Witness Update - SBDs, Meetups, and More!
Hello everyone! It’s been over a week since I’ve made a post and much longer since I’ve made a witness update, so I figured it’s about time to let everyone know that I’m still here and what I’ve been up to...
New Price Feed Tool for Witnesses
As most of you probably know, witnesses on the Steem platform are expected to provide a price feed, which means they report and record the current market price of Steem to the blockchain on a regular basis. This allows the blockchain software to calculate post payouts in USD and governs the amount of SBD that are given out as post rewards.
Most witnesses I know (myself included) used the same price feed tool which had the unfortunate tendency to crash regularly. I spent a while fighting with that tool to keep it running and when it didn’t I lost a few witness votes for not keeping my feed up to date, so I finally decided it might be better to try to create my own version.
I did that about a month ago and you can find it here: https://github.com/MattyIce/pricefeed. So far it has been running great for me and also for a number of other witnesses that have mentioned that they are using it. It was a good project for me to learn about how publishing price feeds works under the hood, and also I generally feel it’s good for more tooling options to be available so not everyone is using the same thing.
Reduced Price Feed Bias
Speaking of price feeds - I recently dropped my price feed bias to 50% from 300% to indicate my preference to slow the printing of SBD as the price is dropping closer to the intended peg.
While I very much enjoyed the high SBD prices over the past few months, I firmly believe that it is important for the long-term success of the platform to have a stable token pegged at $1. I support the proposal put forward by some of the top witnesses to allow conversion from STEEM to SBD (like we have currently from SBD to STEEM) in order to create a fully pegged SBD going forward.
Liquid STEEM Post Rewards?!?
Also, regarding the SBD print rate, some more astute Steemians may have noticed that just recently liquid STEEM has been starting to be paid out for author rewards:
This is because the print rate of SBDs is increasing while the price of STEEM is falling which has increased the amount of debt taken on by the system in relation to the value of the STEEM which backs that debt.
The blockchain code has a mechanism to limit the rate that SBDs are printed once the debt ratio goes over 2%, which it just now has for the first time at least since I’ve been on the platform. If the debt ratio continues to increase, a larger percentage of liquid post rewards will start being paid out in STEEM rather than SBD.
Some people have pointed out that creating more STEEM and fewer SBDs is in some ways the opposite of what we want to be doing right now. It could potentially apply some downward pressure on the price of STEEM by creating more supply and upward pressure on the price of SBDs by slowing the rate of supply increase.
I believe some of the top witnesses are considering revisiting the debt ratio thresholds in light of the current situation and I support that as well.
Steem Meetups in Philadelphia
Now for a more fun topic! I’ve recently been working with an excellent Steemian - @hypnopreneur - to organize the first Steem meetups in Philadelphia! We have been holding them every second Tuesday of the month and just had our third meetup last week.
I’ve made presentations at the last two events along with @hypnopreneur and @knircky and the primary focus of my presentations was the distinction between the Steem blockchain platform and steemit.com. I tried to call attention to the other great sites built on the Steem blockchain and let everyone in attendance know about the great opportunities in publishing content on sites like DTube, Utopian, Steepshot, etc instead of on steemit.com.
I also created accounts for anyone in attendance who wanted one, so I would like to take this opportunity to welcome @ginanicole, @idx00art, @crypto-ventures, @twofreedom, @parislg16, @vidyen, and @edgy-ed-morrison to the platform!
Thanks For Your Support!
That’s about it for this update! Thank you very much to everyone who has voted for me and otherwise supported my efforts here - I could not do it without you!
For everyone else, if you liked what you’ve read and you want to help support my work for the Steem platform I would very much appreciate your vote!
Click here to vote for me using SteemConnect or go to https://steemit.com/~witnesses and click the upvote icon next to my name on the list!
Hey Matt, this is Mello. We met Tuesday at the Philly meet-up. It was great chatting with you. I took the story of the event back to my newbie initiative and received some positive feeback.
Thanks for sharing your update. I like how a pre-existing product did not suit your needs so you developed your own. That’s what developers do.
The pricing model is a complex topic. I was just discussing with my teammates about the STEEM price dropping ~75% and SBD ~80% since their peak in January. This is troubling times for those who bought into the platform, but an opportunist time for newbies like me. It will be interest to watch the market these next few weeks.
I voted for you shortly after the meet-up and am hoping as I spread the word about you that you will gain a few more votes from my community.
Keep up the great work.
Hey, thanks for reaching out! Yes I can understand the price drop can be really difficult for people who bought in over the past couple of months...I can’t say what will happen in the future but I have high hopes, and like you said a dip can potentially be a great buy-in point.
I have recently started to get some answers concerning witnesses here.
There is a great deal to get into, yet everybody should comprehend what's who causes us and guarantees the stage.
isn't such a great amount of data about the progressions on the installment so it's pleasant and perused more about it. make sens in the drop as of late
Thanks for the updates, @yabapmatt. I love your approach to things - if it doesn't work (or doesn't exist) then I'll create it. Brilliant! Keep up the awesome work you're doing here for us. Oh btw, I sent you a message on steemit.chat with the URL to my bot API. It's all ready to go! :)
This is very interesting and one of the best posts I've seen explaining how it all works. I don't have time to read the whitepaper, so I was vBtery happy when @mellofello forwarded me this link.
Between your post explanation and the comments and answers, a few light bulbs have been turned on. I am saving it for later tonight to let it sink in more, but I wanted to thank you for taking the time to explain what is happening and how it works @yabapmatt!
Awesome! Really glad to have helped. Feel free to reach out if you have any questions or need help with anything!
@yabapmattplease i need such assistance, need your help to promote my posts here
Thank you very much for taking the time to reply to me, that is very cool of you! Andy and Mello said you were a great guy and you really motivated them!
If you have time and can elaborate on this one section, I would love to understand what you are thinking:
I think it means that the objective of the witnesses would be to get the SBD price to the $1 mark and I understand how it is possible to push the price down by "adding more SBDs" ie flooding the market. But it appears that you are going the other way and slowing down the rate of excess SBDs coming into the system (from 250% to 50% means less printed, right?) Also will you advocate going back to printing more SBDs if the price of SBDs goes up again?
And when you talk about the conversion of STEEM to SBD... I am aware of the mechanics throught the exchange (which is not affecting the overall supply of either), so does this refer to some mechanism where you would increase SBD and retire STEEM from the market?
I know that is a lot to ask of someone that is very busy, so thank you in advance for any explanation that you can give.
Thanks again and nice to meet you @yabapmatt :)
Hey Dave and @beeyou.
Glad to see you guys know @yabapmatt as well, he's a top notch guy :D
I can see that @spiritualmax! I'm learning a lot from him too... I hope you had a good weekend and how is the game going?
Hey I'm really sorry I didn't respond to this sooner, it got lost in a sea of other things - but better late than never!
Under normal circumstances the price feed bias should be 0. So I had it set to 300% which is a LOT when SBD prices were off the charts, and now as they are getting closer to the intended peg i've lowered it to 50% which means i still support printing extra, but not so much extra.
Yes since I believe it's important to try to keep it pegged at $1.
Yes I'm not talking about the internal market which is just trading STEEM and SBDs among users. There is currently a system in place where you can trade SBDs for $1 worth of STEEM, in which case the SBDs traded are "burned" and removed from the system entirely.
In order to fully peg SBD to $1 USD I support a proposal to also allow "burning" $1 worth of STEEM in return for 1 SBD, with some limits imposed to manage the debt ratio.
Hope that answers your questions!
First of all thank you very much for taking the time to answer this... And no worries that you almost missed it as I know you are busy. I think I understand, but if you don't mind confirming I got it right that would be great.
You have a mechanism in place that would allow you to buy steem and issue sbd on a 1 sbd to $1 of liquid steem basis. Therefore (if true) you theoretically can increase the supply of sbd to whatever is necessary to keep the price manageable and the consequence will be a reduction in the amount of steem outstanding.
I think I have it right and it makes sense as to how that could manage the price. I appreciate the lesson and the time. Also thank you for your support of #newbieresteemday post by @bashadow... He is a great guy and that was a good thing to see! Take care and have a great week!
Cannot vote for you as witness, it shows some error.
If the value of SBD goes down , won't it decrease post rewards and at the same time if steem goes up it will be even more difficult to power up.
Anyways thanks for all the great work you are doing
You can always vote at https://steemit.com/~witnesses if the SteemConnect link isn't working.
If SBD goes down and STEEM goes up by the same amount then post rewards will remain the same. The system is designed for SBD to be equal to 1 USD, which is very important in my opinion. Since it hasn't been anywhere close to $1 in a while it has caused a lot of problems.
If STEEM goes up in price it will cost more to purchase STEEM to power up, but post rewards will be higher and that's generally the overall goal of this entire platform - to increase the price of STEEM.
Voted :)
Thanks for the clarification
I agree with @joelgonz1982. For those with significantly less steem power, especially due to the fact that delegation costs are astronimically higher now than they were 3 months ago, the rewards will be significantly lower if SBD is only a dollar. I understand $1 SBD was the original intent, but still not a fan of that. But hey, who am I...
It's a complicated topic and while it definitely gives large rewards in the short run, I believe it's ultimately detrimental to the long-term success of the platform - which is what the witnesses really need to be concerned with.
Sure it would be nice to be able to hand out oversized rewards to everyone who posts, but that's not sustainable. The goal is to build real value for the STEEM token and use that to reward holders and posters. Having a stable token pegged to the USD is an important part of the value of the Steem platform.
Oh I understand that it is necessary, but it still stinks that i've saved my SBD in hopes of flipping it into SP when the value of SBD possibly returned to a respectable number. If it returns to $1, the money I invested now outweighs what I would actually have in Steem 6 to 1. It is what it is. Can't change that. But I digress. Truly, thanks for the work you are doing. It is extremely beneficial to the evolution and growth of Steemit.
I have no idea what will happen to the price of SBD in the future, however I personally would never invest or hold a token that is designed and intended to be worth $1 when it's trading for over that.
I sell all of my SBD as soon as I get it when it's trading > $1 and am very happy to be able to make that sale since I believe the person on the other side of the sale is getting a very bad deal.
That's just my opinion though, so take it for what it's worth.
I completely agree with you. I too sell ASAP after getting SBD. For now, I am happy with SP.
Hi @yabapmatt i send @postpromoter 24 STEEM 2 days nothing have been done, nobody react to my messages ... Can you help me ?? :((
Hi @markcze - I'm very sorry about that, there were issues a couple days ago with the main steemit API node that caused some bids to be missed. I have just refunded your 24 STEEM. Please let me know if there is anything else you need.
I thought that there was some problem with STEEMIT .. maybe i have tip when this happens you could post a post :D "Things go wrong on dont worry about your STEEM or SBD" ... also STEEMIT can inform us ... but thank you @yabapmatt .. iam going to to vote for you as witness :D
yes I agree with the witness @yabapmatt
hopefully @yabapmatt also happy to me.
thank you very much @yabapmatt
thanks for this update. I was wondering about the new payout structure I've been seeing today. I'm not sure yet how I feel about it but I now I understand it.
I don't really think anyone is too sure how to feel about it - it wasn't really designed with this scenario in mind (as far as I know) - where this scenario is highly increased SBD print rates due to the price being so much higher than the intended peg.
Yea, well I'm happy you're on it lol because it can be daunting to learn all of this stuff. I suppose that the learning curve is tough but I should catch on soon enough. I've converted all my crypto to steem simply so I don't have to learn everything. Posting on social media is no second nature for most of us and it is the best way to participate in the crypto revolution.
Thanks you for this update @yabapmatt
I am a new user in steem, you and your friends are a steam promoter. I feel bad when new users like me are introduced to the platform, I give up because they are not recognized and no detail explained. Your team and you do a good job with recognize the user completely and I will be happy to be part of your team.
Thanks @wiralhokseumawe! There's definitely a LOT to learn for new users, and it can be very difficult to find clear information about how everything works too. I hope that over time that will get better, but in the meantime it's a great opportunity for those of us who stick with it!
** Success not always owned by the clever, but success will be more owned by a persistent person ** I am trying to find a clear and imformasi this day I found her a little bit of you @yabapmatt
Thank you for this
Hey Matt, its Reese! We met last Tuesday at the Steemit Meet-up. I really appreciate you monitoring the market and sharing your findings in comprehensive/easy to read posts. Over the past week, each day I have been patiently claiming my curation rewards while simultaneously watching the value of my account drop. Unaware as to why, this post just cleared everything up for me! Looking forward to more updates.
As far as the meet-up goes, I work on Tuesday night but may just have to do something about that. It was really nice to meet you all and can't shake the excitement of meeting new people! Until the next meet up!
It was great meeting you at the meetup! Glad the post helped clear up some things, feel free to reach out anytime if you have more questions. Hope to see you at future meetups!
Awesome! And most certainly!
Hi Matt I saw that you attended and met up with your steemians at the Philly meet and greet. That is such a stellar move, to get out in the city and be the embodiment of steem and the success it can bring for those that are current members and those that have just signed up as newbies to the platform. That kind of experience and word of mouth is what it very well may take to get the lid off of what I feel is one the best kept tech secrets today, that being steem/steemit/bitshares. I am quite happy that my first witness vote on steemit was not like votes I had cast in other elections, where I had to plug my nose and pray for the best, lol. I plug you to as many newbies as I can as a very solid witness vote, and tell them the importance of that vote and that it needs to be done to retain top tier talent and give them "golden handcuffs" to continue their great work here on the steemit platform!
Thanks @cryptkeeper17 - really appreciate the kind words and the support! I will keep doing everything I can to bring new people in and help improve this platform for as long as I am able!
I wanted to say thank you for the vote on a recent post of mine, and then I see you not only voted for me but that a steemit colleague (@beeyou) is the first comment I see on your witness, report here, and I did not know you were a witness, so you now have one more witness voter. Thank you for supporting our team/group of newbieresteemday. We are trying to give a hand or leg up to new users, not just handouts, or kicks in the face for saying the wrong thing as happens so often to new users. Once again thank you for your support.
Hey @bashadow - you're welcome! I had the pleasure of meeting @mellofello at the most recent Steem Philly meetup and he seems like a great guy and I really like the #newbieresteemday initiative and would like to do what I can to support it!
Thank you even though I vote a lot, most of my votes got to new users, (except sundays), so not many votes back and that is fine because I know how hard it is to only have ten votes. So I do appreciate your vote.
Maybe next hard fork get that vote slider down to say available at 150 instead of 500SP. But I like voting, and commenting, and helping the new user feel less intimidation. After a bit they do learn that it is okay to comment, That seems to be the biggest fear of new users, and I am not sure that can be solved other than other new users telling them it's okay, so I comment, and other team members comment to let them know. Once again nice to have the support, and thank you.
Hi @yabapmatt. I appreciate your support to @bashadow and our #newbieresteemday initiative. It is very kind of you to show your support, not many big fishes give us red fishes any mind. So thank you!
Our team @beeyou were hesitant about joining this initiative when @davemccoy approached us, because as like you, we all have full time jobs and not much time for Steemit. I am very glad I learned about the initiative and became a cheerleader for the community. Our Newbie team have some of the most good-hearted, caring, and selfless individuals I’ve met, both on and off steemit. Every one of us volunteer some time to help others and I am so proud of them all.
Thank you again for your support. Both @mellofello and @andykapps were very impressed with you after the meetup and that speaks volume, coming from my two teammates who were originally skeptics of this platform. I’m Paula btw, the one girl of our team of guys 🙂. I couldn’t make it to the last meetup but hope to make it to a future one! It would be great to meet like-minded individuals in our area.