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RE: It Is Time To Stop Using Steemit.com
When the issues bottom line to not enough revenue to sustain the nodes, that's really irrelevant.
You know what you call it when you offset losses (or generate revenue) by putting the cost to newcomers?
PONZI SCHEME!!!!
That is the answer to the problems of the platform that I've seen repeated by many. Interestingly, ponzi schemes RARELY begin with the intent of becoming a scheme.
Ultimately, it's poor planning, poor decision making and poor implementation. So, NOW the solution is to cast a wider net... except that's not going to increase revenues, that will increase strain on the nodes... So then it becomes a push for a wider net and again and again until some of the decision makers are being given their perp walk.
Actually I am a legal expert on the difference between a Ponzi or Pyramid scheme and a legitimate business and Steem is most definitely the later. I was the General Counsel and main intellectual driver on this landmark case on the issue.
The solution when revenue drops because of outside forces is to cut costs, which is exactly what Steemit Inc is doing. It is cutting costs for EVERYONE who runs a witness or full node by moving to RocksDB etc.
Legal experts are fun, they always manage to interpret whatever they want to be true, even while telling you what they want to be true is false.
Ponzi schemes and pyramid schemes are similar but different. Pyramid schemes directly rely on new investors to supply the return to earlier investors. The ponzi scheme is more about using esoteric "investments" (like investing in steam power, investing in building a witness node as an "independent representative", investing via software development to draw in new investors).
So, the "offsetting costs" is to get new "investors" to absorb those costs under the promise that there are rewards under the success of the platform.
Anyway, this attempt is just going to start the death spiral of the platform, since the measures to offset costs are really only a stop gap measure when the solution requires increasing the value of steem coins, but that can't happen in that current environment and the things that would are going to wind up increasing the costs making the platform even less viable.
Funny, eh ? Poor planning got steemit in a situation where the cure is the poison.