Users Decide: 21st Century Coopetition benefiting all stakeholders or...?
I'm writing a blockchain / running a blockchain project / launching a cryptocurrency.
It was designed to acomplish a state of coopetition with steemit.com:
![](https://steemitimages.com/640x0/https://steemitimages.com/DQmbnobUmGXiWhv3x4Tkbny5Z1FK1wnR6uMNFxEu7a2V9dQ/image.png)
I started writing it because it was easier to make a new chain than interface with steem's. I so wish that I were exaggerating when I say this, but when I tally up the time spent, I know for certain this is correct.
I'm not doing all of these things all of the time of course, but I'm doing some of each of them. My intention for this chain was to augment Steemit with new media features that I suggested in my very first steemit post and to experiment with alternative models of compensation for users who create popular content. Specifically, I was going to try and see if traffic was a better metric than voting, and if that failed, I was going to try a non-stake-weighted voting algorithm, or possibly some combination of the two.
Steem posts were going to flow into DAWN's chain and be hashed like everything in DAWN's chain.
Then they'd be retrievable via those hashes or via steemit.com same as today. So one thing we'd be providing off the bat is webcomponents that can load steem content from anywhere on the interwebs.
Likewise, DAWN posts from users who have saved their STEEM posting keys onto the DAWN chain (encrypted with their DAWN key, of course-- no one wants their posting keys publicly accessible.... would receive a similar treatment (conversion to standard STEEM post setup) and would flow onto the STEEM chain.
Oh, and DAWN isn't really a blogging platform, though there's some blogging. Point being it wasn't designed to compete with steem/steemit. Today if you visit the link at the bottom of the article, I know it looks exactly like a blogging platform. Looks can be deceiving. Maybe the template wasn't able to capture anyone's full intentions and there's a full UX re-do in the works.
IT WAS DESIGNED TO COOPETITION WITH STEEMIT, @sneak. The steem userbase is still insignificant compared to social media overall. A wiser man would be celebrating every single launch of any user-compensated, chain-based social anything site because this is how compensation for user content becomes the expected norm. I'm sure nearly everyone here has a story about a friend saying that Steemit is a scam. I know I do. The reason people think this is that they haven't been exposed to this mode of operating. More experienced people with more information might think this because the rewards system on steemit is clearly slanted towards concentration of power, but that is frankly another matter altogether. No lies were told about the compensation scheme on steem, and so I'm surely not going to say it's a scam.
Much more likely is the truth: It's an experiment. But real experimentation cannot be participated in by folks banned from engineering resources for some extremely hand-wavey reasons. And there's a strong argument to be made that real experimentation-- a search for truth-- cannot even happen in an environment where folks are getting banned simply because some higher-ranking project participants don't like what they have to say.
Being banned from Steemit's github has surely caused me to reconsider my unify, compete, and mutually pump plans.... which would have achieved several blockchain / appchain / contentchain "firsts."
Here are the facts as I see them on developing things for steemit:
- Docs are non-existent or wrong
- No care whatsoever has been taken to keep node operation simple
- Company lies to community regarding the state of affairs
- Company expects devs who cannot help but know otherwise to tow the party line
- Misinformed community members might have unreasonable expectations of third party devs
- To approximately quote an anonymous steem-dev (I assure you, I'm not quoting myself) I know "whomever wrote this is an asshole, because it gives absolutley zero consideration to the user."
here are some facts about steemit:
- Revolutionary concept concerning the value of thought
- On steemit I've gotten paid for the quality of my ideas and my ability to express them. This has been literally life-changing for me.
- Most web systems, even most blockchain systems do not have the power to change people's lives. That's why I'm writing this here as opposed to anywhere else on the interwebs. It's not so much the coins/tokens earned at this point as it is my "why in the hell would I take my long-form expository writing anywhere else?"
- High-quality community of serial early adopters
- Steemit, Inc is a parasite from the 20th Century when we needed things like corporations leeching off of a glowing blockchain composed purely of human thought and appreciation from the 21st Century. It holds a vast portion of total steem and sells it so that it can sustain its USD expenses. This (of course) depresses the price of STEEM and reduces the user-area of the steem currency and its USD pegged token, SBD by making active posting less attractive to both new and repeat users alike.
I never planned this coopetition to benefit steemit, inc.
I couldn't care less about steemit, inc. That said, if executed, the coopetition would benefit steemit, inc. But that was never, ever the goal, and one thing I am very certain of is:
I have no desire or incentive to do anything that could possibly benefit steemit, inc. I absolutley don't want to benefit steemit, inc due to a conflict in core values.
The goal was always to benefit the thousands of utterly incredible people who write funny, witty, technical, boring, sarcastic, tongue-in-cheek, and overall wonderful blog posts on this here blockchain filled with content.
Since I, uh, wrote many of steem's docs and filed many an issue on steem's github, and participated in design discussions, and basically-- gave my input freely, without charge, for the fun of it, yeah, I'm pretty offended about being banned from participating in the engineering for this "open source" project, steemit.com. Given this:
I can't help but get the feeling that I'm not the only person who thinks that @sneak isn't taking steem's engineering praxis in a favorable direction (despite his many excellent code contributions). This isn't an accusation. It's my opinion, and I'm sharing it because I've been forced to call into question the wisdom of programmatically interacting with the steem blockchain despite the engineering effort that both myself and the supernaturally talented @baabeetaa put into the situation. See, such interactions rely on a certain degree of trust, for example:
->-------river------>--------bill's house--------->-------------your house--->--------
Imagine that bill likes to shit in the river. Imagine that for a decade prior, Sarah had owned the house and being a decent soul, Sarah shat in the latrine. Your house uses the river for all of its water needs. You shower in river water, drink it, etc. Bill moves in and suddenly you've got cholera. I'm one of few people on steemit who can honestly say they've had cholera and let me tell you, it SUCKS. Not only do you spring a 105.5 fever, you also get to live for the rest of forever knowing that at some point, you dined on some dookie. Bill won't stop shitting in the river. You stop using your house. It goes unmaintained. Bill has destroyed the value of your house. This is what steemit, inc does to the vast majority of downstream projects with its shit docs and other practices that equate to shitting in the river.
The little >'s denote the direction of the water in the river. Granted, this example is somewhat flawed because the truth cannot exist in rivers:
Truth of a potential dawn-steem relationship-- an impossible-IRL 2-way river
-----river---------<Steem------------<dawn
-----river--------->Steem------------>dawn
Rivers, of course, never flow in two directions at once.
Analogy: API Insanity, github banning, lack of docs, blatantly wrong docs == shitting in the river
YES-- many things have improved surrounding interacting with steemd lately. Kudos to the people who built those systems, who notably-- DO NOT work for steemit, inc. Both I and the community owe you high-fives. I don't see anything steemit, inc has done to improve developer experience, and when I dare to bring up this subject-- indeed, sometimes in profanity-laced rants on this platform that maybe I shouldn't have made (or then again, maybe I should have-- I'm of mixed minds on this matter) well, forget my post earnings-- those seem to have recovered with a greater erecognition of the reality that I'm not bullshitting, nope-- instead I'm banned from a github org where I am the.....
Oh, I've been scrubbed from the contrubutors list.
Commits
Contributors
I'd be right about where @bmann is, were that accurate. It's not like I did anything that groundbreaking. I just wrote the repo's introduction and tried to make the README.md file as friendly to newcomers as possible.
I'd wanted to try and give this site the ultimate pump by in quick succession:
- Releasing a pure swagger API for steemd, opening up previously unimaginable development options
- Releasing several branded front-ends, one which I owe to someone awesome, another for free, and another for my personal use. (eg: jacobgadikian.com)
- Releasing ___________________, which ____________________ resulting in steem upwards
... and finally, by using a voluntary relationship between steemit and dawn to illustrate coopetition. I have to deliver the front end to the awesome person, so that's my current main software dev task. I owe him, despite the reality that steemit has never ever lifted a finger to make derivative sites any easier, I am indeed in the wrong. I got frustrated, because well, I completed the task once, @baabeetaa completed the task once, then there was some other half-successful attempt, and then there was of course that time that lack of documentation (and some lack of knowledge of the encryption involved-- I'll openly admit this) caused me to think that steem-js hid a terrible, terrible truth.
I know others on the platform who're also deeply frustrated with the DX here. LOTS of others. It's really freaking hard when the docs are outright wrong-- if they exist at all. To say that developing to interact with steem takes 10x the time is an understatement. I'd have to say it's more like 15-20x. I have contributed to hundreds of projects on gitub, most with either the odd commit here or there, or with a README.md work-over, or just reporting bugs. github.com/steemit is the only github organization that I've been banned from.
I'm not coming to any quick conclusions here, and no, steem/steemit doesn't suck. I AM looking for input, however, because I've been given ample reason to think that my work could get cholera if exposed to steem's river :(. There's definitely big chunks of poo flowing downstream.
To squelch any accusations that DAWN is some form of vapor, here's a pitiful version of it running on a single-node:
You can see an early version of the steem integration here:
http://52.221.207.170:8000/test/steem_getpost
You can create an account and post content to the test chain. If you're feeling to lazy for that (since it is only a test chain, after all, you can find some test accounts on the create account page. Log in using your private key. Currently fixing the IPFS issue that is causing glogchain not to accept posts.
Its source code can be found here: https://github.com/dawn-network/glogchain
The repository leaps with joy each time that it is starred.
I will not ban anyone from its repositories nor will I allow anyone to ban anyone from its repositories. It can surely be made less pitiful. I'm doing my best.
As someone who has tried to delve into developing for Steem, I can concur that the documentation is a total dog's breakfast, when there is any. @xeroc even mangled piston for a while and after I came back from a hiatus from trying to work with it, I discovered that none of my old code still worked.
I'm happy to announce that although I am going to continue to work towards bringing more witnesses on board, with my new first draft of a simple package to allow anyone to do it, and I am also offering to apprentice a few new witnesses to get things moving forward.
This is my now fully complete package, btw: https://github.com/l0k1-smirenski/docker-gentoo-steemd
But the bulk of my work in the future will be on @faddat's projects, because they are already better than what Steem was 6 months ago. I also want to build systems that interface not just with Steem but with everyfuckingthing. I want to make a blockchain whore who will do business with anyone and everyone, if they flash the cash.
I am now in a physical situation that soon should allow me to spend 25 hours a day building awesome new shit and I am pleased to be on board with @faddat
We are just warming up! Watch out world!
@l0k1 you are spot on! A system that interfaces with everything...any and all it chooses to. this is bigger than a website existing on an innovative blockchain. It's about thousands, even millions of them being built.
So what if Tim Berners-Lee decided to keep http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html all to himself?
What if all websites were made to exist on this one website?
We have to think big now gentleman. We are living in exciting times!
What projects?
Not my projects. There's a lot of us working on glogchain in various capacities. And I can't wait to get the network up so I can no longer threaten it by doing one of those inconvienent human things like getting sick, losing interest, or dying.
Glogchain is the first in a series of chains that comprise dawn, which is a series of blockchains and an Open open hardware brand. Which is to say that the brand is open, as well as the products and their software.
Sounds pretty cool, will keep an eye out for this stuff
He's building a blockchain system built on the Go language. I haven't learned a lot about exactly what it does yet but once I have finished this hardfork migration I probably will be posting about it from time to time.
I'm interested also. Will follow the repo and look out for posts.
They can't ban you from here. Just work hard, ignore them, and then they will come to you.
By the way nice screenshot about the merge request from dan from 15 days ago. Any idea if it will happen? It would be great for everyone (except those guys who banned you from github)
Given the lack of rigor in engineering stuff 'round here coupled with the strong disincentives for users who discover or think they have discovered issues to report them, it's hard to say conclusively weather or not I could or could not be banned from this platform. Probably I couldn't. Note how I cannot say that with definition.
@heimindanger: One of the things that I am afraid of is attracting any cholera-spreading people to any river that my house draws water from. Some of these folks, for example, @sneak, do not share my values when it comes to open software development and I decidedly don't want him involved in my creative work. This said, because of how any software I write is licensed and my views on the importance of inclusive, open design as we move into the post-industrial era, there's not a chance that I'll block him or anyone else from participating in anything I make. He is as welcome as anyone else because I release open code for many reasons, which have proven time and again to be beneficial to all people alive, like:
Regarding the screenshot, steemit, inc has no incentive to open its codebase under a proper OSS license. I think that they wish to sell the company in a "double exit." Eg: They've been exiting the crypto for a long time, so selling the corporation that owns the codebase creates a second windfall opportunity.
They could ban you from steemit.com probably, but you would still be seen on busy, esteem, etc. Technically their best bet would be to use their steem power and downvote you to sub-zero reputation.
You can identify that these persons have cholera because of their current power. Revert the roles and they will look normal, making it hard for you to identify them, sadly. You will need anti-biotics.
About the open sourcing of the chain, that makes sense. Our planet is ruled by greedy people, so why should it be any different for Steemit Corp ? If this pull request was accepted, anyone would be able to relaunch steem without the ninja mine at the start and we would probably get a much fairer distribution, and a much bigger userbase instantly.
Like you, I do not blame anyone at steemit, inc for the choices they've made. In the US it's actually illegal to do anything that lowers the value of a company's shares (if you're a major shareholder).
yeah, they are mainly building something to sell for a billion to MicroSlut as a BSaaS (Bull Shit as a Service) - I can't believe the horseshit I am hearing from the megacorps about blockchain when they have none of the mentality of real blockchains.
Sorry Steemit, Inc., you are thinking so 20th century. The money is on the chain, not in the fucking Bank of America and the NYSE.
So the issue to me isn't really about mentality:
it is about strategy. They don't get the purpose of the tool, and so they do not use it properly. It's kind of like using a toothbrush to clean your asshole. It'll do.... something
but probably not what you wanted it to.
yup. they don't understand that blockchain is intended to pull the rug out from under government-guaranteed corporations that can pay to have their 'externalities' legalised or suppressed under trade secrets shit or something.
it's not a blockchain if someone is in charge. hierarchy and permissions systems should have no place in blockchain, but most of the big megacorps are building these. They don't understand that just cos they build it doesn't mean they can control it, and still get the benefit. I mean, doesn't it sorta ring any bells in their mind looking at how many new coins come out these days with ICO's? The stockmarket is obsolete, pretty much. These dinosaurs are gonna crash and burn in the brave new world.
R3 banking blockchain consrtium being a perfect example of what you're describing here.
realizing that brave new world involves making the state obsolete. Otherwise by colluding with the state, big corps will continue to do anything they please. Conversely, the state, by colluding with big corps, will continue to do anything it pleases (as long as it doesn't bother the big corps, the actual "customer" of nearly every politician).
lastly, blockchain is a tool, like fission. Fission can be used to create cheap, plentiful electricity safely at underground reactor sites with little risk of a fukushima.
Fission can also creat fukushima. Or chernobyl. Or Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
All depends on who is using the tool and what it is being used to accomplish.
Someone promoted your post. Promotions help every steemians.
Your reward is an upvote and 0.040 SBD extra promotion.
Good job, see you next time in
Promoted
! ;)I promoted it, and thanks very much for the four cents!
See you next time, as well!
I'm not a fan of complaining posts in general to I'll skip that part. As for your allegations of bad conduct by the Steem devs, do you have proof of this?
Your glogchain project looks really interesting. Looks like the same thing as IPFS but using existing file sharing protocols (torrents) and a blockchain instead of whatever IPFS uses to decentralize the file system table. But what is the IPFS integration about then?
From what I can see there would be nothing stopping you from "routing" Steem posts into your DAWN blockchain, what's the issue here? Is it just poor docs on the APIs?
On some of your other points, a Swagger description of the API would be amazing, +1 on that.
Also heads up that the dawn network and your personal website are down.
Please re-frame my my post from complaining to "what the hell should I do now?" (with context, and sure, that context includes complaining.)
DAWN was designed to interoperate with STEEM. Being banned from steemit's github is about the loudest, clearest signal I can imagine that this is not something that @sneak and @ned and the rest of the crew desire.
Alternatives include:
Which is why I as asking the community for ideas.
Oh, and proof, hell yeah I have proof. Let me get you a quick screenie.
I would say link the blockchains and make it easy for new blockchains to be linked with dawn. That way if the community wants a major change they can just make a new blockchain.
Already in progress, good sir/madam. Followed.
Love to have you in our chat:
https://riot.im/app/#/room/#dawn:matrix.org
I'm really more interested in discussing all the other points!
Edit after your edit: Sounds like something I want nothing to do with, "crush steem", etc. I'm not sure how you being allegedly banned from contributing to steem prevents you from being a third party developer. It seems like it can't. Unless you were hoping for a partnership with them?
OK let's. So....
Do you want the screencap where it says @sneak banned me from steemit's github because of my posts on steemit? (invalidating everything I thought that this site stood for and any legitimate claim that steemit ever had to being open source)
Or do you want to hear more about DAWN?
Also, DAWN uses IPFS, too. Though I'd like to strip IPFS out in favor of WebTorrent and only webtorrent. BT has a proven ability to scale in crazy ways, which well, I just don't know about IPFS. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't?
Well both
Item one
Reply to dawn part after your edit
That sounds really cool, sounds like removing IPFS dependency would be the way to go, as you say, BT is proven and very active.
There's nothing there on "item one" 😕
Got a link for that item one picture?
https://steemit.com/steemit/@faddat/i-m-still-banned-from-steemit-s-github
I don't want to crush steem either. But Steemit, inc is harming steem, and technically, they own it.
If you look at the article, you'll see that what I'd planned to do was synergize. There is not a clearer way of telling me that such synergies aren't desired than banning me from their github.
I made this post so that I can figure out the best course of action. I am not saying that crushing steem is the best course of action. I am saying I need people's help to figure out the best course of action.
Going to reply to your ban announcement instead, this comment threading is sillyEdit: actually just directly to sneak's comment
What do you mean by interoperate? I really don't see how someone is prevented from making 3rd party apps. Do you want to actually make 2nd party apps, i.e. to partner with them in some way?
No, third party, but here's the trouble:
And I've built some of those things:
github.com/faddat/ingestron
.....and they have huge potential. But the whole "gonna ban you from github?" I mean c'mon..... I always give away my work. Everything I do is open source.
So to be banned from steemit's github.... after I wrote the docs for condenser.... Well, OK they want me to fuck off. So I guess I'll fuck off?
But the real question is how to fuck off without harming the people who use steemit.
I couldn't care less if my actions obliterated steemit, inc.
But the community is freaking awesome and changed my life.
Reply to dawn part after your edit
"interoperate" and "synergize" are buzzwords without any clear meaning here. I guess I'll have to read your doc as you're not answering the question.
Read the article?
The article explains well: Posts would flow between the two chains. I'd build some stuff that would enhance steemit.com. Both sites could go forth compete some, and collaborate some and it would be cool.
But @sneak doesn't want it that way.
Okay what article, have you got a link? @faddat
This article, man. This one.
Great work by @fabien and the crew on steem-js but it's not well documented either unfortunately, by any standard. There are no descriptions for the parameters and I've been caught out on an important issues perhaps 6 times with that.
Definitely bad for your to get banned, I'd be interested in knowing more about the context because it seems odd to say the least. I also have a docs pull request pending at this time and this concerns me slightly. But I'm sorry but I can't give your claims credence without some proof and context, I don't know anyone else who would either.
If your claims are true, why like that stop you? As far as I know there's not way for them to ban a 3rd party dev. Who cares if they like you or not?
So I guess you wanted to make things a bit more standard to help with 3rd party apps? I guess you probably wanted to do something directly on steemd then (a plugin perhaps) instead of simply consuming their API. I would say that you could get pretty good results just using the API on a separate machine on the same local network or even on the same machine running a witness. Have you considered that?
Edit: here's the link to the PR https://github.com/steemit/whitepaper/pull/1
Here's why I might let it stop me:
Suddenly it makes me feel sick to benefit steemit, inc in any way.
No, I just wanted to consume the API. But doing that well requires support from steemit, inc because it is not documented.
....by steemit standards, steem-js is incredibly well documented.
See comments for sneak's comment.
https://steemit.com/steemit/@faddat/i-m-still-banned-from-steemit-s-github
I guess I might feel the same if I were banned. What did you do to deserve it? Come on now, be honest 😉
I don't think I did anything worthy of a ban.
Sneak says that my post content justifies the ban, so you will have to read through my posts. Some of them indeed do discuss well-known and lesser-known problems with the site, blockchain, and docs and indeed do contain profanity.
As an observer and not a "Coder" (so I don't know much about Githubs and Bans) I have seen @faddat treated pretty shitty by the SteemIt.Inc community. @personz, your comments sound like salt for a wound. You don't appear to be UP on the situation and you keep making very lame comments which look like you're stoking some kind of negative response. This feed already has too many comments and you and @faddat should move it somewhere else.
Since I don't want to get in the middle and I wish to just point out that outside observers like myself DO pay attention and watch these posts....
All SteemIt had to do was REGULARLY POST INSTRUCTIONS ON THEIR OWN DAMN BLOCKCHAIN!!!
As a user for several months, this has been a Cluster Fuck of absurdity! Steem will survive and prosper despite itself and despite any of the work of Steemit.Inc, because it's an idea who's time has come. People want to use this Tech... But we also want open source and open documentation... That's why I'm watching DAWN now.
Great work @faddat! Keep it up!
My comments are direct questions to fill in the blanks, not intended as salt. @faddat was kind of evasive and I had to ask a lot of times, and is fond of editing comments after making them, hence the sprawl. I don't agree it should be moved somewhere else, this is the place for it.
"Lame comments"? I thought they were good and we got to the heart of the matter eventually.
I agree that Steemit Inc. need to up their game big time. Flaming isn't the way to go, anyone who starts ranting should expect to be ignored, I don't know what else people expect and it surprises me when it goes on. I'm usually trying to see if there's anything behind it that's legit. Take it as you want.
I, for one, encourage you to ask questions in pursuit of truth. :)
Folks at steem not sharing that attitude is what got us here.
@tyroan
Basically it doesn't matter what anyone feels, including me. What matters is that the facts keep not adding up.
Perhaps I am just retarded. But since I don't know if I am retarded or not, I will just keep doing what feels right in all situations.