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RE: Increasing Curation, Demand for Steem Power and Community Interaction
Maybe you should try to find something that would actually encourage users to want to power up and use the platform rather than trying to lock in those who are already here. Also, give your "whales" a reason to not want to power down and some might stop. Right now there is absolutely NO reason to not be powering down and cashing out every week, plain and simple.
Something that would encourage more users to power up would be not seeing so many of the whales powering down. I think that's one of the largest psychological hurdles. When the early holders and investors into the platform appear to be cashing out of their investment - while still in beta - it doesn't exactly send a signal to future investors and users that there is confidence that the platform will succeed. It doesn't matter what the motivations are for cashing out. It's a perception problem.
But the question is - how can a whale cash out if they don't earn SBD from curating? They must power down to cash out the rewards. Or...they can engage more in posts and post themselves. However, when this happens, the self upvote becomes another problem and potential for abuse - perceived or real.
So, we have several different issues in play, but the proposed solutions never seem to address them. And the largest resistance that the rest of us see actually comes from whales. At some point, there will need to be a compromise - or we can all just watch the value of Steem plummet, in which case, powering up or down will be moot.
The platform was launched with an incredibly high concentration of stake. There were reasons it was done that way with which one can agree or disagree, but that is in the past and can't be changed now.
The only mathematically feasible way for stake to be redistributed without taking many, many years (as it would to do so via rewards, and even then only if the vested SP remains above 90% which is uncertain) is for existing whales to power down and sell. That is absolutely essential to creating a healthier balance of influence and investment, and discouraging it is harmful.
It will play out to where whales have the stake they actually want, instead of what they inherited from the nature of the launch, and then the power downs will slow to an equilibrium, with a wider base of stakeholders. The sooner we get there the better.
I don't disagree that it's a way to redistribute influence. My point is that the reasons aren't being communicated well - especially to those outside of the platform. Investors only see that there is a lot of Steem being dumped in the market. Users only know why it's happening if it's communicated here on Steemit. There doesn't appear to be much of an attempt to explain why whales are powering down, what that money is being used for if it's Steemit-related, or how it could actually be beneficial.
More transparency and some explanations would go a long way.
Thanks for your response - I believe there's some merit in what you've written but I can't say I fully understand what your suggestions are.
I don't know what the answer is at this point, but I don't think forcing people to either participate (without powering down) or leave (powering down, not able to participate) is it.
I don't have any specific suggestions, but it sounds like he is saying we need to find more things that add value to SP (kind to like promoted posts gave people more of a reason to have SBD).
Right now voting power, curation rewards, and long term speculation of a price increase are really the main reasons to power up. The fact you need about $50k worth of SP to really make a difference on the first two is a big discouragement for most people.
Can we think / brainstorm about more benefits that we can offer people for buying/ holding SP?
IMO the most important thing is to widen the appeal of the platform beyond blogging. That could be the promised marketplace, it could be adding better support and encouragement for microblogging, picture sharing, link sharing, etc.
Blogging is too narrow a market with little growth potential, and one that naturally concentrates contributions (and therefore rewards, under any rational scheme that rewards according to contribution) with a relatively small group of successful bloggers.
That is why there isn't much demand for SP right now. Introduce more visible growth potential and investors will be more interested.
It is almost as if someone who is a himself a blogger designed and built this system oblivious to the fact that most social media users and most people are not and do not want to be bloggers.
Constant tweaking of the rules, apart from its own harms, is a massive distraction from addressing the key critical issues that need to be addressed in order for this system to be viable at all. Without investors wanting to buy in, it isn't, and without much better visible growth potential investors will not want to buy in. Period.
A huge untapped potential still exists with blogging. For instance, zerohedge would be a huge score if they moved to steem. They could get paid for every post (probably $1000s), solve their troll problem, and create a permanent record of their work in case they were attacked. It seems like it would be an easy sell for a marketing department targeting these types of users. The devs should allocate some funds towards this.
But who ever heard of a @dantheman project that didn't involve constant tweaking of the rules?
I'm starting to think you're a sockpuppet of mine I'm posting with in my sleep.
I think trying to widen the appeal of the platform beyond blogging is indeed a great idea. This can attract new investors to join steemit and stabilize the steem price.
Secondly, lowering the interest on steem power should be done asap. People are powering down, simply because they earn more interest than they lose by powering down. The high growth in interest makes everyone want to power down.
This 2 measures combined together will already have a huge impact on the stability of the steem price. Many people will immediately stop powering down.
Maybe the powering down rate should be tied to inflation. 1% is fine when there is 90 percent inflation but when inflation is 230 percent power down is 3% per week.
Yes. That is a possibility. I just think that we need to get our act straight, and start following the white paper. In the white paper the system described seems sustainable.
Can you explain this in more detail? Why would reducing the benefits of holding Steem Power increase demand for Steem Power?
When reducing the earnings for powering up from 0.6% per day to 0.19% as stated in the white paper, people will have less incentive to power down. While today when powering down, the earnings of steem power is still greater than the conversion from steem power to steems. If your steem power is growing even when you power down, why would you power up?
Secondly when doing this the distribution, which is one of the goals, happens also much faster. It takes only 25 weeks to get rid of 25%. At the rate of today it would take much longer.
I agree that the "blogging only" aspect makes steemit unlike the social media it is trying to revolutionize and replace.
Most traditional social media users have a more "consumer" behaviour, rather than "producer" (content creation, i.e. blogging) behaviour; therefore hindering growth and widespread acceptance.
If it remains blogging only, as @bacchist warns we will end up with more spun content.
THIS is exactly what I am grappling with. I'm not a blogger, why am I here?
One word.
Commerce.
Leading by example would be a good start. At the time of writing this comment, both @ned and @dantheman accounts are powering down. This is pretty ironic actually.
One simple way to give incentive for people to power up is resetting the interest growth of the power up to just as described in the white paper. 0,19 Percent per day when powering up. And when powering down total steem power will be turned into steem in 104 weeks. At the moment no-one wants to power up, as the interest on steem power is higher than what they lose when powering down. Making them even earn more steems even when powering down.
Smooth made a good comment about attracting new investors by trying to make steemit into more than just "blogging". But as Dan described earlier you guys are probably working around the clock to do this.
Really Ned. Resetting the interest growth to what is described in the white paper seems to me the easiest way to quickly distribute steems and give the incentive for people to power up. For the rest, I feel the free market will solve the other issues by itself.
The pervasively negative price effects of the current power downs are, I believe, an effect of having too expensive financing early on.....ie giving away too much to cheaply to early participates/investors. There may not be much to do but ride it out and hope it does not cost the survival of the project.
Edit: maybe a reduction in the 300% inflation rate will help address the issue. Though I understand the initial high inflation rate has its benefits, Steemit may not be able to afford it due to the financing miscalculation stated above.
The only way to convince anyone to want to be a part of Steem is to make Steem's value proposition irresistible. There are many many ways of doing that. Here are a few examples of features that would make Steem a much more attractive platform:
#2 can be implemented easily on top of the existing post reward system, as explained in an earlier comment.
#3, #4 and #5 exist already in Bitshares. A merger should be considered (I am also a Bitshares holder and would be favorable to seeing a merger). If Bitshares community isn't interested by a merger, turning Bitshares into a Steem sidechain would do the trick and be mutually beneficial for both ecosystem. And if all efforts fail to negociate a deal with the Bitshares community, Steem should just move on and replicate what is good in Bitshares.
The above would help Steem to be considered as a serious crypto currency in the crypto space, and not just a flash in the pan. Since speculators are essentially coming from the crypto space, being considered a major crypto alongside Bitcoin, Monero and Ethereum is key to attracting capital.
RE: crowdfunding
This is exactly how I've been using Steemit already. (You can read on my blog, if interested.) I think there is a lot of potential for this idea and donations don't even have to come out of someone's own pocket, so there's essentially no risk for those wanting to fund a campaign.
I really don't understand why this isn't happening more and why it's not being publicly marketed. (I've mentioned it to other powers on Steemit.) Crowdfunding here would eliminate nearly all of the problems with current crowdfunding platforms. If I had more technical knowledge and experience, I would develop this for Steemit myself. Is there anyone looking into this on the development side?
I don't think it's a good idea to copy features from BitShares.
And this is because .. ?
When I first joined and read the white paper, I hoped whales would be strategic enough to act as a collusive group and avoid dumping recklessly and crush the price of steem. Now I understand that the whales, as a class not necessarily as individuals, are incredibly short sighted, opportunistic, and all too willing to kill the golden goose. I can't see how catering to them to prevent them from dumping without regard for the consequences is good for the platform long term. That basically turns this into a hostage situation.
Some of us wouldn't mind buying more at cheaper prices.
"cheap" is a highly subjective term, particularly if the platform offers more value and long term potential.
What is good for the platform long term is to redistribute stake and be inclusive to new investors so it isn't so absurdly concentrated (with 1% owning 95%, and that is excluding the 'steemit' account). We'll have to agree to disagree on this.
I agree with you there, absolutely. I just think that there is a better way of going about it than dumping it indiscriminately.
Powering down and holding some STEEM without dumping it all is something that whales could be doing to redistribute stake while preserving the value of all stakes. I don't know what it would mean to be inclusive to new investors in an atmosphere of declining prices due to overselling.
But yeah, I agree with you in principle.
@smooth I think that's an oversimplification. Investors have to see that there is an upside and not only a downside. The price can't be low enough for an asset that will only decrease in value. The has been no history of a stable price since prior to July 4th. And there has been no history of prices increasing outside of a speculative bubble shortly after July 4th, and a bounce from Poloniex...
The platform will never attract a meaningful quantity of new investors by demonstrating that it is incapable of protecting the investments of existing investors.
Lower prices are much better for new investors. If I'm looking to invest 10000 USD I would prefer to receive a larger amount of stake for that investment than a smaller. I would also prefer more available upside relative to my fixed (10000 USD) downside. At the earlier 400 million USD market cap the upside was much more limited than it is now (though 100 million USD is still no bargain basement price). That naturally invites more demand from investors who don't want to buy in at an inflated valuation.
@bacchist
I agree with you there. The way to do that is to make the platform better and more appealing, not by propping it up so investors enter higher and get dumped on later.
I do not agree that a low price means that it can only decline, nor that at 100 million cap, it is anywhere near that. Plenty of assets decline to a value that is a more attractive entry point then gain more investor interest, particularly if the actual value delivered by the asset is increased.
@smooth
But the problem is that the pressure is continually downward due to the power-down timeline. Powering down is a two-year schedule. If the largest stakeholders are powering down and selling their stake and this can be expected to continue for at least two years - while they continue to sell more SP from internal accumulation - does this not become a problem with consistent, large downward pressures?
If whales are indeed redistributing their stake, I would expect to see them no longer accumulating through their curating habits and to see newer users buying the SP on the market. But I don't believe that has been happening, according to the figures that are presented every week. There is selling by whales, but there doesn't appear to be the off-setting investment back into the platform by non-whales. The buying of SP is much lower and whales continue to accumulate more through curating based on their large influence.
Am I missing something? Is there an aspect to this that is just lost on me? I don't see the redistribution of influence occurring because the Steem is being dumped in large amounts on the market and being bought by investors. I see some of it being redistributed internally from curating. The actual external investing is lacking. So, I don't know how dumping on the external markets actually redistributes. So far, the only effect that it has had is driving down prices.
@ats-david.
What you are missing is the increase in the money supply (aka dilution). As long as whales aren't buying back their own sales in a sham trade, it means new investors (or at least smaller investors) are accumulating it and the stake is being distributed. Curation rewards are only a tiny portion of the reward pool (currently well under 25%); it is mathematically impossible for curation rewards to offset dilution from content rewards PLUS selling. Not even close.
Currently there is an accumulation of liquid STEEM on exchanges being held either by speculators or perhaps by whales themselves, who are powering down but in fact not selling (we can't know for sure). That is unsustainable and before long that trend will stop. It is the natural evolution of a process where at one time there was 0% of the supply on exchanges (because there weren't any) and now there in approximately 2-3%.
I agree with @smooth here. I remember first finding out about bitcoin when it was around $30 and saw it shoot to $45 by the time I could get accounts set up to buy. I had strong FOMO. It was a bit disheartening to see the price eventually fall to $2, but I'm glad I still saw potential in it and had the opportunity to increase my stake at lower prices with a lot higher potential upside.
I've only recently found out about Steem and see its potential. I still think it has a lot of improvement before it gains traction and see the current phase as a reality check on the initial exuberance, just like the long fall of bitcoin to $2 before eventually gaining traction.
I think one who decided to leave won't do any good in terms of curation and @nextgencrypto probably is a good example of this.
You are ignorant and should ideally refrain from insulting one of your largest investors who also happens to be (and always has been) heavily involved in initiatives that support and promote Steem. Unlike you, I happen to be aware of his involvement with both sponsoring the Steemcleaners team and the Curie project (which is specifically curation, since you mentioned it). I don't know what else he might be doing. Your comment is entirely off base and inappropriate.
props for not flagging, although that might be considered slander...
@nextgencrypto is powering down for a long time, I don't see how he is investing in Steem. How come he became our largest investor? I can only see how he is monetizing on our work.
@ned and @dantheman are both powering down. Are they investing in Steam? Have they decided to leave?
I already explained some of the ways he has invested and is investing in Steem. I see him on steemit.chat every single day working with abuse and curation teams that he is both funding and working on directly. The list was not complete. Since you know none of this, you continue to speak out of ignorance, which helps no one, most notably, yourself.
Kindly refrain from inappropriately flagging my comments because they call you out on your ignorance.
I'm not following political debates closely but as far as I remember nextgen decided to leave back in June not agreeing with dev team on curation rewards, so he started powering down a long be before any other whales.
Anyway calling nexgen largest investor shows your ignorance and this is why I flagged your comment.
Please refrain from misquoting me
"one of your largest investors"