Let's Talk—Just a Reality Check! What's Your Prediction for Steemit in 2018?
Steemit is the most popular interface to the Steem blockchain and has thousands of users using it. However, given the recent bearish market and Steem price crashing down from its ATH $8.40+ to $1.50, in your opinion, what do you think will bring Steem and Steemit its value in 2018?
It's hard to pretend that things are great and sometimes a doze of reality is necessary.
Let's face it. Content creation alone doesn't give value to the Steem currency. It's new money coming in from investors and trading activity that makes a real world difference.
Are people still interested in investing in Steem and powering up? I don't know about you, but in a few secret crypto groups on FB with thousands of users I hardly ever see Steem getting mentioned without doing it first myself and the conversation doesnt go anywhere.
In private conversations, bigger investors continue to remain skeptical about the huge ninja-mined Steem worth hundreds of millions that Inc own and feel the platform is centralised in certain ways inspite of how it is marketed or portrayed.
We're closing in on a million signups but how many active users do we have today? Someone feel free to drop the current data in the comments below for an upvote.
6 meetups in 2 countries and hundred of users. Everyone I've interacted with recently is tired of waiting for new features. No one has an answer or knows anything better. The questions continue to pile up, and there aren't many answers.
Hardfork, communities and SMT are expected from several months and Steem/it isn't in the news as often as it could've been. In light of these things how many of our active users here feel compelled to regularly power up their earnings instead of cashing out?
Things have also changed a lot in the past 6 months. It's somewhat ironic: how the community looks down upon large scale self-voting by small or large stakeholders but has accepted large scale bid-bot use in the name of promotional services.
![Screen Shot 2018-03-31 at 4.29.17 PM.png](https://steemitimages.com/640x0/https://steemitimages.com/DQmYQzjbhBhsHZh74yNXiPnkGfY3qSTu3ogAjNtfMSReMyT/Screen%20Shot%202018-03-31%20at%204.29.17%20PM.png)
For most, delegation to such services and use of such services seems to be the way forward these days. Everyone is doing it so it must be okay, No?
It's a free market at work—is the winning argument.
Truth be told, there aren't many better ways to earn a decent return on your SP investment. Not everyone has the time, skill or patience to write content and wait around to make a few dollars on it. For a content producer: Payout on posts isn't guaranteed here, so if earning a regular income is important to you, what keeps you here?
Voters are limited in their ability to evenly distribute stake. Frankly, it's foolish to assume that it's anyone's job or moral responsibility here as stakeholders to distribute Steem evenly.
Stake gives you power. Power gives you influence and control. Why would anyone want that to be spread evenly?
There is no exact method and ergo its impossible, and exactly for these and other reasons most of the whales now probably prefer delegating to bid bots instead of curating as they did before or have done it already—assuming there were any reasons beyond profit.
But let's be honest. Delegating to bid bots is just so profitable!
It doesn't consume precious time that is often spent curating or appointing a curator and monitoring progress. You will probably make less than 0.5% of your total SP holdings per month as curation rewards from voting around manually. That's less than peanuts for most.
The incentive for curating good content is often very low for most small-stake manual voters. Most people will not want to look beyond themselves and their own sustainability. Why should they? People generally will reserve the little influence they have on the reward pool on their own posts and comments. Unless you a hold a stick threatening to flag them down if they do so.
But one can choose to delegate to bid bots and earn a profit without their activity being questioned.
Apparently this is great for the platform. But you are supposed to be able to decide what you can do with your SP right?
This is just the free market in motion.
But what about community building and supporting new users you ask?
Well, they can use a promotional bot if they can't find themselves a regular voter—seems to be the general sentiment now. It doesn't matter if a few work to onboard new users-investors, educate new prospective users and investors, support existing users, and bring people and communities together. As long as someone is doing it, footing the bill themselves, it's all good.
Some community builders lacking support around here are struggling to proceed with their initiatives. Eventually most will grind down to a halt without appropriate resources and support on the platform. Moral support only goes so far but does nothing to assist in the real world.
But how long are our actions sustainable?
Our cryptocurrency platform needs new users to sign up and use. It needs new investors to pump-in fresh money and buy into its tokens in order to increase demand for our favourite cryptocurrency. We need more community builders who can go out and bring new small, medium and large scale investors into the platform. Just building a platform with a bunch of features won't get everyone to use it.
How do you expect these new investors to behave when you onboard them?
How long before they change their mind and adopt practices to maximise profit over community growth and benefit?
How many mid-large size investors you've spoken to have shown interest in Steem but ultimately shied away from it?
How can these new big investors benefit from the platform other than delegating to bid bots, self-voting or delegating to their own projects? Most people wouldn't touch cryptocurrencies if they didn't offer good returns. That's the fact. Most community builders will give up eventually as big support continues to drop in favour of promotional services, this is bound to happen.
Do you think a change in the attitude of users and/or changes to the system itself will revive the positivity around here? Will that be enough?
As a community of users we have some real challenges ahead of us.
Writing content that drives some traffic isn't going to be enough. Or expecting someone to simply vote for you because you write a ton of "quality posts" isn't going to get you any money either! But we're here for profit no? You'd be naive to think if whales are altruists or for that matter anyone else here is!
If you are butthurt about not making enough $$$$, then go buy some Steem and power up. If you are butthurt about being flagged, just get some SP and use it! It's not that simple in either cases for the majority, but that's just how it is and will be whether we like it or not. Free Market fellas, remember that every time you log-in here! You have to work your arse off for it, and no one's working for your benefit. Keep this in mind and proceed.
Not everyone is going to be successful here. Just like in the real world nothing lasts forever. Some people make it where others fail. That's harsh, yet true!
We'll cross a million users and the developers have their work cut out for them.
People ask me in meetups (please email Inc instead of asking each other) why basic things like resteem separation isn't there (see Github PR) or why the reputation number continues to remain buggy on the wallet page sometimes? It does make one wonder about bigger updates such as HF20—originally proposed over 9 months ago and especially if investing into Steem cryptocurrency is going to be "worth it"—who knows?
Personally speaking, I'm just going with the flow of things. Observing the current situation and adapting to it.
You're an early adopter, you don't have a lot to lose! What about us new guys?—I get this a lot!
Maybe it's true, maybe it's not.
It's not all that bad though. When there's hope, there's a possibility that some good things might come your way. Hopefully, things will change for the better and we'll get the features we've been waiting for. I'd love to see how these new changes shapes up our community. I'm sure it will also improve the general sentiment and make it worthy for everyone HODLing their Steem to stay powered up and remain participative.
But, for the sake of discussion (that's all we can do really) where do you foresee things going in the months to come?
If you like my work kindly resteem it to your friends. You may also continue reading my recent posts which might interest you:
- Building A List Of Users From India—Please Fill This Form ASAP!
- Why You Should Vote For @firepower As Witness—Witness Campaign Post From India!
- India Steem Meetup #5—An AWESOME Meetup In Tezpur, Assam and 30+ Attended!
If I understood the graph well, there were 172,068 active users for this month. Here is the link for it.
I remember the time I came to Steemit. I was this much away from buying my own domain on wordpress to blog. To write my stories/poems or make the daily blogs that I want to, when I came across Steemit. It seemed perfect to me then as my main idea was to put the stories that I want to write out into the world and have people read them, considering the active users who might be on the site regularly seemed a great idea to me & the idea of getting paid through upvotes seemed liked an added advantage.
Thank you for the link to the stats! :)
Anytime Boss :)
To listen to the audio version of this article click on the play image.
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very cool this! :D
You have put in words so many people's thoughts with this post my friend! Thanks for that!
Concerning community building...you are again so right! I have been supporting the foodies community despite my low SP by organizing contest each week the past 8 months! Nearly all that I earn in my post are distributed as prizes to the steemit iron chef contest! I was thinking that I will be getting some more support with the big sp holders with time...but till now NOTHING!!!
Anyway I will keep on doing my best in supporting the max I can as I have full faith in the success of Steem/SBD soon!
When the prices were high, I am sure everyone have enjoyed a lot...now it is time to work hard and have patience!
I agree with you. But now the focus is pure profitability. High SBD prices brought forth these hidden feelings amongst everyone. Large investors saw it as a moment to try and recover their principal investments and exit. Many have gotten tired of waiting for improvements are powering down and selling. Few care for community builders and community oriented projects now. The situation is now vastly different to 2017.
We're gonna have to sit tight and wait it out as you said...
Personally I just tell myself Steemit is a system to allow people (including myself) to be heard. It allows freedom of speech. I just keep powering up and forget about making $, i haven't made any $ since getting into crypto and I don't care.
The moment, I can't post what I want about what I want I'll stop powering up and stop inviting friends and leave...so shoot me!
True just like everyone else I want Steem to be worth lots and I do believe SMT's at the right time could do the trick...until then just have fun and power up! then use that power to bring in friends by up-voting and encouraging and try to make the world a better place by sharing stuff with your fellow humans.
Thanks for the great posts firepower.
L8r
I agree with you. I've brought onboard tons of people and I continue to do so. I also think this place holds a bright future. But it also has several issues as with any other social media platform that needs to be resolved along the way.
It's do or die time for Steemit. Communities and SMTs should be finished and released. I'm sure the Steemit team is working hard on it, but the current momentum brings a little pressure.
That's not a winning argument at all. It's just @ned's argument. I heard him say this as an answer to a question at Steemfest2 in Lisbon (the question was much like your post here-above). My jaw dropped and I couldn't believe the CEO of Steemit does not care one bit about growing the community, focusing the reward system to incentivize quality and engagement, but would rather just focus maximalising investor returns.
As a community, we should simply do what we can. Act like we would want others to act. Help each other, foster a positive growing environment open to new members and rewarding quality. If it fails we will try again.
Probably on a different DPOS based blockchain.
However, if Steem survives this year, we might be looking at a $50 - $100 Steem valuation. That's not impossible, I think.
@fitzgibbon steemit Inc is not concentrating there efforts to make steemit better busy is doing it for them.
There main focus is SMT development.
In the future other social media platforms(quora,medium, Reddit etc) will launch their own smart media tokens and steemit will be just like any other social media platform.
Steam inc is trying to tokenize the web and they don't care if steemit fails
Steemit is a proof of concept indeed. SMTs will certainly be a major focus area in the future.
Yes you are right steemit has been in beta for a long time now and Steemit Inc has been using all their resources to develop SMTs.
It's funny when people here say that steemit will over take all other social media platforms let's be honest the big companies have nothing to fear from a company which doesn't have a marketing department and their platform that has a very bad UX design.
You said it! But we're miles from doing this. Many of us have tried and are continuing to do our best.
Spending time on Steemit and other apps of Steem is actually a nice way of knowing how to be successful in real life.
You seem to have said something funny.
You seem to have said something of value.
You're probably being a dick.
etc.
At least people can use it to mend their personality and attitude to prepare themselves for real life scenarios!
I see a positive future for Steemit actually.
So far, with people getting annoyed by Youtube and jumping ship to Dtube, there seems to be a rise in popularity of Steem-based apps.
That's one thing I like about the apps, they provide actual value to the content being published.
Here, talent = talent.
No need to be a part of some weird "creator's group" etc. to avail the "benefits". If you're good at something and you get noticed, it's only going up from there.
That's the main thing I like about this whole cryptocurrency social network.
Good points all around.
Thanks!
btw how could I forget, the recent FB controversy adds to it! People are probably ready too leave FB now. Steemit could be a good alternative to it now.
True that.
Wow! This is the most honest post I've seen in a while. Kudos @firepower for this!
I feel every word you are saying... And am sure everyone is doing the same thing.. Just going with the flow, holding on and hoping for the best.
Communities, SMT and HF20 better be game changers, else there is nothing to look forward to. Personally what keeps me here is the music communities and a chance to showcase my music to a larger audience. It still takes a lot of effort to get something noticed and to get someone to listen to a song or watch a music video we have spent a lot of effort making!
I sọ agree with you.. It's so tiring.. Especially for the new members
This is undeniably true.
Agree to all your points. I have spent precious hours of my life trying to assist users here and build up the community for Steemit and on Steem.chat. Hence I'm sticking around and waiting to see where this goes. Giving it some more time to mature.
Correct. Since we have invested time here.. We can't just let go.
But sometimes, holding onto things can be harmful. But I believe Steem/it isn't there yet and still has a chance to rise to great heights.
Will be doing my part in spreading the word and posting regularly till then :)
Steemit is for sure a great project with a lot of community support but the community itself is now taking profits from Steemit and most of the good curators are now Delegation their steempower to bid bots and that makes it more difficult for new users to get upvotes because if they want upvote then they have to buy it and that's a really painful situation,
You know i believe in Steemit and it's bright future but it's also true that quality of our content doesn't matter without getting an upvote from a whale and their are a limited amount of whale available and many of them just Delegated their steempower to Bidbots for earning good returns,
So how can be this platform grow without a better curation system and if we have to buy upvotes for our Content then what is the meaning of spending time and hardwork for Creating a good content,
We have to do something for the platform and for others because the future of Steemit is in the hands of it's Community.
It's a question that can be answered by no one and everyone. It depends which side you're on and whom you want to pay attention to. ;)
Hahah that's right ;)
First things first:
Great to see you replying the older comments :D
Now considering the fact that Facebook has made people angry because of the latest CA fiasco. There will be people looking for an alternative.
And we have about 750000 accounts here on steemit but daily active ones are still less than 65000.
So as the user base grows the steem value will increase notion is wrong.
We need to support the newer accounts more to make them stay here and refer it to their friends and just like in mobile games few will buy steem to flunk the quality posts part to get the upper hand or come at equal SP as their friends.
I agree these aren't gonna do much for Steem value but only if you see it happening everywhere. Things will change and we probably will see higher values than ATH we have had.
SMT is coming and there will be an influx of money here. If promotions are done right during this time 2018 wil be a good year.
EX: Clash of clans did offer Gems for money. I played it for about two years and few of my friends bought Gems to come at my TH level buy buying some. Same could be thought for steemit and steem.
Feel free to correct me
Steemit is also bogged down by centralised development and low acceptance of PRs from non-Inc devs. That's a limitation in itself that will take some time to change. When that happens we'll see faster improvements here.
I read all the comments even when I travel but I find it extremely difficult to reply to everyone when im not at my desk. I like to focus on the present and if I'm travelling I keep my social media activity to the bare minimum. It's about prioritising on the most important tasks. Sometimes, responding to comments on the internet is not one of them, often it's impossible.
I know I read your previous post and you said you'd reply the pending comments. I said that because you did that pretty quickly :)
About low acceptance of PRs. You are doing pretty good job even if you don't consider yourself as a PR. But you've grown this community and helped people hold on too.
I am the Exhibit A.
Had you not given me the upvote on my 3rd post, I probably would have left hope as that was the best I could come up with that time.
That upvote helped me be motivated.
Same is required for newer members too, if they get appreciated for their efforts. They'd post more and most probably ask their friends to hop on the ride too.
We do need PR's from non-inc devs but can't wait for this now.
Independent one's who care about steemit need to work like you.
By PR i mean Pull-requests on Github. Not Public relations. Not sure if I got you correctly here.
Yes. But it's not easy. I use up a lot of my funds doing that but only because it has the potential to help people. Then there are trolls who want to disrupt India specific community building.
Money might truly come from SMT as many SMT's will come and they all need +5K Steem for bandwidth. That is the only reason price went up and back down as SMT might be for summer or later now.
I also converted to just delegation as it is indeed too easy and best profit, what to say?
My prediction is a big headrace between the advent of SMT and the advent of Steem 2.0 by @Dan on EOS and we have to face it, @Dan is the brain and he delivers!!!
I understand you're predicament. There's few options at this stage.