Introduction:

Steem is a crypto-currency with a social media platform to generate its currency. Unlike precious metals, Steem has no residual value; it is simply a ledger of numbers created out of an idea. In order for any currency to succeed, it needs to be trusted by the masses. If trust is lost, there is nothing left to give Steem its value.

According to the Steem Whitepaper, it seems that Steem is generated at 100% per year. 90% of that is re-distributed to content creators. If I am correctly interpreting what I have read, then if 1 person contributes posts the 1st year and 2 people contribute post in the 2nd year, then the reward pool has grown roughly proportional to the number of contributors and the rewards will be about the same in each year. However, if the number of contributors outstrips the growth rate of Steem, then as the number of contributors grows, the rewards will be proportionately less for each contributor. What this means is that those who discovered Steem early on and began contributing work had less competition and more chances of being rewarded than they do today.

Let's do some math:
If 100 people were Steemians prior to Hard Fork 19 (HF19) and each of them had 40 votes, that would mean that there were 100 X 40 = 4,000 votes to be distributed to 100 people. I should think that chances are real good that each person would somehow manage to get around 40 votes per day. Also, because each of those 100 people voting are all new, there will be a lot of equality between them and each vote received will be rather close to the votes being given. Overall a pretty fair system it would seem.

The problem:

People new to Steem see the whales and dolphins making a lot of money and aspire to reach those same lofty positions. However, after a while they realize that making 0.001 Steem per post isn't going to get them anywhere very fast. Even earning 1 Steem per day will only get them 365 Steem by the end of a year. That won't even get them a vote slider! To earn 500 Steem will take nearly 2 years! And to make matters worse, as new Steemians come on board, it gets harder and harder to earn rewards because the reward pool is not growing at the same rate as the membership is. On top of that, we have HF19 that reduced the number of votes down to 10 votes per day at full power. Of course those who have tons of SP will generally want to vote for someone else who has tons of SP so that their curation rewards will be maximized. We also have a lot of self-voting going on which reduces the number of outgoing votes and the chances of actually picking up a vote from someone other than yourself, especially if you are a minnow.

We can see that it is impossible for a minnow starting out today to make any appreciable gains without the support of dolphins and whales. Out of desperation, many minnows and redfish begin stalking the bigger fish in hopes of catching their attention; often getting negative attention due to their inappropriate behaviours.

One whale came up with the brilliant idea that he can actually earn easy money by selling his votes. Others see the genius behind that idea and follow suit. The only problem with this is that it defeats the original idea of this being a social media platform! Instead of people reading the content of others and upvoting based on the quality of the content, we now have many who post anything and simply buy votes! The site has become a free-for-all with SPAM and garbage being voted on by bots.

Those very early adopters have been able to amass a great deal of Steem Power (SP) and since SP determines rewards and control over changes to the system, the entire operation is controlled by a small handful of people. They realize that the system is rigged in their favour and they don't want to change it and lose any of that control, nor the money that comes with it. This, however, is short-sighted thinking. By retaining all that control and keeping the status quo, the platform will never reach the critical mass required to become a commonly used currency. If Steem was allowed to grow to the point where one could purchase practically anything with it without the need to convert it to fiat currency, the long term effect will be that these early adopters will have gained far more than they will if Steem never reaches that critical mass.

The following link is a very good article about self-voting and that same short-term thinking that is hurting the Steem platform:
https://steemit.com/steemit/@denmarkguy/about-the-whole-self-upvoting-debate-let-s-examine-the-bigger-perspective

Edited to included this post in my article as well. It has some good discussion in its replies too.
https://steemit.com/steem/@liberosist/idea-rethinking-the-voting-power-system-for-a-better-steem-network

My conclusion:

No, Steem is not dying, but it is very sick. Steem is a great idea and it holds a lot of hope. People will come and people will go. A few will get rich and a lot more will become frustrated. Those who leave in frustration will tell others about their failure, which will stifle the growth of Steem. Negative publicity is much more powerful and convincing than positive publicity, so even if a handful of people sing the praises of Steem, the majority will be saying negative things. Critical mass can never be achieved this way. Steem needs the MAJORITY of its members to be happily successful and promoting it. That will never happen until some serious changes are made. Stop thinking short-term and start thinking long term! Lets make everyone happy and change the world together.

What can YOU as an individual do?

 

make SPAMMY posts attempting to get the attention of the big fish; it doesn't work anyway and will likely get you flagged. Refrain from using bought votes. If everyone stopped buying votes there would be no reason to keep flooding the platform with more vote-selling bots. Stop delegating SP to bots that sell votes. Think long-term and what will make the platform as a whole successful rather than short-term and what will get you to whale status fastest.

 

talk about this problem and spread the word. Tell witnesses that you don't believe vote-buying is good for the long-term health of the platform and that you will not vote for them if they support vote-buying in any way. There are other ways of supporting new members that are better for the life of the platform. Pressure witnesses to address the real problems with the current voting and rewards system and the fact that 1 person can own over 1,000 accounts! What is the purpose of the authentication system if an individual can abuse the system by owning multiple accounts? Consider a 1-person, 1-account rule. Think long-term and support initiatives that encourage participation and engagement such as the many contests and games that are currently under-utilized and under-supported. Create and join groups that cater to specific topics that interest you.

NOTE that the above is simply my opinion based on my own observations and understanding of how things work here. If I am mistaken, I appreciate being corrected.

I sincerely thank you for your interest!

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