The Steem News @ 20 January 2023 : Food for Thought Friday...

Today's Steem News is a little different.

Rather than straight news items, this edition of Steem News features a number of important posts that leading members of the community have published recently.

These posts cover some big issues that really deserve wide coverage and in-depth discussion...

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1. Releasing DAO Funds to Burn Steem

Long time Steemian @jondoe has put forward the idea that SBD accumulated in the DAO should be released, converted to STEEM on the internal market and then burnt by sending to @null.

This would theoretically act like a much amplified version of Steemit's burnsteem25 initiative. Burning STEEM reduces inflation and the supply of STEEM, which should then increase the price of STEEM.

There are a number of issues around who and how this process could be managed, but this could potentially have a major impact on the price of STEEM - a clear benefit for all...

• What if we used the SBDs created every day in the DAO to buy and burn STEEM?

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The Steem DAO, or SPS (Steem Proposal System), is a trustless system set up 4 - 5 years ago to provide funding for development work and other initiatives to benefit the Steem community. It is funded through an automatic take of 10% of the reward pool.

After the Steem / Hive split in March 2020 the DAO funds were effectively locked by a large vote from @dev365 on the Return Proposal. This blocked any new proposals from passing the Return Proposal to receive funding from the DAO.

The @steem.dao account now holds over 3.3 Million SBD, equivalent at the current exchange rate to around 42.7 Million STEEM or USD 7.9 Million.

The Return Proposal currently has 47.57 Million SP of votes. Previously there was not enough Steem Power in the active community to overcome the Return Proposal.

Now as the community SP has grown, there is the potential, particularly through the combined votes of @UPVU and @rme, to pass the voting on the Return Proposal and reactivate the DAO.

Voting on the DAO is based is based on witness proxy votes.

• https://joticajulian.github.io/steemexplorer/#/proposals

Where do we go from here...

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2. Abandoned Steem ?

Steem Marketeer @o1eh asks the question 'Does STEEM Look Like an Abandoned Project?'.

He cites out of date information on steem.com, outdated pages on steemit.com, and missing pages on Wikipedia.

Certainly to the passing observer these omissions could give the impression that Steem is abandoned...

• Does STEEM Look Like an Abandoned Project?

But we the active community know Steem is very much alive and kicking.

How do we let the outside world know that and get the investors knocking on Steem's door...

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3. Billionaires Welcome

Budding billionaire and OG Steemian @remlaps muses over what he would do if he suddenly had ample money to buy Steemit.

There would be big incentives for developers, community support initiatives would be continued, high quality authors would be enticed to the platform, Steemit.com and Steem.com would be brought up to date, inflation would be controlled, and an army of virtual assistants would be created...

• If I were a billionaire, I'd buy Steemit and...

What would you do if you bought Steemit...

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4. Questions for Steemit

The Steem community in Korea are holding an offline Meetup in Busan on Saturday 4 February.

As part of that Top 20 witness @donekim (@dev.supporters) is inviting questions from the community that he will put to the Steemit team before the meeting. He will then report back at the meeting with the answers...

• If you have any questions about the Steemit Team, please leave a question

It's time to ask...

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Pennsif the Witness

After almost 2000 days on Steem I decided it was time to take my contribution to the platform to the next level.

I have therefore set up as a Steem witness... @pennsif.witness

If anyone would like to support what I already do, and what I am planning to do, by giving one of their 30 witness votes to @pennsif.witness I would be hugely grateful.

You can read my full witness announcement here...

• pennsif.witness Witness Campaign Post

@pennsif.witness has now reached #20. Thank you to everyone who has voted to help get to this position.

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Spanish Translator Wanted

Currently @sofian88 produces a translation of Steem News to help spread the news in the Indonesian community.

For people who don't read English, and who don't have access to Google Translate, it could also be a good idea to translate Steem News into Spanish for the large community in Latin America, especially Venezuela.

There are no specifics yet of how this might work, but if there are any Venezuelans who are interested, leave a comment below with your Discord name or contact me directly on Discord (Pennsif#9921).

This would particularly suit someone with a reasonable level of written English, and who is well established in the Venezuela / Latin America communities.

Thank you.

Pennsif.

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KEY DATA [ from CoinMarketCap ]

STEEM price	US$ 0.19	20 Jan '23 1.47pm UTC
STEEM price	0.00000885 BTC	20 Jan '23 1.47pm UT
CoinMarketCap Ranking	#272	20 Jan '23 1.47pm UT
SBD price	US$ 2.45	20 Jan '23 1.47pm UT
Unique visitors (steemit.com)	143,333 / day	20 Jan '23 1.47pm UT
Page views (steemit.com)	273,765 / day	20 Jan '23 1.47pm UT

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This is #485 (20 Jan '23) of this daily news service.

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[ graphics by @pennsif ]