STEEM DOLLAR Peg Debate : Stakeholder Analysis
In a truly democratic system any attempt at change requires a broad consensus. There has been a lot of discussion recently about the high STEEM DOLLAR price having broken the intended $1 USD peg and there are both valid arguments for and against having a high STEEM DOLLAR. Some have suggested it is up to Steemit to resolve, while others look to the Witnesses for leadership on this issue. The truth is - If we are going to come up with a workable solution the discussion needs a broader involvement from a wider range of Stakeholders. If there is one thing I learnt from my experience with Project Management and Systems Development in a highly politicised environment, it is that you need to get buy-in from Stakeholders to get consensus and acceptance of any change - IN ADVANCE. Now I'm not suggesting we try and involve every single person in discussions, but we need representation from the key elements of the STEEM ecosystem. In this post I am going to try and outline what I believe those key Stakeholder groups are.
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In summary :-
- Developers
- Witnesses
- Investors
- Authors
- Curators
- Merchants
- Traders & Speculators
In more detail :-
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The people who design, build, test, deploy and support the technical changes required to implement any kind of improvement to the STEEM platform. It includes Steemit, but also developer groups like Utopian or Busy.org and anyone who might have built additional systems or plug-ins on top of the STEEM platform as they could be affected by any change. Without the Developers on board the platform doesn't improve and we stagnate. Things break and they don't get fixed.
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The people who provide the infrastructure to run the STEEM platform. They have servers all around the world and they produce blocks containing our posts, they publish price feeds that determine conversion rates from SBD to STEEM, interest rates and a lot of other stuff. These people are already pseudo-politicans in this system as they need to get votes to be elected and paid for their work. They are also the ones who physically deploy and host any system changes so if they're not on board then nothing gets done and since they need votes they won't deploy anything that is unpopular.
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The people who have invested into STEEM POWER and they will want a return on their investment, typically a long term appreciation of the STEEM price and/or a revenue stream. Since their STEEM POWER is currently locked away for a minimum of 13 weeks they are usually less interested in short term thinking or trading for a quick buck. They are generally here for the long haul and are the ones who have the vote in who become the top rewarded Witnesses. They are also the ones who provide the rewards to Authors, both through direct upvoting and also indirectly by funding the reward pool via inflation. Without them on board the STEEM price could collapse if they were to withdraw their investment.
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The people who provide value to the platform via production of content. They could be writing quality articles and blog posts or engaging in meaningful discussion via comments on other Author contributions. There are lots of small and medium sized Author communities that have bound together and who mutually support each other due to common interest about a particular subject. Without the Authors on board we don't have any content or value generation on the platform.
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The people who identify valuable content on the platform, they are rewarded for discoving and providing exposure to new and unheralded Authors. Without Curators on board the STEEM platform becomes less about rewarding the quality of your content and your contribution and instead becomes more about rewarding you because of who your friends are and how powerful or influential they are, or how many votes can you buy. Without Curators the new and unheralded Authors to the platform go unrewarded and will leave so they play a critical role in retention of new talent and the long term growth of the platform.
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The people who are trying to build a business presence on the platform and conduct commerce using the STEEM platform. They are a potentially major growth area for using STEEM and STEEM DOLLARS as an actual mainstream currency. They give other STEEM users the ability to trade their rewards for tangible goods and services via the platform. They will want some price stability so that they can build reliable business models here and not have currency fluctuations destroy their margins or generate losses. Without Merchants on board the STEEM platform won't leverage off it's network effect and will lose a potentially massive avenue of growth. Thus without Merchants the STEEM cryptocurrencies would be unlikely to ever achieve mainstream adoption.
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The people who buy and sell STEEM and STEEM DOLLARS with a short term investment horizon. They are the ones who provide valuable liquidity to both internal and extenal exchanges so that others can easily transact in these currencies quickly and at a fair price. They are also the ones who might buy or sell based on product or market developments so their job is also to constantly appraise the platform and ensure that the currencies accurately reflect their true actual value when circumstances change or are changing.
With the current state of play and the STEEM DOLLAR having broken it's peg it is fairly safe to say that the ESTABLISHED Authors are happy because they have an increase in rewards. The high prices also seem to be attracting new people to the platform so the Investors are kind of happy too and if the Investors are happy then the Witnesses generally will go along with them. The Developers don't see any need to change anything while the Traders and Speculators are having a great time because the wild swings in the STEEM DOLLAR are an opportunity for them to profit too.
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The immediate losers here are the Curators, who totally miss out on the benefits of a high STEEM DOLLAR because they are only paid out in STEEM POWER. As the Curators get weaker it hurts the NEW Authors being attracted to the platform because they aren't being discovered or rewarded for their contributions so while we might be attracting new users, I suspect our retention rate is currently not good. Meanwhile there is demand for the Vote Buying services because new and unheralded Authors realise they can't rely on the Curators and need to buy votes to gain exposure. This has caused the explosion in vote buying services recently as the Investors realise they can get a return on investment by delegating to Vote Bots. The Merchants similarly are losers as they realise the prices of both STEEM and STEEM DOLLARS are too volatile to conduct real world commerce so they just stay away.
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The question is - Do we just cut out the Curators and the Merchants and make some money in the short term, even if it is to the detriment of the platform long term? Or do we try and find a compromise and open up the platform to encourage Curators and Merchants for the long term gains they can bring the platform, even if it comes at a cost to other Stakehoders in the short term?
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I would really like to read details about the down side of having a high priced SBD... This looks like only good thing to me... High SBD price pushes the Steem price up, with higher steem price we get even more SBD in our rewards, pushing the steem price even higher...
I believe this is the general consensus of most users at this time. It's too early to worry about merchants. The majority of users don't have (and can't currently get) enough Steem/SBD to buy anything and the majority of users are not interested in being merchants here yet.
I agree it appears to be the general consensus because most (including the minnows) are only thinking of their hip pocket. Not thinking of attracting merchants to the platform is a lack of long term vision.
STEEM had one of the best stablecoins on the market with NO counterparty risk. It was a market leader! There are other stable coins coming out now and it is a huge market and near first mover advantage being squandered in the name of making a quick buck for Authors in the short term.
Great and important post, you have a new follower!
I still am not sure where I stand, but this content is being resteemed to Best of Steem!
I think it is too early to make huge changes to accomodate merchants, especially in the form of a hard peg of SBDs back to $1 USD which will negatively impact other important stakeholders. One of our main focuses should be on retention of active users and rewarding quality content at all levels. I think this could be done by further incentivising curation. We need whales, orcas and dolphins doing more curation on a wider basis, and I am not talking about more paid upvote bots. I don't know how it can be done. Maybe making curation rewards pay out in a 50/50 split of Steem/SBD? Increasing curation percentage? Once we have brought in a greater number of users who are actually able to see their earnings (hopefully largely in the form of Steem Power) grow and therefore remain active on the platform and people actually have liquid SBD or Steem to spend, then let's talk about merchants. If we reach that level of maturity we should be thinking less in terms of the fiat value of our tokens and the concern of that fiat/token price volatility becomes less of an issue, doesn't it? I am no economist but those are my thoughts.
In summary, we have let the SBD cat out of the bag. A hard peg to the dollar, especially a sudden one is going to make people leave and less people join. The result will be that the curators and merchants will have fewer people to do business with.
Great comment. You've already touched on one of my proposed solutions, and that is even if we do nothing about the peg we could make the curation reward a 50/50 split of STEEM/SBD and it would help that Stakeholder group.
I agree that pegging back SBD to $1 USD right now will piss off a lot of people, who might leave. But what if it was (properly) pegged to a higher amount? Why can't we have a stable currency for the merchants AND make sure the Authors don't lose out from it?
Yes!
This is a great idea!
Steem on!
That's all very reasonable I think. Making such huge changes right is against everybody's interest. I've even made a little image to help visualize it:
And as far as cutting the merchants out goes, they are not here yet for us to be cutting them out. SBD is not seeing any significant commerce (meta businesses are obviously not counted) so there are no real businesses in that sphere that need protecting yet.
Everyone likes to frame this as a free market issue, but it's a red herring.
It's like a company exec refusing to review and grant Christmas bonuses for employees because he wants to let the free market sort it out.
It's not about protecting merchants, it's about attracting them so that STEEM can go to the next level. Do we ever want to be more than just a social network? The original design and the whitepaper showed visions of being so much more.
Viewing this as an entirely free market might be a bit simplistic but it's much more accurate than comparing this to a company as here the prices are indeed set by the market, not by the management. Attempting to force an asset on the blockchain into submission would not attract merchants on its own. What would attract merchants would be scale and a market opportunity and what could fuel our growth to that level would be the social network aspect. SBD has spent a lot of its existence being stable, how many merchants has that managed to attract?
Also, the original design is not and should not be regarded as the only thing with looking at - after all we are having this conversation because it did not work as expected...
The rewards are set by management. The price feeds are set by management. The interest rates and the bias are set by management.
It is still early, but I almost bought a car on here using SBD. I also asked a merchant here if I could pay with SBD and while I had to use BTC I think they have since started accepting SBD. I was looking at getting some of my local small businesses on here so I could buy coffees and bread with SBD, but I've given up on that idea now.
Why would anyone use SBD today? May as well just keep using BTC or ETH if we have to take a currency speculation risk while the transaction takes place.
But the market price isn't. And that's the most important thing. If you can't set the price, you are not the CEO setting the salary by any means and the metaphor breaks down completely.
That's awesome! Good on you for spreading the word like that! :)
Well, most businesses wouldn't use SBD regardless of it being pegged or not right now. It's just that the Steem blockchain is not yet popular, recognized and large enough. I have faith in it and it's future and I think the fact that it's technologically superior will at some point start playing a part in its competitiveness. But we have a lot of growing to do before we can achieve that and implementing the hard peg now would stifle that instead of enhance it.
We can implement a hard peg when the market value is the same as the artificial value we want to implement. Otherwise we are going to willingly and intentionally wipe out a lot of value from our blockchain which also means portraying ourselves as less trustworthy.
Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz has just come out and said they will be accepting a "trusted" crypto that isn't Bitcoin. Could you imagine what it would mean to this platform if it was SBD? Fast, cheap micro-transactions we can do....
STEEM was recently rated by Weiss in the Top 3 of all cryptos. We aren't very far away at all.
That's great news either way! Let's see if the crytos they choose are pegged. I bet they will choose freely traded ones ;) But Steem would be perfect for something like that with the practically instant transactions and with its lack of any fees.
My 2 cents; There is a huge amount of crypocurrency money sloshing around looking for a good home. I think we should start paying interest on sdb with the aim of establishment of a $100 peg. Then tell everyone on steemit to share like crazy. More money = more authors I would assume
Stakeholder evaluation in war resolution, project management, and enterprise administration, is the process of the assessing a choice's impact on relevant parties. This facts is used to assess how the pastimes of those stakeholders ought to be addressed in a challenge plan, coverage, application, or other movement. Stakeholder evaluation is a key part of stakeholder management. A stakeholder analysis of an trouble includes weighing and balancing all of the competing needs on a firm via every of these who have a claim on it, on the way to arrive at the firm's obligation in a specific case. A stakeholder evaluation does now not ward off the pursuits of the stakeholders overriding the hobbies of the alternative stakeholders affected, but it guarantees that every one affected may be considered.
Stakeholder analysis is frequently used at some stage in the coaching section of a project to evaluate the attitudes of the stakeholders regarding the capacity changes. Stakeholder analysis may be completed as soon as or on a normal foundation to tune adjustments in stakeholder attitudes over the years.
The problem is that most of those groups are rolled into one, so really we're talking about people who have a lot of SP. SP dominates the conversation. Lots of devs are witnesses or whales, whales dominate the curating game, the leasing game, the bot game, and the author game because they can just vote for themselves and others in their groups.
And so where does that leave everyone else? Nothing they do or say really matters. No matter how reasonable the arguments from someone with 15 sp are, their voice will not get heard because it doesn't make a dent on the blockchain. And what does that result in? Piss-poor retention rates, as you mentioned.
Steemit is the illusion of a social media site placed on top of a coin. It masquerades around as a social media site, but anyone with a brain can look at any other social media site, toy around with it for a few moments, and understand why it's successful. They all occupy various niches and have different types of users, but there are commonalities to most. And steemit lacks most of the basic functionalities and ethos that have fostered the success of them, preventing its widespread adoption and use.
Limiting the amount of times you can vote a day is anti-fun. Not being able to post for half the day is anti-fun. Your vote not mattering at all is anti-fun. Having to navigate a complex mathematical world of min-maxing is anti-fun for most people. Many people do not want their social media platform to reward them monetarily, at least not at the expense of the user experience. People don't like ads, so why would they like a website where no content or post isn't essentially someone advertising something, if not themselves and their own brand and image. People hate insincerity, humble-bragging, virtue-signaling, the restriction of free speech, and being able to be yourself, and feeling like they're being judged with every word they say, so why would they subject themselves to that in their free time?
Whales here are content to sit on their hundreds of thousands or even millions and earn a gradual return, knowing that as long as speculators can overvalue coins whose worth are dependent on a userbase ~50,000 strong with paltry growth and non-existent loyalty or retention, they can at least still generate a decent return on investment if they keep shitposting and voting themselves to the top. They favor a steady trickle of income received from price valuations that are completely decoupled from the reality that is steemit. Steemit was dead on arrival. There is no hope for steemit in its current incarnation.
Why would they vote against their own interests, making the hard choices and leaps of faith necessary to give the platform a fighting chance, especially at a time when the coins are so overvalued? They won't, and it's sad to see. I only say this not because I have full faith and confidence in steemit or steem or its shareholders, but because the competition is so detestable that I would rather watch steemit become what it needs to be, than see facebook implement a killer coin, or watch any of the other giants begin to reward their users with digital funny money to keep them interested and engaged.
When steemit dies it will be known as that weird place with the users who subjected themselves to low-quality memeing about how great steemit is, the place where the power dynamic reflected that of a typical cult and whose value and impact on the world was minimal aside from getting a few people rich and wasting others' time in the hopeless pursuit of getting rich.
And that's a huge problem. Most content creators who are of worth do not do any of what they do for money. Money is just a necessity that funds a basic living. The greatest content creators want to be rewarded by having the largest impact on the biggest amount of people they can, they want to actually change the world and remind humans of their shared humanity and actually have an impact. Maybe there are exceptions to the rule, clearly there are enough sell-outs to prove me wrong, but those who care want to help ordinary people, not just be trivial entertainment for some group of digital royalty like some court jester.
But if they actually cared about any of this none, of these issues would even be an issue by the time I had arrived upon this website, so I'm guessing it's all a moot point by now. And stop using the excuse "the onboarding process takes too long" guys, it's really lame and it's not convincing anybody. New people leave because there's literally no incentive for a sane person or a non-starving person to stay. And that's exactly why the membership is skewed as it is, between the haves and the have-so-little-that-it's-barely-worth-its.
You have expressed your dissatisfaction very clearly. Now, what ideas do you have to improve the platform? I hope you will expend equal or greater effort in building up the platform by offering better ideas on how to improve it and not only tear it down with your words and make people feel that it is a lost cause. Thanks.
Nobody tore anything down with their words, k. If you have ideas tell them, the drama begins the moment a controversy happens, AKA "only tear it down with your words and hurts people's feelingz on the internet by MAKING people feel that it's a lost cause" get the fuck off the internet you clown if you're so affected by someone's clarity of dissatisfaction, or stfu because there is zilch constructive material besides the bullshit remark I hear all the time which is copypasted here by the feelz you makes me that you are.
See my response to you below buddy. It's all right! I was just speaking in general. My ideas are in the very first comment at the top under the author's blog if you would like to ready my constructive suggestions at what needs to be focused on. Sorry if I have created more controversy. I thought I was just contributing to the conversation.
The response to criticism of "well what do you suggest" is common but you took it to "only tearing down".
All this could go away tomorrow in a spectacular crash and burn and yet I think that the idea behind it is immutable because of the principles behind it" Transparency and Decentralization of Power.
I apologize for using the term "only tearing it down". That was a bad way of putting it to someone who obviously still wants the best for Steem. I agree that regardless of what happens the principles will stand in one form or another, hopefully in some other more successful app on the Steem blockchain or maybe EOS.
No hard feelings, this is the internet after all, yet when I am on steem it certainly feels like another place, without the copyright at the bottom of the page or the ads on the side and least of all without anyone to ban or moderate content. Steem is what the interwebs aspire to be.
It's a fair comment and you make a lot of good points.
There are people who could fit into multiple Stakeholder groups, but there are also people who might specialise in one group. I am asking for representation via these groupings because those who wear multiple hats can have a conflict of interest.
There are a couple of reasons why I powered down last year and you've touched on some of them. I see a lot of problems for the platform that people are ignoring or are in denial about, which means they are unlikely to be fixed. With the recent mania there is a lot of gorging at the trough going on and while I am happy for people to be making money in the short term I would rather see STEEM become so much more than what it is today. I'm just not convinced any more that it will ever realise it's full potential. To me it is in danger of going the way of Netspace once the mania dies off and a real competitor emerges.
Maybe at that point people will be willing to make the tough decisions, but maybe at that point it will be too late.
To most, money comes first before any visions of a better future for humanity (lol) so I don't doubt that their desire to make money now will hamper the platform's chance at competing when the going gets tough. I feel like a lot of discussions are simply distractions to peel everyone's attention from the real problems with the site, so perhaps they're cleverly keeping people engaged in those discussions by design.
Yeah, without a high price for the coins I don't see what value people will see in the platform, and if we are to consider the very real possibility of a long-term cyclical bear market for crypto then this site is deader than dead once that happens, and that's discounting the fact that other companies are going to absolutely crush the possibility for steemit to be a dominant social media force.
Fiat or metal in the hand feels a lot better than digital bags or non-existant bags, and I feel like this site has been creating more than a few micro-bag-holders of late.
You're here and by the screen name I take it you're neither hungry or interested in riches of the moneyz, but look at this, show me a place that drives as much thought and does it without censorship. Steem cannot die, bitcoin and all other coins, gold and everything might die, even SBD and STEEM, but Steem cannot die, it literally will be here for our great great great (xinfinity) children, because of the idea behind it, and ideas do not die, especially those that bring such great minds (you, and the nameless horde!) together under the umbrella of FORUM ;), toodaloo.
@baah—I believe @charitybot was talking specifically about Steemit dying, not necessarily STEEM, although I would add that Steem could by extension die because of the very idea you speak of. If people lose faith that their voice can be heard on Steemit to the audiences they wish to reach, then fewer will come and more will leave.
There is censorship on Steemit. It's called flagging/downvoting. If you want to, and have the power to do so, you can flag someone's post or comment to the point where it's no longer visible for the low ratings it received. Unfortunately, too much flagging here involves retaliation, not curation. There are people here who don't take kindly to even a different opinion, let alone being called out for their five second post that may or may not have value.
I do agree with you that of all the crypto coins I currently know of, STEEM has the greatest chance of holding on the longest because of Steemit. But I also agree with @charitybot that as Steemit is currently set up, it is not a social media platform—yet. And the glimmer of hope I read from your post @charitybot, is that with enough voices like yours finally being heard, and people actually acting upon the words, from the ground up, that Steemit can be molded into what it's been sold to be, but really isn't, and may never be unless we, the people, will it, and act accordingly.
Yes, we need to raise our voices and be heard but we need to offer more ideas and support and less complaining, tearing down and fomenting ill will and making people lose hope.
Here's a novel idea, instead of letting people make you feel a certain way because of their opinions you take responsibility for what you feel and what you say and don't blame others for the atrocity of not being owner over your own emotions, because ill will and making people lose hope is wholly your invention.
I wasn't speaking for myself alone. I do take responsibility for my emotions and constantly work to keep them in check. I will continue to use and believe in the platform. I am talking about the majority of humans that are subject to having human emotions and basing their decisions largely on how they feel about things, especially when it is something new to them and they are deciding if it is worth getting involved with. If they come on the platform and see a bunch of people fighting most will just turn away. If they see people suggesting ideas that will improve things, they will naturally want to get involved and bring their own ideas with them.
I didn't mean to offend you. Let's sing Kumbaya, let's chill, let's be positive and not let negative emotions affect either of us. Enjoy an upvote because I really do agree with the intent of your comment.
Countless good ideas have been suggested in the past, but like I said in my original post they will never be aired on a larger scale because it is not in the interests of the various stakeholders to make the necessary changes for allowing steemit to actually grow and be used by ordinary people.
Steem/IT is used by ordinary people and keeps growing, the investors aren't holding anyone back and almost all of the ideas offered are immature or haven't been considered carefully in exactly what other problems would be created, as for example the multitude that scream Curation equated to Censorship, which in my eyes is akin to killing in Self Defense being equated to Murder, yes killing someone in self defense is not nice, but it's not murder and a complete necessity and not a "protecting muh investment/strategy", yet that doesn't stop people for calling Curation Censorship regardless that for censorship to exist in the very first place it, in it's most base form even, at least one thing must be present:Centralized Authority and/or a mechanism to actually Censor, and not simply Hide/Rate content as Hidden by Default, content that can be simply accessed by using a different front-end and even brute force Spamming until the person's or persons's voting power is drained, regardless of how large the account is because the bandwidth limitation makes Flagging crap for "censorship" and there have been numerous suggestions proposed that hardly consider the numerous problems that they would introduce or even less consider the problem that they are trying to fix as not a problem but a feature and instead are convinced that their understanding of censorship and curation is understood when it hardly could be called considered.
Here is a question for you and all alike: Is flagging in the interest of the various stakeholders or in the interest of the community, and how can you explain that it is in the interest of stakeholders?
I'm tired of the rhetoric of "those greedy investors" and only hope that someone else will have the balls to ridicule such nonsense besides me.
When someone says "we" I always assume they are referring to themselves as in "me, myself and I" and I don't see any reason to approach that differently.
Curating is not Censorship. Steem cannot die, demonstrate how steem, a Free to use Free from Censorship Forum can die. I don't care about STEEM, SBD, STEEMIT but steem cannot die, as it is set up it is by far the most resilient proof technology that the world has: Decentralized Forums.
O yeah, did I mention that Flagging isn't Censorship, or we are so loose with our words and their meaning that for example Self Defense is Murder. Curation is not wholly dependent on your interpretation, curation is simply the act of Flagging or Upvoting, it cannot act as censorship no matter how "hidden" it is on a completely decentralized and transparent network.
Hard censorship comes in the form of flags, soft censorship comes in the form of any post by those not in various inner circles getting any attention at all. The majority of the userbase faces soft censorship on a daily basis, they post and their words are like farts in the wind, doomed to collect at most a few cents and a few pageviews.
You cannot censor the blockchain. Hard or soft it involves removal of content or alteration. Curation is not Censorship.
Ordinary users don't sift through new, as it's unprofitable to curate most of those posts, let alone investigate the blockchain itself to find content.
Obviously you like countless others who I've confronted with the facts cannot actually form an argument for equating Censorship to Curation. All I have to do is point out that Curation is not Censorship and I don't even need to say why and how because an assertion is trumped with a counter assertion, why would I argue with your other assertions when I could simply invalidate them the same way.
From personal experience from a few flag wars I've been involved in with whales I can tell you that regular, ordinary users click reveal on flagged content and even reward it. More so I didn't have to even CARE that I was being flagged by whales and simply said what I wanted to anyway which would bring negative attention to the whales flagging me because people would rightfully ask why I was being flagged, this happens and I can provide proof of it also if you want to investigate if you doubt that it's simply an assertion and only that.
People click Reveal, and in fact I would gladly take a flag because in my eyes I've only been mystified and delegated to intrigue, which is quite an accomplishment.
Another thing is attention:
Nobody is entitled to Attention, and who cares what people do to "fit in" or be "accepted" when a feature, and quite a necessary one is seen as a problem SOLELY because of "feelz muh sting to be flagged", those people themselves are the problem and fuck them. To all others I say fuck that, flag away, curate away, and obviously spend your attention wisely or sow the sense of entitlement over "page views and cents" because "I deserve muh". I am awaiting to hear of any place that offers what steem offers, Farts in the Wind indeed.
As the dollar declines in value, alternatives such as silver, gold, and crypto will rise in price. Why "peg" SBD to USD? I doubt many here would want that.
There's nothing particularly special about USD. It just happens to be a convenient reference that shows pretty reasonable short term purchasing power stability (so if you have to pay your rent in a week, you don't risk not being able to because STEEM or BTC dumped off by 30% or more). It is also the most widely used and widely recognized currency internationally, so it makes sense on a global platform to use that rather than some other existing currency.
If the USD were to ever really go off the rails, or even if we just wanted to make a change, it is perfectly possible to peg SBD to something other than USD, such as gold, silver, or a basket of commodities. (The Steemit clone/offshoot site Golos uses gold and has Golos Backed Gold, aka GBG, instead of SBD.) All it takes (aside from consensus to make such a change) is for witnesses to update their price feed scripts to pull from different data sources. Very plausible.
I agree. Some months ago I wrote Instead of STEEM DOLLARS how about STEEM GOLD?
I do hope we'll get there eventually, but I also think we need to help ween the mainstream off their fiat currencies if we are to get mainstream adoption of crypto. A fiat pegged crypto can help achieve that as a gateway. It's a means to an end but fiat crypto is not our end state.
Exactly. Too many keep referring to USD.
The whole purpose of the cryptocurrencies is to provide a new decentralised/trustless reference. Value your wealth in BTC!
Because I am relatively new to the platform, I don't know how the payouts worked when SBD was closer to $1. How are the curators being hurt/impacted by the high price of SBD? If they have always been paid out in Steem and not SBD, my thought has been it hasn't really impacted curation rewards. Has it just lowered the size of the rewards as the payouts have shifted from 50/50 to more like 85/15?
It lowers the rewards because author rewards are not shown in either SBD or Steem. You get half of your rewards in SBD, so that's simple. The other half is the amount of steem worth the dollar amount.
So, let's make it simple and say author rewards are $10 after curation. Let's say SBD and Steem are each worth $5 USD.
The curators are only getting paid in Steem. If SBD were closer to $1, there would be no difference in value (i.e. USD value). But it would lower author rewards, so ouch.
Also, merchants would prefer to have a stable currency to set prices. It seems like some good coder could write an algorithm that would change the SBD price on merchant sites to reflect value though.
I understand Authors making more...but I don’t see curators making less than they otherwise would if the SBD was closer to the peg. The pie has grown, it’s just that it all goes to authors from what I can see in the math.
It's all relative. The Curators are being left behind and are getting weaker and fewer. This hurts the platform.
I did some experimentation and analysis on this in my post High STEEM DOLLAR Dampens Curation Incentive but I'll give you the spoiler - I'm not bothering with serious Curation any more and lots of people aren't.
I am relatively new to Steemit but I can't help but wonder if the real question here is whether Steem whitepaper is still relevant? Was it intended to be a long term guide to the development of Steemit or just a document for getting it launched?
The introduction section of the whitepaper calls for "a stable cryptocurrency pegged to the U.S. dollar". The whitepaper goes on to state:
So, the whitepaper not only calls for a pegged currency but also indicates the mechanism for correcting deviation from the peg.
Another area in which Steemit has deviated from the whitepaper is in the area of recognizing contribution. Again from the whitepaper:
I don't know how the systems got started but to me it seems like vote bots and buying votes would qualify as "intentional manipulation for profit".
If the whitepaper is a document driving the development of Steem, then the decision is to enforce the peg on the Steem dollar. Not enforcing the peg means another deviation from the whitepaper. It is highly likely that potential investors in Steem will read the whitepaper, or at least part of it, prior to investing.
To maintain the credibility of Steem, the whitepaper needs to reflect reality. Is the whitepaper a guiding document for Steem's development or a set of lofty goals, some of which in retrospect tend to be naive. Granted there is a cost to enforcing the peg but we don't know what long term costs exists if Steem loses credibility.
I reckon this is the best comment on this post so far. Thanks!
"Was it intended to be a long term guide to the development of Steemit or just a document for getting it launched?"
It's a bloody great question! Maybe the whitepaper is a bit irrelevant these days.
Thanks @buggedout. I recently also just got into cryptocurrencies in general and normally read at least most of the white papers before deciding to invest in any particular coin. For me, this discussion is really a test as to whether these whitepapers really mean anything or not. If whitepapers really don't mean anything, I'll know to keep my coin investments under scrutiny unless I need to 'bug out'.
Sounds like you are applying some common sense! Excellent! So good to see and so rare!
I have a developer background so I do actually value the whitepapers very highly. To me it is important to understand what the system designers were trying to achieve and then assess whether it is sensible, realistic and well implemented. I guess that's my issue here, maybe it wasn't well implemented so it'll take some work to fix it without breaking something else. Change Management is hard when the system already has a lot of use and is politicised!
It seems like it is fairly common for management to deviate from the white paper. I wish I had more of an understanding of tech to understand if this is a necessity, or if it is more of a result of the traditional management systems which still control the blockchains.
It also seems like hyperinflation would be a risk if the SBD isn't pegged to something. There is some quality converstaion on this post!
I don't think it's management deviating. It is external market forces using the product in a way that is not how it is intended. Management are then faced with the decision of whether to try and revert it to the design, or change the design, or do nothing.
How would you prioritise the above groups?
Personally, I would put the Authors first at present.
The early investors are all millionaires, or well on the way.
Curators and Witnesses are paid in SP/Steem which is 'only' 10-15% lower than SBD, and I would say are not missing out too much here at $6.
Devs, Merchants, and Traders should also be doing well enough.
I would class myself into each of the 3 'groups' above and would not feel disappointed appearing only in one.
These are great times to be around imo!
"How would you prioritise the above groups?"
That is a really tough question and I'd like to say you shouldn't prioritise them in a proper Stakeholder Analysis because they all have a part to play so they are all important. If any one group dies then we have a big problem.
I think your math is off regarding Curator/Witness calculations. AT $6 STEEM and $7 SBD then a $10 Curation reward is worth $10 USD whereas a $10 Author reward is worth $40 USD - which is 4 times as much. I'd say Curators are missing out on a lot.
Had not considered the impact for Witnesses, but it should be worth noting too. I guess it gets blurred because most Witnesses are also Investors and Authors so they still get good SBD income through hosting/delegating Vote Bots plus their own Posts.
But where's the proof of brain in setting Steemvoter or another vote bot up and letting it do its thing?
I mean, I certainly don't expect to be rewarded for clicking a button as much as spending 4 hours producing an article - 4 x less reward sounds reasonable.
Join curie or the OCD team if you want to get more money curating, or join a curation league 😊
It's just something that everyone should do, or delegate their stake for people to do for them.
At this point in time, no authors, no Steemit. No curators - I'll just upvote myself x 10. No merchants, ok I'll cash my SBDs out. no devs - static apps . no traders? Yeah right!
I know you as a keen curator, glad you have adapted to the market and are producing engaging content 😁
For me even the Steemvoter auto-voting is about identifying a promising new author with a lower reputation and committing to supporting them with auto-votes.
If you're good at doing that then you will be rewarded and you will help the new author to get the exposure.
I'm not a huge fan of encouraging self-voting, but even so, you have to invest in some SP before that will work and a new author getting 0.01 on their first 5-10 posts is unlikely to invest.
It's a real shame that steemsql has gone to an expensive subscription model because I was considering doing some analytics to back my theories up about not just retention but also the unsustainability of the SBD price pump. Cest la vie.
I use Steemvoter for partly this purpose, and to support peers around the same level.
The 2nd account is for SP curation rewards.
SteemSQL is a bargain for me, I use it on a least two posts a week - one of those has just paid out the monthly subscription for the next four months 😁
I can see that for an established Data Analyst posting regularly like yourself it's probably not a big deal. But for someone doing a few ad-hocs and experimentation with no established data analysis interest amongst their following I think $70 US a month (up from $0) is a stretch, so it's a barrier to entry. Each to their own though, I will just focus on something else and maybe have another look when the SBD price comes down.
Fair enough.
I don't look at the cost in USD. If the price of SBDs come down to $1, I'd still make 3/4 times the monthly cost with a post.
More engaging posts like this one and you wont need to worry.
You could also hire a data analyst to do the work I guess? :)