How to increase demand for steem and steem power?
@ned wrote how he's been thinking how to increase the demand for steem power. It's really important topic, so here are some of my ideas.
If you want to increase demand for steem, you need to make it more useful. Making it less useful, like decreasing the voting power, is not a good way to do it.
We should be thinking is there something that steem or steem power can be used for? Something that users are happy to pay for?
Marketplace is obvious answer. Not everybody likes to blog, so best way to create bigger network effect for Steem is to use the blockchain for something completely different, like for a marketplace (which has been on the plans for a while already). Steem could require that an account has some minimum amount of Steem Power (worth of 5-10 dollars) until it can post anything on a marketplace. That would require people either buy it or to blog to earn it.
Post promotion should be more effective when steem is used instead of steem dollars. It's better to decrease the amount of steem in circulation. Decreasing the total amount of steem dollars is not very helpful.
Lottery for newbies? Everybody who has powered up in the last two months can take part in a lottery. The more user has powered up, the better chances of winning he has. In this way, those whales who got their share in early mining can't use it. This might be even possible to implement without any changes to the blockchain, if some trusted user is willing to do it and can somehow prove that he is using a fair system.
Gamification? I'm not personally interested in most forms of gamification, but it might work for some. There should be some features that users need to buy with steem.
Or maybe just build games on top of the blockchain? Players need to own a minimum amount of SP to play. Or send steem to @null to use some features.
Are there any other things why users might want to send steem to @null?
Maybe there could be a list of people who have voluntarily decreased the amount of steem in circulation? When steem is destroyed, it benefits everybody else. By destroying it, users could show that they really care about the Steem community. For example, if somebody does something really stupid and regrets it, he can show his remorse by sending some steem to @null. It could be one way to regain reputation after a mistake.
These are just some things that came up to my mind quickly.
@ned is right that incentivizing users to buy more steem power and steem is important for the ecosystem. Best way to achieve that is try to invent something that users really want to do.
So, if you want to be helpful, list as many features as you can, that you or others would be happy to pay for. Just write down everything that you can come up with, even if the idea might sound stupid. Maybe somebody else can refine it to something actually useful.
The more proposals we have, the better are the chances that we can implement something that really works.
I like some of those ideas, and I couldn't agree more with if you want to increase the demand for steem, you need to make it more useful. What are your thoughts on this idea that I suggested on @ned's post?
Well, how would work on you? Lets take a whale like smooth. He powers down and its worth what like $15K a week in steem.
How large a voting bonus would they need to give you in order to forgoe a 15K cash payment? I bet pretty large.
Here's how I look at it:
Lowering the price from $4 to $2 makes buying it significantly more attractive, but at what point does everyone decide that it's suddenly worth buying? There is no one price; everyone places a unique subjective value on the cereal. One person might not buy it until it gets down to $3.95, another won't pull the trigger until it gets down to $3.10, and another won't buy until it goes all the way down to $2.00.
Each time you make buying the cereal a little more attractive, another small subset of people will choose to buy it.
In the case of Steem Power, we have no idea when it will become attractive for each individual user. However, we do know that with each little benefit added, it will become valuable enough for some more Steemians to buy/hold/power up.
Smooth has so much SP that he should be powering down to make the distribution better. Yeah, it hurts price in the short term, but if whales don't do that, new and potential users will complain forever how unfair the distribution of steem is.
Well, that would be a positive incentive. But I'm not sure how powerful it would be. I don't think people are usually powering down just for fun. How much of the powering down decisions could be prevented with this feature? My guess is that most of the powering downs have a good reason, like a need for fiat money.
I disagree. I'm powering down because there is no reason for me not to power down and nearly every other individual with a considerable stake is doing the same.
If there are literally zero consequences to powering down and only upside (liquidity), why is anyone surprised that the sell pressure is astronomical?
Reason to not power down is to avoid inflation and keep your voting power. If you use your account regularly for curation, you'll get more money for it if you don't power down.
I don't mind that big whales are powering down. Yeah, it's causing sell pressure, but in the long run it's necessary to redistribute SP. This is a great time for newbies to get in cheaply (of course it might get even cheaper in the near future). When the price starts to go up again nobody can claim that they didn't have a chance to buy cheap steem.
You can avoid inflation by simply selling the steem that you power down for BTC or fiat (or steem dollars if that's your thing). It's pretty absurd to suggest that someone never spend their money to avoid inflation.
Yeah, money locked in steem power that you can't spend if you don't power down.
The reasons you cite are great reasons not to power down, as long as the people with steem power are OK with having a huge chunk of unspendable assets that they can only ever use to get more unspendable assets.
But most people want to buy hookers and cocaine and play blackjack. Actually, forget the blackjack. Ans to do that they need real, spendable monies.
Here is a great example of a good and easy-to-implement feature: Website Perks for Steem Power
Yes! This is exactly the type of thing we need 😀
SO you plan to fight inflation by encouraging people to burn money.
Yeah, why not?
because it won't work. People won't act against their own interests to benefit the group.
Of course it would work, the question is only how well it would work, is it worth doing. People are continuously acting against their own interests, just look what's happening in politics.
It could be also beneficial to the individual, too. For example to show their regrets about something stupid they did. Or newbies could use it to show their commitment to Steem. It's pretty good way of signaling that user really likes Steem. That's one way to get people interested in you and gain more followers.
There should be charts that show how much people have destroyed steem for the benefit of the whole community. All-time, monthly, weekly, daily.
This is my idea for a sink, BTW. Kaioken voting.
Lets say I can vote at 100% now and my vote is worth one dollar. I can multiply my vote power by X where X is up to a hundred.
For each X, 1% of my vests and the steem associated with them are permanently destroyed. Though i think its pretty cool, IMO the value problem is still on the demand side
Interesting idea! I have to think about that more. I prefer keeping the voting mechanism as simply as possible, but this might have some chances to actually work.
Lots of cool ideas here, kudos!
I also would love to see:
Steemit Video Uploads (pay to upload and or pay to watch, possibly)
Steem based music label
Steemit freelance market place. "Steemerr"?
The emergence of Steemit-exclusive celebrities, where Steemit is the first port of call for their content. (just like YouTube is the place to see Thunderf00t, for example, even though he has multiple web presences.)
A Steem based alternative to Tradebit, where people can buy and sell digital files. Huge scope for abuse though, unfortunately.