What is the Fundamental Problem with STEEM?
I got into a heated discussion tonight with several people over what is to be done about the state of the blogging platforms. I am writing this post to both clarify my thoughts and get your input.
I think most of us agree that the /trending page, which is the dominant factor in the steem-blogging (steemit.com, busy.org, steempeak.com, etc) user experience, is in a bad state. When people see which content succeeds on steem-blogging there are a few different reactions:
A) A Steemian-that-never-was sees /trending and decides not to join the steem ecosystem
B) A Steemian joins, does not get the same kinds of rewards, gets discouraged and leaves
C) A Steemian figures out the relatively simple tasks needed to game the system in the same ways and becomes an "abuser"
D) A Steemian ignores /trending, develops their own mini-community, and doesn't worry about it.
Cases A and B are lost users. Case C adds to the current situation. Case D is the "good user" that we want more of.
A and B reduce demand for STEEM. C has some demand for STEEM but also sells a lot on the markets, so is probably a wash. D increases demand for STEEM.
My contention is that A, B, and C vastly outweigh D and this is the root of the problem with steem-blogging and the price of STEEM. As just one example, @paulag, who has done more for steem-blogging users than just about anyone, announced just a few hours ago that she is powering down.
So I devised a system to create an opt-in Proof of Stake (PoS) for STEEM Power holders.
The root of the idea is that if user experience (UX) is improved by preventing the crappy content from being created in the first place, then we will be able to attract and retain more users. More users, more activity, more buyers, higher coin prices, a better environment for everyone.
The way this would be achieved is that it gives SP holders a path to get the financial rewards of PoS without having to do all those activities that crap up /trending. If a user has a way to get pretty much the same yield as a self-vote without having to create content, comment farm, circle vote, bid bot, and all the rest of it, why go through the hassle?
Effectively the system would concentrate all the rewards farming into a few posts per day instead of the thousands that we get currently.
This will go a long way to eliminating cases A, B, and C.
So I posted a draft of my plan in a private discord that has a lot of members that are very active in the steem community. And I got a very negative response. Basically the gist of the argument was that creating any kind of PoS system is a sell-out of STEEM's principles and it's better to fight the rewards farmers. Also HF21 will fix the problem, at least somewhat and eventually.
I could not seem to get across the idea that:
1, what matters most for steem-blogging, in the long run, is bringing in new people and that means the user experience is the most important thing. If HF21 takes care of all these issues then great, we don't need to do anything. If HF21 doesn't fix these issues then we are only tweaking the margins of the problem.
2, If or when Tribes and SMTs become the dominant focus, then STEEM becomes a simple utility token like TRX. And it will have a similar price of a penny or two because you only need enough to interact with the blockchain. The desired asset becomes the SCOT or SMT.
So if you want to avoid 3 cent STEEM, something needs to change.
I could bore you with anonymized screenshots of the conversation, but I think this has gone on too long already.
And for what it's worth, I do think HF21 will help, but not substantially. If you have 1 free downvote and the farmer has 10 upvotes, the net result is 9. I think the change in the curve will lead to more bid bots, not less. I am perfectly willing to be completely wrong and experience much better steem-blogging after August.
This doesn't make any sense. TRX might be trading at only a few cents per token, but you also have to take into account the fact that there are over 66 billion of them, giving it a market cap of around $1.5 billion currently. If STEEM had a similar market cap then it would put 1 STEEM at over $4.
It would be great for STEEM if some SCOTs or SMTs become heavily desired because it would be (a) great and much needed marketing for the platform in general and (b) Steem Power is required to actually use those tokens on the chain.
I look at STEEM as the B2B token, and the SCOTs and future SMTs as the customer facing tokens. As investors in STEEM we want the customer facing tokens to be as successful as possible because it all creates value for the Steem platform behind the scenes.
Fair enough on the market cap. I should have thought of that.
I agree! But how many customers are we talking about?
It takes roughly 100 STEEM Power worth of RC to do normal posting, commenting, and voting for an average user. And whether they buy the STEEM or the Tribe admin does it and delegates the RCs (if that is ever a thing) doesn't matter much in the aggregate.
How many of those 100 SP users will it take to absorb the inflation? In 2020 according to the chart I'm looking at the daily inflation will average roughly 75k STEEM per day. That 75k plus whatever is being sold from prior STEEM has to be absorbed by the market in one way or another.
Well one idea that has been floated recently, which I am very much on board with, is that at some point if and when SMTs become the main focus for consumers then the "proof of brain" distribution will be removed from the STEEM token, so STEEM will only be used for Resource Credits (much like how TRX or ETH are used today). In that case the inflation would be reduced by around 65%.
So with some quick math, the inflation drops to around 25k STEEM / day from the 75k you quoted, which would only take about 250 new 100 SP users / day to absorb. That should be a piece of cake assuming we have some actual popular applications on here.
Yeah, if that happens it changes the math entirely.
Steem has always been rather complicated and now with all these new coins and projects it has become to much for new users? I cant keep up with all the nww front ends and what they do....
I am sure steem engine is great and will help in the long run but maybe its a case of to much to soon... lets get the basics right and onboard the masses first.
Onboarding is a whole other issue lol.
I like paula, she mashes some nice data, but it's not the first or the second time she's quit and announced it. :)
I'm of the opinion that people are willing to put up with some quirks in a site for the right reasons.
Also, a nice user experience is nice. :)
There are hundreds of websites with users, more than we have. Many of them do not have the potential to give out rewards and still manage to gain users.
We spend all our time fighting about how, where there are tested and true models. I've worked for a couple of them.
The problem is we don't have a common vision and if we did, we could pick your idea or my idea or the other people you were arguing with.. we could pick their idea. Any of them would be okay and better than having no idea and fighting.
We are not short on ideas, we are short on picking one direction and going with it. I don't think you are wrong, I also don't think the others in the convo were wrong.
Sadly none of it matters because we just sit around and yank our own chain.
I was thinking some more about your comment here. I'm not even concerned about whether my idea for a PoS system will work or not.
My bigger point is that UX is the most important issue facing steem-blogging, and other people seem to think that it doesn't matter. I feel like I'm taking crazy pills.
Who cares if you have a great UI and no one knows.
Have you seen SteemPeak? It's a pretty great page. Now what?
Well that's depressing.
Hi @whatsup.
Did @paulag quit already before? Oh, that's great to know. So perhaps it's just temporary discouragement and hopefully she will rest and get back on track :)
It would be shame to lose someone as valuable as her.
Cheers
@crypto.piotr and @whatsup I would love to be shown the posts where I quit steem or even indicated that to be my intentions. Lol if people read my posts they would learn how I have been using steem to try grow my online business and I have purchased additional sp to do so.
What the post above refers to is me powering down an account that was used to support different community's and community efforts. The sp will be transferred to my brand account and powered up. It's my first power down and I'm sad that I cant continue to support the smaller accounts and community efforts anymore as I need to consolidate my sp and time for the business. I was hoping there was another way, but I cant see it. This seems to be a reoccurring problem, everyone has their own project and so dont have the time or sp to support anything else. Steem is still so young and needs time and this support. @whatsup you are one of the few that consistently supports the steem community. Hats off to you, it's not an easy task and we need more of you.
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good thing I read the comments of a lot of posts. I was going to go check your account after to see what was up.
Glad you are doubling down on steem
working hard and keeping out of the drama :-) still here and will be for a while longer
I don't think STEEM being an utility token will necessarily cause its value to tank. If STEEM were not used for curation, a lot less inflation would be needed in which case supply and demand would cause it to go up in value. It is desirable to keep the inflation high for quite some time, however. This is because to secure the chain, we want more decentralization of stake.
My main point here is that you need new users to be attracted to steem and willing to stay here. Without them, the stake does not increase decentralization.
I think decentralization can increase even without new users because the stake is quite unevenly distributed. Steemit, Inc controls about 60% of it. Among the top 20 witnesses there are many who have millions to many hundreds of thousands.
Yes, that's true. It's just not happening fast enough to really matter.
Yes, that's true. It's just
Not happening fast enough
To really matter.
- nealmcspadden
I'm a bot. I detect haiku.
Dear @nealmcspadden
Thank you for sharing your own view on that particular topic. I absolutely agree about trending page. We're on the same page here.
However I'm wondering why people care so much about trending page. Whoever I ask simple question "do you visit trending page" would tell me exactly what I expected. That they hardly do simply because they are already following so many people, that they don't have enough time to engage with their own followers.
so they focus on their feed and visiting accounts of people they recognize. So perhaps our "feeds" should be reorganized more than current trending page?
I may be wrong, but as long as Steem Inc will be dumping large amount of STEEM to cover their expenses and at the same time they will enjoy 100% revenue from ads (without even buying back program) then price of STEEM will be going down non stop. I'm not sure if changing trending page (Who hardly anyone visits) can make any difference.
Anyway great read.
Yours
Piotr
Who are you asking? The people already here? They aren't the issue.
If enough people are coming in to the market for STEEM as new users, then they will have enough buying power to absorb whatever stinc is doing with their stake.
Great to see more and more thoughts coming out and discussing this! I too wish for the success of the protocol but feel like we have little say on what happens. I just continue being present and wait for the next Hard Fork to come around and adapt. Hopefully, from there we can see the state of Steem once again.
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I think Steem under 500 Satoshis is unavoidable at this point. Whether that's 3c by the time it happens I don't know.
Bloggers need to understand that they'll be better off in a smaller ecosystem which contains only bloggers and people who want to read blogs. The key is not really new users in general, it's people who want to read things and upvote them for extrinsic reasons. (Because they liked it, or because they want to reward the author.) The more people Steem attracts because they want to get a return, the more it dilutes that population, and the less functional the blogging ecosystem becomes.
This is why I'm 100% against the EIP - it's all about trying to get more people to vote for return, and in the process making sure the organic users we already have (who don't have large stakes) get fewer rewards (and never get to have large stakes).
I'm listening to msp-waves right now where vadenburg is talking about how people below the superlinear-linear transition will earn a little less and those above will earn a little more.
The transition point is somewhere around 16 STEEM worth of rewards.
One of these days I will sign up to the STEEM SQL service so I can do quick research, but my guess is the VAST majority of accounts earn far less than that.
Regardless, the HF looks like it is pretty much a done deal, so we will see how it shakes out.