Thoughts about the economic mechanism of Steem ---Is it ponzi?

As there is almost no transaction fees on steemit, the whole steem ecosystem is actually losing money. Witness and authors get rewards from inflation, but they have to keep them instead of cashing out, to avoid the price drop. After all, counting on the new members to buy the inflated tokens to keep the a stable price is similar ponzi scheme. What if steem is as big as facebook and no incremental users?
Of course, steem is not a ponzi, as you don't need to deposit any money to start writing. But similar questions are asked every a few days if you search"steem ponzi".

A solution is Bitshares, which uses similar Graphene toolkit. Witness and workers are cashing out everyday in bitshares too, but as bitshares itself is an exchange, there are tons of transaction fees which is the income of the whole system. If the income can cover the cost of witness and workers, then Bitshares system is gaining money everyday. The earned money can be used to buy and burn bitshares, which is a win win for system and share holders. You may decide how many worker proposals can be approved according to the budget.

Therefore, I think steem has to think about how to earn money for the system. For example, transaction fees.

image source: https://btcmanager.com/steemit-criticized-for-ponzi-scheme-like-network/
目前基于区块链的各个内容平台，比如STEEM, Bihu, Primas, 还有其他大大小小的内容激励平台，在经济激励模型上都有点类似，那就是给用户的奖励，并不是从团队出，也不是从其他用户口袋出，而是系统通胀的部分来出。 这就存在一个问题，如果后面没有新人买入STEEM的，那么通胀出来的STEEM抛售势必带来价格的缓跌，如果跌势起来了，大家都想先卖，那么价格就会崩盘。这一点跟庞氏骗局非常像。当然了，STEEM绝不是旁氏，因为你并不需要充钱就可以写文章获得收益。

目前STEEM发帖转账都没有手续费，每天产生的通胀，或者说抛压，需要新人买入，这样是很难持续的，因为目前有越来越多的机器人只是为了赚钱，而没有发掘优质内容，或者去给新人点赞，这样下去会影响新人的动力，只剩下自己给自己点赞然后套现的机器人。

当然，这个并不是无解的，解决方法就是系统能找到盈利的办法，或者通过转账手续费或者发帖手续费，或者通过广告。 广告暂时看不到希望，而且会影响体验。那么唯有通过手续费。当整个系统的手续费收入大于通胀时，这就意味着系统开始盈利了。盈利部分可以用来回购这些通胀产生的币，会推高币价。

一个解决的例子是Bitshares, 比特股由于自身是个去中心化交易所，每天有几千万交易量，于是就产生了大量手续费。 同时，BTS也有witness和worker，他们的收入就是系统固定通胀的部分。 当系统的手续费收入大于witness和worker支出时，bts网络就是健康的，可以持续盈利的。 而当系统盈利小于见证人和worker支出时，系统就入不敷出。所以，我个人强烈建议，对于worker的投票，一定要考虑目前系统的收入，这样才是对股东负责人的行为。