Appreciate the reply. Yes, what we have been lacking is good distribution. The wider we can spread Steem to people that really care, the better our growth will be in the future. The initial distribution was horrible. A social platform where ninja mined stake gets to be the whales and decide what's valuable and what's not? That's like letting Zuckerberg decide where the new Steem would go, imagine that :) We're still suffering from it...
What I'm questioning is can Steem survive without Steemit Inc, that's what I'm hoping to get answers for. What is Steemit Inc spending millions for in a year, and if they go bankrupt, who will run these services? That's what I'm asking, can the blockchain run without them. After that comes the issue of who's going to continue developing it. It would put my mind at ease knowing we could survive these worst case scenarios.
I am sad to hear you say so iggy -- But I have just put some money into STEEM now that it is down so much, it's a nice buy in.
I think crypto as a whole is just crippiling along... so until crypto has some new life breathed into it, there is little hope for Steem. Cause and effect here. That being said I think if it does go down the way you say. Well we need the shake up! We have people who have always believed in the platform... if it is a cult like tribe as you say. So much the better for the people will have to figure out a way to get back that which they knew was always theirs to begin with. Personally steemit will always be my form of expression. I just might put it down sometimes. It is time to change the platform. It is time for someone else to heed the call and take up the mantle.
Steem needs a take over by the people. The stakeholders - you and me IGGY
I challenge you iggy
What can we do together to change this place?
We don't need these people. We find the right people! Talent has seeped through these digital walls. You know that as well as anyone. What can we two do? What can we start. What was your dream for Steemit? What rallying call must be rung so this place can stay for the people?
Well my biggest worry is that Steem the blockchain itself is in danger due to it relying too much on Steemit Inc. If that's solved, I think Steem will survive, one way or another. I do have big hopes for SMT's since they will enable people that care and share ideals and moral rules to organize and build their own ecosystems. One of the biggest problem has always been the distribution of Steem. Those who hold stake in systems like these play huge part in how successful it is, so SMT's that manage to give largest stakes to entities that think long term and can view ideas from far away perspective will prosper.
Now that you mention that, I do have one project that you might be interested in. We should chat on discord about it some time. It's too late
for me to touch upon your comment fully, but I'll just say that I saw Steem as a platform where people would reward good content they personally like. If millions would do this, the trending would be really interesting place to visit, attraction that non stakeholders would also want to visit, every day, but sadly this isn't happening. Perhaps some day though, with the help of SMT's!
The #Steem blockchain can absolutely run without steemit.
Have you ever used any of the other interfaces? Try out steempeak.com, it's awesome! Lots of folks use busy.org, people with phones use partiko app. There are many many ways to access the blockchain!
We are all stakeholders in the Steem blockchain. Not steemit.
Lyndsay, there's a lot more going on beneath the surface... These are just interfaces that show what's on the blockchain, I've developed few myself actually so yes, I know. Thanks for the reply though.
Ok, cool. So what are some solutions you have thought of?
We just need to make sure the system can operate smoothly even if Steemit Inc ceases to exist one day ( they do a lot more than just upkeep Steemit.com ), I'm not going to jump into details with my limited knowledge however.
The biggest problem is that the costs of running API nodes is so high. And normally, one API node is nearly not enough.
You can ask @themarkymark, who ran by far the fastest community RPC node. It was really expensive and got more expensive with time.
Now, I'm not argueing that this has to be fixed, but Steemit Inc. are doing exactly this - making it much cheaper to run API nodes and once that is done - the community will hopefuly stand up.
At least I know that I will work on something.
Thank you for the reply, just to be clear: API nodes serve data from blockchain to services? If there aren't any public ones, any service wishing to use Steem blockchain would need to run their own node?
I'm glad to hear Steemit Inc is taking steps towards minimizing these costs, as a long term investor in blockchains, I expect the ones I'm active within to be running for forever, or at least 100 years. Otherwise there's no point if the system can't handle that.
Should we require top 5-10 witnesses to run public api nodes and increase their pay if needed, after Steemit Inc has done their upkeep reductions?
One thing is bad distribution of STEEM / SP, another is bad distribution of rewards. Of course these go hands in hands, but maybe we could do at least about the latter.
Posted using Steeve
Yes, the latter we can do something about, but that would require offering stakeholders an option to just receive their rewards without actually selling their votes or using it to vote content without curating ( vote circles, self voting through alt accounts and such ), that will just mess up the content discovery and diminish any true curation efforts, eventually forcing everyone to become a rather passive stakeholder if they wish to not feel utterly demoralised and just leave Steem as a whole.
We have a lot of people who would love to find great posts, I'm sure. And I can't be happy with Steem until real curation has an meaningful effect.
How things work now:
Top 20 trending is decided by who pays most to the passive stakeholders, these stakeholders aren't doing anything, yet they get rewards that match about 10 self votes a day + curation. This activity draws a lot of rewards from the reward pool, so the reward pool that is actually in use for manual curation is already diminished. This passive vote selling doesn't care about what gets seen on our trending, that the outsiders see first and judge the whole system by. And yes, it isn't pretty, but what can we expect when it's decided by who pays the most? So since this kind of activity is going on, even I with close to 6k Steem Power won't bother with curating. I don't have an effect, and if I do manually curate, I'm losing out on rewards and on effort needed.
This is a devious cycle that will lead to majority of people just opting to sell their votes, so a trending can be formed that nobody truly likes or is proud of. Quality content doesn't matter, and it will be obvious to anyone who isn't deluded by their stake in the system, hence hoping for better. I'd like to be proud of Steem, but self appointed "community leaders" with their feel good posts, who at the same time sell Steem's dignity to the highest bidder makes it harder every day.
How Steem could work:
Divide the reward pool by rule like it already is, between passive investors and active ones. Doing this we can actually save the curation process from the devastating effects that passive investors currently have on the system and actually make the work of active investors worth more, since they get to decide what gets rewarded and shown to everyone visiting Steem. They'd actually feel appreciated, who knows! Encouraging more curation by people who wish Steem to succeed long term. There are people who would like to do that job, even if it would pay a bit less, but now their work is muddled by passive voting, indifferent to quality of the posts. And it's a sad, sad state. Not sure how long I can take it, I might just take a hiatus and wait for SMT's and hope they can solve this issue.
I share your feelings and agree with your description of the situation. However, what you suggest as a potential solution can be already done right now! At least most of it.. :)
We at Steeve are boosting manual curation. You can read more about how we are doing it in this post published last night.
Our idea is to use AI to process the vast amounts of new content created every day and learn the taste of our users. We can then use the AI for giving personalized recommendations of potentially interesting posts outside of user's regular feed. We will then upvote the most popular posts on our platform. This should improve the reward distribution, as good quality content will have a better reach and curators will be actually rewarded for their manual work, not like now. This should also motivate curators to accumulate more SP and thus improve the ecosystem overall, including the price of STEEM.
Would be curious to hear what you think about it :)
Posted using Steeve, an AI-powered Steem interface
Any steps taken towards quality content being found on here and brought to light is step to right direction. There's multiple ways to do it and AI is interesting approach, but one that tweaked right could provide a lot of value that sets your service apart from the rest.
Actually, I'll be switching over for Steeve for a while to see how it feels in action.