I want to congratulate you @ned . People wouldn't comment or even waste their time if they didn't care. There have been some really cool things the STEEM blockchain has accomplished and it has been an interesting experiment.
What has been created here is hard to replicate. It is far too expensive and requires too much funding for people to easily build their own platforms to "fix" the issues here. If it was easy everyone would do it.
That all being said the platform has frustrated us for over two years. It doesn't really improve it just changes. The same scenarios continue to exist that the distribution was an absolute joke and for the most part the witness situation is a complete joke and always has been.
This blockchain has probably made about 50 people more successful than they were before. Everyone else has been stuck in a frustrating time trap.
Congratulations @ned ..... you won
I feel your emotion but I do not claim to understand it based on what you’ve described. Here are my premises for being resistant to even attempting to clarify your distribution comment because I feel it’s ignoring these: Distribution is woven by Pareto principle as are all the projects and you can’t change this. What exactly are you saying it’s a problem for, Proof of Brain? Peoples money should never be taken from them. Steem is entirely an opt-in system.
The system is broken in so many ways it is silly. There needs to be vote decay on the witnesses as well as a system that will rotate them out of the top 20 for a period of time if they have been in that position for over six months. A lot of them are just hanging out using this as a funding mechanism for their other projects specifically EOS related stuff. I get why they are doing this. They are already in a position of power and don't have to do much to maintain that. If I had to vote for just one witness it would be @good-karma because he has continually worked on making this blockchain more accessible and usable and has taken on other team members. He isn't just "witnessing" blocks. The bad initial distribution did effect the Proof of Brain mechanism because so much power was accumulated by people that didn't really care about the platform as a social / content platform. They treated it like I treated Ripple.... as a use it and loose it scenario. I don't care about Ripple. I think it is garbage and just rode a hype wave and then peaced out. That is how a lot of people who garnered a ton of power here treated this blockchain while the ones that have stuck around for a couple years and have fought for this platform can't really get into a position of influence because of the messed up initial distribution and no vote decay on the witness votes among other problems. At this point the witness stuff can't be corrected because the top 20 witnesses won't adopt a change that takes them out of power. Those in power will always seek to remain in power.
If some people were given the opportunity to get the type of rewards associated with being a top 20 witness they would treat it as a full time job. It actually cracks me up how some people keep telling me to launch a witness on this blockchain and see if I can get the votes. That is a quick way to be further unprofitable on this chain. I'm a witness on another chain and it becomes a very tight group with everyone jockeying for position to become God kings who will rule the blockchain for the entire life cycle of it's existence. It can quickly throw off the balance of power within a few weeks. On this chain there was the ninja mine and a few other factors that have skewed things into eternity.
Overall the STEEM blockchain has been a great success because it made the founders richer and Steemit INC has the development funds to continue to work on the codebase / hang out for the next 10 years. There is nothing wrong with that. You guys had the ability to solidify your future. It will always survive but there are a lot of reasons we don't see it thriving like it could. There is a reason it has slipped from the #3 spot on CoinMarketCap clear down to where it is now. The market has spoken.... it hasn't been a very good experience or investment for a lot of us. We are then looked at as complainers to the 50 people who made a solid amount of money here. Every time I have powered up here I have ultimately regretted it. My biggest power up was 0.5 BTC in December. I was willing to risk that but ended up regretting it once again. A lot of people feel the same way. I have never felt that way about EOS or even stuff like DigiByte or Litecoin or Monero.
In my opinion technologically STEEM is the #1 blockchain..... even better than EOS because of the 3+ years of development but I can't recommend it as an investment because the risk of being dumped on really badly is way too great. It will devalue a person's time like no other blockchain. Then you have risked your capital and your time. Double whammy.
I don't mean this in a negative way but I feel that you have grown up in a wealthy environment and therefore there is a large disconnect between your thought process and the thought process of a common person. It is all relative what motivates people but I feel like you are far removed from anyone who would have to do manual labor in a field or who has struggled to a point where they don't have enough money to fill up their gas tank. It is imperative for a large percentage of people to see value in the system for it to really get the numbers to thrive.
Again I'm not saying it is a bad thing but it just appears to be true over the last couple of years. STEEM is in serious threat of becoming like Friendster, BETA Max, or the Sega Saturn.
If you read all of this don't take it as a negative tone. STEEM is pretty cool and again technologically it is #1 in my mind. You guys have succeeded in becoming more wealthy so it has served its purpose. The clones are coming online confirming the admiration for what has been built here.
I have looked at what I perceive as the missteps of STEEM, Golos, WEKU, Whaleshares, VIT....etc.
STEEM is really a production level testnet and more 3rd party applications will go to their own chains and more competition will come online that are clones of STEEM and others that are being built on EOS. It is just simply reality and honestly I don't think it is anything you need to really worry about. You guys have generated enough wealth out of this system to ride into the sunset if managed correctly.
It is odd that when I was in Sydney as a mentor for the EOS hackathon that Block One employees actually though I had interesting things to say and agreed with me one the issues of why STEEM has never thrived and isn't a good user experience.
Over here the 50 or so people who are founders / ninja miners / top witnesses just act like I'm some complainer nobody. It is strange. Actually I just don't think any of you care.
There are the parties’ invisible, unmentioned incentives here. Much of crypto operates in fiefdoms and the resulting biases. Thanks for disclosing your status.
There really aren't invisible incentives. Clear back in 2016 I was voicing my opinions on issues with the STEEM blockchain instead of just becoming a cookie cutter content mill like other content creators decided to make. EOS didn't exist then and I clearly knew the capabilities of this blockchain far exceeded Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other chains.
I was investing in EOS last summer way before ever having any chance to be a mentor at their hackathon series.
I have said that STEEM is #1 technologically and is ahead of EOS in a lot of ways. Why would I say that if I was 100% all about EOS?
Also why would I be directing people back to Steemit from Instagram if I was trying to act like STEEM is total trash? I don't even direct them back to my YouTube channel that has a decent following.
A month ago I made an effort to directly convince @jerrybanfield to allow me to take over his #35 Witness slot. Ultimately it didn't work out and evidently someone else saw my video and was able to strike a deal with him to take it over.
This is after I had been to the EOS hackathon and spoke with Block One employees. I still think that STEEM has a chance but unfortunately for me I'm not able to really focus on this chain.
I don't really know what to say other than I feel like there have been some missteps and it is ruled by very few.
Nothing in the crypto world has been able to do what the STEEM blockchain has accomplished in two years. I would like to see it take off and I will likely always keep a small investment in the platform.
I do wish everyone luck here. Ultimately I'm just a small investor and one of the 10% of people who actually didn't just leave the platform and stuck around trying to make it an environment that could progress the user base and the price of STEEM. A lot of us in that position feel our efforts are futile and have often wondered if we would have been better off never spending the time here.
@brianphobos - Welcome to TELOS http://testnet.telosfoundation.io/ and we need BPs...
TELOS will not be like EOS and STEEM which is ruled by Whales... We both tried EOS during launch but it was ruled by Whales who blocked all others.... TELSO is aiming to be a decentralized network with no whales (at least from start).... Just run a node in TELOS and contribute in it's development to make it de-centralized...
I'm aware of the TELOS project and support it. I'm interested in getting a BP team together for it. I'm going to have to dive into it more in the next couple of days because I'm currently on the road. Thanks!
Hello, Ok. It may go live on October 17... There was Go/No-Go vote last Friday and everyone decided that we are not yet 100% ready to go live:
Status: https://telosfoundation.io/launch
It is good time to run a BP Node right now in testnet as we need some more BPs who have some competence to mange nodes and you have some experience from EOS. It does demand lot of time to keep the nodes up-to-date and running...
List of BPs in Test Net: https://telosfoundation.io/launch
Instructions: http://testnet.telosfoundation.io/info
Wiki: https://github.com/Telos-Foundation/telos/wiki
Note: There is on boarding process and form to fill for new joiners. I can help you to get on-board....
By the way there is also reserved about 1 millio TLOS Tokens for The Community Rewards Program https://telosfoundation.io/rewards
I’m talking about all parties you mentioned in that paragraph. There are always invisible incentives.
If you want real feedback — my feedback would criticize your take on how witnesses and distribution are holding back the platform — and how they are different from other platforms. When I analyze your reference to one set of these things over the other, I see hypocritical analysis and comparisons. When I see hypocritical analyses, I look for incentives. There are always incentives.
Perhaps I'm just a jealous complainer. It is a plausible scenario. I was mining Monero in 2014 and was buying EOS in between $0.50 and $1 last summer / fall and still have all that EOS. With STEEM I have constantly got caught on the wrong side of it and always feel like I'm getting dumped on before I can power down. Haven't been able to gain major traction for the most part and while there are people who agree with my ideas on this chain they are typically people in the 1000 - 10,000 SP levels. So that doesn't end up going very far.
But If I'm a jealous complainer then what are the 85-90% of people who joined and left? Just quitters?
We appreciate your feedback and that you feel your voice isn't being heard here, I don't think Ned was saying anything to the contrary. I think you can appreciate the fact that we have been inundated with people telling us how we should do things differently since the very beginning. How we shouldn't use PoS or DPoS, how we should have smart contracts, etc. People often point to the initial "unfair distribution" and I think Ned's point comes down to the fact that they never point to another established chain that had a "fair" initial distribution. They are all fiefdoms but NONE enable anyone to join and begin earning that same stake simply by creating. It's not a perfect system, but we would love to be able to look at another system that was "better" so that we could learn from them. Unfortunately, as you say yourself, no one has been able to do what we've done, so we don't have many people to look at. We are open to positive changes for which there is a consensus, but it seems that most people just want us to listen to them and no one else. My point is really only that whatever the history of the formation of this ecosystem, it is responsible for both the negative AND the positive consequences. Those people who were most involved in the beginning, they're the ones who built a blockchain that was able to do what "nothing in the crypto world has been able to do."
If you believe in this chain we are eager to work with all who help build a consensus around the positive changes that need to happen. I don't believe we have ever done anything that indicates otherwise. At the same time, we have no problem with people looking at other projects, participating in them, and lending the insights they've gained from a project that is much farther along and mature than they are. It's not us-versus-them. We're all in this together trying to build a better future.
I would venture to say that something like EOS had a somewhat fair distribution because everyone had a year to cost average into a position. Also that has allowed us to have distributions in other projects such as Telos and many other projects as well.
I get it that everyone seems to have an opinion on what the platform needs. They just wanted it to become something that could succeed and wouldn't be MySpaced.
For the most part I'm not going to spend too much time expressing my ideas here because not much is going to change for the better.
More and more clones are going to come online and you have to ask yourself why there is more engagement on something like WEKU than there is on STEEM even when there isn't an exchange to cash out to with WEKU yet?
99 % of people's experience on STEEM is that they didn't have a chance. It is controlled primarily by basement dwelling whales who afraid to be in pictures or videos or anything so when everything is being dictated by shadow figures it is a very strange experience.
Your problem is you do not understand 1 Steem is 1 Steem, period. You got how many Steem for .5 of 1 BTC? There is no way that could equal a loss in terms of crypto, if you are referencing fiat than you do not need a witness position on any chain.
This is an opinion I do not share. Perhaps money should never unjustly be taken from them, but that's a far cry from never. When the very rich abuse their power and the poor suffer, the very rich should have their wealth taken from them to empower the poor.
This is true both on and off the blockchain. There's a gray area of where "abuse their power" begins and ends, and we should have some clarity before anybody does have their money taken from them on what constitutes "abuse", "power", and "wealthy", but the blanket
should not be our guiding principle.