I have many things to write about today, and since I prefer publishing only one post a day, I thought you won't object to a salad... of topics. Even if you are not a vegetarian. I'm not, but I like salads.

More impressions on PalNet.io and PALcoins

I discovered more interesting posts in the trending, hot and new feeds of PalNet.io than ever before on other interfaces. Is this a way to fix content discovery?

Remember, Palnet ignores our stakes and delegations from the Steem blockchain and only takes into consideration PAL stakes for generating these feeds.

Maybe the solution to fixing content discovery should include one token for every major interface. Would that be overwhelming for users? Yes, if we don't find a way for the entire system to work 'under the hood'. If one will be interested in details, he/she should lift up the hood, otherwise the whole process should be transparent.

Also, 3,286 PAL staked is a high target to reach for the minimum vote that is worth something (1 PAL). I hope it will not be perceived as a barrier!

Ladder of Power

I've seen people confused about the new PALcoins, and whether they should sell STEEM to buy PAL.

For my own use, I've come up with a 'ladder of power', or what gives more influence.

First - or the most powerful - is the STEEM Power. It gives you and every project resource credits to use the blockchain. You can delegate it. You receive curation rewards and have influence on the witness votes based on it. I'm not sure, but in the theoretical event everyone would power down all their stakes, the Steem blockchain would halt, because there would be no way to select Top 20 witnesses (all stakes would be 0). You can exchange STEEM (and SBD) to other crypto and finally to fiat.

Second on the ladder is ENG. This is what powers Steem-Engine. Every token on Steem-Engine needs it.

PALcoin and Palnet.io are very interesting and new. If you have enough STEEM that a purchase of a few hundred or thousand PALcoins (or better yet some mega miners) is not significant, you probably already know what's good for you. If you have limited STEEM (Power), grow your STEEM instead first, and PALcoins organically. And you shouldn't sell your PALcoins claimdrop.

Don't treat any of the above as financial advice. This was my thought process and that's what I apply. It may work differently for you.

Tags

At this point, one element that still artificially hinders content discovery is represented by dedicated tags.

For example, adding the tag palnet for using Palnet.io (and/or to be rewarded with PALcoins), busy for posts posted via Busy interface, partiko for using Partiko app and so on.

Sometimes you add tags linked a certain community, often in the hope to be curated by it.

A new usage is to add a tag corresponding to a token, just like palnet is for PAL, to receive a distribution of that token.

It appears to me that tags become less and less relevant to the topic of the post, and more and more linked to various incentives.

Since tags are still used for content discovery, here's another source for generating anomalies.

I'm not sure if this improper tagging issue can be fixed. From my understanding of things, it will probably get worse.

Maybe a combination between the long awaited communities and custom content discovery on each interface can reduce this effect. I don't know. Not the best idea for the future of organic search results.

Relevance of the Global User Reputation in the Growing Ecosystem?

We have on the Steem blockchain the user reputation score, which is practically influenced by the total amount of stake that has upvoted and downvoted your posts or comments in time. Not the precise formula, if one account keeps voting for you, it will have less influence on your reputation than if more accounts of similar size vote for you, if I remember correctly.

Anyway, this reputation system has been seriously criticized, and in the process, another was created by someone from the community hoping to better reflect one's reputation.

I believe they both fail in some cases, and they will fail more as the ecosystem grows. Because not everyone posts and comments (or follows and is being followed, for the user authority rating). Right now one can be #1 in a game on Steem, which only posts json entries, if even that. Such a person, can be highly reputable in the game and even on their discord, but have 0 reputation score on Steem (displayed as 25 for new members).

Will a global user reputation system (at the blockchain level nonetheless) still be relevant in the future?