My thoughts and analysis on steemit bandwidth problem and why it should be mostly left alone
How much bandwidth does a person need? I'm fairly active on steemit and sometimes on Zappl and Dmania. I use slightly over 250kb. Some people are more active but I really don't think anybody except a bot would use 400kb. Correct me if I'm wrong. First let's look at where the hell this bandwidth problem comes from. I've come to realize that there are so many people on steemit that are not well versed in cryptos and blockchain. I suggest you read my article In depth analysis on Fees and Cryptocurrency and this post by witness @drakos to help you understand things better.
Fees keep things sustainable. Anything that has more expenses than income isn't sustainable. Even a charity can't run on just good will. All resources get depleted when they are being used. Thus there is the need for an income stream. Bandwidth was introduced to sidestep this problem. If you had to do a micro-payment every time you comment, post, follow vote etc....... most of you wouldn't be here.
It doesn't make sense for you to pay to eat from your own restaurant or play DOTA 2 in your own internet cafe. You can forget about the fess. Now think you get a bunch of friends as investors and they are also consuming the resources without paying any fees. How can you keep this going without any screw ups? You can make a free stuff allowance based on the amount invested. That way, nobody is getting free stuff on the backs of another person. The cost is self-sustained.
Now imagine your company stopped serving customers altogether and decided to just give free stuff to the owners based on their ownership stake. That's how STEEM operate. It's a company that exclusively serve its owners. That's why you get free STEEM when you sign up. If you own 0.04% of all SP you can use 0.04% of the Tx capacity of the STEEM blockchain.
There is no spoon - There is no Bandwidth problem
Remember that thing about 250kb? It's reccomended to have about 50 SP to have that kind of bandwidth. In current prices, that's about 162.50 USD. Whenever you use something for free, always know that you are the product. The "Free" service of Fakebook earned US$40.653 billion revenue for 2017 and US$15.934 billion of it was profit. It has a US$509.45billion marketcap which means each Fakebook user is worth 260 dollars in average generating 20 dollars worth revenue and $7.50 profit. Basically all you suckers are working day and night for Zuckerberg like a peasant working for a meal.
Every user who sign up gets delegations to maintain 15 SP. So all you need is 35 more. I checked https://blocktrades.us and you have to pay about 4 STEEM ($13 at current prices) for 90 days. That's $52 a year to do all your stuff with no ads using your data and no surveillance while being 100% censorship resistant (flagging can trigger soft-censorship. But the content remains on the blockchain.) CIA would need to do a global operation to delete a single 4 letter word out of the STEEM blockchain. $52 bucks for that kind of content protection + a highly secure crypto wallet sounds like a steal for me. You'd be paying way more money for Netflix. You can't buy 2 months worth porn subscriptions with $52. So what's the problem???
It's not broke, don't fix it. Free account is the Demo/Trial version.
I'd still like to know the opinions of those who actually faced these bandwidth issues. I never faced them with my 15 SP account. I do think it's a risky move to mess with an extremely well established simple fundamental. As I've mentioned, STEEM is Free to Play: https://steemit.com/steemit/@vimukthi/sharing-some-of-my-steemit-wisdom-after-228-days-and-1000-followers-a-collection-of-tips-useful-sites-apps-built-on-steem-and If you need a better experience, you simply get yourself a bigger stake. It's a simple elegant model.
Still there are things that can be done
Not everybody is using up whatever bandwidth they gain from their 15 SP. Steemit.Inc can do. It can check for accounts that use up their bandwidth and delegate 5 SP for X amount of days. 30 days would be good. If they use that up there can be another 5 SP. We can let them know that they can have up to X amount of these timed delegations. 5-10 would be good IMO.
This way users know what's going on and they are given a chance to earn some SP during those days. If these people believe in the platform, less than 2 months of porn subscriptions worth investment is a fair amount.
I get it, you pay for 1st class you get 1st class.
If you don't have anything other than sweat equity involved, then you are stuck within your means. What no one explains is that it has to do with the amount of bandwidth being used at that moment in time. If all the whales, dolphins and those that have a large amount of SP are on they suck up the bandwidth so there is nothing left for the 'bottom feeders.' Unless you have money to put into it you have to suffer through these times of day. Sometimes they're short, sometimes they're not. Nothing like not posting for 2 days in row to come home from work have worked on a pretty decent article and then can't post because you don't have any bandwidth. (This had happened previously until I researched what was going on with the bandwidth, It took a post of my own and speaking with several 'larger fish' to find out exactly what the no bandwidth meant.
So like the old saying goes 'it takes money to make money' and unless you have the pocketbook to back it up, this is where you are until you can grow more. Mine had been doing much better...the past 3 days...not so much. I don't have the cash to invest, so all I can do is take the windows when I can and try to make my name that way and the dmania and single picture no comment spammers get to have fun.
Steemit does have some severe problems when it comes to educating newbies. Bitshares also have similar UX problems. I didn't have much problems as I'm a quick learner and a research lover. But for a person who just want to blog, things can be a little too daunting.
https://steemit.com/witness-category/@drakos/the-bandwidth-limitation-problems-and-solutions
Above post does have some suggestions from the witness @drakos
Using STEEM is like using Bitcoin. Everything you do hear is a Transaction on the blockchain. Bandwidth is what we have instead of fees. It's like buying shares of Uber to get free rides. You are given a bit of SP to try around the service. If you want to be a frequent rider, you need to buy few more shares.
Optionally you can use Minnowbooster or Smartsteem to buy profitable upvotes with your SBD. That should increase your visibility while giving you some SP when things payout. Rinse and repeat the procedure.
I have been thinking about Minnowbooster.
#drakos was one of the people I spoke with when I was learning the ins and outs. If I remember correctly it was him who explained it the best about the time of day number of whales being active and what was left over to be shared with the rest of the pool.
Since then, I don't usually get bothered since I know how it works. I was just a mess when I got home from work this morning. Had went to make a comment to get the bandwidth message. Just par for the day. Things are good at the moment and been doing what I can to respond to comments and make comments.
Hopefully, I didn't come off too grouchy. It is a good article and a great reminder :)
Not at all. You seemed like a person who'd get it. That's why I made my reply. You can read https://steem.io/SteemWhitePaper.pdf from page 18 to 24 for more info.
Happy steeming!
I will reread that. It's been since Dec so a refresher is good. I had re-read what I had said and was like that seemed a bit grouchy. Sometimes my frustration comes through and I don't mean to let it.
Great phrase from a great book. I agree with your premise as well.
One thing to add is that if they buy the steem and power up to avoid the bandwidth issues it will have the bonus effect of greater voting power and a stake in steem that will likely go up over time.
That's what means to have skin in the game. If platform wins, you win.
This is awesome! I included this in my What’s Up Steemit digest here: https://steemit.com/steemit/@scottcbusiness/the-what-s-up-steemit-digest-3
To get included in the future you can use #whatsupsteemit or submit a post in the comments of a digest :)
Thanks. It's a great little project/initiative. Resteemed and followed.
Best of Luck!
Love it thanks! If you ever use #WhatsUpSteemit I'll be checking it for content to put in my digest :)
I was having these bandwidth issues every day when I first started until I got up to like 60 or 80 SP, it does sort of suck, you don't get that 15 plus whatever you buy they just delegate you enough to get up to 15 so you would still have to buy 50 SP to get up to 50. I troll pretty hard though, few people post as much as I. I can't think of any website that would be successful if someone with a few hundred in account value can't actually access the site for a portion of the day. It would be mostly during certain times of day, I would get locked out all morning and then at some point have many megabytes of bandwidth instead of 128k.
Yes it did cost you way more than $52 bucks to find yourself still locked out.
That rationalization holds true for Steemit too, it's free because they make it free but never once do they say that that free is limited and there will be associated cost involved to expand beyond the limitation. Most people join under the assumption that it's a free site where you can earn money by being engaged, no one realizes there is additional cost involved if you want to expand that engagement beyond what the site allocates at the beginning until they get that bandwidth limit has been reached appearing on their screens, then they are shocked to find out that what they earned has to be put back into the system....but, but, but...I thought that was my reward to keep so I could become a whale and spread the wealth by having more power, they don't tell you how difficult it will be to attain that power and that you too are a product being used to uphold the value of steem by putting your steem back into the system instead of what you understood was to accumulate for yourself to become a whale. Yes, logically that may have to be the way it works for it to have value as a crypto currency but legally (....3,2,1 here comes screaming about regulations and decentralization, (which steemit is NOT decentralized) and leaving the hierarchy of the old system rules and regs out of it because that's how you are getting screwed) those terms and conditions have to be listed up front in the terms and conditions when a person commit to the terms and conditions. In other words the white paper and the blue paper have to be up front not something you come across after trying to figure out why you are out of bandwidth. That would put the honesty in the system about how the platform is run but they don't want to do that as it may discourage people from joining. There is no difference here then as if a vacuum salesman says I am going to give you this vacuum for free but doesn't tell you you only get fifteen minutes of free use a day, you call him and say hey what's up with that and he replies you have to power it back up by depositing pennies in the slot on the side...did you really expect something for nothing? He can do that, all except for one thing, he has to tell you all that up front and honestly.
I haven't spent any money, just time I would have spent elsewhere for nothing. there are a lot of FAQs and guides on the start page before you log in.
You were the one who wrote a article and posted it that said this:
I was locked out starting at around 8:00 AM from posting due to bandwidth and have been unable to post anything all day. Now it is like 6PM, I haven't checked for like an hour but it was still bad at like 4:30This has been happening every day for various lengths of time. It is getting incredibly frustrating because I can't do anything on Steemit.com for half the day. I understand that bandwidth is proportional so I have now powered up my STEEM power to triple what I had, which I realize is not shit relative to what other people have but instead of getting better it has gotten worse. It is allegedly in the realm of $300 at this point though and I am still not able to use the site for half the day. I can't imagine any website being successful that was unavailable half the day, much less one that I have put $300 into that locks me out for use during the day. They desperately need to rejigger how they are assigning the bandwidth,
I didn't literally put $300 of my money in, I had that much in account value at the time. And I haven't had the bandwidth problem in a while, and how much did I make from that post?
seven cents.
lol all profit ;) I think I made like $2 on the next rant about bandwidth though
wow, you'd better hurry and rush that into your retirement account.....
It's not steemit that wasn't unavailable. It's just you hitting your limit. If you delegate SP you can go for a whole year with half of what you pay for Netfilx a year. After the free month of Netflix, you don't ask how can this site succeed when everyone is blocked after the first month.
The difference is that the terms and the cost associated with those terms are upfront. Maybe I missed it somewhere in the Steemit terms and conditions that being on this site will only cost me half of what it'd cost me to be on Netflix for a year.
Read the whitepaper pages 18-24
https://steem.io/SteemWhitePaper.pdf
It pretty much describes everything. Whitepaper is the 2nd most important thing in any crypto project. There is a link to whitepaper and bluepaper in https://steemit.com/welcome page which you visit right after your first login.
I've read the white paper but I found that reading about some other dispute and someone recommended people should read it, curiously I did. I haven't read the new revised one. Anyway, fine print comes before sign up not after...legally anyway.
You are not the only one either that has complained. I just wait till it reloads.
Resteemed upvoted
Authenticity BOT!
Great job! We found more similar posts, but your post is the 1st one posted.