A healthy community discussion: Abuse via tokenized proxy?

Over the last few weeks I have been keeping my eye on various behaviors on Steem and now that the worst of the bidbot abuse has been cleared away, attention has fallen on other points. One of these is where a tribe token is used to buy votes that will arrive in Steem. After getting into a conversation about a post I downvoted, it was mentioned that this is one of if not the most successful SCOT tribes because it has attracted a lot of stake behind it however, is it?

I wonder this because as far as I can see, there is very little value in the tribe itself other than being a vehicle where to post and then use the native token to purchase Steem votes from the stake that hangs around there. Doesn't this mean that the only value of the tribe is as a gateway to get access to Steem the pool?

This is fine in and of itself, but while the native token can be treated independently from Steem, once a post attracts votes in Steem, it falls under the scrutiny of Steem users who have the ability to direct Steem toward or away from the post using their own stake.

What I wonder is how many of the tribes have value if there was no Steem stake involved, as it would be this that is a litmus test to see if the use case and value proposition is going to hold up as an independent community. Having said that, I think many of the coming applications will be given a boost by stake in the startup phases, but eventually they will have to be able to stand on their own two feet and offer value that their users are willing to consider as valuable enough to buy if a token, or use and have advertising pay for the overheads.

An example of an application that started with some stake backing and then transformed to a standalone community on Steem is Splinterlands, and even the name change from Steemmonsters is indicative of the quest to be independent, even though it is still attached to Steem. This should and I believe will happen more and more to the point that Steem-based application will have users who will never really know of or see Steem at all other than perhaps a line at the bottom of a webpage that says, Powered by Steem.

While most tokens in the crypto industry have very little utility if any other than a target for pump and dumps, eventually the projects that are able to add use case and therefore user base will hold the majority of the value. The great thing about Steem is that these applications and communities can be owned and built upon Steem and through the tokenization of the projects, can have highly independent and controllable environments that can offer a massive range of user experience, in the same way the internet does already.

They can distribute their native tokens in any way they chose, however when it comes to the distribution of the Steem pool, it is Steem stakeholders who have the final say on where that value moves. This has to be considered when votes are cast in STEEM, even if it is not a consideration when casting in another token that utilizes the Steem blockchain.

When it comes to the value of a token, if the only utility it has is to sell it for a vote in another token, the token itself has very little value at all by itself. A SCOT tribe token getting sold for STEEM on Steem-Engine is different to paying for a vote in Steem because one is a direct transaction between two accounts, the other draws on the Steem pool that is open to negotiation by all community members for seven days.

While I do not have answers on what is right or wrong, the cleanup that has taken place over the last few weeks has meant that previously hidden and ignored actions are coming into the spotlight, getting attention and being discussed. For the longevity of Steem the ecosystem, i believe that this is a good thing and while the process might be uncomfortable, the resolution of challenges will help provide a great deal more value to the ecosystem over time.

The long-term health of Steem should be the aim for all investors and that outcome requires active thought and development of the community, the sub-communities and the entire technical infrastructure to be able to support scalability and hopefully, growth of the user base and the economy of Steem.

Taraz
[ a Steem original ]