Did STEEM Create A New Problem ?
I tend to flip between seeing it all as a worthless Ponzi and being super optimistic like the full-time bloggers that only talk positive about Steem 24/7 despite the fact that Steem has been one of the worst crypto investments on the market. I do try to always keep a skeptical view not getting lost in wishful thinking and I'm not sure about some of the recent developments on the STEEM Blockchain.
Too Easy to Earn STEEM | No Reason To Hold SP
This is basically my main concern. When I started on Steemit it was a huge challenge to earn Steem and the only way to earn more and grow was to Power Up your Steem increasing your own SP. Genuine social engagement also was a great way to grow as comments tended to get upvotes while you got to know more like-minded people on the platform. All this showed some kind of longer-term commitment giving more reasons for others to upvote you while also increasing your own upvote value a bit. The busy Upvotes came along giving more incentive do better as they are linked to the combined SP of all your followers. It made it quite hard for new people who were in it just for the money to get something going on the platform causing a low retention rate. So a real commitment was needed to get something going.
Right now with all the Dapps that hold a lot of SP, it feels completely different and actually way too easy to earn part of the reward pool without the need to have any kind of investment into the platform. Anyone can just create an account (or multiple accounts), post complete useless garbage with 0 engagement and start earning Steem just for a profit without it having any negative impact on their earning power if they just sell it. In fact, going about Steem from an angle of starting a genuine blog putting a lot of time in writing about what truly interests you while powering up is probably the absolute worst way of going about things and getting anywhere.
Formula To Earn on Steemit with a New Account and Minimum SP
Make Daily Actifit post: This takes little to no time, just install the app and track the steps you make on a daily basis and take 1 minute to make the default spam post. There is no point in putting any kind of effort into it creating a custom image since it won't make any difference earnings wise. You get an Upvote from Actifit and earn AFIT Tokens that can be used to buy bigger upvotes.
Play Steemmonsters: Try to get your hands on a Steemmonsters Promo code or invest the 10$ which is actually well worth it as it gives a way to grind out DEC that can be used to get upvotes from @steemmonsters. With a Starter pack and 10-20 minutes of playtime daily it should be easy to earn 200 DEC daily good for a 0.31$+ upvote. Make a quick post on the daily quest on the Splintertalk platform and potentially earn some SPT with it you can sell for Steem on Steem-Engine.
Esteem post: Esteem gives good upvotes every 2 posts if I'm not mistaken regardless of the content while taking 10% cut on the post rewards. You have to make sure to make another shitpost to profit from those also adding all the other tags that potentially give extra tokens that can be sold for Steem.
Drugwars Reply Those that have been playing the Drugwars ponzi still can get upvotes from that account. Instead of having to make a one-click shitpost on your blog it now has moved to post it as a reply on their forum.
Palnet | steemleo | sportstalk | spt | zzan | steemace | battle | ... tags: Using all these tags is pretty much mandatory and you are currently far better off staking these tokens compared to having actual SP Powered Up. Few of these tokens seem to be actually about the community but instead for most, it's just another way to earn on the platform.
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There are many more ways to get upvotes without the need to have any SP whatsoever and from what it looks like there will be plenty more to come in the future.
This trend of being able to earn on Steem without the need to have any SP or real content raises a lot of questions for me. I see more people decreasing the SP by powering down or leasing it out already since there seems to be little reason to actually hold SP. HF21 will likely increase this trend as investors (bid bots) will also have less reason to hold SP . While the selling pressure of Steem inc has been reduced, the selling pressure of the ones who leech just to sell will likely increase.
Even though I'm not selling myself, I do want to do well on Steemit and feel somewhat forced to in a way to also bend my ways a bit to do what's most profitable at the moment. What I always liked about Steemit is that it has been a friendly environment to have a blog and meet like-minded people. You are able to empower yourself while helping out some of the people you really like giving upvotes asking nothing in return. The idea that it's extremely easy for anyone with no commitment to come and earn Steem really worries me as someone who is in it more for the long run.
Solution ?
If dapps would set minimum SP requirements that are linked to the upvotes they give out it would already give more reasons to Hold SP and be a big step forward to combat all the ones that just want to profit from them. Steemmmosnters with the Dec tokens is actually a good example. You can only earn so much as a starting player without investing some into the ecosystem.
Excellent post @constanza and this ...
... is a very clear statement which mirrors my approach as well.
And you don't just make this statement without backing it up by providing some detailed examples. Well done.
Honest and open, here is what has been of concern for me almost from the first few days of electing to "jump in." Others have clearly stated they have not only not chosen to be part of the solution (although they have the means ...), but are a part of the problem ...
One well-known example believes that HF21 will be a big step towards providing some mechanisms for resolution. But will it?
With you, in it for the long haul, I suppose we don't have long to find out.
P.S. While I have the means to do so to a much greater degree, I also have elected to not invest more until I see some of the significant deficiencies of this blockchain addressed ...
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Exactly, I have some more Steem that I bought ready on the exchange but I currently just don't see any reason power it up and not sell it back for Bitcoin. If anything, Steem has by far the most fun investment despite the price drop. I'm hoping HF21 that will include free downvotes won't make this platform a lot more toxic with people getting triggered everywhere if they get downvoted.
We have quite a big an loyal community who want to make it all work and I'm still hoping it's all still just very early on and the code that allows for Steem to become a true success will be cracked some day.
Yes @costanza ...
... that is certainly the hope of a lot of our fellow Steemians.
It is certainly "early days," even after 3 years, so I am mostly at peace with that part.
Getting the coding "right?" Given my perception of the extraordinary difficulty factor, I am less confident of that ...
Overall, I have enjoyed having exchanges with others all over the world, so like you "hanging in" ... 👍
I think, but I'm not certain of course, that this is skewed at present due to over-valuations of some of the tribe tokens (like this one).
With 14000 active SP, I have a 20 cent vote.
With SPORTS, and about 800 STEEM invested, I have a 10000 SPORTS upvote (340,000 SPORTS Vested), and so with SPORTS at .00185 STEEM current, that is an 18.5 STEEM vote, or about $4.5.
That seems way off?!
If/when STEEM rises, obviously the vote will rise with it. Will the SCOT tribes valuations rise also, I'm not too sure.
I agree that there does seem to have been a shift away from the requirement of holding SP, and it is worrying. Would love to know what some of the witnesses think about this.
I continue having doubts on how tribes currently work. At some point (probably sooner than later) the buying will mostly dry up leaving only the sellers and a big daily inflation. Unless there is a clear system in place where tokens are directly linked to a certain Steem value in upvotes (like PAL/DEC) I have a hard time to see it work long term. Something that would probably also be needed is the ability to have closed communities (SMT's will allow that if I'm not mistaken). Once something gets too big it just begs for bad actors especially if there is a very unclear line drawn.
If all tokens were somehow directly linked to Steem in their value, it might help to actually increase the Steem price over time.
No matter what, interesting times are ahead :)
I will be honest and say that with the issues I see with the Trojans and just glut of coins that there needs to be some serious long term thinking on this matter otherwise it's going to have somethings that are going to nail it down right come along......sooner rather than later in this climate imho
Totally agree that one of the biggest fundamental problems with Steem blockchain reward mechanic is that there is really no incentive to hold SP. The tiny bit of curation you can get by holding SP is basically not even worth mentioning, and the increase to 50/50 curation won't change that. As you point out, what you can earn as an author has nothing to do with how much SP you hold. Another fundamental problem is that there is no real sink either (nothing that incentives burning Steem tokens), which actually would help the price way more than an incentive to hold Steem. A start would be Steemit, Inc taking a queue from palnet.io and getting rid of the "promoted" tab, and putting posts that people promote by burning Steem into the "Trending" tab. Maybe if there was some way to know ahead of time how much Steem you needed to burn to get onto the front trending page, people would actually burn steem.
Some kind of Bruning mechanic or real advertisement revenue sharing would be a huge step forward. The Steem blockchain model more than any other puts the inflation so much in your face while for others this is mainly hidden.
It is better to accumulate SP because even on Steemit you will make more on curation than posting junk on the blockchain.
In order to get the curation reward value you can pretty much get instantly for free by making an account without any kind of investment you would to power up 10k+ Steem at least.
Currently Posting Junk >>>>>>> Investing and curating
Maybe but people will not following you and it will be boring to act this way. ;)
That's the problem, most people only really care about post2mine, take away the rewards and 99.9% of the content from this platform would be gone. It's just too easy to earn Steem without any kind of investment right now.
14000 active SP makes about a $1 a day curation for me. If I sold this SP and bought 7 million SPORTS (at .002 STEEM/SPORTS), the value of that vote would be an estimated $85. lol
Maybe but you need to have people that want to buy your sports token that is very risky. ;)
I don't mind if Steem goes down, I'm not selling it anytime soon.
The one thing all these services have in common is Steem. Having Steem is like investing in land.
I honestly don't really care that much about the price myself. The way I look at it right now, all the services give anyone the opportunity to earn Steem without anything of an investment and just sell it. The top trending post right now is a good example. No doubt he's a quality content creator, but looking at the wallet it's clear that the only objective is just to get the $$$ as he's using a service paying 1.5% to convert the post reward into liquid Steem directly to sell them. It just looks to me like that has become the 'winning strategy' on this platform since there is little to no earnings difference when having more SP.
agree, there a days where I scroll my feed and there are 80% spam post /repeating the same stuf day after day, upvoted by the same 10 people day after day, and commented or pushed by the same bots day after day.
Steem is one of the worst performing coins in the top 100 no clue why people are so optimistic about these dapps, when every 2nd dapp create an own ponzi or shitcoin.
I am not seeling any coins yet but I dont plan to buy any of these coins.
Once steem falls out of top 100 it will be a red flag for me
It used to be a lot worse when the Drugwars 1 click image posts were a major part of the content that was posted. I guess the Ponzi aspect is not strong enough (like 1% daily bitconnect) for the ones are completely delusional to get into it while those who are more realistic realize that there is something not 100% right currently. It's somewhat the worst of 2 worlds. If steem drops out of the top 100 it will be indeed a big red flag. There are a lot of good things about this blockchain (real advertisement income, user-friendly, ...) but if the fundamental upvote/mining mechanic is broken it's going to be hard to make everything work.
Yeah now its a lot easier to get recognised and earn something when you join you get your 15SP and now you can rock it in different dapps or communities and earn enough to live off your own steem. It's still not the easiest thing to do but way easier than when I got started and it was only a blogging platform
Exactly, if only there was a good reason to hold on to the Steem that fairly easily can be earned and power it up instead just using the platform as a cash cow. The platform currently incentives making multiple accounts and milking all the upvotes way too much imo.
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