69) 7 years ago (edited)

@lukestokes
I have been lucky to receive some free delegations! But what enjoys me more is that the ones who are delegating some power to me. Do follow me up. They will warn me or just undelegate me if I would use the power abusively! I do threat it as if it were my own.
I am only a small fish, but because I was away for 4 days. I did try out vote selling via smartsteem but not without notifying me biggest sponsor. I did feel obliged to be open about it, so that they could withdraw their delegation!
The SBC community we have created is another great thing. We try to support each other. Not only with upvotes but with steem tips and so on. We really take care about each other.
A few weeks ago, a new member of our community was downvoted due to flag abuse. He did wrote the complete post in English but also used the pl (polish) tag! He was only around the steem blockchain for 2 weeks! So, as a community we stepped up. Asked the polish tag polish to remove the flag (which they didn't) and stepped up and upvoted his post with all the power we had back then. Still wondering if people can own a tag?
It is important that as many niches as possible on the Steem blockchain, cause this will make it easier for newcomers to stick to it! Our community is sports betting related but could also be a knitting community. The more niches are present, to more people will come.
Like @beat-the-bookies wrote. For our community it is hard to get upvotes from people outside the community or for instance by curator trails and so on! Other communities will have the same!
We are not doing this for the money. We are doing this for the steem blockchain and to inspire people to interact with each other. Each day when I do look at the stats from @penguinpablo and took a look at the comment/post ratio my heart bleeds. We are scoring an average of 2.6 comments per post. This is really really low compared to other social media! And interaction is key! Money should be a nice side effect for most of us!
Newcomers this days may be glad to reach minnow status in a year or 2 and without fiat investment they can forget dreaming about becoming a dolphin or whale!
It is great to see that you are a witness who really care about the steem blockchain and are helping project which deserve to be helped!
Thanks for that!
Feel free to join our World cup contest! You can find it on my blog or on the SBC blog!

$0.08