RE: Planning for long-term success of Steemit: Identifying areas of improvement
You are absolutely right that user experience should be as easy as possible. But that doesn't mean it would be wise to change the system to a simplier one.
Designing a blockchain that has just the right incentives for everybody is really difficult task. If the incentives are bad, project will fail eventually. The Steem blockchain is maybe the best one currently, if we look at what kind of long term incentives it has.
And the blockchain is just the backend side. It doesn't need to be shown for users. The frontend can be made easy and intuitive. This version of Steemit is first version that's pretty much just a direct frontend for blockchain without much UI design. I'm sure they will do lots of UI development in the future.
Are three currencies really that difficult to understand?
Steem Dollar is basically a dollar that has same features as other cryptocurrencies. If person is used to use internet banking, SMD shouldn't be that hard to grasp.
Steem Power has similarities to some games. There are different kind of "powers" that decrease when they are used and they will be replenished automatically after certain period of time.
Steem is the only currency that you can use to buy more Steem Power.
If you think this from the perspective of gamification, players would probably complain that Steem is too simple because it has only three things that can be collected.
We are using "programmable money" (blockchain currencies). Why would we even need 3 tokens and the extra complexity? If you are aiming for social-platform level success, then it must be brain-dead simple. I am not in the lower 99% of the IQ range of the planet, and while I might subconsciously pride myself for my intelligence, I understand the pitfalls of elitist behavior all-too-well. If you make an elitist system then you are aiming for a very small target market. Do we want a reddit for the bitcointalk crowd or do we want a reddit for the millions of users that actually shares the revenue with the users? That's the question here. If you want mass appeal you need to aim for ease of use and simplicity. If you want to be in an elite circle among other elitists who can deal with complexity that most people can't, then you simply won't reach mainstream potential - ever.
I wouldn't say that the complexity is because of elitism. It's because the system needs to have certain incentives in place to function well. If we want to have a blockchain that works without users having to pay fees, we need to have at least two currencies. The system is also highly inflationary which means that there is also very big need for a price stable currency.
I just don't see how it would be possible to design a blockchain that could function as a backend for social media platform with only one currency. We need to have free transactions because users don't want to pay for posting, commenting and voting.
A blockchain with one currency would be certainly more simpler but if it means that system will fail in the long run, it's kinda useless to ponder about it.
It is actually a bit inaccurate to describe it as three tokens. Steem Power can't be transferred so it isn't a token at all. It is just locked Steem. There are other blockchains that allow locking and no one calls those locked coins a different token. Some aspects of how this is being presented could probably be improved but if you look at the web site today, in no sense that I see is the user presented with three tokens.
Well a "share" or "token" is stake in a "company" or "blockchain". So doesn't merkle root come into play with 3 transactions?
You're referring to the 99% aka sheeple.. 1% are making fishers of men.
Just pressed downvote by accident. There seems to be no way to undo this, even couple of seconds after the click.
One more suggestion for fixing then...
After the next hard fork in a few days it will be possible to change votes