Growth Idea - From Crowdsourced #Growth-Ideas to Crowdfunded #Growth-Projects
Introduction
Hello Steemians!
I'm writing under #growth-ideas to get feedback from you.
First, shout out to @trafalgar and others that have inspired the idea being proposed here.
Secondly, I would like to encourage you to respond with your arguments and counter-arguments. I believe this is what the #growth-ideas hashtag is good for, to start a conversation about an idea and to hash it out.
Empowering good projects without Steemit INC being involved
There is a bottleneck right now with Steemit INC. There is only so much they can tackle before they run out of bandwidth. What I would like to propose is something like what DASH has done via https://www.dashcentral.org/ or what bitshares has done via "worker's proposal".
Basically, the network could take x% of the reward pool that is currently being divided among content creator/curator/witnesses and build a pool of funds that are to be used for funding #growth-projects that have the support of the community.
Once a project have been approved, then an official project can be posted and get funding if the project is being approved by the community.
This idea will require:
1- A Hardfork
2- Concensus on the % that should be allocated to the pool
3- An interface to submit and vote on projects
Question to the community
1- What do you think of the idea?
2- If you like it, what do you think would be a good % of reward to fund this pool?
3- If you don't, why?
Many intersting projects are commming up using this
Steem itself has the resource-allocation model by collaborative governance. I understand your point of "earmarking" rewards, but I think it can be less efficient with fixed amount.
Instead, IMHO, what we need is UI. This can have how much the project aims to get funded, and how much the goal is reached via tips and rewards. Users can check each project and its funding status at one page, and they can decide whether upvote or not.
I like both ideas. I think it's a good conversation to be having
Agreed, there is no need to separate the pools. I do think a hard fork could make the process smoother, but we can allocate our stake towards such projects effectively as it is now, although the UX will be clunky for ongoing funding without a hard fork.
Yes! Building this UI would be wonderful. Not only would it fulfill the needs of our governance model, it would also then be available for completely independent uses. It would be the foundation for a decentralized, fee free KickStarter killer, an application the blockchain is perfect for.
I think this suggestion makes good sense.
First of all, I don't think single posts are able to collect all the funds required to power most projects. So this is exactly the reason why #growth-projects participants should post multiple updates to their projects frequently enough to communicate about their projects and get the community involved.
So do we need an interface that only shows certain "greenlighted" projects, since anyone can pretty much populate the #growth-projects tag with any nonsense and "unapproved" projects? In this sense, it would seem that "earmarking" rewards like DASH's proposal governance may make things easier, though it may end up like what you've mentioned - less efficient with fixed amount.
Something in the middle?? (Actually, re-reading your comment, it seems to be in the "middle")
The more I've thought about this idea, the more I like it. I'm leaving my earlier comment, but adding this one. We need to keep this discussion going and refine your idea. This could be very powerful.
I thought this was the idea of the Steemit Inc. STEEM holdings, but I like the idea of community driven better myself, too. Great idea!
The issue of Steemit Inc.'s STEEM holdings is an important one so I want to explore and clarify it. I think you're right to come to the conclusion that "community driven" is better, I just want to explain why because I understand it's not at all obvious for those who might be reading this article.
According to the 2017 Roadmap Steemit Inc will divest its holdings through promotion and development of steemit.com and the Steem BC. "Several methods will be employed, including but not limited to: funding the continued research and development of steemit.com, the Steem Blockchain’s first and best application, promoting and publicizing the Steem Blockchain and features, hosting highly available services for platform users, sponsoring conferences and community gatherings, and sponsoring undertakings to build applications and increase user adoption across the entire ecosystem."
I realize this is tremendously open-ended, so it's perfectly reasonable to think that this means Steemit will fund everything. But there are 3 important points. 1. Steemit Inc.'s funds are finite, 2. Steemit Inc's funds are to be used for many things, and 3. it is the express intent of Steemit Inc to divest these funds completely. In other words, Steemit funding things is necessarily not a sustainable solution. It is also an incredibly centralized solution. Steemit will fund everything it can until it can't anymore. But the more it funds, the quicker it won't be able to fund anything. This reminds me of Elon Musk's logic behind both Tesla Motors and SpaceX which is basically, "We're going to have to do this at some point, might as well get started now so that we're prepared."
We all know that marketing is extremely important for an enterprise, especially a blockchain. Unlike Steemit Inc, the Steem BC can keep creating new money and distributing it to those behind marketing efforts as long as it exists. In this situation, the fund is no longer finite. As long as those efforts are productive (they increase the value of the Steem BC) this is theoretically sustainable for eternity.
The most important point is that the solution proposed is not mutually exclusive with Steemit funding things. Such a fund does not alter our mandate to divest those funds and presumably what everyone wants is for those funds to be used as productively as possible. If a separate fund is handling Steem marketing, then Steemit's funds could be allocated more heavily toward supporting developers, or maybe the funds should just be used to supplement those projects which get funded by the separate pool to increase their impact. A proposal like the one presented allows the process of funding Steem marketing to become more sustainable and less centralized. There are certainly other ways to solve these problems, and not implementing a solution like this certainly wouldn't be the end of the world. But I do believe that implementing a solution like this would accelerate the growth and adoption of Steem and so should be considered.
Thanks for bringing up this important point @richardcrill!
Community Liaison, Steemit Inc.
Thank you for that clarification. This is pretty much what I expected, but I am very happy to see it spelled out here.
My pleasure!
I talked about the "Dash model" since the last week, when the Marketing Team proposed the crowdsourcing for ideas/projects for development. So, it's a good idea for me.
Dash model can work only because master nodes votes. We have witnesses, but I am not sure, whether that be okey to give them one another responsibility.
Being a witness in Steem network suppose to be a technical position, not political one.
right point. masternodes are also investors, since they have to own a lot of Dash.
in Steem, it needs to have other users to vote. they could be the users with reputation >60, for exemple.
please read my opinion about this whole idea, which is described below
yes, I saw it. I understand your reasons, but organizing a form of crowdfunding is needed anyway. Rewards are a funding way, of course, but we need a more focused way to put money in developing projects, IMO
All projects need to find a way to fund themselves. If they will not find a viable business model, thousands of dollars will eventually ran out. You need to have business model first.
If I were to do PPC advertising to generate signups for the network, how could I fund this? This kind of machanism would allow such marketing to be done.
ok, but this "growth idea" is just about projects for develope Steemit/Steem, not for every project.
I agree. This is an important point
Yeah, I am loving crowdsourcing these #growth-ideas
I like the idea. We could use it to fund bounties also.
5% initially. Then 3% as we grow the market cap. Then 15% when we expand our growth projects to space missions.
Upvoted for a good conversation idea. Definitely worth considering.
All about growth! part of my name after al. Believe community growth is our next choice to grow from steemit, inc. so look forward to what we find and create into growth with STEEM as a community.
0 %.
Steemit account and many other secret accounts we don't know about have millions of dollars, not steems. That should be more than enough to fund every viable project from crowd.
Yes in fact this could be done without touching the daily reward pool. The main Steemit account has an unbelievable amount of Steem which is exactly for this purpose. The only thing that would be need to be done is some means of community decision making on where it goes to eliminate the bottleneck of Steemit Inc having to decide.
Wait...you are okay for the network to pay a % for memes and articles but you are not okay with the idea that the network could fund marketing or devs?
Also, those fund that steemit inc has are limited and they are not being replenished via inflation...this is not a sustainable way to go about funding marketing.
Why not both? Is my thought.
And you are right, the funds are of steemit are limited and scarce in general anyway cause of the limited reward pool and inflation, that's why we as a community have to be careful of the plans a head of us and how we will fund them.
But with every step and every funded project we should also be seeing results over time which often drive the price up thus steemit's value and the daily pools payouts should increase and make bigger projects possible.
I am sure I am not the only one that would be open to choose a % of posting rewards from the pool to fund projects I am interested in and believe they will do good for the growth of the userbase. But doing both would be most effective- funding for example to get a quick start to some projects could be good from steemit, but then make up plans for monthly payouts or checks from either active posting while bringing some content or blogging about it, sort of like Patreon just through rshares.
Anyway, something I am looking forward to is funding project that are open about their funds and what they do with them, I know I myself have started some minor projects that have either had a quick death or there just hasn't been enough activity, but with the downtrend for so long its not surprising that more and more people didn't bother helping out or just going afk. Having said that I don't want the platform to make the same mistakes as before where they go "oh look we are at 4$/steem and a lot of people are joining that might or might not help spread the word about the platform - here 10k $" but instead reward and use funds to those that are open about everything they do for the platform and can provide some sort of proof to it. Cause the worst you can do with the funds both from Steemit and the reward pool is having users receive a lot in the beginning and then going AWOL knowing their wallets are cryptographically secure.
Sometimes you make sense and sometimes not so much.
Marketing, development etc was exactly what that fund was supposed to be for - if it was running low I might understand your argument but there are almost 100 million Steem in that one account alone - calculate how long it would take to equal that from the rewards pool.
Plus if you divert funds from the daily reward pool you can pretty much guarantee that people will start crying scam.
As far as I know and as I stated earlier those Steemit funds are there to be used for promotion (amongst other things).
If Steemit Inc started asking for money from the reward pool for that you can be sure people would start complaining and those who already call Steemit/Steem a scam would use this to justify their accusations.
I'm not saying it should never happen.
Once those funds are depleted I can understand it but right now I'm not sure it would go down well - I could be completely wrong though of course!
I'm not sure why - what is needed is a way to speed things up and that could be done technologically - in either a decentralised or centralised manner.
I suppose the way of doing it would be to create a new account which would be controlled via a smart contract and transferring a certain proportion of funds there.
Once those funds run out and assuming the community is willing then the reward pool idea you suggest could be implemented.
Not sure about that - Steemit have been using those funds for development already. If it were such a problem how would they be able to do that?
Anyway I do like the idea I just think the funding thing would need to be considered very carefully.
I agree that it should be considered very carefully. A smart contract would be the best way to implement this. Steemit holdings are controlled by Steemit Inc. I agree that if Steemit INC would divert funds from the network and own a secondary account to fund marketing, it would be seen very badly.
But if it is done as a form of DAO via a hardfork that makes it independent from Steemit Inc. I think it could look fair without people crying fowl play.
O.K. I give up. It's way to complicated for oldtimer like me. Thanks for answers. I learn something new on steemit every day. And that's good.
Lol i'm a relatively youngtimer and i still find it too complicated. It's not a clear-cut situation afterall..
Reward pool supposed to be for authors and curators. I think so, but maybe I missed something here.
Well that's not 100% true, since it can be used to fund projects and current existing ones as well. @steemcleaners for instance relies on posting once per day to reward the daily contributers.
I understand and agree, but my point is if we use reward pool for other stuff there will be less rewards for authors and curators. If steemit want on board more people that is not the way to go.
It would just mean less would go to them of the 50% SD and 50% Steem we get daily from the pool, but if the value was to rise (maybe cause of the projects we are funding) it would create more SD to match the value of Steem thus proportionally leaving posts at fair payouts.
That's at least how I always thought it works, if the price goes up at the same time that is.
This is exactly right. The question isn't who gets how much Steem, but what does the most to increase the value of Steem. If we only gave Steem to people who uploaded photos of walls, people who post photos of walls would get a lot of Steem, but that Steem would be worthless.
it's also right now for arbitrary rewards (content platforms built on steem) and witnesses. It doesn't have to be big. 1% of the yearly reward would mean a few hundred thousand dollars to crowdfund grassroot projects.
If we use Steemit INC holdings, then they have to personally approve every single project rather than having the community decide.