An Objective look at Dlive's exit

in #dlive5 years ago (edited)
I've had the whole night really to process the event that transpired yesterday. Without a doubt, when I first reaction to this whole thing was emotional, being someone who has invested so much time and energy to help the blockchain and it's ecosystems. But, in the interest of setting the record straight, putting everything on the table as they say. I'm going to write everything on a post and let the immutable feature of a blockchain work it's permanence.




Yes, Steem has problems


We know that, and I'm not one to defend it blindly. I know that token distribution is not optimal, I know that the best content is not pushed to the top, I know that account creation is painfully slow, I know all of it. Anyone who has ever followed this blog knows that I've been discussing these issues for a long time and that our project @helpie has been my response to it.

But at the same time, I think we need to be fair when we have these conversations. For one, I don't know of any blockchain that is perfect, I don't know of any token distribution that solved "inequality" and mind you that the word itself is tinged with socialist/communist rhetoric which to me signals it's time to pull the hand brake lever.

Without diving to heavily on this particular aspect of "the problem", let's say that ideally a healthy economy should have equality of opportunity, but never and I do mean never, equality of outcome.

Now, regarding some of the specifics as to why the STEEM blockchain was not ideal for Dlive. I think @taskmaster4450's posts on this is spot on, and a must read for those who want to dive in detail.

Dlive stage entrance


Even though I mentioned this in my comment already, I think it's worth mentioning again. When this project first reared it's head, it did so out of the blue. As a matter of fact, I distinctly remember @netuoso being very skeptical about it, as the idea of investing that much time and resources in a gamble sounded quite strange.



However, it was not until @ned delegated some real power to @dlive that the platform itself, took off. This event happened at the beginning of this year, and that month is very important to keep in mind as you continue reading.

Now, let's apply some logic to this, and just so that I've covered any doubts that someone might have, let me preface my opinion with one detail. I may not be a developer myself, but having worked with @therealwolf over the past couple of months, and understanding the gargantuan task of developing software for a blockchain, I have a good sense of cost in the way of man hour resources these days. But, let's continue.

When @dlive launched, meaning when it started to work, only a few days had gone by since their initial announcement. The post of course can be looked up and these dates confirmed. We could effectively say that a ton of groundwork had been done before the @anonsteem account (funny detail), made it's entrance to the left of the stage.

One would think that the @dlive team just have had already a way to secure funding for such a project. After all, it would take more than a few STEEM tokens to pay for such a platform. Without even mentioning that up until yesterday, they had never powered down to pay for their costly servers. A fact that I personally appreciated, even though right now I feel quite naive. This to me further proves that funding at least the core of it, was somewhat secure for the insider team. Unless somebody can show me developers of this caliber that believe in such levels of idealistic altruism.

The Warning signs we missed


And this to me is the only silver lining here. Because as individuals who understand the core principles behind decentralization, somehow we missed all the red flags, almost all of them. Maybe we got too caught up with the letter "d" at the beginning of the name, maybe.

As I previously pointed out the @dlive model was edificed with minimal interactions with the STEEM blockchain. For example, no custom jsons scripts were employed that I know of, with custom memos, to store anything pertaining the @dlive ecosystem. They had and have, their own account following, their own chat, etc, all of it of course centralized.

On top of all that, they were so independent from the STEEM blockchain itself, that I was mesmerized with the fact that when the STEEM blockchain halted, @dlive continued to work as if that had nothing to do with their app. Please take a second to think about that.

So we could conclude that this was done 100% by design and not happenstance. And let's not forget their system for storing video files, again, centralized. They host all videos on their servers, and even announced they would be taking them to LINO. On that note, if you are one of those steemians who is uninterested on participating of LINO, there is a very useful post by @patrickulrich on howto liberate your content from them.

But, let's recap the red flags: Centralized Storage, Centralized Account Ledger (running in parallel to steem), Centralized Communication (streaming and internal chat).

All this without even touching on the fact that this whole project was closed source. Again, something we must ask ourselves why we ignored nonchalantly.

Undisclosed Relationships


All this and yes, there is more. As it turns out, @wilsonwei777 the CEO of LINO is @wa7 (Kent)'s best friend. They went to college together and as you might guess studied the same field. This information is easily verifiable with some basic google knowledge.

Now, as we can clearly see on this very blockchain @wilsonwei777 was heavily involved in the development on @dlive. Proof can be found on his very blog, where he was testing the streaming features as the project was about to get it's legs. And, that's not all, other members of LINO were also part of @dlive such as @cqf and @zac2116.

If you ask @wa7 about this, he might tell you that he just needed some help to get @dlive off the ground, and that would be a valid thing to say. It would, until you find pictures of the founding members of LINO like this one:



Guess who?

LINO and it's funding


It took but a few minutes to find information about this blockchain. As it turns out, it's been in the news for a while, quite a while. As a matter of fact, one of the articles that really jumps to my eyes is this one from coindesk where it clearly shows they managed to raise 20 million dollars for their blockchain project.

The date of this article, January 2018. Remember when I mentioned that the month where @dlive received it's delegation was relevant? Yes, same month. But, let's continue.

Since the funding was somewhat secured, it was time for the @dlive team to change it's focus, to start making some noise if you will, and put the word out there: LINO is coming.



They changed their mind, you say?


I thought about that too. I thought that maybe, I was being too harsh, that maybe my gut instincts where off, I'm just human after all. But, since this is the way my brain operates I kept on digging, I kept on talking to people, to friends, to trusted allies.

Right about when I was ready to say, "Well, maybe, I'm not being fair", this little piece of information made it to my screen. Please note the outlined parts.




The date of this Medium Article, March. This means that only three months after receiving the generous delegation from @ned, @dlive/LINO (they are one in the same) felt completely comfortable with stating officially on their medium account that the experiments on steem were going quite well.

I find it fascinating that they did not list any of the problems STEEM has on that medium article, and because I don't want to sound cynical, I'll be blunt. all those problems existed back then too, right?

Delegation Abuse and User Base Farming


You could say this is mainly my biggest problem with the whole thing. I remember many months ago asking @smooth if there were some guidelines regarding @steemit's delegation practices. I don't blame @smooth for not responding to me, since I'm sure he has no clue if I am of any relevance, but the question however, is relevant, and it's relevant to absolutely everyone who has invested time and money on this place.

From my understanding, my basic understanding that is, the delegations that @steemit inc has "handed" out are there solely for the purpose of enriching STEEM's ecosystem. In other words, any project that is not for STEEM, and exclusively so even, is probably not a project @steemit would be interested in supporting and understandably so.

To those who don't understand how this works, because there are those who have left some uninformed comments on that @dlive post. The "money" sort of speak, comes from us, from you, from me, from anyone who has bought STEEM tokens. If no one buys a token, if the market does not have buyers, you could hold millions in your wallet, and it would be worth the same as numbers on an excel sheet. In other words, this whole idea that nothing was lost is so uninformed it almost pains me.

But on top of that, to me the one thing we can't fail to observe is how this bait and switch tactic was designed to literally extirpate the users from @dlive onto the LINO blockchain. A lung transplant done with a spoon and a bottle of vodka. An untested, unused blockchain with no market value, at least at the moment of me writing this.

Now, this blockchain could be amazing, it ver well could be, but as I've said before. Technology is important, but users are just as important. Having the fastest most secure blockchain in the world would mean nothing if you had the same three people posting their fortnite videos every day. The obvious conclusion is that they intended to take steemians there, and "bribe" them with 100 tokens.

For their convenience however, they are transplanting their content onto LINO. As you read that last bit, think about the concept of decentralization and try to contort logically, but please, don't hurt yourself.

Insult to Injury


Again, in very much their style @dlive decides to rebrand. They need a new logo, a new look, so they went back to the user base that has given them so much, and got even more.

When the contest was announced, it was done so with some interesting rules. I believe it's important we don't dismiss the little details.




Now, I'm also not a designer by trade, but I so happen to live with one. I remember having plenty of conversations regarding this very contest, because from a designer standpoint it made absolutely no sense. Why ninja? Why yellow? Why now?

Exploring those questions is somewhat subjective, but it might be enough to say that the way branding works, at least normally, is that you try to have elements of resemblance to the overall market you are operating in. In other words, a STEEM app, looking STEEMish (made up word, I know), makes a lot of sense.

The obvious intent to detach itself from the STEEM brand by incorporating incompatible colors(purple is the opposite to yellow), seems too intentional, it cannot be just a coincidence.

On top of that, some prizes being given away in the form of fiat, also tell a story, but I need not to continue to beat on this horse.

Conclusion


As a small entrepreneur I guess I have to give it to LINO, in the sense that they played their cards right, and as far as I know got away with everything. However, as a steemian, I'm very disappointed and to a point disgusted, if I'm to be honest.

But there is a huge lesson for us here, and at least we can say that is the silver lining of this whole debacle. The community should require more transparency from now on. I don't think It's unreasonable to ask for a clear understanding of how the "backdoor deals" work, and how a delegated STAKE is supposed to be used.

A minimum set of rules should exist, as the responsibility of millions of dollars cannot fall on the decision of one person's bias. I say this respectfully but also firmly, because I want what's best for STEEM and if I have to pick between being too careful or speaking my truth, I pick the latter.

As I was getting ready to publish this post, I saw this come across my feed written by @tcpolymath. This tells me I'm not alone on these sentiments, and that requesting some clarifications is nothing anyone should feel shocked about.

At any rate, I don't want anyone to leave this post thinking that I'm signaling the end of the titanic's journey, not even close. To me this whole experience, as bitter as it may be is a huge lesson for all of us. And believe or not, at least about that, I'm grateful.

Steem on my friends.


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The naivety drools from this post. DLive was SF based. The valley works faster generally.

I’m sorry, @meno but you’re not going to tell me that if you could validate your concept and possibly grow a starter base already for a year, rather than having to wait until [unknown] you wouldn’t have done it. That’s BS.

The announcement post was timed, yes. It’s always pitch season in SF. That they used anonsteem for account creation? Are you blaming a team for doing their homework and circumventing a weakness in the system?

I was mesmerized with the fact that when the STEEM blockchain halted, @dlive continued to work as if that had nothing to do with their app. Please take a second to think about that.

Yes, please think a second about that. Their system was designed to operate almost independently and have an almost safe failover. Every developer should work that way, that’s a benchmark right there. That oozed only good architecture. Especially given that steem doesn’t host video.

While it seems they acted with a vision, a vision which doesn’t suit Steem but yet a vision which shows they were an ultra-focused team, we can opt for two things:

  1. Admire their vision and target
  2. Choose to see malice in it as if the Steem community is the holy grail

It is known that stealth never works well and from the response they certainly have learned from that.

But the only stone we can truly throw them I see is specwork, a much loathed upon method. Yet, specwork only works if there’s a community rabid enough to also contribute to said contest. And, of course, that they didn’t reject rewards for their final post.

All the rest is kneejerk butthurt. Butthurt for not being kneeled for. I’ve never used DLive but I've always admired their focus and what they contributed to the platform all without taking one percent beneficiary. That they always were targeted and seemed professional in their dev is nothing I will hold agains themselves. That they validated their concept and an initial userbase on Steem... well done, guys. That will most definitely contribute to your funding/valuation - if you still need any.

There’s too much hate being spewed for never guaranteed upvotes lost.

I won’t follow them, I thank them for the distribution they have done, and for showing what can be done on the Steem blockchain. Hopefully the 500lbs gorilla leaving results not only in the vacuum being filled by multiple alternative solutions but also in more innovation. This is healthy for the steem ecosystem and for the community. I Doubt that the community will resist the call of the next specwork.

I understand your words my friend, and because I'm well aware of the temptation that such situation would represent for absolutely any mortal, sincerely understand exactly what you mean with your first lines.

However, in a world of hypotheticals, I could be a super early adopter of BTC that acts like a bully too and that would not change a single fact regarding the events transpired.

All this to say, point taken. And that I appreciate your need to bring some balance to the emotionally charged conversation and the archetypal pitchforking everyone is partaking of. You are what I would call a chaotic neutral character.

I won't follow them either, I also expressed my gratitude for the lesson learnt, but unlike you and I do mean this with much respect, having spent fiat on this platform I'm invested in more ways than most of its users. But again, point taken...

Thanks for your understanding.

As someone who follows startups closely, they did the right thing. Despite my interest in startups, and thus also the Valley, that doesn’t necessarily mean I agree with the common Valley MO.

But given common practices, I can not fault them for what they did and investors will be very tempted by their ultra sharp focus and super validated already product. That is a reality.

I remember telling @acidyo about their first post (I accidentally spotted it when it was below $3) and I told him the timing was interesting as the announcement post could serve as “concept validation” for the then upcoming Y Combinator pitch season. The fact that they were razor sharp in focus and had a vision they pursued IMHO should be admired.

They have contributed to the ecosystem. “Thanks for the fish and sorry that the door hit you in the back on the way out but you deserved that”, comes to mind. Even if solely for a specwork contest, irrespectively of timing even. Other than that I hope the grass is indeed greener for them on the other side. But we all know how that, and stealth, often goes and LINO will also be tested in all its pores by maximizers too and it will make them cringe too.

Yet, investors (in teams - not tokens) will value their work. Big time.

For us, who are vested in this platform, the side to see should be: thanks for leaving after showing us, and the world, what can be done. Hopefully the successor candidates have learned from their rather solid platform and will build on that. Both build and innovate.

This is positive for $TEEM. It paves the way for innovative competition rather than having a niche pretty much locked out already. Steem is an open ecosystem and I myself am happy they are gone. The 500lbs half-hearted gorilla left the house. Midterm that’s absolutely positive for our ecosystem. We can only celebrate that.

PS: Please make no calls about which degree people may be vested in the platform. It is entirely possible that I could be more vested than you but I understand the feeling. And we better brace ourselves for more of the same, especially with the expected low cost for SMT creation.

Great discussion @fknmayhem and @meno, you have represented both sides of my thinking on the matter better than I could have put it so there goes the need for me to put that together in a post!

Fkn I'm kinda surprised you're the only one I've seen saying that this is just cut throat business led practices. I know the guy doesn't get much love around here (get ready to be triggered) but as George Soros said, the market is amoral. That is the reality of how people operate in business and crying about it is pointless.

I'm also baffled why people are not saying that DLive did actually contribute a lot to Steem. So it can all be boiled down to a broken promise that was never made: DLive is here for the long haul.

However @menos has convinced me that the level of ninja operations is counter to the spirit of Steem. That they didn't integrate more with the blockchain is a red flag. We definitely want to encourage any and every company to use Steem as a payments layer, but only those who integrate well in the full ecosystem should even be considered for Stinc delegation. Hands down.

I think people need to calm down and sit back to reflect on the assumptions they had which have been exposed as a result of the DLive exit. In what way did they not do what was required of them? Why did we think it was a requirement?

There are sharks out there and it's foolish to blame a shark for chowing down. What we need to be skeptical, rigorous and honest. DLive made no promises that have been broken - to the best of my knowledge. If it turns out there were promises broken in private conversation with @ned and co that's a problem that we don't know them.

One thing I have considered in recent hours is whether the license should require apps to be opensourced. AFAIK DLive never opensourced.

Yet, AFAIK that’s not compliant with the MIT license of Steem. A license I vastly prefer over the much more restrictive nature of its obvious copyleft GNU-GPL alternative which would de facto require that for almost all. Yet even an opaque app could function within the GNU-GPL as happens for example with Akismet spam filtering for WordPress. The plugin is open sourced as required by WP’s GPL3.0 license yet not the matrix. So we wouldn’t be much further either, we would merely have a more restrictive license.

Open sourcing, or rather the lack thereof, is a red flag to me though.

That's a good suggestion, and requiring it by license inheritance a neat trick.

Except, of course, that by enforcing it you would be deliberately and aggressively limiting access to creators who want to create digital applications which might be terribly successful, and thereby increase the value (both physical and personal) of activity on the steem blockchain.

Not to mention the impossibility of enforcing that requirement. Given the general lack of governance in the context of the blockchain as is, trying to suggest policy which requires governance which has no mechanism of enforcement is like wishing in one hand and spitting in the other. I suppose at least you have some spit.

What we really need are more reasonable applications that provide actual value to someone's personal experience which just happen to use the steem blockchain.

The problem is that for most of the developers around here, the blockchain comes first – and the idea that the digital application should solve some problem will provide some value to user comes much further down the list.

Fix that first, and the rest looks after itself.

Aside from that, all of which I wholeheartedly agree with, I truly don’t think that it would be compliant with the MIT license.

And if by inheritance then only the connection layer could be required. Not anything which happens outside of the BC.

Personally, I much more prefer the more open nature of the MIT license over the restrictions of GNU-GPL3.0. Plus the MIT license is compatible with more licenses than the copyleft licenses are.

You're correct. The context under discuss here is about improving Stinc's delegation policy.

the STINC delegation did not cost any time or money. Steem gained more investors because of dlive and the delegation. End of story.

I'm interested on how you came to that conclusion, since steem has lost so much valuation since @dlive showed up.

Could you show me a chart that shows STEEM increasing against satoshis and cross reference it with @dlive's contribution timeline wise?

I mean no offense when I ask, I'm simply putting this out there, because it seems that many investors don't understand that inflation is a "tax" on people who bought tokens with BTC.

But please, explain your point.

(edit)

I'm not blaming @dlive for the valuation drop. I'm simply stating how you say it brought more investors and how you draw that conclusion.

I would not have invested much in to steem if dlive had not existed. I know many people on the same boat.

If your argument is that the inflation created through dlive's curation outweighed that of investors they created, that is possible. To be fair we have been in a bear market for 8 months.

That could be anecdotal, and the conversation to be productive must be looked at in macro. But I don't dismiss you words, because this is your personal truth and as such is valid for you and your positions.

In order for this to make more sense, or at least for you and I to talk with the same information as a foundation. Look at the price of STEEM against BTC since the launch.

The inflation has always pushed STEEM down, it's a downtrend overall.

"We definitely want to encourage any and every company to use Steem as a payments layer, but only those who integrate well in the full ecosystem should even be considered for Stinc delegation."

I completely agree with your entire comment, but this in particular strikes me as relevant going forward.

Thanks!

Interesting, take. It may have been a good showing what is possible. But it is sad that they seem to be planning from the start to move on to lino.

We should brace ourselves for more of the same come SMT, that mostly due to the expected low cost of entry to start a SMT.

I totally understand the feelings about they ‘always planned’ and from a personal perspective, it isn’t anything I would ever be comfortable with. Yet, that’s their right to do so but also, from a tech angle we need to raise the question whether LINO was actually already a viable future or merely a planned thing at that point.

Looking at LINO’s code on Github the initial commit is merely 8 months old. DLive joined Steem long before that. What had happened if LINO hadn’t raised such vast amounts?

But, once more, this is healthy for the Steem ecosystem. :)

lino_dlivaXXXXXXXXXX.png

ryanli code23523532.png

These are from their public testing livestreams, removed by them after images being publicized.

checkout these images, zoom in... they can't deny a thing!

But the only stone we can truly throw them I see is specwork

I don't actually mind the specwork, but I can throw a couple of other stones.

  1. They flat-out lied about why they're leaving Steem. However legitimate the criticisms of the system in their post may be, they have nothing to do with dLive's decision to leave Steem because that decision was made before they ever came to Steem. Pointlessly trashing your incubator on the way out is not something that's likely to be appealing to future investors.

  2. They encouraged their users to commit to holding their funds for thirteen weeks and then gave four days' notice that those funds would become useless in a dLive context, when they could easily have done otherwise. I know shitting all over your userbase whenever it's convenient is part of a particular segment of the cutthroat SV environment, but it's still bad business nevertheless.

You will need a jury for 1, not a rabid pitchforking mob.

The timeline connects dot so based on assumptions, territotialism can not change my opinion here. I will need concrete evidence beyond refutable level.

I’m so sorry. The reasons brought up dont add up sufficiently to unilaterally condemn and pitchfork them. What’s happening is mobbing.

And I think, looking at the responses they received it’s time for Steem the I had hold some introspection because they may very well validate one of their given reasons.

PS: Test platform and incubator are two entirely different things.

You will need a jury for 1, not a rabid pitchforking mob.

Quite the opposite, in fact. Lying to us about why they're leaving is not illegal; the appropriate consequence of the lie is the anger of the people lied to.

PS: Test platform and incubator are two entirely different things.

Yes, but not in a way that helps your argument. Steemit Inc. provided dLive with funding; some of that funding was used to compensate their staff for developing their project. That's an incubator, not a test platform.

I did say techbros are brutal. I did say the Valley has a MO I don’t necessarily approve of.

But:

  1. Lino’s first commit to Github was 8 months ago. As I said in another reply... what if LINO didn’t raise. Or didn’t reach Testnet stage or turned out to technically not be a match? And DLive had decided on those factors to stay
  2. Steemit offered a not requested nor pitched for delegation. That wasn’t funding, there was no contract nor actual handover either, a delegation is a sharing process but without actual handover of funds or any promise. As such there was no incubation. That is the reality.
    The rest is trying to spin it to fit the rabid mob born from territorial “we are the holy grail”.

Facts:
A. They may be friends and may fully have coded on each other’s platforms. That does not constitute of a crime nor does it automatically imply malicious intent.
B. I have had my mugshot in launch photos wearing a startups’ shirts without having an actual commitment with them and yet I may have helped them more than other’s I have actually had a commitment with. That is entirely possible and thus you will need more to reach beyond refutable doubt level in this whole $hitstorm in a tea glass where no Code is Law was violated.

Yet, I admire their focus. I think they have set a decent benchmark for devs to aspire to. And, at this point I’m happy they’re gone and I hope that we will see more and hopefully more innovative entrants in the streaming niche.

And, also, I am totally prepared for more of the same come SMT. The Steem blockchain is an open ecosystem which requires no commitment and as personz said maybe it was a promise never made [which is now held against them].

I have spent enough time on this topic, I think my neutral and hopefully rather objective position is all over it. I will not waste one more word at this.

That is entirely possible and thus you will need more to reach beyond refutable doubt level

I don't, though, because I am not taking this to court. Preponderance of evidence is plenty for me to dislike and speak out against a corporation. I'm sorry that you don't seem to recognize my right to do that, and everyone else's, but it exists nevertheless.

Steemit offered a not requested nor pitched for delegation. That wasn’t funding, there was no contract nor actual handover either,

None of this is in evidence, and I have a hard time believing that you are the one person on Steem who is privy to how these delegations work, especially given this bit:

a delegation is a sharing process but without actual handover of funds

This is completely false. The cash flow is actual handover of funds, and would be considered so in any court. If this does end up litigated I have no doubt that will be confirmed. Of course whether Steemit. Inc. gave themselves standing to litigate over this is something none of us know.

As a mod at Steemhunt I can confirm that the delegation to Steemhunt was made to happen without any prior request, pitch and also without any conditions or terms. That’s how misterdelegation’s delegations happen. “Boom... that just happened”, is the reality of receiving a delegation from Steemit Inc. so far.

There is no cashflow involved in the case of the delegation. You mean the curation rewards, yet that is a result of using the voluntarily offered stake. That is not a handover. Remember that we are a Code is Law based platform, only that decides beyond very few arbitration possibilities, which were never triggered.

Until Steemit Inc says that anything was violated nothing was violated. We have a healthy justice system, thank you.

And, of course, you have the right to express your dislike, even I did such. Just like I have the right not to buy into to your argumentation and respond to your replies. That right is implicitly and expressively expressed merely the fact that I actually respond. At which point, you benefit the right to both accept or disagree with my answer. Isn’t such a beautiful life and world, a life and world without needing to resort to implicit passive aggressive claims such as ‘I’m sorry that you don’t seem to recognize my right to do that...’ since disagreement does not mean I don’t listen nor don’t allow you to express your sentiment. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Dlive did contribute lots to the ecosystem and public awareness of the Steem blockchain. They are one of very few who achieved mainstream media mentions. All which brought more eyeballs to the existence of this beautiful platform.

Anyway... time to move on, move on to the next $hitstorm. And it will require more for me to take a condemning position. Now and then. Connecting dots is not a position I am in, that’s for courts to decide or for our governance when arbitration. Until then... code is law.

Well said. Steemians are bit too naive in these things. Next time when delegating so much SP maybe have something on paper too. There are fundamental flaws with this blockchain and i feel like there is no proper discussion about it.

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I blame Ned/STINC for their willy-nilly manner of gifting massive amounts of stake to unknown “projects” and users. Remember Ned’s 500K delegations to individual users? Remember Dmania and the self-voting they were doing? This stuff with Dlive isn’t anything unexpected...and that’s the sad part.

Every new free delegation like that crowds out the existing invested users. It’s dilution of our influence over reward allocation and, so far, we have pretty much nothing to show for it.

Why should users/investors continue buying and powering up STEEM when so much influence is freely given to people with no stake of their own and with no real interest to build quality, lasting apps on the Steem blockchain?

This delegation nonsense sabotages lots of real growth, real project development, and real communities - and it undermines the entire proof-of-STAKE concept.

At what point will Ned/STINC realize this? Or do they simply not care? (Seeing as how this happens a lot and is continually pointed out to them, I lean towards the latter.)

Anyway...as invested users, we’re being diluted and undermined by the very people pretending to be our “leaders” on Steem. How long are witnesses, larger stakeholders, and the rest of the user base going to continue with the charade?

You don't mince your words and sometimes get dismissed (regrettably so) because of it, but when your logic is sound, it's sound.

I can't disagree with you, I would be dishonest myself... Now, how we actually have this dialogue with steemit inc and get "heard" is part of the equation I've not yet figured out.

At times I feel that if witnesses that have been here for far longer than I've even been a member struggle to set foot inside that circle, I stand no chance. But, here I am willing to keep on trying.

But again, you are spot on.

I can relate very much to feeling not heard, but unexpectedly found that I was not shouting into a void long after I had given up hope of response.

Being heard doesn't necessarily equate to be responded to directly, in fact.

I believe Stinc has ears on the ground, and listens quite closely to the community. Responding directly, not so much, as that would be far too time consuming, and productive of fractious debate of no benefit whatsoever.

Take heart!

Ned went to other projects.So my guess is he don't care much about it.

Yep, the unthoughtful delegation is definitely the root cause for all the drama.

I like how there are some of those very people crying in the thread trying to virtue signal rofl.

Thanks for taking the time to put all this together for us, @meno!

I guess from a strictly rational point of view, we can't blame a business for doing business. But when it comes to the moral part, apparently the DLive team has clearly failed. The fact that they didn't even inform Steemit, Inc before publishing their official announcement is a zero in business ethics.

As a little compensation for our personal suffering (and I fully comprehend your disgust), this behavior will perhaps ruin their future career in the crypto space. Nobody will ever be able to fully trust them. That is the worst basis for an entrepreneur or a team of entrepreneurs.

Yet, that is not where our energy should go now.
We can't turn back time, but we can build our future. So I fully agree on what you said about the need for more transparency. That doesn't only apply for business agreements (e.g. delegations) which are dealt and closed on a higher level, but also for a better education of the community. We can't label an application as a dApp if it effectively is a centralized app.

Do we want businesses to use the influence of the Steem community, our creativity, time, ideas, etc. while they're operating in a closed circle, not committing themselves to our blockchain solutions?

THAT is something we should talk about.
Which are the requirements for businesses to become part of the Steem network?
What does someone has to offer the network in order to get a delegation? Where's the win-win?

Establishing a certain set of rules and requirements will make us become even more professional and attractive to new investors and businesses.

Let's embrace the lesson learned. We can only become better after such an incident.

lessons.png

Quite a lucid comment.

" We can't label an application as a dApp if it effectively is a centralized app."

This^^

Thanks!

If a project refuses to make their code open source we shouldn't be delegating to them. Simple as that. Open source code and blockchain/decentralization go hand in hand.

I was never impressed with Dlive and I've spoken many times of the false promises of decentralization. Not just with Dlive, but for most projects in general.

If a project refuses to make their code open source we shouldn't be delegating to them. Simple as that. Open source code and blockchain/decentralization go hand in hand.

You know, that doesn't sit well with many people, but its hard to argue against that logic.

And that is totally understandable, because people have been living under the shadow of artificial scarcity and competition their whole lives.

The idea of making our projects open source is frightening... because how can we make sure our ideas don't get stolen and we get paid? If we were living in abundance we wouldn't have to worry about such trifles.

Alot of good facts about it. Great post!

#fuckdlive #vimmIsTheFuture

It wasn't exactly a nice way of doing business, and their leaving could have been quite a bit more graceful, and I don't trust the reasons they give, or, in other words, they are a bunch of greedy, ingrate pricks, and good riddance, but:

As far as I know, they broke law nor contract, and that could be the main problem right there: why doesn't this behaviour break a contract or agreement, when so much Steem was delegated to them? Are such amounts of Steem delegated on good faith alone?

Parties doing business in shady and untrustworthy ways do exist, and while I understand and share the moral outrage, isn't the real thing that went wrong the giving of a huge delegation by Steemit, Inc. without an enforcable agreement or even openness about the deal?

they broke law nor contract, and that could be the main problem right there: why doesn't this behaviour break a contract or agreement, when so much Steem was delegated to them? Are such amounts of Steem delegated on good faith alone?

That is why I think it's reasonable to ask for transparency for delegations, and I would even go as far as a democratic system for it.

I confess my spine crawled at the very thought of democratic approval for delegations by independently held stakes.

While I do expect the delegations to be informed by this particular result, and due diligence to be more in evidence hereafter, and further, have called for whales to delegate to users they think will be 'good' for Steem and Steemit, I'm not, and have never been, interested in determining for them whom to delegate to.

I'll be happy to see them tend to their knitting.

As far as I know, they broke law nor contract, and that could be the main problem right there: why doesn't this behaviour break a contract or agreement, when so much Steem was delegated to them?

I like your way of thinking.

That's the wake-up call and big lesson to be learned here.

" why doesn't this behaviour break a contract or agreement, when so much Steem was delegated to them?"

I note that the delegated funds were never at risk. That's a beautiful thing about delegations, and that thing changes a lot about how businesses can operate. While I do agree that due diligence regarding delegations is good, clearly it's not risking the principal and can be done on blind faith.

I actually see that as a vast improvement in potential business operandi. It is an example of my thesis that technological advance increases mutual felicity and beneficence, and I'd be sore if some kind of code or program made it harder to delegate to folks you have faith in.

Even if it only makes it harder for Stinc to delegate, I'd be sore about it. The present delegation mechanism falsifies the old saw 'Nothing ventured, nothing gained.'

Stinc, and we all, can gain from delegations that work out, while delegations that don't simply return the principal to the stakeholder.

Beautiful!

There are still these little things called opportunity cost and yield. The delegation could have been used more fruitfully elsewhere, even if they didn't risk the principal. Blind faith is never a good way of allocating resources, in any way or form, because there are always alternatives to delegate to that don't require blind faith but do give some guarantees. This applies to delegations just as much as to investments.

While I'm not claiming that blind faith is the best means of exercising due diligence, I am trying to point out that even nothing better than blind faith is able to preserve the principal delegated by Stinc, and that the devs and management of Stinc are the best arbiters of the effort they effect to craft the future of Steem, even if mistakes are made.

Certainly better due diligence and specific guarantees could be undertaken for large delegations, but given the lean team extant, I suspect that there is a point at which cost/benefit is attained which is far lower than is traditionally possible.

I do reckon better due diligence, and some kind of expressed expectations and performance is undertaken hereafter, given the manner in which dlive burned the community. However, I am not convinced much greater benefit might have been attained were even far more restrictive and costly impositions undertaken.

The opportunity cost of delegation is pretty damn low, and the potential yield may not have been much greater in actuality than was achieved.

Dunno, but the preservation of principal, and the cost to dlive of it's poor ethics may serve to lower the cost/benefit break point to practically blind faith. I'm not sitting in that seat that @ned is, and can't really second guess him or the rest of the Stinc team.

I don't doubt they're giving this event a lot of consideration, and that they will endeavor to best spend their efforts going forward.

meno, i am proud to be a part of @helpie and also to hear your thoughts. thanks for digging and finding these very clear points. i never "took" to dlive, but this move is BEYOND FISHY... it's exploitive and nasty. appreciating you....STEEM on!

Great research, my friend. But what is this DLive? Never heard about it. Was it relevant?

dliverip.jpg

what is this dlive? perfect....

Steem monster? :)

Not yet but makes sense, doesn't it?

Mushroom-Monster-Card-1.png

You can totally buy your way into it being a real card via the Steem Monsters Kickstarter.
It looks like it belongs there.

Upvoted and Resteemed! great write up @meno much better than mine!
The Truth Exposed I do wish you would go comment on the other social media outlets @meno you explain things very well and diplomatically.

thank you @dynamicrypto , I actually slapped it on twitter... I'll ask for some retweets from friends.

Whats your take on Lino heavily promoting Peculium? It seems both were created at the same time and Peculium has partnered with Google it seems...

Anything with LINO scent to me reeks of "stay the f away". The mentality of these people, their moral compass is something I want nothing to do with.

I was saying looking further into lino they seem partnered in a weird way with a blockchain that incorporates Ai and is sponsored by google, from what I can tell for cloud computing.

Just a weird rabbit hole really

Need to post a deep investigation with google in the title, ruin their lil party if google pulls out

I am struck by the fact that birds of a feather flock together, and that turnabout is fair play. Given the example of business ethics Lino and dlive have just provided, what could be their expectation of faithfulness from their partners?

This is, to me, why principle is often more important that principal.

Thanks!

Cue dramatic look.

We all wondered, why would you put yellow in the logo.

There you go. Makes sense now.

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