Steem, The Experiment.. New Questions
I joined Steem in August of 2016 after hearing about it from James Corbett of @thecorbettreport.
At the time I had heard of Bitcoin and even mined Bitcoin for a day in 2010ish. I had no idea what I was doing but followed some links on a whim. After a full day of mining and not even having "A full Bitcoin" I turned it off and mostly forgot about Bitcoin. I would hear about it in passing from time-to-time and think I really need to check that out, but until Steem I hadn't yet.
I logged into Steem and for about 2 years read everything I could get my hands on about Bitcoin, Crypto and Steem.
I learned that Freedom is messier than I pictured, and decentralized is a confusing topic.
A lot of people handled and swapped around a lot of money, and the price and rewards had little to do with internal actions, costs or anything I've learned to use as a measure.
I think the crypto days of profiting on ideas are numbered and that most projects will have to begin to develop a real business plan that balances costs and revenue. The excitement and hype of Bitcoin created some 2200 crypto projects many will not be viable in a slower market. The speculation and hype phase is mostly over in my opinion. I've often written about that phase after experiencing it working for Dot.com in the Late 90s early 2000s. I could be wrong and we could just be experiencing a bear market that will Moon again soon. I'm just not counting on it.
MY RECENT PARADIGM SHIFT:
How will Steem handle that adjustment? Right now we don't seem to be positioned as well as I had imagined. The sheer amount of Stake that SteemIt Inc. holds, combined with our inability to know what their financial situation REALLY is and based on Ned's last "Bridge", I don't think they have a defined direction or plan. So, it is pretty difficult to predict anything. What we know that any community-driven efforts would have to be approved by witnesses who are easily controlled by Ned and SteemIt Inc's stake. They are a private company who does not report to us, does not hold community funds and does not have to justify it's actions or inactions to us. I haven't decided whether or not I am comfortable with that moving forward. This is not an attack on Ned, it doesn't matter WHO it is, it matters that there is a WHO. To be fair, I haven't seen Ned try to bully the community with his stake or even so much as pull a power play.
The current situation has me thinking about a lot of things...
I'm not even sure I like the idea of Free Transactions anymore, and I feel like I should have known better. Free means that SteemIt and the Witnesses were paying and during high times that worked out great, but now we have a community that is expecting rewards with or without a stream of revenue and free unlimited access to the site. We have Apps that don't appear to have a business model without the support of nodes and we have witnesses struggling to pay for equipment and an over-extended SteemIt Inc as our main and pretty much only development company.
Steem has always been and continues to be a high-risk investment and I've never lost sight of that, but now I am wondering if we are really supporting any of the ideas of cryptocurrency, decentralization, immutable, censorship-resistant.
Nothing is free, someone else is always paying for what you get for free and if money gets tight or directions change the entire economy is based on speculation and not a revenue stream it complicates things even more. That is where I see most of Steem right now. But not all and our community and extremely young economy have some really bright spots also.
We have accomplished many things during this experiment and for me it was my first real-life experience of practicing Freedom, learning the real challenges of decentralized anything. In addition, I've really enjoyed being exposed to an International Community and the diversity of ideas and cultures.
I don't know what the future brings and neither does anyone else, but I woke up this morning thankful for the experiment. If my investment of time here doesn't result in monetary gains, I think the experiment was worth it. Experiments are meant to answer questions, but often they result in new questions.
I couldn't have learned so much about the experiment if it hadn't been for all of you! The ever so discussed community!
I think Steem and social media interaction on the Steem blockchain will survive. I do think the price will fall more in the short run though.
I don't normally link to my own posts but on the subject of apps not having a business model I posted a 'funny' meme in response to seeing yet another dapp requesting delegation. Here
Some people I know thought I was being unfair on discord but I am glad to know that I'm that respect I was pretty spot on :0)
I still have hope for Steemit though!
I don't really get your point in that post. These services don't need SP, they need delegation so that the users reward the service for what it brings and the service must use the delegated SP somehow to actually make some money. But yeah, why not make free services buy their own SP on top of it, right?
But I somehow get your point. On the other hand, we are using delegation on @steveapp currently to help users fund and support the service (under @steevebot), which I think is legit. With delegation you at least have to be somehow creative.
What I like less is this "I am doing this great thing for the community, so vote for me as a witness". Like, I don't get this whole point that being a witness should reward you for anything else than being a witness. Ok, during good times, why not to support a project by delegating what you make as a witness, but otherwise it can really easily point to just having zero idea how to make actual money and value and you can just hype people, get to be a witness, problem solves. Even though getting to be a witness is not easy and it costs something, it is for me somehow the easy way, because really you don't have to be creative in any way. Just give me your money and I will use it to fund myself, whatever I am doing. And by definition such services cannot bring people that would buy into Steem, because they are not going to charge anybody since they are well off with being a witness.
But then of course, the reality is not black and white and some handy services have simply no way how to make money. Like I don't know, you decide to make another SteemConnect, you want to fund it with a witness. Or you have to make it a paid service. Which is also legit.
The fact is still that it is probably just SteemMonsters that makes sense in the way that it can make people buy Steem. Others are just about getting a part of the inflation pool, which is just like and infinite circle. Let's get paid with what we generate for nothing for ourselves :-)
Posted using Steeve, an AI-powered Steem interface
Delegation is SP? Just not SP that you own permanently.
My point was simply that at that time my feed was cluttered with service after service requesting delegation.
The delegation that I don't like, is not so much the delegation from users, hell, if you like a project why not support it. No, the delegation I don't like so much is the one that is implicitly sought from Mr delegation. You know, the Biggie.
Which again is fair enough, but it is not a sustainable business model to rely on something which can be taken away at any time. I would much rather see these apps have a business model. Something which ultimately meant they were independent of Steemit Inc.
And I wholeheartedly agree on the witness thing :0)
I have hope for STEEM, not so much Steemit and its leader
Definite hope for steem, for me I think the two are so intrinsically tied now that I fear one without the other does not bode well. If this project had been like Eos (which I think sucks ass but that's another story) and created the Blockchain with no front end then invited app development it could have worked but it didn't and now having had a beta then throwing it away in favour of a bunch of fragmented apps sends the wrong message out to the world.
It might be the only way forward but it's all about perception.
I do hope I am wrong though.
I'm not hopeless, not at all, just working through some thoughts and feelings.
Oh I know, I got that and well reasoned too :0)
Having invested a good chunk of money into this platform, I understand where you are coming from. Even more so I find it really hard to answer the question: "what problem is steem trying to fix or improve?" and if you can answer that question, you have the secondary question of, "does it even need to be fixed or how much can you really improve?
All tough questions that don't work out really well with steemit's current usage is. That's the real working point if you ask me. What I do see, is steem blockchain being used for everything BUT blogging, sort of a public access blockchain that you have access to and can do as you please (the whole point of SMTs really).
Are we still waiting for that???
Let me test out a few thoughts on what I thought prior to Ned's meeting.
Problems we are trying to solve:
Providing a place for people to communicate without PC standards, censorship and selling our data.
Provide Monetization to Content Creators. (Youtube modelish)
Educating in a real-world situation the masses on crypto. (Look at how many people, even non-technical people have learned to earn, use and trade crypto)
Now, how do we monetize that?
I don't even know if SMTs are still a thing. :)
I dont think you can ever create a sterile environment without PC standards. Anytime you gather people together, you'll have someone pointing out the PC shit going on and making a fuss about it. nature of the beast.
Providing monetization for content creators is great, until we realize that there has to be special interest from the person providing the money. Focused money is the only way to be paid to create content, save for the few people who are really good at entertaining (think the casey neistats and Jenny Marbles).
part of the issue with that concept is that MOST PEOPLE have nothing significantly important to share. and even if we did, we dont have the skill to deliver the message. Which is fine! But seeing the truth means that blogging is not a community thing.
There must be more!
What else is there?????
DPOS is realistically dealing with scalability, in my opinion. Put a fee on transactions and we can all go home. 😎
But, hey, the blogging/social media thing is the coolest dapp on the chain!
I guess that might be the case. Scaling goes hand in hand with profit and costs. But if I paid for scaling costs for 2 years up front and there is still no profit in 2 years, then scaling wasnt the issue. Usability is.
It's a great question, and one I have asked before. The funny thing is... Although I can't clearly answer the question, believe there is an answer.
Letting it stew for a bit.
I believe theres an answer, and its sort of brewing. At the end of the day, its all about the dollars. How can someone benefit and profit off the network is the million dollar question.
The experiment should continue. On all levels.
That includes SMTs, or whichever minimal version of it. As they will allow what Ned always called “UX issue” and those who want other monetization matrices can stake their SP to those SMTs.
We truly should look al Apache, both the software and the org, and also W3C. Neither ever moved fast but they had a goal in mind and it happened as a community.
Keeping their success in mind, it becomes blatantly obvious that the central institution in the experiment was the single point of failure (this isn’t an attack on Steemit or Ned, but an observation at this point) and has withheld the Steem dev and promo scene from growing and becoming more dynamic than all current rather small initiatives. Mostly by being the ever present shadow, an involuntary one I think, and also a sword of Damocles at times - an involuntary one as well but merely involuntary born out of naivety this time.
All this is a blessing after all because it allows us to step out of that shadow and actually rather than always talk to/direct at Ned... this time the act needs to be cleaned up by everyone.
Whatever that means for freedom is just as much up for grabs as before. Freedom in an environment like this is free, not as in beers but as in movement, and everyone has their own definition of it.
Lastly, in a slightly more distant future than the “SMT release”, we should by now have learned that Steemit Inc should also be decoupled from being the blockchain dev crew and become a cog in the chain.
Whether that means they become a witness then too... maybe they best throw that at the community given stake.
It is an eventual necessity tho. Both for them and for the community to get a focus on the wider needs, a focus not dominated by one company.
Example need: looking at the current witness server requirements... how will those ever scale to 2m daily users?
There’s work to be done. Lots.
The game starts now.
Posted using Partiko iOS
I think you're wrong. Someone different might have gotten more done, kept the price up, and given time, the community could eventually take over development. Hell, someone different would have done things completely different in regards to open source development, and we could actually have some community development of the code in place. As it is, a few witnesses contribute. It's pathetic. I think Steemit has discouraged decentralization of the development simply by not making it easier to get involved. On that, I fully blame Ned and the Steemit team. I also blame them for various actions that have held down the price a bit. Under someone else, this would feel more like an open source project and they would have been possibly able to last out the "bear market" until the community could take more of an involved role in the development, if they weren't already. This place has a HUGE community, including a TON of developers, such that projects are popping up all the time. But how much work is getting done on Steem and Condenser, the Steemit front-end?
I think it was a successful experiment in any case. The question is, has Steemit learned from their many mistakes yet, so that this place doesn't sink?
If you are correct and if the community has learned our lesson from the above. Ned is a non-factor. Now we know... What do we do?
Yes, now hopefully the community has learned. I don't think Ned is going to be a "non-factor" though. I just hope we can more to not depending on him and Steemit. I think now we need to organize open source efforts.
I guess we need to organize the developer witnesses and create all the missing trappings of normal open source efforts. I guess maybe we could use one of the forum front-ends. Then we can start getting more of the developers on here involved in the development of Steem and other projects on here.
good answer @whatsup.
We are in unknown territory. Its easy to go he said she said, until you are at the helm of the sinking ship.
Even if ned made the wrong choices, to what extent is it his fault? How much of this is an inherint problem with a blockchain based social media site? My focus on this is, the nodes are FREE access, yet no one chose to do anything but create vote bots. There is more potential, but no one knows the potential except the creators themselves. but they are not in the business of creating dapps, jus creating the infrastructure to allow dapps to occur.
I personally knew that we weren't decentralized and that I didn't always agree with Ned, so he did his thing, I would have done mine.. It's easy to throw rocks now, but I am not sure it matters.
right on whatsup, i always appreciate your straight approach. i appreciate the experiment too and would also love to see some monetary dividends someday.
this sentence rings so true to me. it's similar to the "eco-village" thing that humans try cyclically to create- living together in community, sharing things to varying degrees of success and trying to live sustainable lifestyles. i've read that nearly 90+% fail. it boils down to the fact that we don't know how to live that way and it's really really hard to ground an alternative way of being.
crypto, decentralization, censorship-resistance... these too are hopeful ideals that we as humans don't have much practice in living out... some of us wake up from the bad dream that is the modern age and we are thirsty, so thirsty for these "alt" ways of being only to realize that we need so so much practice.
i , for one, also don't think ned is being malicious by any stretch of the imagination, but i do think he has been "resting on his laurels"- like so many in the space, and that i suppose as his pockets have been padded, he lost a true skin in the game. that's my felt sense anyway. yet ned and steemit inc and our thirst for them to lead kind of harkens too closely back to the demands of centralization, doesn't it?
in the end, i think it's healthy that we're breaking our dependance on them. sometimes cutting ties hurts. but , from what i've seen, i don't think this community will die. way too many incredibly talented people care way too fucking much. and isn't that practicing decentralization after all? :)
Great response, many things I could focus on... but I just really want to agree with you that it is better we address it now than continue to make the situation worse.
I get a sense of disappointment from your post @whatsup
It might just be me though...
After Ned's latest "bridge" there is uncertainty everywhere. People are trying to find solutions. Some are heavily invested in steem while others not. Some are just blogging / vlogging and haven't invested fiat money.
But the effort, the engagement the time someone puts into his posts are equally important if not more. One thing is sure though..this.
Don't forget...WE are steem!
Yeah, it would be fair to say I'm feeling a little disappointment, but it is just a feeling. I guess that is how I process things.
Don't let it bring you down
It's only castles burning,
Find someone who's turning
And you will come around.
Steem has been very slow in releasing development updates. In a highly competitive market, you need to be on your toes all the time and plan atleast 2 years ahead which includes financial planning as well. Clearly, Steem Inc failed in those regards and I believe they are still not understanding the whole point. They can reduce the costs and everything but that is not a long term solution. What if we have another year of Bear market and Steem prices reaches below 10 cents. Will they still be able to sustain themselves? I am seeing many businesses shutting down their shops and can't even handle a year long bear market. Financial planning is so critical and now when they should really be focusing on creating revenue streams for the platform, they are busy cutting cost, completely wrong approach in my opinion.
Posted using Partiko Android
Wow - fully agree - that's what I pay you for :)
Yeah same here - everything from James Corbett in Aug 16 to arriving at a point of total disillusionment now...
I do think cryptos will have at least one more big pump and dump before any deliberate major economic collapse (hope like hell), but I'm not aiming to get scammed like this again!
Much as I love Steemit, because of the people (some of them), I now have the same trust for Steem as I do for pretty much everything else - none - work the scam or it will work me.
I hope you are right about that pump. I don't think it is a scam. But everyone got caught up in the hype including me... even as I preached about lessons learned during the dot.com era/
My own behavior baffles me at times!
I think the tricky thing about Steemit is that it's a creative and social platform, so we are invested in it in that way.
With regular investments like other cryptos I have no attachment to them, and would sell them at the drop of a hat.
Even at this point I'm up on cryptos, but if we ever get back up to half where we were at in February, I'll be selling them as fast as they rise and taking out 50% of the gains rather than only 20% - and going up from there. Ultimately I think all cryptos are just scams now...
Don't ignore the power of many chains each with their own criteria the regulators are trying to get it under control. But what has been started cannot be undone! We played a role in that and it will continue.