Poloniex Deposit/withdraw issues, and the need for more on/off ramps.

Recap on withdraw issues

On the 19th of June @poloniex disabled deposits and withdraws, giving no reasons or notifications.

This continued until the 5th of July when they came back online for 8 days. They where then taken off again for 6 days this time with the message we can currently see.

STEEM is currently under maintenance or experiencing wallet/network issues. Deposits and withdrawals will remain disabled until a solution is found, which may require an update from the STEEM team. Any updates must be tested and audited before enabling.

It again came online, for 6 days before 9 off and again 4 on.

That brings us up to date with transactions disabled since the 8th of august, 11 days from the time of this post.

Here's an informative graph from @penguinpablo

source post

Updates from steemit's side?

I don't like to spam my followers, so it is with some annoyance that I have to use up one of my posts with what is basically a post looking for info. I tried searching posts from the last month but all that I found was posts about people unable to transfer to poloniex.

What I am looking for is someone from steemit's side to give an update from their point of view. Particularly as the message from Poloniex implies that there might be a problem on the steemit's side. This is highly unlikely as there is no problems with transfers elsewhere, most notably bittrex where deposits and withdraws are working fine.

I also tried searching posts by notable devs like @ned. And I asked on steemit chat and on steemspeak on discord. I got some helpful answers from @fyrstikken who believes the problems are solely on poloniex's side and they may even be insolvent. Unfortunately I think we had some crossed wires so the discussion was ended before I could get more info.

Why is this important?

While I understand the opinion you often hear of don't worry about it, we will get more finance ramps as Steemit continues to grow, as evidenced by the ever increasing user numbers"

Thats all well and good but any product in the tech space, which steemit is, is at risk of standing still too long. And of course developments to the platform are the most important aspect, I think we need to realize one of the main draws to steemit, what makes us different than any other blogging platform, is the fact that money is involved. But unless a user can get value (STEEM, SBD) on and off the site, then money is not involved. We could quickly become Myspace to a Facebook. There are at least 2 similar ideas to steem been worked on on the ethereum network.

Poloniex is the biggest exchange that trades STEEM, while bittrex is quickly catching up in steem volume, even with no transfer options there is nearly twice the volume on poloniex than on bittrex. Which means whether we like it or not we still have to engage with them, for now.

As we all know Poloniex's support is nearly non-existent but I got to believe that there is at least a way for the dev team of a top 25 cryptocurrency to open a dialog with them. Has this happened? What were the outcomes? etc

Of course if a dialog could not be opened that tells us something as well and would be more incentive for people to stop using poloniex.

More Finance Ramps

Whether the current problems are sorted out or not I think it is clear we need more options. What would be of the biggest help is a way to trade STEEM into a FIAT currency, say USD or EUR.

The most likely option in this regard would be Kracken as it has working relationships with banks and has shown willingness to add smaller assets. For example it has XLM, MLN and GNO all of which have lower market caps than STEEM.

Now I know Kracken has had problems themselves, but most of them seem to revolve around trading and access to the site at high loads. If used as a place to cash in or cash out I have heard little complaints and have none myself. Withdraws to my bank are done the same business day.

I have heard rumours that to get listed on an exchange requires a fee. I think it would be well worth it to facilitate investment into Steemit. It could be paid from the daily issuance of the blockchain i.e paid by all, or by a small tax on the large accounts. As a semi-large account I for one would be happy with this.

TLDR

What on earth is going on at poloniex?, have we had any updates from steem devs about what they know? and let's try to get STEEM listed on Kracken