[Discussion Post] What can we do - as a community - to get STEEM into the top-10 rankings?

Can STEEM be a top-10 cryptocurrency again?

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Last month, @stephenkendall posted Please help to promote Steem and let's get it back into the Top 10 again where it belongs.!!.

I was here when STEEM was ranked at #3, so the title of the post definitely resonated with me, but to be honest, my reflexive response was to think, "Yeah, right. Wishful thinking."

Since that post, I have been thinking some more about whether it would be possible to get STEEM back into the top-10, and while I still think it would be a huge struggle, I have become slightly less pessimistic.

You can't travel from A through Z without passing through B, C, and D, so how would STEEM advance from it's current @officialcmc rank of 131 into the top-10?

According to a toy spreadsheet model, STEEM's rank needs to advance by about 12% every 30 days in order to get to the top-10 in two years. Here's what that looks like.

^{STEEM's 2-year path to the top-10}

One thing I'm sure of, is that if we're going to accomplish that goal, more needs to be done than merely promoting the token. Certainly, promotion is a necessary part of the puzzle, but in my opinion it is nowhere near sufficient to support a climb to the top-10.

That is a hard row to hoe, especially considering that every other token is also trying to advance its own rank and value.

So the purpose of this post is to discuss the question,
What can we do - as a community - to get STEEM into the top-10 rankings?

As my contribution, I'll offer some thoughts of my own, including the following suggestions:

1. Large stakeholders and witnesses make a clear and convincing public statement against future censorship and stake seizures.
2. Return to using the SPS for funding of development and marketing - with a twist.
3. Make it easier for authors to burn part of their rewards (or direct them to the SPS) and for curators to identify the authors who are doing so.
4. Improve the web site, add web sites, add mobile applications

Here is a little bit more about each of those concepts:

Large stakeholders and witnesses make a clear and convincing public statement against future censorship and stake seizures.

The intent here is not to renew the argument over what happened in the past. We are where we are.

But, we must recognize that the things that happened earlier in the year have a continuing influence on investor perception. To mitigate the negative perception, I propose that witnesses and large stakeholders make a widely communicated public statement against censorship and stake seizures except in the cases of clearly defined and identifiable attacks against the blockchain. In the cases where either of these actions are deemed necessary defensive measures, there should be a well-defined and transparent appeal process.

On a personal note, I've been here for more than 4 years, and even I am still abstaining from witness voting after the events of this year. On censorship, with the way Twitter and Facebook have been assaulting their users, these past months should have been a bonanza for Steem. It was a disaster that I couldn't honestly tell my friends that they could come to Steem and get away from the censorship. Confidence must be restored.

In addition to issuing such a statement, witnesses and stakeholders could make a show of good faith in two ways:

• Support a reduction in the number of witness votes per user or an increase in the total number of witnesses that contribute to the consensus mechanism.

  • According to Centralized Decentralization: Does Voting Matter? Simple Economics of the DPoS Blockchain Governance, with 20 witnesses and 17 required for consensus, the optimal takeover resistance is found when votes per account is set to somewhere around 4.

• Consider decensoring the @penguinpablo account.

  • I have no idea who this account owner is, but the account has a history of posting transactional information about Steem and a competing chain. To the best of my knowledge, however, those posts have all been informational and not promotional. Additionally, even after being censored, the account owner has continued to hold a large stake and to support content creators on the Steem chain. Decensoring this account would send a small but reassuring signal to content producers who are worried about censorship.

Again, none of this is meant to re-litigate past decisions, but merely to recognize that past actions continue to influence current perceptions, and that circumstances have changed over the course of the last half-a-year.

Return to using the SPS for funding of development and marketing - with a twist

From my perspective, a main problem with the Steem Proposal System (SPS) in the past has been a lack of accountability. No one actually tracked that funds were spent as promised, and it became a personal piggy bank for a few stakeholders.

There is another decentralized business model that we're all familiar with, the corporation. Corporations solve this accountability problem by establishing boards of directors and CEOs. I propose that we do the same thing with the SPS. We, the SP holders are the board of directors, so I propose that we use the Steem communities to establish an SPS steering mechanism and begin by hiring a CEO for the SPS who will be responsible to recommend for or against proposals, based upon how they fit into an overall strategy and to see that the various proposals actually deliver on their objectives.

The CEO could be paid out of the SPS, and their bonus could be tied to the price/rank of STEEM in order to align incentives.

The SPS should fund the same types of activities for the blockchain that any other decentralized corporation engages in, including but not limited to:

• Marketing
• Business development
• Technology R&D

The SPS CEO would be responsible to see that these needs are fulfilled (and yes, some of those funds can and should go to Steemit, who- at present - does the lions' share of development)

Make it easier for authors to burn part of their rewards (or direct them to the SPS) and for curators to identify the authors who are doing so.

I have long advocated for authors to have the ability to set their own author/curation reward split, whereby new authors could use higher curation rewards to compete with established authors and established authors would be able to use their existing popularity to support a higher percentage of author rewards.

The nice thing is that an approximation of this is already available. Authors can adjust their reward ratio to attract curators by "burning" a percentage of author rewards. If we want the rank of Steem to increase by 12% per month, one mechanism to accomplish this is to reduce the supply. An easy way to reduce the supply is by burning rewards.

Why would an author want to do this?

1. To increase the value of the rewards that they do receive.
2. For favorable treatment from curators who give preferential treatment to authors who burn rewards.

As a community, I propose that we encourage this behavior. To do this, an easy way for voters to find posts that are burning rewards also needs to be established.

Improve the web site, launch new web sites, add mobile applications

Not much needs to be said about this. I'm sure we can all imagine improvements that we'd like to see. Personally, I don't use mobile apps much, but they're important to others. Here's a short wish list that I'd like to see on the desktop:

• General improvements in look, feel, and usability
• Side by side editor/preview pane
• Post templates, to include the saving of beneficiary settings and categories/tags
• Beneficiary rewards in replies
• When posting in communities, set a small default beneficiary setting to community owners
• The long-awaited Tron wallet enhancement
• Simplified tipping
• Improve search and filtering capabilities
• Simplify mechanism for burning rewards or assigning them to the SPS

Of course, this applies not just to Steemit's development work, but also to supporting other developers in the Steem ecosystem.

Conclusion

So, in the end, can STEEM once again be a top-10 cryptocurrency? I think it's possible, but it would take a concerted effort and it would involve all facets of the blockchain and the community.

Are we up to the challenge? Please comment below with your thoughts on how to raise STEEM into the @officialcmc top-10.

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Thank you for your time and attention.

As a general rule, I up-vote comments that demonstrate "proof of reading".

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Steve Palmer is an IT professional with three decades of professional experience in data communications and information systems. He holds a bachelor's degree in mathematics, a master's degree in computer science, and a master's degree in information systems and technology management. He has been awarded 3 US patents.