RE: #BurnSteem25: A Solution to Inflation or an Unnecessary Sacrifice?
In general (obviously), I support the initiatives to burn Steem, but I also agree with some of your points from above. For example, 25% seems very high, and it can be a big sacrifice for people with limited means. OTOH, as @the-gorilla pointed out, here, 75% of a big number can be better than 100% of a small number.
My opinion has always been that burning tokens should be done in exchange for some service, not just as a way to influence prices. In the #burnsteem25 implementation, that service is basically attention from the Steemit curators. It's not a guaranteed upvote, but I think it makes your post more likely to get attention.
I would prefer, though, if it were purely an audience-building play where rewards and scarcity are side-effects. Burning tokens should put your post in front of a lot of eyes, not just the eyes of a few curators. A lot of development still needs to happen for that to become possible.
One effort in that direction is the Steem Curation Extension that I built a couple years ago. The idea here was to draw attention to promoted posts and/or posts with null beneficiaries by highlighting them in the feed, instead of requiring the reader/voter to go to a special tag. Here's what it looks like:
The top post has a @null beneficiary set, the second one has both a @null beneficiary and a post promotion, and the bottom one is promoted without a beneficiary (it probably had a beneficiary, but they disappear after payout). The shades are also adjusted, depending on the size of the beneficiary or the promotion amounts.
Another initiative has been the post pinning by mod-bot, and I have others in mind, too.
By itself, the #burnsteem25 initiative barely makes a dent in the overall Steem supply, so if it's ever going to be significant, I think that the payoff to people who burn tokens needs to be higher in terms of audience size. Burning tokens to get tokens is just marginally better than spinning a metaphoric gerbil wheel.
OTOH, you can see what is possible with Tron, where the blockchain has been deflationary for a couple years. I don't think it's a coincidence that the price has risen from like $0.03 to about $0.15. But, (IMO) those tokens are being burned because someone gets value out of it, not because they're trying to boost the price.
GitHub is one #rabbithole I haven't visited yet in terms of learning. I think I should, though, after hearing all of the good things that can be had from the site.
Here's a question: Would giving that same 25% to a person/cause in need here on Steemit be a better use of that "burnt" crypto? Technically, it doesn't pull the coin out of circulation, but it does go to good use. I guess the 'end-cause' is good, but once I look at it typed out, it doesn't quite click the same boxes. There has to be some medium ground on that somewhere where the coin doesn't get "wasted."
Theoretically, nothing is wasted. The value from the burned tokens gets spread out among all the other STEEM/SP/SBD, in the form of higher prices, so the value doesn't go away. Just as much value would still be available for charitable causes.
In practice, of course, there are many other factors in play - so it might or might not work out that way.
I'm generally suspicious of Steem's charitable initiatives, though, except in a few cases where the organizer has established a reputation and provides strong transparency. I've seen too many "fly by night" initiatives over the years, where people took advantage of peoples' empathy.
On github, I wasn't really expecting you to install it. Just demonstrating that it exists. One of these days, maybe I'll learn how to package these up for the chrome extension store. The way I have the extensions now, some technical background is needed. It's less than ideal.