Earlier this spring, I began noticing EOS-related posts in Steem communities that I support with votes. At first, these posts didn’t bother me, because I’ve always been glad to see other cryptocurrency projects posting on Steemit, and I have voted for many of those in the past. Steemit and other Steem-driven sites are a great place for crypto projects to share information and build their communities.
But the more I investigated, the less comfortable I felt with the EOS cheerleading posts. And through my investigations, I have learned enough that I recently implemented a new policy: I will not make any more votes to support EOS-related posts. And similarly, I will not vote for Steem witnesses who are double-dipping with candidacies as EOS block producers.
Because many people have asked me about these two decisions, I have written this post to clarify my reasons
If you haven’t heard of EOS, it’s a smart contracts platform that’s in development. I wish EOS and its dapps the best. In fact, I was the one who purchased the @eos address on Steem and gave it, free of charge, to Block.One’s CTO, Dan Larimer, to keep it in his custody and away from squatters. And I’ve had high hopes that EOS could excel in its own niche, which is smart contracts.
Are you sure it's not your EGOs?
But that was before the egos over there decided to get into the same business that Steem is in. The CEO of EOS’ parent, Block.One, stated his intention to create a social network site, a la Steemit. In fact, the first use case shared by EOS on Github, as an example of what could be done with its platform, was a Steemit-type example. In retrospect, perhaps this should not have been that surprising, since EOS’ origins lie in a fork of Steem. Also, one of the first dapps on EOS will be ONO, which apparently will have a social media-type site, though it may be the first cryptocurrency site I’ve ever read that left me with less confidence after reading the team profiles.
Oh no. A currency that’s many times more expensive than Steem. Security vulnerabilities. A (lack of) governance system that’s setting up to be a royal mess. Remind me why I own any EOS when Steem’s SMTs should be much better? But, I digress…
EOS’ social network aspirations make it a potential competitor (even though its costs may be too high to compete meaningfully with Steem).
Once I understood there was a potential conflict, I began to take a closer look at the EOS-cheerleading posts that were on Steemit. I realized some authors were receiving support or had been promised certain incentives to pump those projects by either Block.One or some dapp spawn (though my evidence there is second-hand, several people have confirmed that was the case). And that’s when I understood that it’s not healthy for me to be voting for those posts using Steem Power.
Support your own cheerleaders; I hope you don't mind if I use my voting power elsewhere. Disclaimer: To my knowledge, Ladybeard has not endorsed any blockchain, but was the best image of a bearded cheerleader I could find. Source: Creative Commons via Wikipedia.com by Dick Thomas Johnson.
If the EOS community wants cheerleaders on Steemit, it should support them itself. I won’t do so with my Steem votes. Many Steemians have worked hard over these last two years to build communities, support great content, and/or create Steem-powered applications. It would be a disservice to them if I did not put them first with their ongoing loyalty and commitment.
Steem Witnesses should be 100% committed to the Steem ecosystem, not divided in their loyalty, commitment, or fiduciary status
That brings me to witnesses, who are paid to verify blocks for the Steem-chain. After I explained to several communities that I would not vote for more EOS- or ONO- stuff on Steem, the question arose of how to handle votes for Steem witnesses who also stand for similar positions on EOS. And the way I see it, consistency requires me to withhold votes for any witness who has announced intentions to do the same for EOS. So I also unvoted some witnesses who are double-dipping with Block Producer candidacies for EOS (a BP for EOS is similar to a Witness for Steem).
Sadly, I happen to really like some of those people and consider them better than certain other Steem witnesses when it comes to the good work they have done here in the Steem ecosystem. But for the money they are making as Steem witnesses (which, when the markets are happy, can be as high as $25,000 per month for a top witness), each one of them should be 100% committed to building with Steem.
Instead, what I hear when a Steem witness decides to become a Block Producer candidate on EOS is that: (1) they are not making enough money here, or (2) that they would like to spend more time on other (non-Steem) projects.
If so, they’ve lost my vote here. Tinkering is fine. Experimenting is healthy. I encourage people to try new things. It’s not at all disloyal to poke around over there. But all of those are possible without being paid a large sum of money. If you take the witness money from Steem, then this is your team.
And even if I were the world's largest EOS holder, I would demand the same commitment over there.
Finally, witnesses are not merely running some esoteric code. They are the governors of our blockchain, who vote (or not) to adopt any proposed updates. They are trustees who have a fiduciary duty to uphold the best interests of Steem. And if they hold a similar position for another blockchain that has aspirations to compete in the same space, then they are serving two masters: communities that need to be able to trust them.
In legal terms, that’s a conflict of interest, because they cannot make decisions on behalf of one without potentially disadvantaging the other in that same space. Thus, when they are presented with a proposed update that favors one blockchain over the other, they have no choice but to violate the oath they have taken to act in the other community’s best interest. If they don’t anticipate that possibility, then they may be too naïve to be entrusted with the governance responsibility.
Business Ethics presentation via Slideplayer.com by Madeline Dawson. http://slideplayer.com/slide/4728985/
I am not asking others to join me. I have the greatest respect for anyone who chooses to disagree with my position. Yet enough people have asked me about this that I felt the need to provide the above explanation.
If you’ve never voted for witnesses before, you can visit the following page to do so: https://steemit.com/~witnesses .
Disclaimer: I do not have a witness. I will donate 100% of this post's rewards to Steem curation initiatives.
Amen. I debated LukeStokes on this topic live on the air on Sunday on Steemitzens of Steem on the @SteemStarNework, taking the position that our top witnesses heading that way cannot in any effective way serve two masters. His response was let the voters decide. And it looks like at least one or more powerful voters like yourself are doing just that.
I'm with you.
Full disclosure, I too, considered it two months back, and bought some domain names (reallly good ones too) to support moving a similar set of projects modelled after my @SteemStarNetwork and @YouAreHOPE Foundation initiatives there as well. But I quickly deduced I wanted no part of that, and intend to stay here, for a number of reasons.
The debate with Luke was lively to be certain, but we are on very different sides of it. I am all in for Steem. Our work as a team witness here is about lifting voices on THIS platform and ensuring a strong and growth oriented future here. How could I work for Coke and Pepsi, Ford and Chevrolet or McDonalds and BurgerKing at the same time and do either one credible justice with integrity?
There is more too it and our audience asked Luke some tough questions. If you want the link to the debate replay post, its on my blog from Monday's post of Sunday's show.
Thanks for taking the right fork in the road with us @DonkeyPong
@SirCork
Steem Witness #63 in full partnership with @RhondaK
[edited some grammar, not all of it, just a spot that made something ambiguous sounding to me I want to be specific about.]
My feelings about this are a bit guarded. This isn't an issue I'm ready to declare war over on any front. However, speaking as an individual and half of the Sircork witness partnership, there isn't a chance I'm headed to EOS. Nothing against EOS. But all of my investment is here--the blood, sweat, and tears of building @thewritersblock into the largest writing-centric community on the blockchain, and future plans for leveraging SMTs to fund the first real-world publishing house backed entirely by crypto. It would be insane for me to jump ship now. I don't know how anyone has enough time and energy to invest equally in both places. Maybe I'm not seeing the whole picture yet. But for what it's worth, I'm definitely in agreement with Cork.
@rhondak I'm a fairly new user here. With help of channels like @thewriterblock I've been able to taste the amazing potential of this platform, so thank you for your work there. There are clearly significant issues with steemit though for the well intentioned but relatively late arrivals to the party.
Cannot a content & user fork onto the EOS blockchain provide an opportunity to fix some of the issues, while allowing the hard work invested in steemit to carry on and without needing a complete restart on overthere? I'm just speculating, but if a better designed platform was to emerge there and start from scratch, I think many new steemit users might choose to invest their energies there instead rather than to complete here where we can see complete garbage trending at times.
Either way, if steemit is to prosper, we need to improve the user interface and makes sure proven humans and community can triumph over greedy individuals using crude crude gaming the economic system to detriment of all. The ongoing challange of mankind...
@sircork - I agree with your and @donkeypong's sentiment about a witness should be fully into one or the other. Luke said to let the voters decide and I decided. I had voted for Luke as witness and now took that vote away and gave it to you.
Well that escalated quickly :) Thank you for your support of the team that stands for lifting the voices of the good people of steem in all possible ways!
Thank you for being more vocal about it and taking a stand.
The pleasure is mine and my teammate @rhondak's ;)
Well said (and I especially like the Coke and Pepsi part). Luke is a very nice guy, but he's wrong about this.
I don't often check my witness votes as far as who is or isn't voting for me (I try to stay as impartial as possible), but the other day I did happen to see your vote removed (as it's a rather large one, it stood out) so I was happy to see this post and explanation. I love that we can respectfully disagree and still get along just fine and continue adding value to STEEM.
Before I get too far along, I want to ask if you'd also remove your support for witnesses like @anyx and @jesta? In my opinion, they have provided more value to this blockchain than most any other witnesses combined. To remove support for them would be to signal that what they are contributing here is not valued. IMO, that hurts all of STEEM. IMO, they provide so much value exactly because they are involved in the entire cryptocurrency ecosystem, not just one thing.
If some authors are receiving support to shill for a project, I'd be very turned off also. I've never done that for any project. One time after I wrote a SmartCash post, I found out about a writing contest which was already going on and submitted my post. I ended up winning and that's the closest thing I can think of to getting rewarded outside of STEEM for a post here. I think those who talk about projects they like should do so because they like the projects, not because they are getting paid to talk about them. I completely agree with your reasoning for not upvoting posts for projects you're not interested in. Definitely use your Steem Power as you see fit.
As to witness voting, I wouldn't say those who are advisors or block producers or advocates for multiple projects or teams are "double dipping." On the contrary, I think being well-rounded and learning from every project in the space helps people have a more complete understanding of what the latest technologies are and what open-source and governance best practicies are being implemented which can benefit other open source projects. For me, this isn't about tribalism or coin maximalism, but about improving human well-being. The things I learn from EOS, eosDAC, STEEM, SmartCash, or any other project I advise or do research on makes me a better cryptocurrency advocate and (IMO) STEEM witness.
Back to my example of @anyx and @jesta, I think the only metric that should matter is whether or not a witness brings value to the STEEM ecosystem compared to others. If someone who works on multiple projects is too busy with those projects to stay engaged enough in STEEM, then their output would decline and not voting for them makes sense. If, on the other hand, they are learning new things and bringing those ideas (these are all open source projects anyway, right?) back to STEEM to improve it, why is that a bad thing?
I'll give a practical example of what I mean. I mentioned in a comment to Tim Cliff about how the EOS community is building a foundation to control the EOS Github repo outside of the control of Block.one. I think that's something we should do also and @smooth replied in agreement. That's just one of many small examples where being engaged and involved in many different blockchain projects helps us all grow and be better at our jobs. For another example, what if SMT Oracles could be improved by including the Ricardian Contracts like EOS is using?
If someone's motivation is selfish or that they "aren't getting paid enough" or some similar reason, then I would agree with your reasoning to remove your vote. If, on the other hand, they want to provide more value to the whole cryptocurrency space to increase human well-being, that's something I support, based on their output of value.
I don't see blockchain projects as tribal "teams." I like this talk by Andreas Antonopolous where he describes a future where money is a form of language expression and competing currencies all live together just fine. I can't imagine any situation where a witness would (or even could) actually make a decision against the best interest of the community they are producing blocks for. We discussed this on the show SirCork is mentioning as well and no compelling example was presented.
You mention the potential for a conflict of interest. Can you give a concrete example? The only one mentioned on the show related to a witness blocking the release of SMTs which we all kind of agreed is ridiculous. Any witness who doesn't do what's best for STEEM will not remain a STEEM witness. The witnesses aren't writing the code (for the most part), they are validating blocks as trustworthy members of the community. Their expertise and experience in many projects creates that reputation. I've been a witness for a year. A top 20 witness for 6 months of that year. I've yet to come across anything evenly remotely concerning regarding insider information or the concerns you're bringing up. It's all open source and everything is visible by everyone on Github, long before a witness decision is made regarding an upgrade or fork.
I'd like to see a real example of "a proposed update that favors one blockchain over the other" because I can't imagine one that would cause me to make a poor decision, and I don't think I'm being naïve. I'm always going to work as hard as I can to support the communities that are trusting in me. What incentive would I have to invalidate that trust? On the contrary, by being involved in both projects (and even many projects), I can bring the best of all worlds together. eosDAC, as an example, is learning about decentralization from things SmartCash is doing (which I learned about via a tipping bot here on Steemit). We are all connected, building a new financial and governance reality. If we start creating walled gardens with "us vs. them" mentalities, we'll stunt progress and take further steps backwards.
@donkeypong, I respect you and the many communities you support here. I say all this not to persuade you to change your mind, but to clarify my perspective for others who are still undecided. As I mentioned two months ago when joining eosDAC, I think decentralization and DACs are the future, and I want to help build that future. I think it will impact and improve not just every cryptocurrency project in the space, but systems all over the world (governments, corporations, non-profits, clubs, and more). I think the DAC Toolkit will help many future DACs built on STEEM who need tools for organizing themselves as a DAC. I see a future where we all work together to create the world we want to live in, not just to support our tribalistic team. I'm not a fan of tribalism and when I hear some of this language, it puts me on the defensive a little bit. Let's not push away those who are creating value for STEEM. The output of value is what should matter most.
This is the most important thing I've built being a witness - the trust from the community and a reputation of providing value.
My decision to enter the EOS space wasn't to ruin this reputation, but to further enhance it as an "expert" in this industry. If I started acting against one platform in favor of another that would destroy what it's taken so long to build: trust.
Well said @lukestokes - I think we're on the same page on much of this.
It's understandable, that some would have this fear/concern.
Money makes a man not funny.
The side note to this however, is that this entire ecosystem as a whole is so new, that I have to agree there are massive benefits to being involved in multiple projects and blockchains.
It's such a new frontier, that learning from what others are doing through a hands on experience, can greatly help improve our personal ecosystem here.
I do share a lot of the constraints that @donkeypong is expressing however.
I was lucky enough to spend a few days with @lukestokes and after having done so....I believe him, I believe his motive and stance on this matter is genuine.
It's because of said opportunity that I won't be removing my vote from him...or from you either @jesta
I will say this though, as someone who has gone all in on this platform, someone that is 100% providing for my family through our blockchain....I truly hope you live up to the words you speak.
Do us right please.
But hey....I'm just that Hots or Shots guy...lol :P
Steem On!
Thanks. As I've said before, if there are 30 witnesses providing more value than I am, vote for them instead and let me know as well as I'll change my votes also (if I agree with the argument).
Thankfully my reputation is out there on an immutable blockchain for anyone to evaluate. If I ever did anything that wasn't in the best interest of the communities I'm working to support, I'm open to talk about it, and change if I was wrong. I think that's the best we can hope of from anyone.
I second this - and would encourage people to vote who is providing the most value. I won't be upset with anyone for voting who they believe provides the most value.
Thanks, @jesta. I didn't want to speak for you or @anyx, but I did think we'd agree the most valuable people we have on STEEM became so by the many things they've done to add value and build their reputation.
Hi Luke
Thank you for giving a detailed reply to this post. I guess what @donkeypong has laid out has been on the mind of a number of witnesses, including myself, over the past few months and so I'm glad to see it being discussed openly and respectfully.
I chose to support you as a witness prior to SteemFest 2, but on talking to you there and listening to your input at the event I felt I'd made a good choice, and that remains the case. I am though in agreement with @donkeypong that the continued 'promotion' of 'rival' blockchains/projects is not desirable to see here. A cheap example would be @dtube supporting a YouTube promo video - not that there are many of those these days.
Your actions on the blockchain, particularly when compared to other witnesses, tell me you are still heavily involved here. And I trust if that any point this were to change, you will let the community know of your status.
Cheers.
Thanks for your input and support. I really respect that you'll make decisions about me and hopefully all the witnesses based on what value we're actually bringing, not based on fears or concerns that haven't materialized and (from my perspective) may not be that plausible when it comes to what a DPOS block producer actually does.
My hope is both you and @donkeypong won't view this ecosystem as full of "rival" blockchains. My job as an educator and advocate for decentralized non-violent consensus systems will be to show a future where everyone competes on merit alone, not based on geographic regions, imaginary borders, or tribalistic partnerships. We have some serious challenges ahead of us with nation-state governments and central bank cartels. Together, we are unstoppable. If instead we fight over how much of the new pie we get to carve off as "ours" we may miss the point entirely.
When I talk about these things, I'm speaking from personal experience about what I think works in the marketplace. I ran FoxyCart for over ten years with my business partner before selling my business this year to focus full-time on cryptocurrency projects. During much of that time, if a user came to sign up for FoxyCart and during the signup process we determined they weren't a good fit for us, we'd actually send them along to Shopify (a "competitor"). This mentality always served us and our customers well. This experience informs my perspective on how we can all work together to get the best outcome for humanity looking for better solutions.
@lukestokes, I know that you will not care what I say. But you should. Not because I am anybody important, but because I am one of the few that have joined lately and stayed.
I have read your response to this article by @donkeypong and also read @abh12345's reply. From what I can deduce, you are probably a well-intentioned guy and a nice guy too. But your arguments here as to why you should keep your witness vote, completely highlight what is wrong with the platform.
In your litany of reasons why @donkeypong should keep his vote for you, the most glaring response was you wanted to keep your feet in the EOS camp to keep the pulse on the cryptospace. This is exactly what the problem is with Steemit.
You (and frankly too many of the witnesses) are looking at one thing (the tech issues), and you have completely ignored the fact that people that sign up... leave. And I am not talking about 1 in 10 leaving, or even 5 in 10 leaving... I am talking about an attrition rate that is so bad the number of active users is going DOWN (fyi, that means that more users leave than signup, which is particularly bad since you have lots of signups). Did you even know this?
If you didn't, then maybe that is the problem. Here is the post from @paulag which she did last month in an attempt to bring this issue up so it can be dealt with. (Click Here) This 3 month snapshot shows this simple stunning fact:
What are you doing about this? Where is the focus on this issue? Instead of spending your time learning about EOS as a secret double agent spy, why don't you spend time talking to the people that sign up and try to use this platform? Why don't you see why many see this place as nothing more than a schoolyard filled with bullies throwing their weight around? Why don't you see why many people have given up on making good posts, and now do the bare minimum so they can recycle the whales SP at a small profit (ie known as bot farming)?
As a witness, instead of your answer being that you need to learn about EOS, ask yourself are you really only there to "learn" how to make Steemit better? It seems like a weak response to me and one that isn't very believable.
Having said that, Asher says that you are a heavily involved witness on this platform (compared to other witnesses on this platform). If that is true then great (even with that pretty big caveat). I hope you are. I hope to see you involved with finding solutions to the absolutely terrible retention problem that exists here. I hope to see you give these issues more of your time, and the EOS platform much less. I hope you can see why someone like me (a nobody here), thinks this is a ridiculous discussion that you are having about why you are supporting another platform when the one you have supposed "loyalty" to is burning around you.
As I said, you seem like a decent guy. I hope that you take these words constructively and get out in the community and find out what is going wrong. It is there for anyone that wants to ask good questions. I have many friends that can help you too if you just ask.
Its not really that hard if you want to make Steemit better and maintain your witness... Start focusing on Steemit users (especially the new ones) and the issues that are important to them, and stop pretending to be using EOS as a learning tool to make Steemit better. I'm not buying it, and I hope you stop trying to sell it.
Thank you for this post. Many artist that I know just stopped posting here and just stopping by once a month to see what is going on around steemit. It is sad to loose so valuable assets to the platform but most people here interested in crypto and tech .
I agree with you completely @marinaart! I have seen so many talented artists come and go. Its really a shame too as this could've been so so different. The people at the top are tone deaf and don't listen to anyone. I hope you stick around though, even though we only talk every so often, one day I think things will change and the tables will be turned! Then we can make a difference and bring all those people back!
Only time will tell. I think steemit will change bloging format in future. May be it would looks like YouNow.
Instead of leaving a huge reply, I turned it into a root post here.
I replied in your root post... I will respect this blog and not repost the full reply here, but I did post my full answer in both your blog post and my blog post.
As I said in my answer, I am not happy with the actual answer you gave me (but recognize you are the messenger and not the architect of the plan), but I definitely appreciate you having the courage to tell me like it is. I appreciate that you didn't sugar coat it. It is maybe the most meaningful interaction I've had here is 6 months.
Thank you again (for telling me the bad news), you have done me a favor and really opened my eyes!
ps... I hope you're somehow wrong, but frankly judging by the actions of the other 19 "top 20" witnesses and the lack of ever seeing @ned I have a suspicion you are very much right!
Wow, thank you.
I hope you read my follow up reply as well. Your first reaction to my post may be more pessimistic than needed. Thanks for the constructive dialogue.
I think you are talking to DonkeyPong and not me, right? It's in thread under me, so I was somewhat uncertain.
If its to me? I haven't had a vote on you for a long time, and I don't think I ever voted for jesta and anyx, I've always supported witnesses who do things I like, witnesses I can talk to and engage with anytime, that I see on the platform, drinking the coke and pepsi of the place. For the deep divers, yes many of the witnesses I vote for, also vote for me, that aligns with us having similar values, metrics and expectations for each other, but in general I will go for involved, dedicated, contributing, engaged witnesses whom I can reach pretty much any time (though I don't often exercise that as such per se, because we all tend to hang out in the same places anyway, there are only 50K active users after all, it's just a small town with only so many watering holes)
Also I often opt for lower ranked ones who work hard. Bigger ones wouldn't even notice my vote but for small ones I've moved some several positions with my proxied votes and my own. That seems beneficial to them, the chain for what I am supporting of their work with my vote and our users, by extension of the platform value-add stuff these guys do.
But to your points above. I will switch from sodas to pizza now. As a teenager in my school days I managed a pizza hut delivery. I didn't need to work at domino's to steal ideas from them, er I mean, learn from their methods and apply them in our own store. In fact, I would have been fired from one of them for trying to do both, I'm almost positive... something akin to voters responses to choosing witnesses dedicated to their "brand"
In our radio chat, and here on this page, the people against splitting time and interests anecdotally seem to out weigh those in favor of the idea. Echo chamber due to OP content and corresponding reader attraction? Maybe if it was just here or just on the radio show, but those two unique moments are producing similar results from the "crowd"
Which is where you and I differ on what you seem to consider being "engaged" in the platform and with the communities made up of the platform's users. I spend all day talking to them, the running joke being that I am "everywhere" and "always listening" which I get teased about a lot but really is just judicious use of ginabot and discord notifications and steem.chat emails lol. But the thing is I respond, nearly every single time, nearly every single hour of the day, something I've seen more of from you in a week since the meetup than I ever recall before.
I say that because I perceive that you are literally standing in a room full of people opposed to the idea of witnesses splitting their time and attention to both brands, and suggesting otherwise is going to be acceptable, makes me wonder how in touch you will be able to be with user sentiment with your attention divided if it's slightly seeming out of whack already?
Ultimately though your point seems to center around being able to learn more to bring back, that means you'll also be learning here and taking our improvements to the competitor faster. Right?
But it's all open source cork, they can see it anyway. Which underscores my point. I am pretty conversent in EOS tech already, at a white paper level as much as anybody else guessing along on telegram channels. I don't need to work there to learn how it works and use that knowledge here. In fact doing so would leave me little time to do much of either.
If you have such an abundance of free time, I will come back to my favorite repetitive question for you. What do you do with your time? You get paid a very nice full time salary. Do you spend 40 hours a week on steem? Will you spend 80 when you have two salaries? Perhaps you will say you can be more efficient and the time value of expertise warrants higher pay at fewer hours but to that I say, welp, I'll give my vote to the hardworking dedicated guy/gal/team willing to work the full shift for the same pay, its a better value proposition for me, since the competitive nature of the place and the method of dPOS voting means that guy has to be accountable and deliver "quality" and "value" to stay in his spot or someone hungrier will come take it from him by earning it harder, better, faster, stronger.
I can't speak for all "the people" but I can tell you I hear more sentiment against split personalities than I hear in support of them.
You're a decent guy, I hope you don't end up getting shunned by the people here and finding yourself in a massive cluster fuck or being outgunned over there or whatever, and losing what you HAVE invested here. That would suck, wouldn't it?
Yes, I was replying to Tom who said I was wrong and so I wanted to clarify my position.
If we start making decisions about "hours worked" instead of value delivered, then we're going to lower the value of contributions to STEEM. I have no fear-based mentality. If people don't think I provide value, they won't vote for me. They chose to vote for me up to this point (over 5,000 accounts, 7,000 if you include proxy voters, from what I've been told) and some will chose to change their vote as well, as Tom did. I'll simply present my case and keep doing what I've been doing and let others decide if it's valuable.
There are 100 people on this page citing it bad to dual operate. But I can't make you any more aware of community sentiment than to have it laying here all around you.
Your opening statement is a logical fallacy though. And a pretty basic one.
I said I would take the guy who would perform better, more of the time. Your assertion he can't work a full shift and deliver at par or even better too is ridiculous and needs no further comment.
Taking a leadership stance isn't always about going along with the masses. I think being directly involved in multiple projects makes me better understand the space in general and how we can improve STEEM. That's speaking for myself, not others. I'm not sure which opening statement you're referring to. Discrediting my views as "too ridiculous" isn't part of healthy dialogue. Maybe some examples could help: Richard Branson, Elon Musk, etc. They are involved in many things. Are they better off for it or worse off?
(I'm not claiming to be anywhere near these legends, I'm just using it as an example to say the concept is not immediately worth ridiculing.)
I would say Luke and I - after two rounds of public debates - at a meetup and on the live streams on youtube, twitch, steemstar.net, etc, - have reached a point of civil disagreement that didn't begin so civilly.
I sure hope steem is pepsi in this analogy....
I dont care which label we put on the can as long as "diet" is nowhere in sight.
Hahahahahaha. This made me laugh, just as the Pepsi and Coke you mentioned earlier sir.
you are right sir!! @donkeypong
I went and listened to the entire 3-4 hour podcast. lol. I heard Luke's answers. While you had legitimate tough questions, I found Luke's responses to be very convincing that there wouldn't be a conflict of interest, at least not on his part. I enjoyed the podcast. It was a healthy and interesting debate/discussion.
It doesn't matter if he's convinced himself of that subjectively. In either business or law, when there's even an appearance of a potential conflict (even if you think you could do your job well enough), you stay away from putting yourself in a position where people believe that you may be asked to favor one or the other. It's an objective standard and a matter of trust for the community. That's why corporate shareholders, officers, employees, and other stakeholders demand an adherence to that simple code of ethics.
I understand this perspective, but I don't see the cryptocurrency space in the same light as business or law. Many people are very, very frustrated with the legal system (war on drugs, victimless crimes, new jim crow, etc). They also see the problems of multinational businesses which work so closely with nation state governments as to become indistinguishable to them (regulatory capture, revolving door politics, lobbyists writing bills to regulate themselves, etc).
I don't think these concerns apply to block producers because of how the motivational incentives for DPOS function. The job is clearly outlined, and I don't think there is room to manipulate one way or the other without directly being removed from the position by voters. I guess I'd like to see some more concrete examples of what "potential conflicts" exist within this specific DPOS system.
It's a simple matter of time. People don't realize that the witnesses here typically average 10-20 hour workdays applied to the chain. Quite literally. Take out all the conflicts clearly stated on this page, and you still cant divide a human in two or add 24 more hours to a monday.
I'm glad you enjoyed it. :)
I think open source blockchain projects are somewhat different than coke and Pepsi are they not? I see what your saying. I just feel like that is on old centralized view. There are already witnesses who were doing both bitshares and Steem, even golos and peerplays.. and back then not a word was said. Helpful applications got developed on both though. It appears to be EOS that makes it a big deal..
Actually for nearly a year or more "the bitshares gang" absolutely centralized both chains and we don't want that to continue although in this case, it would be EOS new problem to solve, when a group of cohorts shows up and kicks in what we will generously call "mutual support" over there.
It's not different from coke/pepsi at all. Each chain has investors expecting outcomes and full time application of the groups they invest in. I would not put my money on a team that is not 100% applied where my money is spent.
It's not that it's EOS, persay, as much as insert any major competitor that risks our investors funds due to the conflicts of interests @donkeypong articulated here or that fellow witness @jackmiller also elegantly articulated when I debated @lukestokes on his dual intentions on last Sunday's SoS show either.
golos and peerplays are actually more like a sister to steem in terms of dev interoperability and shared gains than opposition, things made for them can quickly be used in any of them.
Bitshares, nobody cares much because we all knew it was and is more or less abandonware anymore anyway. Though I do have issues with how the same "club" of people seem to surface on all these chains and suddenly more or less centralize control, but that's of course, just an opinion based on my perception of history, some data and some commonly recurring names. And as I noted, it's becoming less of an issue as the platform carries on and we educate users more and more, which is working for sure to change the landscape quickly right now.
Last fall, JerryBanfield published that 27% of the platforms users had voted for a witness, today, lukestokes tracks it and its increasing monthly, to which I credit the 15-20 witness attendance chats held on my network or networks I built in the past running similar shows, and the weekly shows we do which nearly always have a couple to half a dozen witnesses in attendance on air or in the audience fielding questions and educating, and then those people go forth and spread the word in posts. Since we began these active and consistently delivered awareness campaigns, we've seen voter participation increase, awareness of what it means increase, and even better questions about the status quo emerging.
In the end though, back to the topic at hand, my team partner and I work 20+ hours per day EACH and witnesses who are actually active on the platform like @followbtcnews and @crimsonclad and @drakos and others, all tell me they spend similar hours.
So if we did both? Who would really be well applied at either place? So, you say, hire people like some do here. Well to that i say, okay then Ill vote for the people you hire, not you. Cause what do you do exactly if you farm out your job?
SirCork you know I love you right. I was in no way trying to be a dick, so sorry if it came off that way. Bitshares essentially kicked Dan out by not approving his proposal.
I kind of thought it was graphene chains vs other chains for my first while here as you said. They were like sister chains in a sense. This is why to me EOS is like a sister chain built by the creator of Steem and the strange cousin bitshares.
Sure I expect outcomes as an investor here and with EOS.. I don't expect it to come from it's creator or it's ceo though. Not @ned, not Brendan, not @dan. but a group of people working on open source applications that they built. The groups of people like you spreading awareness. The people making this new Steem based card game. By people using to the code to create awesome things that the CEO and CTO cannot do.
I thought that's what these decentralized layers for applications were supposed to do.. I admit I am not the most educated person. If Luke and you had a long conversation or two I don't expect to change your mind.
I respect your opinion and all the work you do here @sircork. As well as @donkeypong and see what you are both talking about. I agree it's a valid subject for discussion. I just don't think everything must be so black and white.
I think someguy123 has helped a lot of people here launch their witness nodes, he made EOS in a box ported from his Steem in a box. It would be a sad day to see him leave the Steem blockchain because his help is valuable. Can he not help both, and want them both to succeed?
Anyway. I guess we agree to disagree. I wish there wasn't so much hate in the crypto space. But it's like a sport. You pick your team join it, and hate all the others and anyone who would dare wear their jersey. I wish both EOS and Steem the best of luck really..
Oh I didn't perceive any dickishness at all? I too hope my response didn't allude to any, I was just being matter of fact and stuff.
I really enjoy my chats with @someguy123 and yes it would be a shame to lose someone like him to a competitor, but there I go again, using the world competitor.
To wit, though, I can't speak for Mr 123 here, but I sort of get the idea he isn't on the EOS BP ship jumping lists I have seen so far, and to make the "in a box" thing is more a function of privex as a generic hosting provider offering a wide variety of options than his own individual work, which I know is almost 100% spent here on the chain all the time from personal observation, and I haven't heard anything about that changing.
His ownership of a hosting company puts him in a unique position compared to others. One could argue if he sells servers to wordpress operators he's not living for the chain. I feel like some sort of pass is allowed here. It's like saying he makes computers basically, what people do with them is not necessarily what he does with them.
Your attitude is very generous about fairness and equal opportunity for the chains to succeed and I can respect it, but I also feel we have departed a little from the central theme of can a witness server this chain effectively while also serving another one?
From my experience of actually BEING a witness for eleven months, I don't think its possible to stay current, contribute, add value, create value, use the platform, engage with and understand the user community to be able to effectively represent them and their needs and do that for two chains.
Its information overload, its nearly time impossible to do ONE even in teams. I am a part of a team and some of my favorite witnesses here are also, and no one has a split second to pee, eat or shower some days, most days. We are all generally lamenting over how all consuming being a good and valuable and engaged witness is, and how much we neglect ourselves and our lives to be competitive and useful here.
Divide that by two?
Yeah, no, not without outsourcing most of it or doing all of it poorly.
We don't need jacks of all trades, we need masters of ONE.
And I choose steem. It's a gamble, those guys may go get insta rich and leave me crying, but I'll be here crying in some damn fine company.
I will be here with you lol.. I don't expect that to happen. If the crypto market does thrive again there is room for multiple chains.
I agree with the jack of all trades statement. And I concur as the chains grow, the users and apps grow. The demand for time will also grow and it will become more and more difficult to help both chains unless coding something functional to both of them. Then maybe split into to offices it groups. I am only saying you can help one chain and another without violating the first chain. Do what is good for people on this chain or that, or
both if you are able.
A website that offers voting/posting functions on this chain and eos when you post would be nice. I hope it happens even though Dan and Ned would dislike it I'm sure. They are decentralized so it's possible right?
sure making two api calls in one ajax method is possible. Until one cant get a response from a borked node and they both fail or crafty try-catch coding alleviates that pain point.
But that means a duplicate post has to be on both chains, and somehow identifiable as such, or else what am I submitting two votes to?
Take these comments, imagine a button that said vote on steem, vote on eos at the same time, but the comment only exists on one.
if you are talking witnesses well same thing, how do you know the one there and the one here are the "same" one?
I find this part of your argument rather duplicitous sir. You argue that a witness that is doing his job properly does not have time to do the same on EOS. While at the same time "you give a pass" to a witness that also runs an entire business. You either accept that people can divide their time appropriately or not.
What about witnesses that have a day job?
You missed the point. Because what you repeated is not what I said.
I run a steem exclusive charity, a steem exclusive business, a non steem international software company which doesnt take much of my time at all as an executive who pays people to run it and a STEEM witness.
I do not run them for competitors at the same time.
This!
I often wonder: if a decision was only going to favor one of the two between the steem blockchain and eos blockchain, as a top steem witness and eos BP, which will it be?
At the end of the day, we are looking at what we call a conflict of interest. Things like these even spark the flames of perpetual unhealthy competition. Steem might not be where it wants to be right now, but when those "elected" who owe steem a primary duty to help it grow through thick and thin are busy vying for the growth of other rival blockchains, how is that a good thing?
Herein lies another problem: The support for team eos comes from the steem blockchain..be it the steem/sbd being converted to eos, the posts made on STEEMIT and all. Why isn't the publicity channelled elsewhere? Steemit sourced it's users from the outside world, why not go and replicate that feat instead of targeting ready made members of the steem blockchain.
How many people are doing genuine publicity for them without incentives or hopes of benefit? Well I know those who are doing and who can do such for steem.
I also believe that instead of complaining about the ills of this platform as an excuse to bail out, we can actually do something about it like some few individuals are doing.
Finally, I am open to corrections here since I believe I am not an island of knowledge and I am open to learning.
Very well said. You're active in a number of communities where you've seen that happen, so your perspective is important here.
The @steembirds are epic and will never die!
Well, we are immortalized by the Steem Blockchain 😎
I thought I was the only one calling it "Oh No" after they put a completely zero professional experience person in charge of "international operations"
Haha. I wouldn't think of using such a name. It happened to be a complete coincidence that my next sentence began with those words.
Hrm, maybe your smarts got ahead of you on that one and came out before you even knew how punny you were! :)
This is amazing! Uno!? ONO!? oh no lol
I was going to write a comment but this is pretty much /thread at this point lol
hahaha brilliant
Haha! Awesome guys ;)
😎😎
U guys rock and so LOOSE!
I love you guys, rock on.
Heh thx! Glad to hear it 😎
"Oh noooo" was the first thing I thought when I heard about ONO. lol
You guys are awesomely talented and adorable. <3
Hehe, thanks Isaria. Ya it’ll be interesting to see what happens with that in 20hours or so.
Ha ha ha ha, you guys rock, pun intended, It's great you got inspired and can see humor in this. Thans for sharing your music with us
For sure 😎😎
LOL!!! hahahhahahahha on point guys!! !
Thanks bud 😎😎
"What's the essence of us switching sides" i like that; loyalty.
Hahahahahaha funny video and cool song too. Is that the name of a video/card game? Oh no! Hahaha
I respect your decision and thanks for posting this. To me this site is a place where other blockchains and technology are posted about often. At this point any single DAPP blockchain is as equal a competitor as EOS is are they not?
I joined Steem because it was the social media blockchain. Dan made a post talking about creating a DAPP blockchain. Next thing I know Steem is no longer the social media blockchain. It is yet another DAPP blockchain like EOS, NEO, Ethereum, tron, cardano, etc etc. So EOS is announced, Steem announces it is doing what EOS is doing. EOS announces future plans to develop a social media site. Who Announced becoming competition first, and whos decision will end up being a blunder..? I guess that is for time to tell..
Some of the best developers on Steemit are working with EOS block producers. Maybe, just maybe.. shoving them towards EOS is not the best idea.
and yes ONO is one social media website on EOS. Dan Larimer is still planning on building another one as well.. I am thankful that competition is almost here. Maybe things will start being done around here, or around here will be done.
I think I'm in line with your perspective on the situation here - and the showmanship between the these two projects has been a bit ridiculous.
What makes it worse is that people really believe these two platforms are directly competing with one another, which is true in some respects, but not an absolute truth. They both are competitors and aren't.
From the eyes of a developer, the analogy I can best describe is that STEEM and EOS are akin to iOS and Android. They're very different platforms, with different approaches, but ultimately accomplish the same thing (running the software on your phone).
Apple goes the route of making things incredibly simple and easy to use - which in turn ends up limiting what developers can do with iOS. The developers on iOS are incredibly restricted to ensure the end user has a great experience and is safe from any threat. This is what STEEM's SMTs will be - safe, accessible and with a low barrier to entry.
Android on the other had is focused on customization and adaptability. You can do almost anything on an Android device provided you write the software for it. However, this freedom also makes Android devices more prone to problems and the user experience isn't "as good" because of it. EOS dAPPs will be like android - flexible, powerful and with a high barrier to entry.
Furthermore, in the "mobile app" ecosystem you see plenty of app development teams that develop for both iOS and Android, and are probably sponsored by one or both in some way.
There are some flaws in this analogy, especially from the eyes of an investor who's using his/her stake to vote for block producers, but there are also some truths.
The release of the EOS platform isn't going to hurt STEEM anymore than a release of Android hurts iOS. Each platform will succeed based on the actions not only of those who are exclusive to their platform, but those who are also part of multiple platforms.
PS - If you want to consider another example, where each community of developers remains "isolated" to a single blockchain, consider using Playstation, XBox and Nintendo as reference. Those 3 platforms suffer greatly because of the lack of interoperability between their respective platforms. The consumer definitely ends up suffering as consumers are isolated into proprietary environments.
nobody is saying that EOS and STEEM cant have interoperability. But being STEEM witness is like being a politician for the STEEM blockchain, being a block producer for EOS is definitely a conflict of interest.
It would be like being a US Senator, while being on the Russian Federation Council.
I don't see being a witness that way. There may be some politics in the campaigning of a witness - but there's no governance for the most part in Steem. We don't have super secret meetings where we decide what happens next. We talk a lot about what we'd like to see next - but we aren't making those decisions.
Instead what we are is essentially gatekeepers of the blockchain. We are paid to produce blocks and occasionally decide what changes are allowed to happen on the blockchain. We can campaign and promote ourselves as more than that, and you can vote for us for those reasons, but it's not required or part of actually being a witness.
The key point to all of this is the blockchain and understanding that the blockchain is not steemit.com. When it comes to steemit.com (the website), communities, the development of SMTs, the priorities of tasks in development, or almost anything else - witnesses have very little say in the matter. Pretty much every change you've seen since June 2017 has been outside of the purview of witnesses.
To Steemit Inc, witnesses are block producers and they are paid to produce blocks and consider changes in blockchain consensus. Those witnesses may also be "other things" on top of that, but the official witness responsibilities of each of those people/groups ends there.
I would hope that my track record so far as a block producer would at least give me the benefit of the doubt when it comes to being a "conflict of interest". If it becomes a problem and people see me making decisions that favor one chain over another - then I'd expect to be voted out.
I think an even easier way to put it is, no one in their right mind would want someone working at two central banks at once.
Charity you're are completely right, but I would take things a step further and say that having people play politics on multiple side would be no different than having the Rothschild's controlling the banking system of multiple countries, something that id assum most of us are highly against
That's correct. It's basic Business Ethics.
It's not that simple, you have been around long enough to know that the witnesses aren't politicians controlling this place.
You have the ability to decide the how SBD works which literally gives you the ability to make or break this entire economy, and from what I read you may be getting even more powers with this next hf. Whether you like it or not this is politics. Secret meeting or not, You are the face of the STEEM blockchain and voice of those who delegate resources to you. Id also like to point out that all single politicians(in the American Republic system which is really no different than DPOS at its core) do nothing more than talk about what they would like to see next, which is gets them voted in to the pool that allows them to vote on what actually happens next.
You overestimate our responsibility in this. Our current responsibility in relation to SBD currently is only that we report the price of STEEM (as oracles). We also have the power to approve/block hardforks which would change SBD, but that hasn't happened in a long while.
If you're referring to the peg discussions that have happened over the past 6 months - we have discussed at length various mechanisms to restore the $1 SBD peg, but there hasn't been much traction. The public outlash at "wanting to make the system work as intended" has scared many witnesses away from approving anything that would work towards actually affecting the price.
As far as I know, the only change for SBD proposed in the next HF is to increase the percentage at which SBD printing slows, which timcliff worked on.
In some ways yes, in others no.
Politicians once elected have the powers to propose, ratify, and amend bills - which become law, and allow politicians to legally earmark funds (from tax payers) in order to establish agencies, build infrastructure, and ultimately enforce those laws.
Witnesses can also follow those same steps to propose, ratify, and amend changes to the blockchain, which essentially become "law" - but we can't earmark funding to actually make these things happen. For smaller projects we can fund them with our witness earnings, but that only goes so far. For anything beyond that, we are at the mercy of those with the purse strings (Steemit Inc with their massive "premine") and the decisions they decide to make, regardless of how we vote.
The system lacks checks and balances, funding appropriation, and has a sole power who is ultimately in control of the direction of Steem. As witnesses, we are gatekeepers that pretty much just prevent them from doing bad things to the community (which we do).
If the various automakers got together and combined forces, they could build the perfect car. An engineer without a full-time gig from one could work for two or even three companies and make a full-time income!
I'd love to see a kumbaya-hug and more cooperation, but we live in a free market with other humans. Different projects have various interestholders and agendas. And competition can improve the quality for the consumer, which is not as well served when there's just one game in town. You know the technology far better than I do, but I would guess it's still early to be talking about interoperability - I'll join you in supporting that if it becomes realistic in the near future.
I understand that you want to be able to hire a team and do a lot more. (Frankly, with your skills, if you partnered with someone who understands business and marketing, there would be a lot of potential; chainBB could have been marketed to various communities here. Probably still could.) To your point, this is crypto. It simply isn't very stable yet. If I could count the number of people I know who have tried to go full-time either founding a crypto business or a Steem blog, often to "fail" due to volatile prices that can't support them yet, the fingers on two hands would not be enough to count them. Maybe we're not quite there yet.
I sure hope it's realistic. I just don't think there's any way to know without trying. I figure if I try to bridge that technological gap (and maybe a little of the politics), others might join in too.
Honestly once Muse and Decent get running - I think those would also be interesting candidates for integrating with Steem-based websites. How cool would it be to blog about a song and integrate some sort of purchasing of that music through Muse or Decent?
There are very peaceful and fantastic ways these technologies could play together. To me, none of this is about Steemit.com or any social network that might get built on EOS - it's about how all of these technologies could enable non-crypto communities to build platforms like this.
This entire thing is about revolutionizing the internet, not a single platform.
We probably aren't there yet - which is why I'm thankful that I've had the support (in witness rewards) from multiple blockchains thus far.
Allegedly smart contracts are built to allow cross-chaining, so EOS in theory could connect some data through to other chains, but I have yet to see much beyond the white paper theories on that to believe its 100% viable.
There's so many of those theories floating around about "what it could do", I'm hoping everyone just stops and thinks about "how what we have could be better" every once and a while!
Um not sure where you are headed man, that's pretty much our whole argument. We want people here, focused on making here better, not a house divided where a resource (person/team) is trying to make two things better at once that at times may be at odds.
Isn't the whole reason you and Anyx are going to go to EOS is because of "what it could do" thus taking time away from being here "making it better?" It is impossible for it NOT to take your focus and split it.
This comment was more and comparing "SMTs" to the "cross-chain" whitepaper you spoke of. Those are both "what it could do" technologies and definitely not "making what we have better". In this regard, none of those have anything to do with witnesses or their responsibilities.
That's not the point. Of course my attention gets split, but what matters is what my responsibilities are.
Currently I'd probably estimate that my typical week looks something like this:
What happens if I don't have to spent 30-40 hours a week on code? That's an additional 30-40 hours that could be allocated elsewhere. My new typical week could look more like:
While you are right, my attention is split between more individual things, what matters is the amount of attention each one is getting and the balance it achieves.
Also - I'm not saying this is what will happening - but I'm saying situations exist where it is possible. You can't just judge situations like this without really looking into the specifics.
No snark, I think you have a typo here
10-20 hours engaging in conversations about steem projects
10-20 hours engaging in conversations about eos projects
10-20 hours engaging in conversations about non-steem projects
Because did you mean non-steem AND non-eos?
Anyway...
70 hours on both platforms? And you get paid what? While the people I see building massive communities (user retention) or building new apps like dsound or whatever (user adoption AND retention) and then ALSO staying relevant through constant engagement, could never do it in such a small amount of time and are typically in the mid range ranks.
I'm 100% with you on that. Thankfully, I've hedged my positions with relatively good timing so far (buying fairly close to their lows to date), or I may not be so with you.
Investments aside, coming at it from a pure user-experience perspective, competition is absolutely a very good thing. I think we're close to witnessing an exponential growth in the decentralized social media market(s) once EOS, and perhaps a few other current "no namers", start pushing serious dev time into this space.
I wouldn't be at all surprised to start seeing television ads (here in the US) for one or more of the flagship decentralized social media sites sometime within the next year(ish) and it's around that time (assuming that there is such an advertisement effort) that I expect at least one of them will become a serious threat to the current social media giants like Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat and what-have-you.
Clever :)
IMHO, it's pure ego on his part. Plenty of other fish to fry with EOS' technology. As far as Steem becoming a blockchain competitor through its actions, SMTs are all I know about. Those should allow existing sites and communities to plug into a blockchain. I don't think that makes this a platform for the ICOs, etc. that we've seen on Ethereum and other developing platforms.
What is Bob's repair? They had no platform before doing an ico for their SMT.. or appics? Both had no communities before announcing becoming SMTs. Both did or are doing ICO's via SMT. As far as I've read SMTs will allow you to do an ico and start a community as well. You even called EOS a fork of Steem..
I guess I don't see how SMTs are any different than erc20 aside from the fact they run on a better blockchain, and they have some built in voting and naming functionality. Which is what EOS will have.
One more thing I forgot to mention. EOS was a fork of bitshares. People called it a scam because it had the bitshares graphene code in it. So if EOS is a Steem fork, then isn't Steem a bitshares 2.0 fork?
I am in now way a cheerleader for EOS though btw. I have invested more cash into Steem. Even if my EOS is currently worth more..
I just think this is a social media platform that is supposed to be decentralized. So Dan or EOS posting here should be fine. Other people post about other chains all day.
Discriminating on one chain over another is not good, unless it's Steem. We are on Steem so I'm fine with a little favoritism going that way. I just look forward to competition. Without it things are allowed to suck. Even ned said as much in my reply in his 'downvoted for aggrandizement' comment.
I respect your decision though. Sorry for the long winded comment. There is nothing wrong with wanting to support the things that are going to support Steem. Or not wanting to support the things that are not going to support Steem.
In my perfect world Steem and Bitshares are both running on EOS. More inclusivity and less division is surely the best route. If that were the case it would just add users to all 3 blockchains more than likely. This road we are on is a divisive one unfortunately.
HELLO!
You and I we see things MUCH THE SAME mo frair..
"I guess I don't see how SMTs are any different than erc20 aside from the fact they run on a better blockchain, and they have some built in voting and naming functionality. Which is what EOS will have."
I AM SO F*ing DONE with ETH.
Had my fill.. ;-)
SMTs are supposed to be more application specific
And it would be nice if Pepsi and Coke had a group hug, combining their formulas so that everyone could enjoy the perfect cola. The reason it's unlikely is that they started with different interest-holders and agendas. I'd love to see a kumbaya-hug and everyone work together, but I don't see that as likely.
The reason SMTs are better is because they can plug right in to an existing community or site. Sure, there are new ones that want to use SMTs also. Some may be better candidates for ICOs on other platforms, while others will be perfect fits here. The SMT concept predates EOS, by the way.
Pepsi and coke are private companies. Technically MIT should have horded grqahene from Steem, bitshares, and EOS. Hashgraphed it. Instead it's open source code.
I think that having a cherry coke one day is nice, and having a Pepsi the next is nice. I'm glad convenience qbd grocery stores don't have wars against companies. That they allow both on the shelf so the customer has options.
I do agree that that is a good thing to be able to do and that does give SMT that advantage. I just don't know that EOS will not be able to.
I heard about communities after the last HF. I never heard about SMT. Maybe you are right that they came first.
I thought Steem was the social media blockchain. If they focused on that that's a good niche worth billions. Becoming a jack of all trades might leave them a master of none. I hope not.. as I said I invested more money here than EOS. I just don't like having to pick a team and rooting against the other. Which is what crypto appears to be about sometimes.
Thanks for taking the time to get back to me though yo.. I appreciate your thoughts.
Well written, Tom. I also do not support ONO Cheerleaders with votes. In the case of the witnesses I accept that they try to hedge the risk that EOS could kill STEEM. Let's see what happens after the EOS MainNet launch. If well-known STEEM-Witnesses are also successfully EOS BlockProducers, I will drop my vote here. Steem On :-)
Hey, Twinner. Thanks for the comment. I agree that's probably what they're trying to do now (also they are uncertain whether they will get Block Producer roles over there).
I quite understand your postion and I like how you put it in a straightforward way. I’m sure that some early Steemit witnesses (although I've no idea which ones are involved in EOS now) came to Steemit, because of Dan. I’m following both Steemit and EOS. I guess some witness can have enough energy for both platforms, or like you said, double profit ahead, who doesn’t like it? An EOS supporter myself, but I doubt if a EOS based social network can be any better than Steemit though.
I was an early BitShares adopter and have followed Dan for more than four years now. He has my utmost respect and thanks for what he has envisioned and helped build. But he jumped off the Steem boat much too early (as he did with BTS). History will probably repeat with EOS once the people problems overwhelm the coding there.
I really appreciate your TIMELY comments and airing the linens..
I showed up a little later, and not as deeply nested, and have had a difficult time drawing any lines, mostly just standing back and taking in the view!
What amazing times to be alive.
Thanks yall, I'm having such a great time! ;-)
It is a fascinating time to be alive, and to be able to be participating in everything as it unfolds! I can dig it ;)
I'm sure if there were explicitly no contracts drawn up but the steem was already in his pocket it must have been a no-brainer to jump ship and try to print more money elsewhere if there were still people around trying to push up the price of an asset he got regardless of length of tenure. Sometimes contracts are a good thing... a non-compete could have made him, ya know, actually try to work things out with steem.
Thanks for the reply, Tom. Dan is an amazing writer and programmer, I was so inspired by his story, how he started his journey on Blockchain. Without him, I wouldn't get into crypto to be honest. It would be interesting to see how the EOS main net looks like and how Dan solves the possible bugs in the future. It's sure a concern if he would ever just leave the platform. As he stated before Steemit has some unfixable problem(unfixable might mean he prefer a public chain like EOS I'm not sure), I hope he could fix all the problems on EOS.
Wonderful comments, thanks.
Most welcome sir.
Please sir upvote and resteemit done
This has been my issue some time now till i let it slide because i see it as a waste of time as my complain might not go far or yield any positive interest.
I just cant tell you how steem has been a game changer, after all my years in ponzi and facebook without achieving a dine. Steem came from no where and in less than a year, i am now doing fine.
Now back to the issue you raising here, i really got pissed off not because they are promoting EOS here but because of the mode they are using. I belong to a group where i saw those you are supporting with upvote criticizing this steem blockchain by comparing it with EOs.
It is good to see competition but with the way some are taking it, it is way beyond it as i see some person advicing others to dish out steem for EOS. We are so bad, how can we just forgot the game changer, that lovely platform that showed us love, that platform were ideas is shared.
To me i will stick with steem and continue promoting it the way i could, even though if i am not benefiting from it, because i know it is still far better than those social media that does not in one way give you anything meaningful as reward.
I said to my self, if i have money to possess EOS, there is nothing wrong with it but going forward comparing it with steem or rather use it to talk steem blockchain down is bad @donkeypong
If that is your decision you have to respect it, everyone is free to express what they feel.
In one part you are right when you say "1) you are not making enough money here, or (2) you would like to spend more time with others" The witnesses think they earn enough to look for extra money with EOS.
I did not know that the first line witnesses won 25 thousand dollars a month. How much money would they earn as an EOS witness? I think 3 times that amount ..
I trust that over the long haul, more STEEM witnesses would move toward becoming associations as opposed to people. So much trust must be put into a person when they turn into a witness though associations that are worked for Steem, Steem-related administrations will probably dependably remember Steem's best advantages.
Definitely. I agree with you that groups, teams, or associations will be best. In the future, I will hold witnesses to a much higher standard as far as making a positive impact on the Steem ecosystem. Each one should be funding dapp development, marketing, or community building, etc.
Heh, my team does all three and then some, and we are insistent that witnesses should be using the platform. I'm well over the excuses that we never see top 20s because they are busy working on stuff. Some of which materializes, some of which doesn't. Meanwhile my team mate and i spend about 140 hours a week a piece here. literally putting in 20 hour days.
Also I think that at least the top 20 should also run full RPC and seed nodes, required or not, and the only reason I don't is because the servers currently cost more than a level 63 witness can afford without a revenue stream here, and because all our projects are free tools, charitable, communities or otherwise not revenue generators, for now, i am waiting to see if appbase and rocksdb can make the currently still vaporous claims of major ram requirement reductions come true. Even if I had the rev to stand up a full node today, id wait for hf20 now or just be downsizing a couple month old expensive node and rebuilding anyway at this point.
I totally agree. There is no way we can possibly compete with a project that has as much funding and support as EOS without everyone at the top making this their fulltime, parttime an side gig all in one.
100% agree with this. I'm new here and could totally be talking out of my ass, but from looking around at the github and the apps I get the vibe that while many of the Witnesses are putting in work towards making STEEM more valuable for all of us currently many of the witnesses are nothing more than glorified E-Celebs.
That's a really great step by you @donkeypong and i myself see so many posts about EOS and why steem stands no chance against EOS, i mean really ??
People of Steemit making bad posts about Steemit itself for getting some extra upvotes from EOS lovers,
It's a good step to stop Upvoting any posts about EOS because we have so much things to share and talk about on Steemit itself then why would we need to talk about any other Cryptocurrency who trying to build a Steemit Killer type Social media platform,
And we all know steem is the currency who changed life of many Included myself and iam fulli in Support of steem.
Thanks for the comment. Some people seem to think all that glitters is gold, even before it's built and when major questions surround its governance.
I already foresee EOS having similar problems to bitcoin, theres way too many people that are heavily invested for consensus on major issues to go well once ideas on how to progress begin to split
We've agreed all page long @donkeypong but being completely real, we have some governance issues of our own to sort out...
Wow!. This is a great view i must say sir. I totally support you on this. Loyalty is every thing and that is what i picked out from here too.
Witnesses are being paid quite a lot, it is logical for them to support the growth of this platform without undivided attention.
If EOS wants to be a competitor to this platform, it is common sense for them to support their own rather than have other people to support them with their supposed competitor's Steem Power!.
I love the way you gave us your thought sir. I am with you on this, absolutely...without coercion hahaha
Thanks. I'll respect whatever others want to do. This is how I see it and there's definitely no coercion. Thanks for the comment.
I really enjoyed your view and take on this. You are a man of great insight and I really respect that.
Thanks a lot sir.
I really think your arguments are acceptable to be against this whole issue and you are right we should have Witnesses much more committed to helping grow and maintain the ecosystem, not to be aware of his wallet.
I concur 100% with your position on EOS, especially regarding the divided loyalties of witnesses and witness candidates. I am happy to say I have never upvoted any competing crypto post here on steemit (or anywhere else) and never will, because I believe in total dedication to a project once you've set your shoulder to the load.
That having been said...we are going to get our lunch eaten soon by some startup if we don't improve the incentivization of quality content here, de-incentivize upvoting for poor content, stop malicious downvoting for people that do it purely for ideological reasons, and get a better distribution of new membership from a broader cross-section of the planet than we currently have.
Just saying...
For sure. Plenty of work remains here to improve this place so that Steem/it works for everyone. We'll get there.
I sure hope so. This place has AMAZING potential..and could be bigger than all the other social media platforms combined if we clean things up a bit.
Great explanation. You bring some good points here and I agree with you. But for an average user like me is useless without names. Most of us don't have a clue what is happening behind the scenes. If we want changes we need names.
An earlier draft of my post included names, but it didn't feel right. This isn't a witch hunt and I'm not trying to shame anyone. If other users care to investigate, they can find out which Steem witnesses are also candidates for EOS block producers - definitely a few familiar names. Some probably have identified themselves in comments on this post as well.
This reminds me of the Apple-Google drama of claims that Eric Schmidt stole the idea for Android from Apple while he was a member of the board of directors at Apple. I can see as a large stakeholder your explanation makes perfect sense. At the same time, I tend to believe for average users EOS emerging as a competition will be a good thing.
Healthy competition will motivate and drive innovation. For example, right here on Steem, Dtube recently made significant improvements after Dlive emerged as a competition. Dtube's new curation reward distribution may become a successful model for others to implement. In my opinion, a competition was the reason for this creative and innovative thinking.
Overall I welcome this competition, because I think it will make Steem even stronger in a long run. When Apple was almost going bankrupt, it was Microsoft that saved it. I think Steem and Eos can be competitors and prosper alongside.
What I really would like to see is both Ned and Dan start getting along again, become great friends and support each other. That would boost both projects in crypto and social media space.
^ this
I don't think anyone is against competition. But As a witness you are assumed to have STEEMs best interest in mind at all times. Dan himself stated that he was building a direct competitor to STEEM. With that said i don't see how anyone can say with a straight face that it wouldnt be a conflict of interest to play politics at the top level of both platforms
I was tempted to respond to this as well - but my other response covers this pretty well already.
After writing the above comment - I can with a straight face tell you that I personally won't have any problem distinguishing what's best for Steem regardless of the other platforms I work with.
I'm honestly shocked that people are more upset with the idea of a STEEM/EOS witness combo than they were a year ago about a STEEM/GOLOS witness combo. Golos was a direct fork of Steem and a direct competitor attempting to take away the Russian traffic from Steemit.
The FUD is a lot stranger this year.
We open sourced steemd and encouraged other builds. I'm not all that against nationalized versions that run separate, I for one cannot read cyrillic anyway. But I can go to a Forex and change dollars for whatever russia calls their shiny pebbles. And I can probably find a way to make steem into golos (golo's?) (goloses?)
By that extension I will also likely be able to get my steem turned into EOS and vice versa too. I don't see the forking and taking traffic away to another completely different language as that crazy. I cant read anything @clayop writes either, we might as well be on different chains.
I would argue about witnesses doing both though. Same as we are here about EOS and Steem. Not enough time in the day to do both well. Period. Then all the real, perceived or imagined (doesn't matter, still effects the market) conflicts of interest and there is no rational way I can justify it, despite a couple of you trying to defend a position that is IS possible to do both, in the midst of massive public opinion that disagrees here and in other venues where this discussion has occurred.
Come on... that's an opinion, not a fact.
I'm not going to argue here-say with you and I don't know what massive public opinion you're citing - but I'm also not going to let these opinions alter the decisions I've already made.
People can vote - that's how this system works. If I'm not pulling my weight I expect to lose votes - but I would hope I don't lose votes simply because people are running around FUD'ing my ability to execute.
The public opinion is literally making this page itself a nine mile scroll.
As for "opinion" lol, man, each week I have half a dozen witnesses on our various radio shows, every day I talk to probably more than a dozen by dm, and over the year Ive talked to nearly ALL of us at some point and to every single one who is actually present and visible they are killing themselves with neglect of life, and self to spend unimaginable hours working on this platform in various capacities, and achieving remarkable things.
To suggest you aren't? Probably isn't the best tack to take in a public space filled with reading voters...
The market cap of Eos is much higher than Steem, that creates some anxiety, where golos market cap is much smaller than steem.
Lots of people can lie with a straight face... especially to themselves.
Cork has my vote, you and luke do not, will not.
You're right, a lot of people can lie with a straight face. Are you trying to imply that I'm one of these people?
Well, are you a human? It is a problem I have only noted in humans so maybe you are a bot or an alien in which case, no, I do not mean you. "The professional blind spot" is a real thing, and when there is money on table, when one's livelihood or even reputation or peace of mind is at stake, humans DO lie to themselves. And we are total suckers for the most ridiculous bullshit when we are feeding it to ourselves.
Tell me, if you heard ANYONE else tell you they could work for Microsoft and Apple and always have the best interest of Microsoft AND Apple customers at heart, you would laugh at them, right?
I understand your argument and I can't speak for the Witnesses. Some of them do and unbelievable amount. Some are just there by default and don't seem to do much of anything and a few worked there way into the situation after joining STEEM "late."
I will just speak for myself. STEEM wasn't distributed properly and in my opinion and a lot of other people's minds EOS is distributed more fairly. We are also supporters of @dan 's work and want him to do well.
STEEM is "almost" there and has been for two years. Let's see what EOS can do. Competition is good. Maybe SMT will be launched sooner when the competition from EOS heats up!
Competition is welcome and it's perfectly fine to be invested in both. I just choose not to use my votes from here to support the other one and I find it a conflict of interest when the same people want to govern both chains. Others are welcome to their own opinions, which I respect also.
Unless they're doing work on a private github then i doubt SMTs are as ready as people think
This was very well thought out and clearly written, not negative nor overly critical, I don't see how anyone could blame you for these decisions. I sincerely hope no one gives you a hard time, but if they do I will be looking at them with "one eye shut" in the future and possibly reconsidering some of my votes as well.
It seems that "cheerleading" is the only thing that supports the valuations of 98% of the existing crypto-currencies in existence.
Truth be told, I actually believe that 100% of cryptos (including Bitcoin....blessed be it's name) are all hype driven.
Haha. You're probably not far off there. Hopefully, we see the crypto money getting a little smarter about which projects actually involve some worthwhile use cases, since we both know that many do not.
Really glad to see a post like this. Make clear your intentions, and your methods and strategy. That is all I could ever ask for from a witness. Some witnesses are very silent, and now I know why. I have heard their whispers in discord about jumping on the other wagon.
As a pro wrestling fan, I have seen this happen with old territory turf wars, and the brutal Monday Night wars with WWE and WCW. The competition made them build a better show, and paid their talent better. When rumors spread that the champ signed a contract with the rival company, swift action was always appropriately taken to remove their title to avoid mass embarrassment and loss of value.
Post a list! Do it!
These witness are hiding their true intentions in secret. They prey on our ignorance, because it allows them to better reach their hidden goals. I want to know which witnesses are double dipping in Steemit and EOS. I have a larger witness blacklist than witnesses I trust. There are many more witnesses using this platform to advertise for their other conflicting endeavors, but that is for another post.
Post a list of the witnesses who are serious EOS adopters who are likely going to upgrade to the so-called Steem version 2.
Thank you @donkeypong.
I've decided not to publish a list, but it's not difficult to find the EOS block producer candidates and compare them against a list of top Steem witnesses. Anyone who makes a wrestling analogy deserves a vote from me.
Yes, and I took a twisted amount of joy when I looked down the witness list yesterday to adjust my choices.
I may not understanding everything about blockchains and cryptocurrency, but I understand loyalty.
It is said that when the head is wrong or right, the body follows suit. Having divided loyalty has never been a good thing. Sitting on the fence is choosing the opposition.
No one is forced to stay with steemit, but if you have such role as a witness, where you earn from the community because of the role, that's like receiving salary as an employee. Such person should be loyal.
Is there a way to recognize such witnesses? This may be the reason the coin is depreciating swiftly. With EOS launching games close, many more people are powering down to get there.
While I know that steemit will rise again, I also think the witnesses should pick a hustle and focus.
I felt your intense dedication for steemit @donkeypong maybe you should also share on your blog, from time to time, reasons why you are here and sticking here on Steemit.
Crypto in general has been in a downcycle; it's not specific to Steem. We have a lot to look forward to here in the coming months with SMTs and Hivemind (amongst other developments). To find those witnesses, you can research the names of EOS block producer candidates. I chose not to list names in my post, but some have identified themselves separately in their comments on this post.
This is an act of betrayal, mutiny, dishonesty, unreliability and I must say it’s a banish-able offense off steemit. The forerunners, the leaders how are the main face of the platform are the black faces .
About EOS, trying to copy steemit is such a dishonoring thing to do , let’s see how well it goes for them
I respect your decision on this and I must say, some witnesses deserves to be checked . So nice you clarified yourself, good name is better than riches they say
Your language is stronger than mine. I don't bear any ill will towards these people. But I'm also doubting they would do well in a Business Ethics class. For me, it's mostly about commitment level to Steem; either they are or they aren't.
Sometimes you just cant play nice tho. @olumideolowoyeye is totally correct. I really don't see how this is even a hard concept for people to comprehend and I'm appalled that certain witnesses are even attempting to defend their ability to do both so vehemently
Witnesses and Block Producer are politicians plain and simple, and as I stated earlier I would not trust a US senator who was also a member of the Russuan Federation Council.
When I started reading your post, I was a bit lost, noticing a certain unclarity in the message that you were sending (the "why can't I do two things at the same time?"), but then you mentioned the Conflict of Interests and I think that this is the point that holds the whole argument together.
And it is one hell of an argument. It's pretty black and white when you think about it. When two projects are so similar, people will tend to either one or the other and there will be competition. You can't be on both sides of the competition or you will not be trustworthy to those who put the weight of their voices on you.
In fact, with this argument, you are the first and only person who has convinced me of the importance of rational loyal Steem in regards to other blockchains (also applicable to other investments).
It's basic Business Ethics. Glad you appreciated that perspective. Thanks for your comment.
Be in agreement.
don't give a slot
I understand your angle and you have too many reasons to be right, the thing is Peter can never be robbed to pay Paul really, if you decided not to support the EOS posts using steempower is a credible claim and it's undisputable really, I however stand of principles of right and wrong and you're certainly right.
I wish STEEM could be crowdsourced like this I'm other platforms it's a pity it isn't
Crowdsourcing? That's what we're doing right now, isn't it? Give me an idea and if I like it, I'll vote you the funding.
Don't know if you're serious, but I was going to write a post/make a submission somewhere touching on something I have mentioned in the past, which is that dlive/dtube should totally team up to fund an esports team in a country/countries with low costs of living but large enough playerbases with potential talent who could grow to become at least tier 2/1.5 in their respective games, if not tier 1. Do you think that's feasible at all, or that they would want to partake in any kind of shared responsibility like that? I think if we want to get eyeballs and users from the outside we have to start thinking a little differently.
That is a brilliant idea. However, they don’t need to team up. They are competitors of each other.
Maybe later they can be competitors, but right now I view it as a situation where competing against each other within the current steem ecosystem is less beneficial for the both of them and their largest source of delegation than it would be for them to work in unison to share the risk of a joint project that could yield dividends for everyone involved including general holders of steem and SP.
Also, the cost of a team isn't so low that it would be easy to field the first team on only one platform's back, unless you were really scraping the bottom of the barrel in terms of talent, management, and amenities, and even if the team is hosting in a cheap place to live they still have to fly internationally, among other costs that bring the baseline up.
So it might be hard to immediately start several teams for several games at once unless they were contributing substantial percentages of their voting power, but it's certainly realistic to think that advertising revenue from other companies, crowdfunding from other steemians, and any amount of success and tournament winnings could start to offset the ongoing costs of the first team. Once it isn't such a large cashsink they can start to look at the results, conversion to steem users, activity on the platforms etc. and then begin eyeing a second team acquisition or creation.
It is however important to note that most esports orgs are never profitable, but this problem is itself somewhat lessened if we view it how many of the other owners do, which is the all-coveted brand recognition. Any given team establishing itself within a game with some modicum of success would garner somewhat substantial street cred for dlive/dtube/steem, something imo we sorely need among certain demographics which esports currently holds captive.
That makes me think how did twitch become so successful and popular? I don't know much about its history, but I am sure there are lessons that can be learned from its experiences and marketing methods.
I was actually thining the same thing. theres no reason for the two projects to be seperate
I'm not familiar enough with either of those apps or their development to know whether they would work together. You certainly could contact them and suggest it.
I think STEEM has been of immense value to people, and it's really not even crowdsourced you know like most even valuable stuffs that are being fed down people's throat.
I think majority of people do not kow about STEEM, and I'll be damned if EOS rises to take over.
If you ask me, I'll humbly say it's possible to orientation on local TVs, mass ads, on billboards in many countries, even on products that uses ads to boost their economy, so many ways sir, can I continue?
ONO honestly looks like a pile of shit.
China-level censorship and algos to make sure nothing ever rocks the boat? Check.
Giant 75 payout to devs and friends while the entire rest of the community gets 5 a year? Check.
Paying people to shill for them before launch? Check.
CEO only involved in shitty projects like a crappy eth cats clone? Check.
It's a shit project run by a literal female Jin Yang.
There are a lot of witness overlaps between BTS and STEEM and I still find issues with that, but at least BTS's flagship product isn't the same literal thing as STEEM's flagship.
Honestly EOS isn't that great. We should just drop the block time down into the nanoseconds for STEEM and claim we're faster than EOS if necessary.
Good shit man.
rofl
you beat me to it.
You know more about it than I do. The leader there sounds like a nice lady with a vision, but from the pictures and profiles, it also appears to be run by teenagers.
Yes, the speed is virtually the same.
Yes, I only incidentally looked through the whitepaper because I kept seeing people harping on about how great ONO will be... on steemit of all places, and got annoyed enough to give it a read for the lulz. The extreme front-loading of the project and the desire to extract even more via a continuous cut of some aspects of the project leads me to believe it's a pretty big cashgrab trying to ride on the back of a trending project.
Ethics aside I'm sure that most people would jump at the chance to cash out like that in their youth as opposed to what, do actual work for the rest of their lives for a pittance in comparison? So I can't blame them any more than I can any of the other people involved in opaquely greedy ico's.
To be clear, no legal business can operate in China without signing the users' rights away to the government for surveillance operations. This isn't even a secret. Even Apple has signed over its servers to be put in China so they can scrutinize their own apple-owning citizens.
This is not something you want to have any of your personal data or views to be shared on, imo, especially now they're integrating their mass surveillance system(literally called 'skynet') through all social media apps within China (weibo, wechat etc)
(I live in China)
I didn't really know what a witness was till now! Glad you're taking the initiative! I enjoyed reading this post! I started coding a few years back looking at shows about hackers haha! Now That I've gotten into it, I love everything about it. Very informative post! Good work :D
That's great you were able to learn something form it. In Bitcoin and many other crypto projects, miners conduct the work needed to verify the blocks. In this system, the accountholders elect witnesses to handle that, which makes it much more efficient (but not without its challenges in terms of governance).
a really good post @donkeypong, that's great, I agree with you, because it's all for the sake of creating Steem to grow in the future, but I think Steem will always be number one for the future, because I see, more and more people are supporting Steemit, so even if Steem has a rival, it will not be a problem. Thanks for sharing, and I will always support you, and I hope Steemit will be more successful for the future, because with Steemit, the less unemployed in the world...
I like how you place it direct. I'm certain that some early Steemit witnesses came to Steemit, due to Dan. I'm following both Steemit and EOS. I figure some witness can have enough vitality for the two stages, or like you stated, twofold benefit ahead, who doesn't care for it? An EOS supporter myself, yet I question if an EOS based informal community can be any superior to Steemit however.
I see posts gladly cheerleading EOS on steemit and I simply choose not to see saying "perhaps this is on the grounds that the co proprietor of steemit is tye proprietor of EOS thus its permitted". Be that as it may, to be true I figured it wasn't right. Steemit will be steemit and anything donw here ought to be to promot steemit and for the benefit of steemit. I should state I bolster this development of yours energetically as should be obvious that it is for the great od tye group. This needs to stop and it would take a move the correct way like yours to stop it
Concerning the Eos and ONOs, I truly have little enthusiasm about them, might be on account of I'm still new to the stage or another reasons. What I know is that, you can choose who and whoever to vote in favor of as long as it doesn't make any symptoms the group. For somebody like you, you are a standout amongst the most experienced steemian on this stage. You have the information and comprehension of what to do, so if your choice is to not upvote eos related posts, you more likely than not had your reasons. A debt of gratitude is in order for the data @donkeypong
I simply cant disclose to you how steem has been a distinct advantage, after every one of my years in ponzi and facebook without accomplishing a feast. Steem originated from no where and in under a year, I am currently doing fine. Presently back to the issue you raising here, I truly got irritated not on the grounds that they are advancing EOS here but rather on account of the mode they are utilizing. I have a place with a gathering where I saw those you are supporting with upvote reprimanding this steem blockchain by contrasting it and EOs. It regards see rivalry yet with the way some are taking it, it is path past it as I see some individual advicing others to relegate steem for EOS. We are so terrible, in what manner would we be able to simply overlooked the distinct advantage, that stunning stage that demonstrated us adore, that stage were thoughts is shared.
This is a good example for any witness out there, if you are truely for steemit, then it would make more sense doing everything in it's favor. With a monthly pay of $25,000 it's betrayal to just support something else and play a false image on steemit.
Thinking some steemians out there will learn from this post as well.
Such things are confusing new steemit investors who can't decide since our own steemit witnesses can't decide as well.
Thinking steemit has a lot of improvements to consider and we can't take afford to take our focus to something else.
Thanks for this one @donkeypong.. And thanks for the support you give to different communities around the platform.
I don't think they're playing a false image. These people have been very honest. But the conflict of interest potential is very clear. It's basic Business Ethics. Thanks for your comment.
I hope that as time goes on, more STEEM witnesses would become organizations rather than individuals. So much trust has to be put into an individual when they become a witness whereas organizations that are built for Steem/Steem-related services are more likely to always keep Steem's best interests in mind.
Absolutely. I agree completely. I have voted for a couple of witnesses that were teams and each of them turned out to be disappointing, but I still think that is what we need: witnesses who support dapp development, community building, marketing, etc. with the humanpower to get it done.
Interesting, I've looked at some witness teams that were disappointing but others that had good approaches so I'm very hopeful that we'll see more of them as time goes on.
Since I've been reading about eos, I've been suspecting it to be a direct competitor to steemit, but have this beautiful ways to sugar coat it
I don't believe in it, I never did, and with this I'm reading, I don't think I can.
EOS should stop using steemit to promote themselves...
EOS looks like a Trojan horse here. With good intentions he has entered into trust and now wants to take the idea of Steemit and go further. I heard about the platform ONO. I hope they do create something different, not a copy. Even if the steemit has problems, it is not a reason to give up. I think that our platform will still be able to resolve all the differences now and become better. Many witnesses are working on it. Yes, we need some reforms. But we don't need another Steemit with the name ONO.
I tried commenting based on my point of view as a regular steemian with limited knowledge that I have about the world of blockchain. My apologies if I am wrong.
Reading your review above, I am very happy to say you are very sure and make sure to make steemit more developed in the future, and I'm glad you decided to not support post associated with EOS, means a big hope for the writers at steemit that has niche apart from talk about EOS will get greater support from you,
Hopefully the other whales will do more support to ensures steemit will grow stronger again in the near future.
A few weeks ago steemit has been getting members more than 1 m, I hope will be 3 m before end of this year.
Best Regards
dedy rendra.
Steem!! On.
10 million before you know it. :)
😊😊😊 10m wow 🎉🎉🎉😍😍..
Thank you my buddy, I hope you always in the best health and will come to Indonesia or Province of Aceh and join espresso coffee time with steemfriends here☕☕.
Interesting stuff. While I don't really have a dedicated "dog" in this fight, this was a stimulating read, and good food for thought. Thanks.
Well, you've been here long enough I would hope you care about this place. If a person has both dogs, then that's perfectly fine also. But I'm not going to use one's food to feed the other.
Of course I care, man. It's pretty much my bread and butter right now. And that is no easy feat in the current climate, as you may well know. This community has given me a kind of voice I did not have an outlet for prior. I am interested in EOS, too, but also have some fundamental disagreements with Larimer's worldview/ideas/approaches.
I only know what I've read, but its hard to trust or take someone seriously who has left two prior projects in a state of disarray to work on competitors before finishing the ones prior.
Open explanation says it all. Thank you for the explanation, but really, taking a decision for what you stand for defines your person.
I know it is pretty difficult choosing sides when it comes to this kind of scenarios but first you said in legal terms- it is called “conflict or clash of interest”.
I don't think people here on steem blockchain need to be involved in an act that will dampen the progress and forwardness of this chain. Better still, they can relief themselves of their post from the other party for the new found party not too lose on both ends. Double jeopardy!
And a man's word must be credible and upright, always know where you stand, the steem blockchain now knows @donkeypong position henceforth. Although, he didn't have a bad blood against people fronting for EOS. Just stated his mind that's all...
Trust.
it's a long writing about EOS and somthing else. I've read it all but not sure i can understand all. i don't have enough knowledment about Cryptocurrency and something like that. what i can see from this post that you are not agree with EOS and anything relate to it.
May be i'm not deserve to make a comment to your post but you know you are a well known guy in steemit and people try to make a comment so do i. sorry if my words are far away from the topic this because my poor english.
regard
Thanks for your comment. I have no problem with EOS and I wish them well. Anything negative I wrote about EOS was just good-natured ribbing. My main point is that I choose not to support that development with my Steem votes, given the potential for competition. Others are welcome to do as they wish.
thank you @donkeypong i'm so glad for your replay i don't even think you will do it and so sorry for my wrong understanding about your writing like i said, i not so good at english. i will try better next time. thank you
Many will misinterpret this one, and it shows in the comment section. This is nothing personal. It is all about business ethics and loyalty.
I remember when I asked my teacher in ethics about reproducing patented products you officially design but for another company. She then answered it's not a good act. And she added that it's not an ethical thing to do as a person/worker after I asked why.
I think this is great. We need to be working on the long term viability of this platform. The decision for EOS to create a competitor site is really frustrating, and the decision for our Witnesses here to double dip is equally bad.
I think this site has the potential to be around for a long time but we need our strong players to be committed to this team. When you're batting for both teams the only person that doesn't lose is you. And that sucks for everyone else.
I respect your opinion on this matter - even though I fundamentally disagree with your logic.
By all means though - please vote for those who you feel are contributing the most to STEEM and it's success. Everyone should do this always. I was personally sad to lose your support and figured this was why, but it's you're right to voice your opinion (in the form of voting) however you see fit.
I do have one comment on some of reasonings you listed out:
I think when talking about "enough", the for is important context in this point.
On one hand: currently (and for the majority of STEEM's lifespan) witnesses have been rewarded enough to support themselves and enough for a professional server infrastructure to produce blocks and help the STEEM network.
On the other hand, STEEM witnesses "are not being rewarded enough" to build entire teams that can do meaningful work on the STEEM network (at least from my experience). This may change - but you can't build a team on the "hopes" that STEEM prices will rise higher.
It's not black and white when it comes down to "not making enough money". If and when you try to boil it down that far, it tints the motivation towards greed. While I'm sure greed plays a role in it for some people - it's not the primary motivator for everyone.
Thanks for your responses. I respect your opinion as well, though I think you discount the role of a witness in its role in governance and potential conflicts of interest. I responded to your other comment with more detail.
I run an EOS newsletter that I publish on http://thisweekineos.com which I also publish on steemit. I am also an ethereum developer. So keep my biases as well as my expertise in mind when reading about my opinion.
The biggest objection that jumps at my face is that steemit competitors can be made with any other smart contract platform of which EOS is but one of many.
If you do not believe me, take a look at https://peepeth.com/ which is a twitter-like dapp running on Ethereum, a smart contracts platform supporting less transactions/sec than EOS. If a twitter clone can be made on Ethereum what is stopping anyone, right now, from making a steemit competitor on any other platform? Should people be ostracised for making posts about Ethereum or NEO because a steemit competitor can potentially be made on those platforms?? Of course not!
Because steemit is such a genius, awesome idea should it not be expected that a competitor be bound to come up? The fact that one is planned on EOS rather than all the other smart contract platform does not warrant going to war with the smart contract platform itself.
Of course, in this case block.one themselves are interested in doing a steemit 2.0, but it's easy to see that even if block.one was out of the picture someone else would have come up with steemit 2.0 on another smart contracts platform.
Therefore, EOS is NOT a steemit killer. It is just a generic smart contract platform like any other smart contract platform and should not be held responsible if someone uses it to make a steemit competitor.
Competitor, definitely not killer. And I'm OK with the competition if they bring it. My only point is that I choose not to use my Steem votes to build it for them.
So it seems you have 9 witness votes free.
May I divert your interest to some other witnesses?
@emrebeyler
@pjau
Or even myself, @isnochys?
My threshold is very high for supporting witnesses. I'm glad to begin a conversation about that, but it takes me a long time to trust a witness' reliability and understand the work they are doing to support this ecosystem.
Yes, could become a conflict of interest for witnesses once EOS dapps launch. Now it seems to me that witnesses just like us, are dipping their toe in the water. Who knows what exactly will happen with EOS..
Thats especially the case with minnows, most of whom have extremely limited earning potential on Steem. (im one of the very few super lucky ones).
That is why you are seeing cheerleading posts. People just cant stand the drama, cant stand unfairness (anyway they might judge that), they hate 50% of SP is locked in bot delegation, they hate that only a small handful of "saint whales" upvote minnows, they hate that Curie and OCD are the only big players in the community curation game that actually value quality, they hate the trending page looks the way it does.
There is a lot of frustration and the way they deal with it is: "EOS will be better, will be best, i couldnt earn here, but on EOS, that will change completely.
Call that what you want. Delusion, lying to yourself that the promised land is just across that hill, passive aggresive voicing of their frustration... etc
You said it yourself that you encourage others to try EOS out, but this is slowly turning into Xbox vs playstation debate.
Some people will literally yell at you, call you ignorant, lacking in knowledge, if you criticize EOS.
Their incessant cheerleading for EOS is a sort of revenge to the Steem blockchain.
You might be a little hard on witnesses that are trying out EOS. As i said i think it will become a conflict of interest, but it still is not until we see what EOS has to offer. Witnesses will have to make a choice.
Its either Xbox or Playstation.
Sir @donkeypong I would be happy if you would put the witnesses names here so we can vote/unvote them too because I want a steem supporter witness with a full support of steem and steemit in particular.
My decision was not to list their names in the post. Some have identified themselves in these comments. Others, you can find by researching the names of EOS block producer candidates.
I definitely appreciate this food for thought. I feel that the transparency that is touted here (though sometimes still worked around) is one of my favorite aspects. IF witnesses have these conflicts of interest, I think its important that we know, and then can take all of the information and decided whether it is possible for them to be partial or if it is fair for us to expect them to step away from involvement from projects such as this. I just hate to have decisions made for me, or information kept, especially as I move into supporting Steemit more and more. How would we be able to research which witnesses are involved in both? Or is it sort of a 'keep your ear to the street' kind of thing ?
Your honesty is refreshing, @donkeypong. We are all wondering what's going to happen when Steem has a formidable competitor. I feel like most people are too afraid to acknowledge the elephant in the room: if Steem is not the best at what it does, its value will fall. Therefore, if your investment is in Steem, it is simply a matter of acting in your best interest to attack other projects, or at the very least, withhold support. I don't believe that's unethical, in the slightest.
I don't use "attack" as a bad word here. I don't believe that all attacks are bad behaviour. For example, I would consider it good behaviour to participate in a 51% attack on an obvious scam coin.
There's something to be said for a bit of healthy Steemian tribalism. I don't think anyone can hold that against you.