The Problem with PAL and Ponderings
There are a few little minor issues of PAL of course, like their hastily modified Steem front-end that only shows PAL, but there's one major issue that kinda annoys me.
To use my PAL that I Staked, I have to be on the PAL interface, voting on PAL posts. This means that everyone who chooses to use PAL can still get votes from the rest of Steem, but they only vote on PAL posts, unless after checking their followed list they don't find enough things to upvote, and decide to check the rest of Steem. Then, they sort of waste that PAL voting power for a few votes.
It kinda sucks.
This means that all of those that are using PAL have an advantage when it comes to votes from other PAL users. But those not using PAL have a distinct disadvantage...unless they use the palnet tag.
Frankly, I'm not quite sure if this is more bad for Steem than it is good for PALnet.
The idea behind PAL is pretty cool. I'm not sure if making a walled off garden is that great of an idea though.
What's the real advantage of using PAL over any of the clones that are bound to come? What if a game community comes about? Wouldn't gamers rather use that? Then they'd have all the other gamers using that interface, more likely to upvote them.
But then what happens when there's 10 or 20 or 30 or 100 different communities, all walled off, giving their own coins?
That would be really bad for Steem I think. It would be really bad for the users. It would be good for new users that come here just for one community, but then they would only be experiencing a very small part of Steem.
I think we'll likely have to develop interfaces that can award any coin that a user has, and show users from any of the many communities.
Other than offering it's own coin that means you can earn more possibly, I'm not sure about the real draw of PAL. There's nothing that amazingly great to make people choose it over clones that might come and do things their own way.
I think that perhaps niche communities will show up doing similar to what PAL does. What happens then? Does everyone sell all their PAL at lower and lower rates? Do they continue development hoping for a spike in price sometime? Do they end up having their own fans and slowly adding more and more unique features until there are clear reasons to use PAL over anything else?
![dragon-pondering-277022.jpg](https://steemitimages.com/640x0/https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmVS2wmT7smkmAHTqHz3mcZcpxFLnyGde98iPRmQz4KGF3/dragon-pondering-277022.jpg)
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I'm fairly certain there will be big changes in these regards. Also, it's somewhat trivial to delegate all your PAL to a new account to separate the voting power.
When I want to tip someone PAL and they didn't use the palnet tag I just tip them liquid coins. I'm thinking about making a little program called @tip-jar to streamline the process of self-upvoting / vote-selling and then using the proceeds to tip the liquid assets acquired.
I don't think PALNet will have any of these problems in 6 months.
I think there are many options of where it might go and the changes that may happen in the Steemiverse. I think some of them aren't necessarily good...but those are just some possibilities.
I'm still waiting for more options in relation to not just buying votes, but buying eyes, and getting paid for curation...not just upvoting. Bid Bots are just one possible configuration. They're extremely profitable, and I think that's why they've spread so much, but I think they need to be further developed. They're really basic in their configuration currently.
So with the post rewards cleared up using #palnet on any front end that makes me wonder about comments ? I assume there is no direct mechanism besides tipping to distribute pal on a comment? And if we get there to where comments can be rewarded with pal votes will there be dust?
@geekpowered weedcash is just like palnet as far as the tag and staked votes are concerned. Yes, beer and others are all tipped base and require a minimum such as 10 drama or beer, or 1000 engage tokens.
I like the direction we are headed in though!
You'll see that comments of palnet posts inherit the tag and receive rewards.
Awesome thx @edicted
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You can vote from any interface you chose. If you have staked Pal and the person you vote on is using the palnet tag, you will distribute Pal to them.
Your pal voting power is only used if the person you're voting on has the palnet tag, so if you vote for something on Steem and the post doesn't have the Palnet tag, it doesn't waste any Pal voting power.
Nobody has an advantage over anyone else, if you want to be eligible to earn Pal, just use the tag, that's pretty simple and open to anyone.
So those are the facts and hopefully clears that stuff up, so what's the draw?
To me it's a couple things, one it's a filter.
For the most part it's filtering out people that aren't really engaged in the community and if you're a part of that community, it just gives some focus.
Another thing is that it has better distribution. The majority of the stake in Steem is tied up in bots, so the distribution sucks. On Pal there's a new distribution and the newly minted Pal is being distributed in a healthier way, at least right now, hopefully it continues, but yea it's still brand new.
Activity. People are actively working on the frontend and developing new features. That's exciting as Steemit hasn't changed in years.
Different economics. They're doing the 50/50 split and I think it's working out great there, not sure if Steem will have the same results as it already has so many well established exploits and methods of gaming the system, but here it works well I think. Also all your Pal is paid out liquid, which I like.
Well hopefully this got cleared up above, but they aren't walled off. Palnet is a "general" content community, so let's say there was a Tekken(the fighting game) community and an art community, I then create some Tekken fan art, then I could use the palnet tag, the tekken tag, and the gamr tag and earn rewards in Steem, PAL, TEKKEN, and GAMR. I don't know about you, but that sounds fucking awesome to me. Not to mention Steem Engine ties all this together and if one of these communities is my "main" community, I can easily trade these tokens for other community tokens or for Steem, or even for Bitcoin.
I can't understand how any of that would be bad for Steem. Every new user will need to hold at least around 50-100 Steem for RC reasons, so yea, it's good all around.
Thanks for clearing that up!
There is still somewhat of an incentive to use PALnet though, so you award with your PAL, which does mean that you're possibly ignoring friends not using PAL.
I think it might be a good idea for front-ends to choose to distinguish posts using these tags in the future as well. Lets say a big number of users start using PAL, people involved in PAL might want to recognize posts by those users so they upvote them and reward them more.
There is already a real advantage to use PALnet or just it's keyword. That in turn means there's a disadvantage for those not using it. When we do have a ton of different communities, it might mean that the community is segregated into a ton of different smaller communities. If they bring in a ton of new users who each hold their own Steem Power, it will be good for Steem...but if a bunch of people are all focusing on their own communities, it might mean it will be even harder for people that aren't part of those communities.
Of course, being able to use whatever interface you want and still award PAL or whatever token is great...but there is incentive to vote for PALnet posts, and there will be for similar communities in the future. I feel like there is a risk that people may be forced to post in these communities to have a chance to earn. Maybe it will be fine...or maybe we'll end up split apart and parts of our own teams, with some major benefits and problems depending on which you belong to or post in.
? I'm confused. Maybe you're misunderstanding, but you can award Pal from any interface, the only incentive to use the Palnet frontend is if you want an automatic filter of only people using the palnet tag. There is no economic incentive to use it.
I've already suggested this to Steempeak and I think they're working on something along these lines.
Well, that's sort of like saying everyone who declines payout is at a disadvantage to the people who don't decline payout. Yes, I suppose that's true, but there's a simple solution, don't decline payout(use the palnet tag)
Couple things, so if you post something on Palnet, it still shows up on the main chain, so again, these communities aren't walled off. If someone just goes to Steemit or Steempeak, they'll see posts from every community. But the other thing is I think this is desperately needed for Steem. Currently Steem is like Reddit without subreddits. That's why it's so hard for each user to discover relevant content. It will definitely(IMO) be MUCH better when there are tons of niche communities.
That's what I was saying. There's an incentive to ensure you're voting for mostly PALnet users.
There should be communities. And I think Steemit kinda dropped the ball on developing them. I guess they were waiting for SMT's. Who knows. Not like they're very communicative. Communities need more than just their own coin though. I don't think that's necessarily a requirement in fact. Mainly they need communication tools. I don't think this is the way to go about making them.
You have said very succinctly what I have been thinking about all this. Thanks for that.
I think saying 'well people will only vote for PALnet content' is like saying people will only vote for X content. Good content. Fiction content. Gaming content. Crypto content. I thought that was the point of tags. Find things you are interested and help tag it as good or Interesting by voting.
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Cool that's exactly what I thought as well, thus I used a weedcash and palnet tag yesterday. Combos are the way to go
Damn, you have explained it all. This should be enough to create a post about it. I mean your well expained explanation reply
Just when I was starting to think about using PAL since I see many others jumping on board......
I'm using it myself. I'm just a bit weary about the future and do not use it without considering that it might not be around forever. We can't unring this bell though. There will be SMT's in the future, and their use may be implemented in a similar manner. It's important that we consider the potential ramifications, good and bad.
Thanks for the input @geekpowered Now I am not sure what I will do but at least I am now more informed about PAL.
I was under the impression that anyone with staked scot tokens such as pal that voted on a post with the #palnet tag would be using their pal voting power.
Same with weed, or beer, or whatever, though maybe I'm wrong. If I'm right as long as a user knows what tags to use then I think it will be OK.
I made a post yesterday with weedcash and palnet tags for instance. I never use either of those clones though as a mobile user steemit clones are too buggy, hopefully someone will chime in here to clarify. But, I'll ask in discord as well.
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You vote with your Steem Power and PAL when you vote on PALnet.
I think Beer works just with a bot. I'm not really sure exactly how it works though. Not sure how weed works either.
This is in part why I split my stake by SCOT.
So I upvote palnet with PAL power. I upvote STEEM posts with STEEM Power. I upvote SPT content with SPT power.
I did as well, I think it depends on how serious you are about curation. If you don't really care it's not worth it, but if you want that to be a focus of how you earn it makes sense.
I believe all this communites, pal, weedcash, spt, aaa, sct and many more operate on the foundation of steem communities. So no matter what is been done, the steem is still imvolve. Look at the aspect of rc and many more. I believe having more of this communites will really help steem at a whole