RE: Announcing Steemit's New Delegation Application Process
How much total STEEM will be available from Steemit, Inc. accounts for this delegation program?
If you're talking about delegating even more than is currently being delegated from @misterdelegation, then I have absolutely zero confidence in the ability of your company to assess actual problems plaguing this platform and coming up with any actual solutions. You appear to be completely tone deaf to economic incentives, market conditions, and user feedback. Instead of creating a new delegation program with a laundry list of rules and procedures, you ought to be pulling back all of your current delegations and giving that influence back to the rest of the user base.
A delegation should only be awarded if it will result in specific and MATERIAL (not ambiguous or theoretical) economic benefits to both Steem users, and Steemit, Inc. (the entity sacrificing the opportunity costs that result from delegating Steem Power).
There are two major problems with this statement.
First of all, the best economic benefit for STEEM would be to entice businesses to purchase STEEM. By freely giving away delegation, you undermine the entire concept of staking. You're telling businesses that, if they meet your requirements, then they don't have to actually purchase STEEM - to invest in the very platform they want to build on. This is the exact opposite of how bad businesses are weeded out and how legitimate businesses are able to thrive. It ultimately results in less pressure for business operators to succeed by essentially giving them a free "safety net" - at the expense of all other users of Steem.
Asking recipients of delegation to promise not to simply sell their acquired STEEM through this program and telling them that they should be evangelizing Steem will do very little to mitigate a variety of exploitation...and is quite a bit naive.
Secondly, there is no "sacrificing of opportunity costs." (I think you meant "sacrificing of potential gain/revenue" or "assuming the opportunity costs," as sacrificing opportunity costs would mean that there is a loss of costs - i.e., it's a net positive for you.) But I'm assuming that you mean there is an opportunity cost to delegating your stake...which is BS, unless your only plan was to continue the programmatic selling of STEEM. But even then, you're simply suppressing market prices even further and the losses taken from a lower STEEM price are largely your own doing.
And then there's the fact that this stake was never supposed to be used for voting in the first place - per the original ownership. For three years, every opportunity to not use the "ninja-mine," as originally described and rationalized, has been taken by your company. The code of the Steem blockchain has been changed several times just to make it easier for Steemit, Inc. to avoid using that STEEM as originally intended - and then to delegate it or sell it instead, decreasing the influence of all other stakeholders on the platform and adding significant downward price pressure on the Steem currencies.
Claiming that users have a better experience when their influence matters and then diluting that influence by making your previously dormant stake active in the allocation of rewards is ignorant and contradictory, at best. At worst, it reeks of manipulation and malice. I would hope that it's not the latter...although, the former is not much more confidence-inspiring.
Please consider that your continued actions are having a detrimental impact on this blockchain and token prices. The potential of this blockchain is continually stifled by poor leadership, Steemit mismanagement, and what appears to be abject obliviousness by much of the community (your company and many Steem witnesses included) - as we can see in this very comment section.
I would also like to note that, if Steemit, Inc. had to apply for this delegation, based on the questions and rules/procedures listed in this post, their request would be rejected.
That's something to seriously think about.
That is right on point.
Also, I agree with a lot of this. Though, one thing to keep in mind is that if something of value doesn't get built on here, the price of steem will keep going down regardless of whether Inc continues to sell or not, and the odds of something of value getting built on here likely goes up with a delegation program like this. Something to keep in mind. But yes we do need to be very particular about where these delegations go and for how long they are used.
I think anyone who runs or runs a business on Steem knows it doesn't make sense.
The truth is that Steem as an eCommerce platform collapsed a long time ago. Perhaps with the Lightning Network appearing on Bitcoin.
I have to abandon Steem domains, because their cost even if it is low - often takes a lot of money. In addition, the critical situation of Steem causes that few people want to spend Steem, they prefer to sell on Bitcoins.
LOL WHUT Lightening network? dream on, that shit doesnt work. Steem didnt ever collapse as an ecommerce platform because itr never was ecommrce wtf are you talkin about you counterfeit hodlnaut lol
stop shilling bitcoin here... everyone who is a steem whale has bitcoin too, its not always about bitcoin lol
Hmm. I didn't know it didn't work. I've been using it myself for months and I'm surprised. Some freaks are working on a blog platform with monetization! So ... Another competitor?
Of course Lightning Network works. However, some functions have to be created.
Just because YOU used it, to send some transactions to other lightening network nerds., doenst mean it WORKS for mass adoption which si what it was designed for
TELL ME does it work/ show me ONE fucking website or exchange where you can actually USE your lighteningnetwqpork balance? HAHAHA I DIDNT THINK SO
Good LUCK converting $1 in lightening network Bitcoin to STEEM a REAL cryptocurrency witha blockchain unlike the private block stream lightening network that centralizes bitcoin. lol seriously man, lightening network? really? you basicaly will need seperate exchanges for it, its basicaly a DIFFERENT bitcoin, you CANNOt use lighteningnetwork with REAL bitcoin exchanges..... so wtf is it good for?
For FUCKS sake man, just to ACCEPT 1 BTC worth of Lightening network Bitcoin you have to HAVE 1 BTC... its a fucking mess and will NEVER work, and if it DOES ever "work' irt will defeat the entire purpose of BTC... have fun supporting bitmain and the lightening network which we dont need when we have steem and EOS
BTC will scale with EOS... once Voiuce comes out it will do what steem tried to do, $100 million in reward over the next year, yeah peopel are all gonna be uysing voice and its eos wallet, with eBTC or pegged BCT asset kinda like the steem engine BTCp asset... we wont need lightening network when we have pegged assets for BTC in DPOS blockchains.
Hodl Hodl I think, BTCDuke, Zigzag, I today found Sparkswap (looks like DEX?), InPay implementing Lightning Network.
Well, the future will show. EOS is centralized (6 full nodes?), Steem has only 22 full.
I also found FixedFloat.
But I do understand the nervousness. I thought myself that there is nothing in Lightning, but unfortunately in terms of the number of services is bigger than Steem.
https://steemit.com/justin-welch/@coininstant/breaking-news-this-is-why-i-have-such-a-hard-time-typing-and-spelling-on-steemit-com-interface-attn-justinw-head-engineer-of
This will continue to be the case as long as we are giving away a majority of the inflated tokens to people who do not need to invest. Right now, there is not only a problem with the amount of tokens flowing out of the system, there's a problem with there not being any reason to hold SP except to earn curation rewards. But as the price continues to fall for a variety of reasons, the risk of powering up and holding those STEEM tokens is too high, even if you can earn a 20% annual return.
With Steemit's plan to delegate (which dilutes stakeholder influence and reduces their ability to earn with SP) and their plan to continue the programmatic selling of STEEM (which puts consistent and predictable negative pressure on prices), it'll be hard to find new buyers and to retain current stakeholders.
The problem is stake-weighting VP, because it allows the extraction of the majority of the rewards, and prevents that value from inuring to the Steem price by creating more demand, as it would if it was reaching the content creators. The media payout is .01 SBD, and the average payout is ~15 times that, revealing that a couple dozen whales are extracting more than an order of magnitude more than the entire rest of the community.
Wanna grow the price of Steem? Grow the market, not the wallets of whales. ROI from extracting the funds from the marketing division of Steem directly discourages ROI from capital gains, and that's the problem that has not been addressed by any HF. HF21 halves author rewards, doubles curation rewards, and gives the whales another tool to increase their ROI too: the downvote pool. Every time whales flag rewards back into the pool, they get another run at it and extract ~90% of it.
Until stake-weighted VP is no longer is able to extract the rewards that create interest in Steem in new users that grow the market for Steem, capital gains will remain elusive. Profiteers are not investors. They are a plague.
Well, in my opinion, there are plenty of reasons for Steem's problems.
I started to wonder if there are (and what) alternatives to Steem. There are a lot of them, but I was most interested in ActivityPub protocol and the biggest interface - Mastodon.
That's why in 2016 (October) the Mastodon project was created, which today has 4 million users and 500k - 1m of active users.
My observations:
Especially the third point is the most important in my opinion. Programmers, server administrators, developers are most often nerds. But do we have these nerds on Steem?
There are always a few of them, but most of them are gone. Steem from the plankton / minnow side is a difficult network. Somebody may not like your post and give you a flag. You can create a project and devote a lot of time to it, but if you don't have good relations with whales, it won't succeed.
I have an online store project on Steem. A lot of people say it's the best application on Steem. I believe it is, but what if it's losing out because of price drops? I have to either invest in Bidbot (which will probably never pay for itself) or try to achieve something by being a small, meaningless project.
Some people say that it's over and they don't care about Steem anymore.
I personally am shocked by the development of projects in the Lightning network. There are a lot of nerds in Bitcoin!
I still feel that delegation has been the biggest mistake made on this blockchain.
Delegation has not been the biggest mistake. Delegation to the wrong people, without accountability, has been the biggest mistake. This method appears to at least attempt to mitigate that problem. We should be so lucky they are willing to give it another go! I've been waiting for this to happen, and feared it may not.
But my biggest dream since I stepped foot here was to basically delegate to worthy people and projects. I'm telling you, when in the right hands, it's a brilliant plan. It works. No question.
The problem is, we have not used the greatest discretion in the past. Now, it appears discretion is being used, and a fail-safe plan seems to be in place when delegation is abused. The expectations are clear, accountability should be as well. Until then, then yes, it is a complete mistake.
You could essentially do that by powering down or using steem earnings and giving them to someone you want to support. Delegation on the otherhand gives them power that they didn't grow, they didn't purchase and they can do what they will with it. I think it is important to realize you could do what you were stating without delegation. It was also easier to track what was going where. Delegation actually made it easier to game the system. It most definitely was taken advantage of. Are there some people that benefited from it to good ends? Yes. I have a little over 1000 I am delegating at the moment. I know it's not much, my account was once 20,000 steem power. I lost faith in the direction steem was going some time ago. It had (and still does if people start thinking as @ats-david indicates) potential. Ease of joining is a big deal and can help. Yet also not being voted to oblivion because someone doesn't like your ideas is a big deal... especially here where that is financial oblivion. I haven't pulled my delegation because some of it is other accounts of my OWN, with only two or three exceptions due to the tangible service those accounts offer to steem.
no delegation is an asset, dont be mad at the system for the mistakes of its users.
Delegation lets you GIVE someone something that NO OTHER crypto or asset can do, a 0 risk loan of sorts.. one you can take back at any time.... delegation is a new form of fintech that is being used in EOS to create the future of business
so no, delegation was not a mistake. without delegation on steem theres no delegation on eos...
Just wait for EOS Voice to come out, and then steemit inc will get an idea of how a competent company that knows how to make money, runs its social media product
Today something like a charlatan can first devise their latest and greatest example of nothingness and false hopes. That charlatan will then purchase votes, enriching those who do not own the trending page, and diluting our influence at the same time, for nothing. The charlatan will then ask for delegations from the community. Maybe 1000 or more people will delegate, diluting their influence along the way. The charlatan will then use that SP to dilute our influence further, by voting for bunk or whatever else these people do with their time these days. Then they leave with bags of money while nearly everyone else sits there thinking, gee. I didn't see that coming.
If this plan actually works, these legitimate businesses have a legitimate source. They don't need to enrich the vote sellers for a spot on the trending page, all they need to do is tag it. Community voting power no longer needs to be wasted on the latest and greatest promotion because visibility is earned instantaneously so instead that VP can go to those wanting to get paid for their posts. Businesses don't need to ask the community for delegations, that community SP can then be freed up for voting purposes since many enjoy earning more on their posts anyway, and curators are getting a raise. Impeccable timing.
The charlatan will look foolish presenting their case to the public, because if the plan was legit, they would be able to take the official approach to all of this instead of the shady road. If Steemit is looking out for number one and rejects the charlatan, the community should be able to take a hint and not set themselves up for failure.
Provided these delegations are used for what's stated above, this could actually free up a lot of influence, rather than diluting it. There are a few positives here.
As much as I disagree with handouts. This line:
That one means a lot to me. They should be investing in their own businesses, purchasing STEEM, proving themselves, before they see anything that could make them feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
I'm not saying it's going to work. I'm not saying there won't be problems. I do see potential here. I hope they don't screw it up.
Sounds logically.
However, having different opinions (but still the same aim: to improve STEEM) is a normal thing and shouldn't result in fighting against each other. I would be curious to read an answer of Steemit, Inc. under your comment.
Ats, it's going to work. Just chillax.
Is that sarcasm? I truly cannot tell.
No. It is going to be fine. And everyone needs to chillax.
How come the STEEM facebook scam is coming from the official STEEM FB account? Also since all the sock puppet accounts are fake, and also verified by me to be fake without any matching tx's why would this scam be posted by steemit in the first place? Surely if it were real someone would be using it and sending some steem back here?? So who owns the steemit FB account and why is this post still being posted on FB? Is this a scam YES or NO? ! I know you will never answer me, I better start flagging again soon!
https://steemit.com/beware/@kawaiicrush/scammy-sounding-commments-coming-from-the-steem-facebook-page
What are you talking about, it sounds like a good idea! Not to you because you are an abuser! lol anyone arguing here is wrong! Go NEW STEEM!