CoinGecko Response to Ned’s Update
This post represents our thoughts on the events happening to the Steem community over the past week.
On 27 November 2018 11 PM UTC, CEO of Steemit inc. Ned Scott announced an organizational restructuring of Steemit Inc. and a layoff of “close to 70% of the team”. In a nutshell, Ned has made the tough decision to cut costs to keep Steemit inc.’s core operations viable as the current automated STEEM token selling from Steemit’s stake took a hit by the ongoing bear market.
For those of you who are not familiar with what we do, CoinGecko.com is a website that provides fundamental analysis of the crypto market. We have been operational since 2014 and continue to provide a 360° overview of cryptocurrencies.
As CoinGecko recently became part of the Steem community, we thought about giving a few thoughts on what had happened.
In light of the situation, we hope to be of help in any way possible as inspired by @therealwolf's amazing writing.
The issue
We are aware that Steemit Inc. the startup is not Steem the open source decentralized community. That being said, we must not ignore the truth that Steemit inc. has been encouraging and subsidizing the growth of quite a number of startups and Dapps built on the Steem Blockchain.
As a website operator who uses cloud servers for the bulk of our operation, we can relate to steemit’s AWS costs concern. We’ve read comments by certain members who grossly underestimated the cost of running AWS and we want to assure them that cloud server costs do rack up pretty quickly. We’re not surprised at all when Ned ballparks the server cost at $2MM annually.
The Steem community must also acknowledge the effect of such an announcement on the greater Crypto community, given the conflated perception they have on Steemit.inc and the Steem blockchain and ecosystem.
This news marks the first time Coindesk ever covered Steem and Steemit in over 2 years.
We cannot say whether is this good or bad for the community as a whole, only time can tell the effect of this publicity. However, no matter what the outcome may be, we want to be a part of Steem and offer any help we can along the way.
Our Opinion
@coingecko is the official Steem account registered by us at CoinGecko.com 13 months ago. However, our true foray into the Steem community started on early October when we first powered up the account with 3 BTC worth of Steem at that time.
As a business, our focus on expanding into the Steem community was never really about earning more steem tokens via post rewards as a typical Steemian would. When we first powered up the @coingecko account, we consider it an investment in marketing to the crypto community. Our returns are measured in the attention and response of the Steem community.
We were pleasantly surprised with the initial reception of our first ever post made on the Steem Blockchain. With over 120 replies, we’ve received plenty of feedback and suggestions on how to do better. It is not a stretch to say that you the Steem Community has helped us to innovate our product.
We must also mention our partnership with @utopian-io, which is helping us to speed up the development of Cryptoexchange, our open source Ruby library.
We’re in here for the long game. For us, the value of the Steem Blockchain really does lie in its users and communities. As you can see right in our post history, we have been using this platform to promote our giveaways and competition as well as communicate our updates. It is our personal wish to be the case-study of businesses using Steem as a marketing vehicle, as with our overarching goal to bring the applications of many of the cryptocurrency technologies into the real world.
How can we help
Although we are new to the Steem community, we are ever learning and adapting. Everyone is affected by the current bear market, and it is our belief that this is the best time for crypto-businesses and projects to focus on core development and building long-lasting partnerships.
To this end, we would like to take suggestions from the Steem Community as to how we can help the community. We may start with something small, but it is our hope to support the Steem community and see it evolve into the de-facto blockchain-based decentralized social media platform.
Our Hope
This is our first ever attempt to use upvoting services on Steemit. Normally we’ve always tried to reach our readers organically. However, we want this post to be seen by not just our current 339 followers. If you find this post and our presence on the Steem to be of any value at all to you, we hope you can click on the follow button and do us a solid. We promise we won’t spam, and you’ll get to see our competitions and giveaways contests that we do regularly.
To the witnesses and figurehead(s) of the Steem Community, we would like to reach out to you to discuss the possibility of being included in our Beam feature that allows verified administrators of tokens and exchanges to engage directly with the wider crypto community, this is the least we can do to help at this moment.
If you have any enquiry or suggestions which you want to communicate to us privately, please feel to use the Steem Encrypted Memo function or send us an email at [email protected].
About CoinGecko:
CoinGecko aims to collect all the data required to quantitatively and qualitatively rank the potential of an altcoin. We plan to benchmark the coins based on our algorithm to determine how valuable a coin is compared to its peers.
I think u can promote steem in coingeco website. That would help steem
One thing we can offer directly TODAY is to get Steem included in our Beam Updates.
To do this we are still waiting for someone from the Steem Community to represent the project. Feel free to urge your community leader(s) to contact us to work out the details.
I will make a post about it. Could you pls list out the benefits that steem will get if included in your Beam updates
Sure! You can read about our Beam launch here at https://steemit.com/coingecko/@coingecko/coingecko-launches-beam-to-improve-crypto-transparency
For one: Beam provides instant reach more than 2 million MAU through our website, API and partner apps. We've also intergrated Beam right into our coin pages so that readers who researches a coin can read about project updates right there and then.
Very interesting. I will write and tend about it. Hope somebody pays attention to it
Hi team!
I love that you've accepted the role of being a shiny example of a business on the Steem blockchain, I really do think you could be an incredible case-study for other organisations looking to utilize the content creation skills, development skills and raw enthusiasm of the Steemians on the blockchain.
I've got a couple of suggestions for you;
Since you're technologically savy, and potentially have the infrastructure already in place, would you consider setting up as a Witness? If the bear market continues for 18 months (which we should plan for, even if we hope otherwise) other Witnesses may need to drop away, but it might just be a small percentage of your overall infrastructure meaning you could potentially outlast bear market activities.
Would you consider developing a Coingecko front end for the Steem blockchain? You've got your APIs developed already, and you've already got a voice in the industry and probably a lot more open to advertising. If Steemit Inc did go under, I think there's enough enthusiasm and expertise to keep us going, but a Coingecko front end might be awesome! Bring the crypto crowd to one spot, and I don't imagine it'd be massively difficult since a few of the existing front ends are open-source already (but again, might not have your infrastructure and/or alternate revenue streams.
Lastly, I'm sure it's really a consideration, but stay with us. You've invested a lot, and that's amazing... but there's still a lot we can do for you too. I imagine if Steem did become a sinking ship (which at this point I do think is unlikely, but plan for the worst right) then the most skilled Steemians are also the most invested... and therefore probably the last to leave.
Thanks for this post! I've been excited about you since you arrived and you continue to be great.
Hi aussieninja, thank you for the comprehensive write up, suggestion, and supportive comment!
We are actually considering running as a Witness, though we are still evaluating our capacity to deliver given the intricacies of setting up a Witness node. Hopefully, the answer is yes and if so you can expect to run some time early next year.
As for running an API front end, that is definitely a solid suggestion and much needed for the network.
However, we want to also ensure that we can deliver this, as we are quite new in this space; we want to ensure that we understand Steem inside/out before we can setup an infrastructure to serve this well. That being said, we are always evaluating what we can do best to serve the community if we were to run for witness.
We've got some ideas in mind that we brainstormed along the way and can't wait to share with the community once we are ready!
To get started they can just start using this plugin to STEEMize their posts..
https://wordpress.org/plugins/steempress/
I've always been a firm believer that as much as it's very important to not become a blind "yes-man" for the sake of playing your role.. it's just as important to maintain a level of respect with everyone, even if your voicing critiques, or passion fueled suggestions.
All this to say is that, I get the reasons why people are frustrated, but also know there is no solution in standing on the frustration square and not moving an inch.
Some of the proposed solutions however I really like, and in my view, this is a special opportunity for the steem blockchain to reduce it's point of failure.
Thank you for the tone of positivity displayed, I'm very happy to have you guys as part of our community.
It is true you said , team work is necessary to build the new goals in future.I think you follow me on steemit
Thank you for the positive response. And we do agree that there are times where actions are better than words.
To that end, We are trying to reach out and hear from people like you for what we can do to help push the Steem Blockchain in the right direction. As a business focusing on providing web-services, we are sure that there must be something we can do.
@coingecko
very thoughtful piece , followed !!
Suggestion : you can add your steem handle on your website to show your official presence on STEEMIT
Question : are you aware of steem wordpress login that would allow you cross post on your website and here ?
https://wordpress.org/plugins/steempress/
Great Suggestion! Keep a close eye on our Page footer for the next few days, would you? ;)
As for @steempress, yes we are aware of the great work being done by @fredrikaa and @howo. :D
Currently, however, we are still indecisive and will continue to evaluate the viability of cross-posting our content in the future.
Please do cross post your content. The articles you post are a great inclusion to the service.
Awesome. Love your professionalism.
Out of curiosity, what communities besides Steem are you guys looking at when it comes to promoting your business, and how do they compare?
Thanks!
Posted using Partiko Android
To be honest, the Steem community is our very first attempt to actively reach out and expand our brand awareness. We do have official mainstream social media pages chat groups like Discord and Telegram.
Got it! Thanks for responding! Not sure if you have noticed, Partiko has a very decent influence with in the Steem community. Maybe there are ways we can work together!
Send me a Partiko Message!
Posted using Partiko Android
@yabapmatt just posted an article earlier on getting advertiser on steem blockchain and get them to advertise on front end like steemit, busy, steempeak etc I totally second to it.
Awesome move @coingecko ! businesses advertising indirectly by using upvoting services are good. Business get attention and possible conversion on product/services, vote sellers get business, readers get content.
PS :
If you’re posting content on instagram, give share2steem a look. It’s a new dapp that EASILY autopost your instagram post to steemit. Get daily upvotes from s2s and other users who activate unique double curations.
Thank you for the suggestion, we are aware of @share2steem among many other cool toolkits created by the Steem Community.
This is one of the theories we're testing for Steem. Hope we can convince you to give us a follow!
sure ! how abt getting 1 back too =)
keep posting
Thanks for reaching out to the community! That shows me you "get it" and understand what this is all about. We're moving to a decentralized future, not one dominated by central authorities. I posted some thoughts both before and after the live stream Ned did yesterday. I see this as an opportunity for the Steem community to rise up and take responsibility for what they want Steem to be. It's not just a free money faucet enabler. It's a killer app enabler for cryptocurrency mass adoption. The more we focus on that reality, the more we can clarify our best path to get there from where we are now.
Some interesting questions you laid out there to the Steem community in the post as well as to @ned directly in your comments to him.
As mentioned, we know that we are new to Steem and we'll continue to monitor the community reaction for the next few months. That said, we want to make our intentions clear that we are here to offer what help we offer to the best of our capabilities.
Good to know that you guys are here for the long run and still support the Steem Community. How can you Help?
Well why don't you start a coin review contest where steemians are reviewing the most popular coins. You can than publish the best post into Coingecko Homepage as an extra service for your users.
This is just an idea how you could use our brains to bring good content to your Homepage. Any thoughts on that?
Posted using Partiko Android
That's a mighty good idea! in fact, we already have this in the pipeline since it makes sense that the Steem Community are among the more crypto-knowledgable ones. Stay tuned for contests!
Your work is appreciated ,
Greetings
@Blockbrothers
Thank you that you are on the side of good guys )