Steemit.com Is Not The Decentralized Platform You Think It Is
Since joining Steemit last May, I have seen, and in fact been a part of the confusion over Steemit's status. Some people have and do (myself included) believe that the website is a decentralised network.
Let's clear this up right here and now; it is not.
Well that was a short post....
OK, let me elaborate.
The Impossible Likeness Of Being
The cryptocurrency known as Steem, sits atop of the Graphene blockchain. Blockchain technology, by it's very nature is decentralised (to a point).
However this has led to much confusion in the Steemit community, because whilst Steem is a decentralised cryptocurrency; Steemit.com or rather the company Steemit inc. is very much a centralised organisation.
This is because Steemit inc. is a company incorporated in the United States of America; thus on the incorporation documents it will have the name of the shareholders, and the "people of influence", and guess what?
Your name isn't on there!
What??? I thought holding SP meant I was a shareholder?
Nope, the only thing that makes you a shareholder of a company, is having your name on the incorporation documents, stating that you are. Or of course, if you buy some shares from a shareholder, or that are publicly offered on a stock exchange.
Having Steem Power makes you a stakeholder in Steemit; however so does visiting the site and reading articles without voting; or any other kind of interaction you have with the site.
The only thing that will make you a shareholder in Steemit, is for you to obtain some actual shares; got it? Good.
Steemit.com owned by Steemit inc. will never be a decentralised platform; why? Because in order for it to do so, Steemit inc would have to give up all rights to the IPs surrounded Steemit, and that's not going to happen, not necessarily because there is no willing from the Steemit owners, but rather an issue of profit, loss and taxation.
Reality Bites
Being an incorporated company in the good ol' US of A, one can safely assume that they pay tax, and stick to all the various corporate regulations that are required of a commercial entity operating in the States.
The website (at the last time of checking), generates 1.2 million Steem a day, and then allocates that Steem in the form of voting power. How much voting power you have, is determined by how much Steem Power you hold.
Now of course, Steem has a dollar value, so Steemit is a money printing machine, which means that there are profits (and losses) to consider. Trying to build a stucture whereby Steemit inc. was not breaking corporation law, in a decentralised environment would in my opinion, be impossible.
Apart from the legal mess that would ensue from dissolving the company whilst still trying to claim it was solvent. We have the reality of the fact that decentralisation would probably lead to complete chaos within the Steemit structure.
Blockchain Forever
The wonderful fact of the matter, is that Steem is a decentralised currency, and it sits atop of an open source blockchain. There is nothing stopping anybody from building apps and software that takes advantage of that, and in fact we have already seen this to some extent.
MASSIVE RECORD SCRATCH!!
Woah, wait just a cotton-pickin-minute there. Strictly speaking Steem is not decentralised, Steem cannot be forked (have the code changed) without express permission of Steemit inc. Hitherto (love that legal word), the Steem token remains the intellectual property of Steemit inc.
So, erm yeah, I was about to write about how the currency Steem being decentralised was the real winner here. Steemit was the trailblazer, and others will follow to utilise Steem in new, wonderful and previously unseen ways.
That of course may still happen, however, as long as Steemit inc. holds the intellectual property rights to Steem, and as long as Steemit.com can produce Steem at will. The actual currency will remain, for all intents and purpose, centralised.
Does all of this matter? Well it matters to the people it matters to, and to others it doesn't. I personally am somewhere in between. I have done quite nicely out of Steemit and still want to see it succeed. However at the same time, I'm aware some of these issues may prove to be counterproductive to the overall development of Steem the currency.
I don't see any change coming anytime soon, and in my honest opinion, I feel this is just another reason why Steemit will ultimately be replaced by something that takes the basic principles of the site, and improves it.
Cryptogee
WHAT DO YOU RECKON? HAD YOU ALREADY FIGURED THIS OUT OR ARE YOU SHOCKED AND APPALLED AT HOW WRONG YOU WERE? AS EVER LET ME KNOW BELOW.
You seem to be conflating the STEEM currency or the Steem Blockchain with a specific piece of open-source software developed by Steemit, Inc.
Steemit Inc does not own the blockchain, nor do we control it.
I agree however as the largest holder of STEEM, Steemit Inc (and it's employees) do hold the largest influence (express or implied) over STEEM and it's Witness composition. Not necessarily a bad or good thing.
They also own the Steem IP, look up in the whitepaper where it says that no fork of the Steem token can be done without the express permission of Steemit inc.
The blockchain maybe decentralised, however Steem is not.
Cg
At no point in the article, did I say Steemit owns the blockchain. I said Steemit owns the IP for the Steem token; which is true, right?
Cg
Incorrect for two reasons:
The license on steemd that has generated the controversy lately has nothing to do with Steemit; Steemit does not own all the IP in the repo any more than GNU owns the IP for Linux. We don't have a CLA, so the non-staff contributors remain rightsholders.
Anyone can use the blockchain without using the software covered by the license at issue. You can write your own wallet and many have. I hope someone writes their own p2p node, too.
OK, let me ask you this; could another website say called Washit.com, come along, gain a community of thousands, and those thousands of people decide in whatever way they decide, to fork the Steam currency as it is now.
Is that possible? If not; why?
Thanks
Cg
Absolutely it is possible. Nobody owns the blockchain.
Not according to you on the conversation I took this screen shot from below..
So I guess you could stay in Beta forever and use the same excuse.
It seems @smooth both agrees and disagrees with me, as he has flagged this post.
original link https://steemit.com/steem/@demotruk/petition-to-demand-steem-be-made-open-source
Cg
@cryptogee
You are conflating the Steem Blockchain with the
steemdimplementation of that consensus protocol.It's all very complicated; and therein lies the problem; mass adoption will never happen with such confusing matters surrounding Steem and Steemit.
(I have just noticed this post was not posted when I originally wrote it 2 months ago.
Cg
In theory, one could write a clean-room implementation of steemd that follows "the protocol". Certainly would like to see the license change though.
I'm not quite technologically enough minded to fully understand that statement. Are you saying that another Steemit could be written that follows the same protocols of the current site (i.e. creating lots of Steem each day to allocate voting rights)?
I can't see the licensing changing for as long as Steemit.com is owned by Steemit inc.
Cg
I'm saying that one could write their own version of "steemd" from scratch, not using any code from Steemit, but it could be a functioning witness on the current chain (that follows all the rules). You could license it with a more free license and Steem would be truely free.
So would that solve the issue of Steem being a protected IP owned by Steemit inc?
Cg
It would be a solution yes. It would take some work, but not necessarily too difficult. I believe graphene is open-source. You could start from there.
Right I see, yes, as far as I can tell the graphene blockchain is open source, so I guess it would be building it up from the ground.
Difficult, but not impossible; in fact, I wouldn't be surprised if someone was doing it right now!
Cg
What makes you think Steemit Inc owns all the IP to
steemd? We have no CLA.I don't know what CLA is, and I said Steemit inc owns the IP to Steem the cryptocurrency.
Cg
@cryptogee Outside of the implementation of
steemd, there is no other IP to STEEM the cryptocurrency. You seem to be confused.Without a CLA, Steemit Inc doesn't even own all the IP to
steemd. There are no rights assignments to Steemit Inc from outside contributors.Hey CG,
Hope you're well. I think you're mistaken on this one. I'll writing my perspective on this in post shortly.
Hi Nanzo,
I think you'll find I'm not :-) There's a former witness in the comment section who 100% agrees with me.
Some of the info in this post has been lifted directly from the whitepaper...
However, I humbly await your repost.
Cg
Might not get the time to write an article...
A couple of points for a start,
The fact that STEEM cannot be cloned with permission, does not mean STEEM blockchain itself is not decentralised. It just means it is not fully opened source.
Another minor point...
STEEM's inflation rate has been changed to 9.5% pa. Many seemed to have missed this, STEEM is a lot more scarce than it was previously. Also the website doesn't generate STEEM it's generated from the blockchain.
Also the Whitepaper is now woefully out-of-date... making it very difficult for people to keep up with where we're at including myself!!
Yes, however the website draws from the blockchain, so doesn't that amount to the same thing. Could I for instance, develop an app that drew generated Steem from the blockchain in the same manner as Steemit?
Yup, so you can't blame people for telling it like they see it.
I get very turned off when an idea can't be explained to me in simple terms, it usually signifies a badly thought out, or incomplete idea, or worse yet, an idea that is not fully understood by the people implementing it.
Cg
You mean something like the eSteem app?
Don't force our hand Steemit inc!
We would absolutely welcome an alternate implementation.
Interesting post, congratulations.
excellent piece.
I'd expect some people to get in a fuss because it's not fully decentralized - which could be reason for really thinking about why decentralization has been epitomized as the favorable ideology.
interesting, having thought about it like that - there's been such huge push in this crypto space for decentralization as the end-all-be-all - though how is such a one-sided extreme statement any better than total centralization? at the end of the day, they're both extreme ideologies on contrasting ends of the spectrum - neither better nor worse than another really, just different states of form suitable for different points in evolution - the ultimate, perhaps being a harmonious balance between the two...
ok, that ended spiraling out into this:
https://steemit.com/philosophy/@rok-sivante/decentralization-fever-the-path-to-utopia-or-just-another-fundamentalist-ideological-mindf-ck
You make some interesting points, and have got me reading these comments again, there is a lot of confusion surrounding this issue still...
Cg
There is a few things that will have to happen in order for a blog platform to be completely decentralized. First and foremost, it will not be a centralized and controlled dot com. Just the domain name alone raises a red flag because a .com can be seized by the US government without any due process. It’s happened before, and it will happen again. If SteemIt violates even the most basic rules which are all bendable of course they are toast. So, with that in mind a truly decentralized blog platform is going to contain a decentralized domain name not a dot com.
Second thing that I am not sold on is how comments and blogs can be edited after they have been submitted. Ok maybe I am missing something or do not understand the implementation here, but it seems that all our content is stored in regular SQL databases and the actual currency runs alongside the application in parallel. If our content was stored in a blockchain then it would be unchangeable.
And third flag is how spam is being controlled. Where is the excessive spam, porn and other unwanted nonsense? See this is where things get interesting with blockchain because it’s hard to stop spam unless some kind of central authority is screening or organizing the incoming data before its added to the blockchain. Otherwise it’s probably just going into a SQL database and getting flagged as spam because people vote it down.
Finally, USA is not proving to be a blockchain friendly country. The regulations alone are already pushing developers overseas. Americans may want decentralized platforms but truly decentralized platforms are not going to be accepted in the United States.
So what should we do?
What can we do? Apart from be aware that unlike a shareholder of a company, you have no say in the running of the company. Also unlike a decentralised cryptocoin, Steem can be forked at any time by Steemit inc, so I guess; be careful about putting all your crypto eggs in one basket.
Cg
thanks input
Hum. :(
This post contains many basic factual inaccuracies, and I encourage those of you who voted for it to re-evaluate your voting criteria in the future.
I'd be less concerned about people voting on factually inaccurate content, then getting the correct communication out there.
Maybe if factually inaccurate perceptions (that many people have) made it to the trending page, there would be more of a concerted effort sort out some communication and marketing.
It cannot be under-estimated how little people understand how STEEM works today (myself included!)...
Keeping the Whitepaper up-to-date would be a good starting point.
BINGO, my friend. Wish I had 2 upvotes for your explanation.
Tell us what those inaccuracies are, and if proved right, I'll post an "I was wrong" post.
Cg
How about instead of telling us we're all wrong, making a post explaining things like this. Because saying something has factual inaccuracies; without explain what those inaccuracies are, is not very helpful, and comes across as you saying "move on, nothing to see here."
Cg