Earlier @therealwolf made an interesting and thought-provoking post on the status of Steem, where we are and where he thinks we need to go...
https://steemit.com/steem/@therealwolf/real-talk-steem
I've been pondering it for a bit, but I have to make a few points and ask a few questions for the sake of discussion, not an argument.
However, a good amount of realism is important and something needs to change.
We need to attract more a+ app developers (like crypto.talk) and give them an incentive to build their app on Steem instead of on EOS, Ethereum, NEO or any other blockchain.
Why? Which Dapps are gathering more users than ours?
Answer... None. SteemIt.com is the most used app on the app list. With all of its faults.
We need to attract a+ blockchain developers, so we're not dependant on Steemit Inc. (I'm honestly tired of running around the tree talking about the fact that Steem needs RC Pool delegations, Incentivised Downvote and other important changes, only to realise nobody is able to implement it and Steemit Inc doesn't have time. And what good is a community repo, if nobody uses it?!)
Agree , we HAVE to quit relying on SteemIt Inc. Critical issue.
We need to keep the developers, entrepreneurs & project, who are already on Steem, here on Steem! (Could you imagine what would happen if Utopian or Dtube would decide to leave for another blockchain? Not saying that they would, but they are still businesses and if Steem wouldn't recover ..)
In the case of a few apps I agree, but for most of them.. No we do not need them and having to support multiple front-ends and their development teams is a waste of resources when most of the apps are using the same APIs and provide only changes in the look and feel and not in functionality. During a financial hardship, we should focus energy on only our most successful or unique products. We do not need our talent focused on Duplicate Products of different colors pulling from the same userbase.
We need to have a landing app for Steem users, which doesn't look like it's been in maintenance for 2 years. Besides the redesign to green, nothing much has happened to condenser since I'm here. Please don't get me wrong - this is not an attack against Steemit Inc, but a statement of what is currently wrong)
Is it smart during an extremely difficult financial period to send our users off SteemIt? I think it is the dumbest decision I've ever heard. Pretend for a moment we are doing business in a fiat business. during a financial hardship would you toss your most utilized product out? Creating stress and strain on other products or... Would you condense your users and support to a product already successfully in operation?
We need to make sure witnesses have an incentive to keep building. I know, after HF 16 and the major cut-off of witness rewards, the only task for witnesses is in making sure the blockchain runs - and I agree. But there are a lot of (backup) witnesses who do major work for Steem's success (just naming a few: Holger80 with beem, emrebeyler with dpolls, wise.team with engrave & wise, and of course myself) - but the rewards we're receiving, it's not much of an incentive. (On EOS it's normal for block producers to provide A+ tools, why not here as well?)
Why? Again What A+ tools do you think will magically be developed? If anyone built anything great, who would ever know... We don't have any marketing team.
We need to use this god damn but amazing reward pool to incentivise value creation for Steem. Over 20 Million Steem has been generated through inflation this year alone and just a friction of it has been powered up. Most of it was probably sold. I personally, have powered up 99% of it and my plan is to keep it this way. I've even powered up every post for the last 30 days - thousands of Steempower)
I agree that the reward pool is being badly mismanaged in many ways, but what is more valuable during this time? End Users that aren't buying and holding? Or Dapps that don't do anything any better than the Dapp they just replaced. If we condensed our users to the apps we currently have and focus on retaining them that might be a better focus also we could do Marketing and see if we add eyes, adds and condensed our efforts to supporting less, we would see more return...
Again, unless you have an idea for the Magic App that will bring money and end users in why throw more effort and professionals ins without having a revenue-generating product in mind?
My response is not meant to be taken as argumentative. Or as disagreeing with you, rather to challenge your ideas and see if they make sense.
If there are good reasons for taking this path, people should be able to state what they are.
I feel a need to say, in my experience, we are doing the perfectly wrong things during a time of fiscal consolidation.
What I recommend...
Scale Back, not add new projects.
Stop the bleeding. Direct the reward pool to holders not add those with expenses and no line of income.
Make a plan, Carefully select apps with user cases, messaging and a revenue or value stream and encourage and reward the community for supporting those things.
If you do want to spend money bring in Professionals in Marketing and Business, before trying to attract more devs to build struggling products on a bloated blockchain.
You could build the LAMBO of Apps here and no one will know about it.
I assume you are going to assume I have this point of view as a "Content Creator" but I am not a Content Creator, I am a Corporate Exec. Who helped take two companies in the dot.com era from beginning to Publically Traded Companies.
Yeah, I know that sounds full of ego and it likely is, but it is also the truth.
Let's talk about it...
No Magic Mushroom?
Your comment just helped me realize what is Steem's killer app! A stablecoin pegged to weed... We screwed up with SBD, it should have been SBW.
@whatsup,
I agree with what you said! But I don't know it's possible to gather A+ app devs without SMT! I think STEEMIT INC should focus more on SMT, then we could finish that bound between STEEM and it's INC!
Cheers~
SteemIt Inc has had nearly 2 years to deliver SMTs. They haven't done it yet. Nor do I have any reason to believe it will come in the future. We should have been 5 weeks away from testing at the time they laid people off.
There is a Magic App. It is called collaboration. The weakest point in the crypto-sphere is the immature young man mentality, where we try to outperform, outsmart and out-compete other projects. It's a problem of ego.
Block.one and other developers in the EOS ecosystem are building a Steem 2.0 or Steem-like projects, while Steemit.com (beta) still has a vibrant and active community (although it doesn't seem to be on a positive and growing path at the moment). I think that eventually technology and functionality will converge to become 'blockchain'-agnostic, where the underlying technology matters little to an end-user.
So I'd like to see Steemit adopt more of a collaboration mindset, instead of pushing to do most things themselves. The recent blocktrades proposal was a missed chance imo. Ned thinking that Ned knows best is his biggest fallacy.
That’s exactly where we should focus on. I mean, it’s nice to write long post explaining the benefits and the potential of Steem blockchain but hey...isn’t it like we are talking to eachother? People need to know about it. Outsiders. Steem needs to be promoted the way @stephenkendal does. Period.
I am a small fish but this is also what i was talking about with my friend. That example in our country in Hungary the people dont even know the steemit. And even some of us made a post on FB and try to share it on social media but still somehow it is difficult to get the peoples atention.
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I am a small fish but this is also what i was talking about with my friend. That example in our country in Hungary the people dont even know the steemit. And even some of us made a post on FB and try to share it on social media but still somehow it is difficult to get the peoples atention.
Posted using Partiko Android
Yep, definitely. We need to learn from Bitcoin Cash, they do promotion better than anyone. What's really sad, is that Jimmy Song and all the BTC maximalists to a way better job at social media promotion than Steem's community does and this blockchain is suppose to be a Social Media Revolution... Its embarrassing for the blockchain...
I do think steemit needs to be replaced with something better. Lots of us might like using it but I think millions more are put off. Having beta in the logo for all this time is wrong. I know Ned is working on something new but we shouldn't be relying on Ned and we have no idea when that might appear. I think @partiko might end up with more users than steemit, because most people use mobile phone apps now.
I'm not 100% sure but I think that got killed with the layoffs.
Agree
Good point. There are interesting things happening in Steem mobile, including Partiko (but not only).
@ned dumping coins since last year isn't helping the cause .
When I complained most people said it's a good thing that STINC stake is getting smaller , that may be but it's hurting the price in the short run.
Basic question is : why has the community accepted the fact that CEO of company is constantly dumping his stake in company , wouldn't that be an obvious red flag in the usual corporate world?
I'm totally for ned dumping his coins, for the reasons you already stated. He owns and controls way too much stake! Way too much.
what about the second part of that question ?
1 yeah, I've always accepted that the terrible distribution was going to create a long term period of sell pressure.
Yes, it's a good thing he's selling, so there is a greater chance of redistribution on here. But there is also the second part, which @itstime is trying to point out.
I think you're holding up too much hope for this blockchain. It's admirable but still, you have to see facts for what they are. CEO dumping might mean nothing like that to you, but for the people we're trying to attract (which a great part of your post speaks about), this is exactly what it might be implying. "CEO and largest stakeholder is powering down even at a ridiculous price". Speaks a lot about project confidence and valuation.
Anyways, i'm here for now. But i won't let my love for this place hinder me from seeing things as they are presently.
How does it not show low confidence CEO ?
If ned thought STEEM is going to 100 in few years he woudln't be auto-selling it ...once or twice sale to cover expenses is understandable but auto sell ??
Do we have any idea what his real stake is? He could be moving it from his highly visible account to ones that nobody knows about? He might have a large tax bill from last year or he might be using the money to put back into Steem projects? There's no way we should rely on Ned, so I don't have a problem if he's selling. When he's sold, that selling pressure is gone and we don't have to worry about it. Maybe he's doing something that wont be good for the rest of us but I think its obvious that we shouldn't be relying on Ned now.
He has about 1m liquid steem in the ned account
From what I have read , it's mostly going to exchanges which inturn means selling for Fiat.
His own personal stake isn't that large and was never really that large given his position. The collective of the ninja-mine including the steemit account and the founder accounts (including to be fair neds) is a much bigger deal.
I think what we have seen is this just isn't a model that works. Startups (whether companies or projects) need to raise external capital from committed investors with a long time horizon (and preferably some accountability) not just printing your own money and dumping it into liquid markets destroying the value of the very thing you are relying on.
Okay, well, I do realize that Steem is unique in that the price of Steem greatly effects its popularity because of upvote payouts in SBD. However, Bitcoin had to go through years of wild rides, maybe Steem just hasn't paid its dues.
Can't we be patient for the value to move in over time? I see Steem as having great fundamentals, and while its definitely a dark horse right now, it is growing. In my mind, the true expansion and killer app are the SMTs and also getting NFTS onto Steem. Honestly, while I do believe SMTs are important, I think NFTs are more important for giving talented people the ability to sell their eBooks, art, photos, eCards, eComics, movies and any other digital product you can imagine. Nothing out there matches up with NFTs as well as Steem does. Its potential is to be OpenBazaar on crack.
Bitcoin is a completely different model. For one thing the supply is distributed over 100+ years (50% of remaining every four years) it isn't instantly assigned 80% to the founders and then dumped over a few years. Apart from it simply being much, much larger with more demand, even years ago compared to Steem now.
Sure there are interesting things that can happen on Steem but unfortunately they are hobbled by broken economics and a dysfunctional ecosystem structure. It may still yet succeed but the odds are stacked against it for these reasons.
Fair enough, but if we forked away we would likely experience the erosion that BCH is experiencing right now. We lost Dan, so if we kick out Ned we're probably headed down the same devastating direction as BSV is right now.
You may be right. IMO the ideal situation is NOT to lose Ned (in fact to go out of our way to keep him) but to also have everyone take a hard look at things and recognize that the model needs some iteration.
@actifit is a good example of an app which creates a community from the niche.
Connecting the real world with the platform is the way to go.
What strikes me odd is this constant repeating of we need this and we need that. Who is this WE?
WE don't have a consensus here :) WE don't have real governance in place. Maybe WE need governance in place before WE move to anything else. Of course, this is a far fetch, building governance and consensus...
Also, the platform needs to survive without Steemit Inc. and without steemit.com. This is the most important aspect of WE.
Just my three cents ...
@actifit is great app for onboarding normies..
Definitely, its all about the normies! We need way more normies... Man cannot live on crypto alone!
Exactly. Attractive activating apps and online games (Steemmonsters) are the best onboarders. Plus, they provide money flow and test the limits of the transactional system of the blockchain :)
This is a great review especially since I missed it and looks like DApps are now being discouraged? 🤣😂 oi vey the back and Forths
I think we have over 40 dapps and only a handful are useful at this point and at the same time stand a chance of losing their usefully if they do not find meaningful ways of improving on their existing achievements.
we need to...we need to...
How do we do what is needed?
Most of the useful dapps have the support they need. What they lack is innovation. We are at a point where dapps needs to started creating new ways of generating revenue rather than depend on the reward pool
In my opinion we do not need more apps, what we do is need is the existing ones improving on their services, finding a bigger audience/customers other than steemians.
Posted using Partiko Android
Great thoughts which have incited great comments which is why I think we have challenges at the moment. I heard most of the Forum yesterday and I struggled to see a clear next step for most of the issues discussed which concerned me because it all come down to execution not just thoughts and ideas. Also, it requires external resources to commit to some of these development whereas there is no immediate incentive to do so. It feels as though action will not occur until we have a major failure... I think the community is strong but this could get worst before it gets better. While I am committed, I feel my actions are limited to ensuring my witness vote count and remaining active in supporting the community...
Posted using Partiko iOS
Great post. Actually you are right, we need more big dapp projects on steemit to attract people. Someone ask me that is steemit going to crash so i told him that he who have faith till the end will celebrate
Please, use the word Steem for the platform, the ecosystem or whatever it is called.
Steemit is a company, steemit.com is their Steem platform frontend product :)
You have no idea what you're commenting on, as usual.
Merry Christmas, enjoy the vote!
I think we have over 40 dapps and only a handful are useful at this point and at the same time stand a chance of losing their usefully if they do not find meaningful ways of improving on their existing achievements.
we need to...we need to...
How do we do what is needed?
Most of the useful dapps have the support they need. What they lack is innovation. We are at a point where dapps needs to started creating new ways of generating revenue rather than depend on the reward pool
In my opinion we do not need more apps, what we do is need is the existing ones improving on their services, finding a bigger audience/customers other than steemians.
Posted using Partiko Android
Partiko does have a small problem with double posting at the moment. If it looks like something went wrong after you press post, it usually went right. I give it a few minutes and check on steemit and its usually there.
I think I just noticed, thanks
Posted using Partiko Android
Steemit Inc stops selling .... burn or share a big portion of their stake
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The problem is that it is a product with a broken growth model and a vast gap between where it is and where it would need to be to possibly shift that. Maybe you don't toss it out but you absolutely transition away from it yes. 100x yes. Just as Netflix did when it was clear that DVD mailing (still at the time most of their business) was not the future and streaming (at the time a money-losing vision) was the future.
steemit.com is "the biggest" product yes but it is still much too small to be considered a success. @therealwolf's model of a VC firm and focusing on new apps makes a lot more sense than continuing to beat a dead horse.
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