The State Of The Steemit
What other delightful way to spend one hour of a lazy, sunny, albeit winterish, Sunday morning, than to write a few bits about your favorite blockchain-based social media network (that would be Steemit, of course)? Well, there aren't many other ways I can think of, to be honest.
Oh, wait, is there any other blockchain-based, fungible-tokens-backed, dollar-pegged-coins-rewarding, delegated-proof-of-stake-managed, really-working social network out there? Ups, I guess not. So it's jackpot baby: Steemit it's both my favorite blockchain-based social network AND the only one. I feel so lucky, damn!
Hardfork 16 Consequences
Everybody and their mothers waited for the big dumpening to happen and for the price of Steem to go below $0.10. For reasons beyond my limited, human comprehension, this didn't happen. At the moment of writing this article, Steem was trading for $0.16 after holding steady between $0.24 and $0.17 for the last two weeks.
That can mean any of the following:
- whales aren't dumping everything, which means the platform is still relevant for them
- Steem is becoming an attractive investment for crypto-speculators, who are considering even the $0.15-0.20 level a good buying point
- somebody from the Steemit ecosystem is holding / hiding significant amounts of Steem in exchanges and throttles the price
The last one is a bit conspiracy-like, but it may be true, who knows?
Another interesting consequence of the hardfork is the lowered inflation. The SP reserves aren't growing as fast as they used to. I personally see this as an incentive to write more, to take action somehow. It's a good thing for the platform because it makes a bit clearer from where the money comes. If money keeps coming from inflation, out of thin air, Steemit is staying dangerously close to the Ponzi scheme club, so that's not good.
The equihash algorithm for mining proved to be an interesting approach and, for a few days, I was able to mine. But then a bug in a third-party library downgraded the algorithm to the old SHA256 (same as BTC). That brought back the infamous mining queue dominated by only a handful of players (allegedly using GPU or ASICS hardware). From what I understand by perusing Github, there is a fix in the workings and that should make equihash available again. Well, it happens.
New Content Types: Sports and NSFW
During the last few weeks, Steemit witnessed the rise of two new content types: sports (mainly bets, as far as I understand) and NSFW (or porn, if you prefer). I'm agnostic to both, so to speak, but I do understand that there is a wide audience for each of them. From that point of view, it's again a sign of growth.
In my opinion, porn will benefit the platform once payments using Steem/SBD can be done easily in other places. Adoption is slow and difficult in any community, so I think it would be much more effective to make payments available in Steem in "traditional" porn hubs, than trying to grow a new NSFW community inside Steemit. That also creates other problems, like clearly separating content based on age, etc.
Maturing apps: SteemConnect and Busy
I had the privilege to be an alpha tester for busy.org and I have to say I'm impressed. They did an amazing job at the user interface level. Also, the rise of SteemConnect is probably the most important thing that happened in the app ecosystem after the Hardfork 16 (and in a long time, if you ask me).
SteemConnect opens the door for third party app makers to integrate Steem into their projects as easy as using OAuth or, I don't know, Sign In With Facebook (if that sounds more familiar to you). The only drawback - which isn't really a drawback, just a feature which hasn't been yet implemented - is that you cannot make transactions using SteemConnect. If / when that will be available, I expect to see I surge in new apps on the Steem blockchain.
Increased Adoption
To my huge surprise, the other day I got a comment from a user called @unipsycho. The name resonated with me, because it used the be the nickname of a long time blogging friend (long ago like in 6-7 years ago). And yes, it was him! Not only he found Steemit at the same time with me (October 2016) but he also started some side projects. The most interesting of all is SteemWriter, you can check out the first announcement here.
For me, this encounter proves that blogging veterans, or at least people with experience in creating and maintaining moderately big sites, are joining Steem. The platform is certainly becoming more and more attractive and the content is becoming more and more mature as well.
So, if I would have to sum it up, I'd say: Steemit is doing rather well, for, you know, a lazy, sunny, albeit winterish Sunday morning.
I'm a serial entrepreneur, blogger and ultrarunner. You can find me mainly on my blog at Dragos Roua where I write about productivity, business, relationships and running. Here on Steemit you may stay updated by following me @dragosroua.
https://steemit.com/~witnesses
Great article! I also feel that Steemit is maturing and getting better with time. It's the most fun I had online in a long time (social media wise). I'm a little jealous you had a chance to try out Busy.org. I'm looking forward to that one!
Well, did you sign up for their mailing list? I'm talking busy.org. They will roll out new users every month, as I understand, so you should be close.
O yes, I did a long time ago. It said it registered successfully but I have not received any email from them. I just assumed the newsletters would start in Q1 2017.
Hang in there :)
I concur - Let's see more apps integrated with Steem Connect!
I have something on the back of my mind for weeks now, let's see if I'll have the time as well.
Nice Article! Easy and fun to read, Go Steemit!
Thanks :)
Great update dragosroua, its been very interesting watching the steem trading since the hardfork and as well, seeing some growing wealth in that trading and steem price. Good for everyone who's writing and believing in steem.
Thanks so much for the mentioning Steem Writer, I'm been working very hard on it and really enjoying using it now, as well as many others.
I'll have to dig into steemconnect further as I tried to set it up but didn't have success just yet, as I'd like to use it now to connect steemwriter and another project I'm working on to handle the security more easily. Great to hear about busy.org as well, I'm excited to see it myself. Thanks!
All the best with integrating SteemConnect with Steem Writer. If I have any time to experiment with it as well, I'd drop you a message. Have a good one :)
I am absolutely certain that this is very helpful to the converted! I tend to speed read and then read properly. I got to here: "The equihash algorithm for mining proved to be an interesting approach and, for a few days, I was able to mine. But then a bug in a third-party library downgraded the algorithm to the old SHA256 (same as BTC)" - where does one start to educate oneself on this because it is more than obvious that a giraffe would have more understanding than I!?
Some direction would be most welcome.
Thank you in anticipation.
A good way to familiarize yourself with how Steemit works is to read the White Paper. There is a menu on the right, click on the hamburger icon, and you will find there a link to the white paper. Take your time, the document is long and if you have questions after that, I'd be happy to answer you here. Just leave a comment with a specific question. Good luck :)
Ok, many thanks. I have read the white paper but in my way as opposed to thoroughly, I will have to do those sections at a leisurely pace. Thank you again for taking time out to reply. Much appreciated.
steemit,a cada dia se surpreendendo
si, puedes decir eso de nuevo :)
Thank you for the article! I wish you prosperity and steemit!
Thank you and wishing that prosperity back to you as well :)
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