RE: 25 Reasons Steem Will Replace Bitcoin as #1 Cryptocurrency by 2021!
I have resteemed Jerry’s blog to my 1865 followers (only the 3rd blog I ever resteemed) because I want to promote the transparency of this debate.
Readers first take the time to dig into the serious flaws of Steem which can’t ever be improved. These flaws were premeditated by Dan Larimer et al. The reasons the (probably fatal) flaws can’t ever be improved are explained at the linked comments and in the proof/prediction I made in 2016. The whitepaper of Steem even admits that the “proof-of-brain” reward system depends on being able fool most of the users into doing more effort than they will be equitably rewarded. This psychological deception is quite clever and effective at fooling newbies and n00bs.
It is very important to understand that the cartels and whales generate asymmetrically, disproportionately more rewards than their share of the SP stake that they hold. So not only do they get outsized rewards, but they get more than their outsized share. This concept seems to fly right over the head of the community-at-large. It is much worse than capitalism and should not be conflated with free markets. It is a by-design power vacuum induced monopoly.
@jerrybanfield, I want to point out that many of your reasons are incorrect:
1. True value comes from how the people participating are able to collaborate […]
Which doesn’t happen much on Steem because the flaws of Steem force everyone to only vote for themselves, buy votes, joining voting cartels, and employ bots, else they are losing their opportunity cost to those who do. This is a fact that is admitted by all the experts who are honest.
2. Seeing the number of transactions Steem processes every day […]
5. Within just two years, we already have nearly one million accounts as seen at https://steemdb.com/accounts […]
Most of that vaunted transaction volume and 8000 daily signups are ostensibly due to bots and sockpuppet faucet accounts created to rob the system of value for those (probably STINC) whales who control Steem.
There’s probably less than 100,000 real human users of Steem. If you have proof otherwise, I want you to show it?
@samueldouglas wrote:
Yes, we are approaching 1,000,000 accounts. But we still only have a bit over 60,000 active per day.
[…] we don't really know how many of them are genuine human bloggers aiming to produce the kind of content that will bring people here […] there are rings of mutually-upvoting spam that involve many thousands of accounts per ring […]
Anecdotally, I've seen a large upswing in new accounts that really only exist to game the system […]
3. Smart Media Tokens on the Steem blockchain will soon provide new way for publishers to monetize their online content and community based on the model proven successful with Steem’s community […]
My market analysis of the SMT concept, is that it has a dubious chance of being widely adopted but unknowns preclude me from outright asserting it will fail.
6. Facebook and Google both have banned advertising for cryptocurrencies which is making Steem the number one option for promoting an ICO using bid bots to promote posts to the top of the trending page […]
You haven’t proven that Steem advertising for ICOs is greater than that on Bitcointalk (including signature campaigns), Coindesk, Coinmarketcap, etc, etc.
And your assumption is very likely not true. Speculators aren’t here en masse writing blogs on Steem. They don’t have time for that.
7. Instead of miners needlessly wasting huge amounts of power and computing resources competing to make new blocks as on Bitcoin, witnesses on Steem are a leap forward in the evolution of producing new blocks […]
Son wipe that consortium blockchains drivel off your chin where it has dribbled. Which continues to get worse for EOS.
9. Wired.com recently featured Steem in “The Social Network Doling Out Millions in Ephemeral Money” […]
The Corbett Report with it’s 1 million Youtube viewers recently featured Steem and has allowed open source revelations.
10. Any new competitors to Steem must be ten times better to have a chance because Steem has first mover advantage for a blockchain with an integrated social network […]
Your overconfidence is very welcoming. I’m the one who is developing the competitor that will dethrone Steem and being 100 times better is a walk in the park at least in terms of design parameters.
While it is possible a competitor might take off, going from zero to a million users is very difficult.
I already explained that there is no way that Steem has a million users. In the 3rd year, it still has only 60,000 active users and many of them are likely sock puppets. There may be as few as 10,000 or even less real bona fide bloggers on Steem.
Note I wouldn’t worry about Minds and Gab.ia ever being serious competitors. Ned also pointed this out.
12. https://utopian.io/ by @utopian-io and @elear enables rewards for open source contributions especially on GitHub which finally allows developers building valuable projects without a built in monetization method to fund projects.
This project can’t get the upvote button in front of the users because it has no control over the Github user interface. So it will not integrate seamlessly and thus not attain the ease-of-use and economies-of-scale/critical mass of usership to cross the chasm to adoption.
13. @dsound by @prc empowers musicians, podcasters, comedians, and any artist working in audio files to upload to the Steem blockchain and earn rewards without needing advertisers, publishers, or a record label at https://dsound.audio/
Ditto. Insufficient critical mass of economies-of-scale in terms of getting upvote buttons in front of users who’ve signed up for Steem, especially since signing up for Steem for free has become nearly impossible because allegedly STINC is reserving/allowing the faucet for (it’s own?) bots and sockpuppets.
15. https://fundition.io by @futureshock is the world’s first decentralized crowdfunding platform using the Steem blockchain to eliminate the middleman dividing founders from backers empowering a totally free way to support projects.
There were many such platforms created before but they all failed because of the same critical mass issue. Crowdfunding relies on being able to attract 1 out of every 10 million people on the planet to your campaign. If each of those 1-in-a-10-million happens to not be a user of Steem, your campaign dies. Who ever created that project is a marketing dunce.
17. YouTube and Facebook Are Losing Creators to Blockchain-Powered Rivals as explained in this post from bloomberg.com published on April 10, 2018 at https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-10/youtube-and-facebook-are-losing-creators-to-blockchain-powered-rivals
Where’s the data supporting this FUD? Obviously a few creators come and go for various reasons, but there’s no mass exodus yet to blockchain-based social media. We’re still a tiny, itsy-bitsy fringe.
18. Investors delegating to voting bots are earning returns several times higher than masternodes making buying Steem and powering it up an ideal long term investment where the principle consistently increases and payouts are available every day without touching the principle!
So you originate from the original master scam of Dash masternodes to this newer Steem scam? Interesting.
This and money laundering are two sources of incoming investment and liquidity that can keep Steem afloat in the short-term. The money laundering prison sentences are rather severe and I wonder how many users of Steem have thought about whether they’re incriminating themselves by using Steem?
That is the model STINC is ostensibly counting on where they can continue to cash out while allegedly generating more SP for themselves via the faucet and sockpuppets.
But the problem is that if a replacement for Steem comes along with an even more lucrative investment model and one that is not flawed such that the flaws of Steem are exposed by the relative comparison, there could be a mass and rapidly accelerating exodus coupled with the replacement quickly adding more new real human users than Steem ever had. Then it could possibly cause some of those investors to be stuck powered up for 13 weeks while Steem is crashing.
22. Anyone can see the transactions for any account on Steem providing complete transparency and accountability to anyone in the world […]
There’s not complete transparency without verified identities, because we don’t know whom is operating the (allegedly up to 8000 per day) new sock puppet signups.
25. With new blocks every three seconds and no transaction fees, we can see why Steem already has the most transactions of any blockchain and is prepared for mass adoption […]
The lack of a transaction fee allegedly incentivizes massive sock puppet and bot voting/comment spam ostensibly as a means of gaming the reward system as explained in the linked comments I already provided.
The ostensibly 8000 new sock puppet accounts per day is not a sign of mass adoption. It is sign of a highly flawed design where everyone is incentivized to defect and extract value in a Ponzi scheme that relies on new investors coming in to grab their share of the Ponzi rewards.
You shouldn’t be offended by my frank post, since you’re apparently taking full advantage of the flawed design of Steem which I admit you can and should do because the broken design isn’t your fault and not doing so would allow others to “steal” your opportunity cost. And you’re allegedly doing your job as an elected witness to promote Steem. Ahem. Cough. Ummm. IOW, Steem’s vaunted “proof-of-brain” reward design is a Prisoner’s Dilemma that can never be equitable.
I’m really curious as to how you manage to act so sincere in your video. And I see also one of your “self-help” books on your personal website extol Christian-like virtues of helping other humans. Is it that you’re too ignorant about the technology to understand the flaws of Steem? Or are you capable of somehow rationalizing to yourself that your ethics are pure? Or are you just an expert actor and con man? Btw, I couldn’t watch your video beyond the first 30 seconds or so, because of your rambling and sensationalized style of presentation. Get directly to the point man with well reasoned elocution.
EDIT: please note my comment reply to @prameshtyagi for some clarification of my viewpoints.
Disclaimer: I’m developing a competitor to Steem, so I have a confirmation bias and vested interest to find flaws in Steem. But I also write this to encourage people to sustain their idealistic hope.
First of all, thanks for this. I had no idea how ignorant I was about how things ran on this platform. I feel a bit sour though knowing that I work so hard to produce content. I am not saying they are mindblowing, but to know that value does not always translate into just reward, I guess, is one of those things I suspected, but had no idea was so widespread.
That said, I am still trying to wrap my head around the fact that there are so few real bloggers on steemit.
I want to try to balance out my comments some. It’s not all bad. We have this “decentralized” platform to communicate with each other. The very active community has collected a critical mass of supporters. Much of the foundational engineering for putting social networking and media on a distributed ledger have been demonstrated. We have ongoing experiments in adding new functionality on top of the ledger such as Dlive. Etc. In my opinion, this is progress. Even I noticed some users commenting on this blog that they joined Steem because of Jerry’s Youtube promotions. Everyone is part of a larger process whether they realize it or not. And nobody owns the community. The community has it’s own independent mind. I have to tip my hat to those guys for creating something. When others were talking, they were doing. I’ll take the bad with the good for the time being because it is what we have available and it is to some degree working. Heck personally I am damn glad Steem exists given I am perma-banned from Bitcointalk.org.
I resteemed this blog because for example look at all the comment activity and discussion. This is a sign of life for Steem and is positive.
One of my motivations for writing this now (and I do have other vested bias motivations), is I think the community should not get discouraged. This is a process.
Also I wouldn’t feel bad for not knowing all these issues. There’s probably only a handful or two of people who understood all of those factors.
And by writing this, I will motivate others (other than myself and my project) to work on solutions. The more people that understand the issues, the more chances for the process to move along faster. IOW, we have a mostly open sourced process underway.
We can all do our part in keeping the community informed by for example linking new users to these caveats and other well reasoned+researched viewpoints. Perhaps some of you might create a new FAQ for Steem that is not controlled by STINC.
I hope we will continue evangelizing Steem with caveats. And see what comes. Maintain open minds and observe all options.
I am inviting everyone to feedback on a naming a new project which will attempt to fix these problems.
I have read through it, but I have not yet made a decision. I will try and see what I can do, though I suck at these things.
Not intended to pressure anyone. Those who have something they feel is worthy to share will probably do so if they think it’s worthy to do so. Some follow-up comments on that blog of mine have already generated some new ideas.
I agree the reward system is not ok on steemit.
I am totally against the presence of bots On steemit Platform. It’s a social media platform, and social means human to human interaction ; not human to bot ; or bot to bot , as steemit has become.
When are launching your blockchain based social media?
I have following suggestions :
If you incorporate the above suggestions in your social media, I am sure it will be way ahead of Steemit.
Do let me know when you launch it. I would like to join and would love to invest in something better than what we have here.
"There should not be any bots or AI on the platform."
Translation: I want something impossible as a key point of my design.
We can possibly disincentivize the deleterious activity of bots with the economic incentives in the design, but you’re correct that we can’t eliminate them.
I think what she really meant is to eliminate the deleterious activity of bots.
I do not use bots. I do not vote for myself. I make money on Steemit. I buy Bitcoin in case Steemit dies someday. Don't keep all your eggs on one basket. I'm on Gab, Minds, Facebook, MySpace, and many places because better safe than sorry. I love talking to people and I love sharing. I'm Oatmeal. Upvoted.
I jump into this link right after a I saw your comment which is more worth it to comment here than on the jerry ban field post. I hope that someone able to reduce the amout of bot or limit the usage of the bot only to retrieve old post which had quality or useful as source of information. I appreciate your effort to deliver a good info for the rest of steemers
Ty. I can appreciate Jerry’s blog because it gives us an opportunity to discuss and shine a bright light on his points.
There’s no way to limit bots or sockpuppets unless Steem gives up the free transaction fees model and/or forces all users to be heavily identified in some way that can’t be gamed. Phone numbers are useless for verification because they can be obtained for free in bulk these days. But even if those changes were made, it wouldn’t solve the problem.
This isn’t intended to be pejorative in any way. But when you mention bots or sockpuppets, you are really not understanding the root of the problem. The root of the problem is the fact that the “proof-of-brain” rewards system is “damned if you do, and damned if you don’t”. Which means there is no change that can be made to it that would fix it. It is inherently unfixable. Voting for rewards from a collective pool of minted money supply is inherently flawed because it forms a power vacuum and a Prisoner’s dilemma. There is no possible fix. I explained that in 2016 and seems that novices can’t understand the logic and math I presented. Or perhaps I just haven’t explained it well enough yet or haven’t yet drawn enough attention to that 2016 blog post in the context of the outcome it predicted.
I will translate for Korean.
Thanks for sharing your idea.
Thank you for being a liaison to the Korean community.
Hey @anonymint. Thank you so much for writing this. While I'm still slightly confused by some of the more complex elements to the platform I can see clearly in your article how things are not always as they seem! I'd certainly be interested to find out more and have definitely benefitted from being an early adopter in Steem as much as 2 years ago have spoken to someone at a wedding who told me about it. Needless to say, I signed up and managed to create enough content to earn steem before the bots came a'running! I genuinely do look through the platform to comment and engage - just like we are doing now but can also see how people exploit things. Anyways, if you have any solutions to the problems you mentioned above I'd be more than willing to hear them! All the best, jonathan
Thanks Jonny for appreciating the effort. I’m repulsed after-the-fact by my avatar being plastered all over this blog trying to get others to notice my rebuttal. I wanted to get the ball rolling on wider awareness. I hope the community can carry the torch on educating others. I don’t want to have to plaster my avatar all over again. It’s embarrassing as if I am trying to grab attention to myself, which is not the case. I could probably reword some of my comments in a less combative tone, but I wrote too much already and don’t have enough time to go back to make all the words perfected.
I am inviting everyone to feedback on a naming a new project which will attempt to fix these problems.
Ok I agree. But what do you suggest?
Good one. You caught me in an uncomfortable position. This is one of the reasons I have laid low and not been outspoken as I could be. Because people hate to hear complaints without a solution. The whiner who only criticizes and doesn’t build. Or as Linus Torvalds said, “Show me the code, talk is cheap.”
If I tell you now the design I have formulated to fix it before such a project has launched, then some other group is likely to release some DPoS clone modified to implement my idea and which would not include the radically redesigned consensus algorithm I designed. I’m also trying to fix the problems with consortium blockchains. So I think if I was the one to figure this out, that I as the lead dev would be the best one to bring a project with my design to launch. Others can work on their own designs and we can observe the outcome of which effort works out best. So that the first-mover benefits are not diluted from clones lead by those who don’t have all the holistic knowledge that I have. Also design-by-committee doesn’t work well. Open source is good for maintenance and refining launched projects, not for design. Small focused design teams work best. So I will decline from telling you now, but I will open source as soon as I can. Apologies I hate closed source but in this instance I must temporarily.
EDIT: I will make a reply to @joeyarnoldvin that will hint at some solutions.
I am following you
Agreed. After digging in, I'm no longer bullish on $Steem in the long run. Most of the whales have no interest in the platform. They seem to be waiting to cash out. Others abuse the system.
One point no one makes is about the effect whales have on witness voting. Witness votes don't expire which means witnesses can stay in the Top 20 without having to be active in the community.
On that note, I believe that @jerrybanfield is sincere. I think you're wrong to question that.
Well I caution myself that it’s difficult to predict the future. Steem could perhaps be forked and significant changes made by the users.
He may (or may not) be, which I acknowledged for example in this edit I added before you wrote your comment:
Fyi, I am inviting everyone to feedback on a naming a new project which will attempt to fix these problems.
In all fairness Mint, I look forward to seeing your end result.
Sounds fantasticly fair.
Cheers.
I am inviting everyone to feedback on a naming a new project which will attempt to fix these problems.
I agree the reward system is not ok on steemit.
I am totally against the presence of bots On steemit Platform. It’s a social media platform, and social means human to human interaction ; not human to bot ; or bot to bot , as steemit has become.
When are launching your blockchain based social media?
I have following suggestions :
If you incorporate the above suggestions in your social media, I am sure it will be way ahead of Steemit.
Do let me know when you launch it. I would like to join and would love to invest in something better than what we have here.