Steem.DAO and the potential after the developers
I should really go to bed but my Steem addiction got the better of me and I have to write a quick post with some thoughts on the newly named Steem.DAO progress update from @blocktrades not long ago. The decision is to build the system on a donation basis and then use the system to decide how it will be funded. Steemit Inc should be donating enough to the startup in order to get to that point at least.
![](https://steemitimages.com/640x0/https://i.imgur.com/nE4rQnh.jpg)
This is a good compromise to go this way and @blocktrades is right that he shouldn't be the one making the decision so leveraging the Steem.DAO seems like a good use case for it. Having said that, I think that the donation system isn't going to provide anywhere close to what is needed in the long run and even in the short-term, it would likely have to rely on some very generous benefactors who believe a lot in Steem.
For the Steem.DAO to be of use it is going to require a steady stream of Steem and through donations, I don't see that happening as it would require people paying with what they already hold and would therefore feel it as an immediate loss, a cost incurred. If it came out of the inflation pool (from any of the source options) it would never pass first into hand and therefore, never out of hand.
It is much like the success of a savings plan that takes an automatic percentage out on payment instead of whatever is left at the end of the month. For most, never seeing that percentage as disposable income means that it has an out of sight, out of mind effect and gets forgotten to accumulate in a savings plan. For those who are trained savers, which path would you recommend to someone getting into savings, struggling to have some left at the end or, putting some away at the start?
The steady stream of Steem needed can't be financed by a few people, it requires a steady stream of donations by a consistent community and as we know, this is highly unlikely to happen in a community that has decided that self-voting and delegation to bidbots is great for the community as a whole. So, who is actually going to donate and, of you aren't why should I? See the problem already?
I do think it will come out of the inflation pool in one way or another pretty soon and likely, a fair bit of it will come from rewards. While content producers might complain now, there are other things that they aren't factoring in with this system that is highly important in my opinion.
Before that, the idea is that the Steem.DAO is going to encourage and finance developers to build various parts for the Steem blockchain. People want diversity of use and availability of development and improvement and this is the way to get it - pay for it. Now, if this all goes to plan, the Steem blockchain will become increasingly valuable as more and more users and consumers will find a home to create and earn as well as content to entertain and learn. Everyone should understand by now that, development is needed.
Next though is that people don't want to pay for that development even though they want to be the ones to benefit from it whether it be through increases in their Steem holdings or access to more interesting and compelling applications and ways to interact. Development benefits all users at all levels, no matter whether contributor, investor, developer or consumer. I think we can agree on that, even if we can't agree on who is funding it. Well technically, we all would be anyway.
But the more important thing that should be considered isn't the funding of the development but, what happens if the development is successful as that is what we are actually aiming for. The point of the entire proposal system is to make Steem more valuable by increasing its ability to satisfy the needs of an expanding community.
Let's pretend for a moment that it does work and Steem is highly valuable, what then?
At some point, it the amounts of value that is being pulled from the chain to fund the development of the chain will no longer be reasonable which would mean that we could lower the draw from the pool to the point that perhaps, it isn't needed at all. But what if we didn't? I tend to look long on crypto and I tend to think that it is more than a way to get rich.
In my last post I wrote about how we are trading what we have of value for worthless fiat. About a year ago I wrote a post that mentioned funding that had been secured for AI research from crypto gains about four months ago I wrote about funding research through Steem and eleven months ago again something related. There are several more at least and the search function sucks on Steem, but do you see where my head is at?
While at some point the Steem.DAO might not be needed that heavily for the development of the blockchain itself, the same system could then be leveraged to fund all kinds of other development funding. Essentially, rather than selling into fiat, we are investing the blockchain into a buyback system of the real world through using a percentage of the inflation to fund research into various sciences or, the building of schools in developing nations. It doesn't really matter what the development is, the community itself would be the driver of the decision making, development through demand.
This is where I see the future strength of Steem as it is able to not only increase in value through community growth and use case but, real-world needs could be met by the community itself through all kinds of funded initiatives that puts highly utilized and valued Steem to work in the exact places the community chooses to place it. That is empowering the community to take responsibility and power the real world which in turn, feeds back into the social use case of Steem loop to improve usage and transactions to increase the ability of the next round of funding.
Steem becomes a true economy and, it includes a mechanism that allows the community to create and support developments that reach out into the real world to solve more and more issues in ways and with reach that no government or centralized company can. Does that have value?
This is the issue through because in order to get to that level of usage, the blockchain and the community has to develop a lot in both technicality and maturity to have the kind of value and values that enable such a thing to happen. That isn't going to be triggered through donations at this point in time because for the most part, if the community could afford to donate Steem to development, there wouldn't be 76,288,412 STEEM sitting on the exchanges.
As I see it, the donation mechanism will fail and soon enough there will be a draw from the inflation pool. This isn't a loss to anyone on the blockchain as it comes from unallocated Steem at that point but, it will lower potential earning for some people. If it works as hoped however, it will make those earnings not only much more valuable, it will provide numerous other opportunities and incentives for the very people who lost out to make more gains. It is about timing, right now code developers are needed to build apps and improve the blockchain but as it improves, they will take a back seat to other kinds of developer. Community developers, education developers, art developers, sports developers, social developers... you know, the contributors.
The infrastructure required to organise and carry them all needs to be created first though. I isn't a loss, but it could be among the most important gains any community has ever attempted to undertake. But hey, I am an idealist - though still not to the point that I believe donations will be enough.
Maybe you are here for the moon - aim a little higher.
Taraz
[ a Steem original ]
Damn it, that wasn't a quick post.
Goodnight.
I'd like Steem to get to a point where the Top 19 witnesses are the ones who are contributing financially to; the Steem Blockchain development, QA of that development and then whatever other projects they're working on.
I'm not sure about the exact math, but a few people have thrown around suggestions that what the top 19 witnesses make per month generously exceeds the required hardware costs.
Many of the top witnesses build apps for Steem, some very important ones at that. That's something all voters should pay attention to. Active developers as witnesses should be rewarded as such people are competent at reviewing code to be deployed at hard forks to boot.
Many users take into consideration the projects that witnesses work on. Myself included. There are quite a few witnesses that are where they are on the list because of the projects that they work on.
But being a witness is more than just building things on Steem or running a curation service. They vote on the forks. The Steemiverse lives and dies by their actions.
I know. And that's why I said active developers tend to be the best witnesses because they're the most competent ones at reviewing code before forks. My actual point was that it's ok for the top witnesses getting paid much more than the cost of running witness servers because they are responsible for so much. It's up to the community to rank them according to how much they accomplish.
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Well, it depends on what language they develop in. The majority of projects here seem to be developed in JavaScript.
You don't have to be a coder necessarily to be a good witness though. The problems with the notoriously bad fork a few months ago were actually known before it went live, but they thought they needed a larger pool of data to really know for sure. In other words, they pushed the fork, knowing that it might, or even likely would, cause problems. A good witness didn't need to know code at that point, they just needed to stand up to Steem and say "No."
Sadly, it was still approved and the witnesses weren't held accountable. I don't know if any major voters re-evaluated their votes based on that, but it made me consider coders far more highly for witness positions, and consider witnesses more carefully.
Sadly, normal users don't have much sway. We'd have to start a campaign for or against a witness and get tons of users together to have any effect.
True as the blockchain is written in C++.
That happened because of the still fairly centralized stake distribution. That's changing but slowly. It was much worse in the beginning.
The majority of voters still have too little stake to vote too many witnesses into the top 20 against the wishes of Steemit Inc. But as I said, that's changing.
Exactly. But I think the situation will be much better after a year or two especially if the price of STEEM remains low, forcing Steemit Inc to sell their stake at a rapid pace to keep paying their expenses (development+full node).
Many top witnesses do... but do all of them? I'm not sure I'd super agree that even the very important apps are more important than quality blockchain development itself... after all, that development would hopefully improve all apps and the user experience of the chain itself.
Not that normal users get much of a say, but I think we're used to rewarding app developers with witness votes, and I have no problem with that... but I do think that should be secondary after 1.) are they excellent at confirming blocks 2.) are they supporting development of the blockchain.
As the stern supply decreases so do their rewards and thete are likely going to be other pressures put on. It is very important to make sure that the witnesses are well enough paid as they protect the chain. I would like to see the rewards go deeper though do maybe the next 20 or 30 get more of a share of thx blocks.
That seems fair... but if the price of Steem increases, their costs aren't likely to increase. I'm sure the price at the moment might be causing some witnesses to just break even, but if we got to a $10 USD/Steem pairing, wouldn't we want to see those profits re-invested back into the platform? While I understand the role of backup witnesses... we probably have 5 times more than we actually need right? I don't think we'd need to worry too much about protecting them if we're spoiled for choice.
It kind of depends how you look at it as essentially the goal would be that the witnesses are professional witnesses meaning, they have to more than break even and, the more people on the platform, the higher the price, the more incentive to 'act poorly' perhaps. You want at least the top 20 to be solid, the top 50 would be better. It is something like when inflation hits 1% in the future, it will be 0.005 Steem a block.
Oh, sorry, I don't think I explained myself well... I'd like us to get to a place where the witnesses who are contributing to the development/QA of the blockchain code are rewarded with a Top 19 spot. It would be entirely opt-in, so they'd manage their own profitability, but we as a community would vote for those making the blockchain better instead of a couple of accounts determining who is and who isn't at the top for reasons unknown.
Maybe it would just be a short term thing that backs off once the blockchain is super solid or the lack of inflation makes it unfeasible.
I do wonder what will happen to Bitcoin once that last block is mined.
Ah okay. I think that in the future, the witness positions will be companies themselves, not individuals but that is s while away.
I have no idea what BTC will do but what happens to all the mining rigs?
I'm assuming those few people are ones that know how much servers cost to run and how much the top 19 witnesses make?
Asking as I only know one of those things XD
I think those few people have made guesstimates... oh, which bit do you know?
How much servers cost (which I guess you know as well). I could probably find out how much witnesses are making but I’m lazy 😅
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Wait... are you a witness? Or are you just good at servers? If you're a witness let me knowwwww...
Not a witness, not game enough, I hate server admin 🤣 I’m not good at server admin it’s just kind of a necessity for other stuff I’m doing.
Posted using Partiko iOS
It certainly wasn’t short but provided great perspective as I also believe that a donation based system will ultimately fail due to funding. There is not way to combat the unintended consequences of gane theory working in a mn ecosystem like this and it will lead to changes in the future. @meno said it best that we should strive for a larger pie for all to pull from instead of protecting our current portion of the pie.
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THe thing that people 'think' is that taking it from the reward pool is taking from their piece of the pie. That is not actually how the inflation pool works however and the percentages are likely to adjust many times over time, just as they have done in the past.
Taking it from inflation, makes it too much like a tax. Meaning subsidizing stuff one may or may not support.
It is a system that allows the community to vote on projects.
I agree on taking the funds from the pool.
I think it is the only way it will get enough finding and even if disks are accepted, I don't think many will actually put significant Steem up for it. It is either nearly everyone donate or, out of the pool.
No, donations won't be enough. All the donation run efforts out there prove that it takes more than donations. Though many of them could be a lot wiser with how they use their donations.
World hunger still exists. World poverty. Wars. Human rights violations, etc.
The only way to fund things indefinitely is to find a way to get a steady stream of income.
But that doesn't mean that the proposed "tax" on the inflationary pool is necessarily the right way to do it. For one thing, funding needs will fluctuate. You'll have a situation similar to government workers, where they have to spend their budget or risk losing it for the next cycle.
There are many options. For example, we could build a voting system for proposed projects, where their funding is allocated based on whether or not they are approved by the Steem community.
I think that's why this proposed solution is perfect. We can work on developing the very system that will decide the best way to fund it.
I think that donations should be part of it, particularly donations towards specific development goals, because that's all voluntary. Sure, it probably won't support that much development, but it will give us somewhere to start, and we can start getting lists for people to see what is being developed, and what needs to be developed, so they can decide for themselves what to do.
If we did choose to go with a donation only system though, I think some people would surprise you. While it's hard to support things on donations alone, it's not impossible. There are many projects run on donations, including scientific research, and development. Open source is done for the most part through donations of time and resources.
This is part of the system afaik.
No, I meant that the amount taken from the pool would fluctuate based on approved projects.
So, if a project needed X money up front, it might be taken from a slush fund, but also needed Y amount per month, the amount taken from the pool would be increased based on the proposal.
It could flex but I think they are also able to send excess to null and lower inflation
It depends on how it's set up. A lot of things depend on how things are set up. That's one reason why we couldn't really just decide on some amount of the pool when users don't even have a list of things that need to be done or any idea of how much is needed.
It's kinda putting the cart before the horse.
We only know that we need funds, not how much. We also don't know how we're going to distribute them. We don't yet have everything set up to do that.
Users actually know very little about Steem development. It almost feels like that's intentional. Part of why people got so pissed off and this whole thing ended up happening. Steemit's just so closed off.
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