I'm attempting to be objective about this conversation, but I must confess its very difficult. As someone who has invested a lot of time into this platform, I can't help but to be kidnapped by my biases, however I will try my best, my absolute best to be fair with everyone who is participating of this difficult conversation.
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The Basic things out of the way
Yes, competition is good, it brings the much needed drive to a market and its usually(there is exceptions) the best way for price discovery to really take place. This is to say, that the free market decides what is best solely based on its competing nature. For this I believe that all of us who participate of the Steem ecosystem should not really be worried, but quite excited about the prospect of ideas being polished by a wider selection of developers and philosophies.
So to me, the promotion of EOS on this blockchain or any cryptocurrency for that matter is not unethical, amoral or anything that dramatic. It just is, and we can't advocate for freedoms, for having a platform that is true to the idea of censorship resistance while attempting to make a list of biased exceptions.
However, we must divide this conundrum into two to make sense of it all:
Users don't really owe any loyalty to Steem
If a product is better designed, better implemented, more profitable or what have you, then that product should win, and the users of this platform would be doing themselves a disservice for adhering to loyalties that won't give anyone participation trophies. To my knowledge there is no plan in the works from Steemit Inc to hand out lambos to those who no matter what they do, or don't, stick around and keep themselves powered up.
As a user and someone with a small investment on the platform compared to our whales, I have to accept this and move on with my life. Yes, I may have big dreams for the Steem blockchain, I may want one day to live strictly off the ecosystem, but I must realize my dreams are my own and no one owes me a penny to make them happen.
So, if users start to promote EOS, if the actual competitor of Steem ever gets launched and if they are actively recruiting on steem, I must not be a hypocrite (since I do the same on the mainstream platforms) and allow them to do their thing. If they succeed or not, will be entirely up to them and my interference will not be necessary.
But, real Investors can demand loyalty
And that statement is not outrageous or out of place. The truth is that we are an ecosystem that relies on heavy investment, if we did not have whales like @transisto @trafalgar that bought into the platform with shiny bitcoins, we would effectively be distributing a token worth mere hypotheticals.
To reduce the experience of participating of the ecosystem to profits exclusively, is to ignore some of the less tangible (for lack of a better word) gains we receive from it. Social status (equivalent), relevance, purpose and other human constructs are hard to reduce to numbers, but none the less are unquestionably valuable to our life experience.
In this sense, some of the whales who have bought into the ecosystem have done so possibly because they understand and value these less tangible dynamics and not only because of the gains they stand to make. I'm using the word possibly because I'm sure this is not always the case, nor does it have to be.
However....
If we isolate the conversation from the social profits (best words my brain could come up with) the truth that lays before us is quite simpler to understand. And this chart tells a story we must all consider.
Steem vs Bitcoin - Down Trend
On this particular fact, on this chart, there is very little to discuss. To make this as simple as possible to understand, what this chart tells us, is that people who bought into the platform with Bitcoin, are having their Steem funds diluted against the bitcoin valuation of their assets.
We could think of this as a tax, as a fee paid by the investors and users of the platform, but as I've said before the facts are quite undeniable. Because I want to make sure I'm being clear, I will attempt to break this down to a simple example.
Let's imagine @iwannabeasteemwhale buys into our platform today with 1 BTC, in today's numbers he would get about 3000 Steem Tokens. This brand new user with be a minnow mind you, but lets continue with the example. If this user is able to double his/her size in one year, thus being a dolphin with 6000 SteemPower after 365 days, our natural appreciation of that would be - "Well, that's awesome, @iwannabeasteemwhale doubled his invesment"- and technically we would be correct only, and this distinction is key, only if Bitcoin remained at the same valuation for a whole year.
The last line of the last paragraph should have sparked a light bulb in your head. As recent history has shown us, bitcoin the current undisputed king of cryptocurrencies refuses to stay put. The users who exited their bitcoin positions for steem moved to a slower moving train basically. Yes, against USD Steem will go up, I'm not implying a loss in Dollar valuation, I'm implying a dilution of your Bitcoin assets.
So, we can conclude and we would be quite correct that the ones who mainly pay the "salaries" if we can say as much, to everyone on the blockchain are the investors who have used their bitcoin to buy heavily into their positions.
A Steem Witness gets his share
From this same pool, from the dilution of the Bitcoin valuation. This is to say, that all their wages are the equivalent of an inflationary tax, or fee on the users and investors of the blockchain. The bigger the investor, the more the investor is "spending" in bitcoin valuation to foot the bill of the ecosystem.
So, we can conclude that if an Investor is footing that bill, if a whale has bough into the platform with their cryptocurrency assets, that whale has absolutely every moral right to demand loyalty from a witness who is paid to secure and maintain the blockchain, as a condition for offering his/her support.
The top 20 Witnesses and EOS
Are met with a choice, and so are we. They have the complete freedom to contribute to both projects as they see fit. We also have the complete freedom to vote for them or not, if we believe they are not acting in the best interest of the platform we have chosen to support.
In my opinion the power to make this choice is independent from the list of contributions top witnesses may be making to the platform. Meaning, that we can't simply conflate the contributions they have made and will make with the right or lack thereof to support them in their endeavors. They are mutually exclusive.
I know for a fact @jesta is one of the best developers we have on the platform, and his position as one of the top 20 witnesses is somewhat safe because of this verifiable fact. However, this does not mean that this fact gives him the equivalent of "diplomatic immunity" and that the investors of this platform should not question his current and future actions.
The conversation needs to continue
And even thought I'm practically a sand flea compared to our whales, I will hope that the concerns of the community, the smaller stake holders don't get ignored. In that sense I appreciate @lukestokes approach to this whole thing, and the somewhat emotionally charged conversation he has been having with @davemccoy on the matter.
I'm walking away with a bitter taste in my mouth, I won't lie. But on the other hand I appreciate the honestly, although brutal at times that has been shared on the topic.
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I want witnesses I trust (like Luke) securing EOS, even if I don't hodl any.
Bitshares, Steem, EOS; they're all @dan's babies, and until they've finished off Mark's lunch they don't need to eat each other.
I also happen to think highly of Luke. I think however the conversation last night got very emotional and a lot of conflating happened, a lot of confusion and semantics where a bit scrambled.
As I was saying, I'm trying to be fair, even though I've invested heavily (from my perspective of course, nothing compared to others) into this platform.
This remain one of the topic I don't like associating myself with on steemit, different people with different opinions.
What people refused to understand is that, for the fact that EOS would be lunched does not mean an end has come to steemit. Both can coexist
They both have different agenda, but not all believe this and that is why I don't always engage in any conversation as regards the topic.
Its hard to remove emotional biases my friend, hence why the conversations get cloudy. But the more we iron these ideas out, the better. I certainly learn a lot from reading on these topics daily.
I've dedicated so much time in reading about it too. Their is absolutely nothing bad or wrong in having alternative when it comes to market. The market price of one product can actually influence the price of another... I hope many people understand this!
Thanks for searching into the concept
Those of us in opposition to dual personality witnesses are not concerned with competing products.
We are concerned with our platform decision makers simultaneously charged with making decisions for this chain AND it's competitor.
I understand your point, it is a very complicated issue for the witness especially.
Agreed. I'll just repeat what I said in reaction the the post on this same subject by @donkeypong:
With "both" meaning @lukestokes and @sircork. As long as a witness's "duties" don't suffer from his/her attention to other blockchains, be they potential competition for Steemit or not, there should be no problem. So I voted for both witnesses :-)
Great post btw: you manners are civil, human and friendly as always ;-P
Thank you for your support. You have 100% of my appreciation and dedication and I suppose, maybe 50% of Lukes? Unless you vote for him on EOS too ;)
Ahhaha epic answer!!
Great discussion, as I continue to say, Steem should focus on getting the trading volume up, 100-300 million USD should work well and lift the flow of Steem so investors aren't worried about losing BTC value, they have the most lethal weapon in the form of SBD, and they aren't using it... But I hope it works out but I feel like alot of the Steemit witnesses are just bullshitting their way and dumping bags when BTC value increase basically milking BTC, so the game theory doesn't work because they never had a monetary investment so they don't really care what value they are selling at..
I know there are bad actors Daudi, but also casting a generalized net like this is not fair to others. You and I know personally people who where trying to do the right thing.
The witnesses are free to do what they want. And, I'm free to vote how I want. It's up to each witness to decide if the degree to which they care 'bout muh 'pinyun or my vote. It boils down to two things:
Economies of scale apply when expertise in the other blockchain help Steem out in some way. That's common for operational technical skills because the skills are quite transferrable and the time demands are not flat on either side.
Division of attention is something I'm more concerned about for community witnesses where I want them focussed on growth in steem communities. To some extent, this also applies to third-party devs too. If you're doing something else, then you're not doing Steem. If your witness platform is steem community then I'd expect the witness to show the resourcing they're putting into Steem itself and how steem stands to benefit from any economies of scale if they also resource another blockchain. An individual witness is going to have a tough time in this regard - though an organisation-based-witness (or witness team) is better placed. So, I'll be voting accordingly.
For those wondering; I'm not evaluating new witnesses at this time. However, if your witness runs a public API node and I don't vote for you, then please let me know - I have a few votes going for public API nodes.
It makes me smile this is one of the things you are focusing on. I keep on saying, even though it feels like I'm talking to a wall at times, that all top 20 witnesses should run one IMO. It sends the right message, the right precedent to anyone attempting to up the ranks, and its precisely what we need to scale our blockchain.
Ideally, that'd be great if the top-20 did run an API node. I haven't yet considered unvoting top20 witnesses that don't run an API node, I'd rather incentivise more to start.
The overheads of running an API node are much too high and it'd be great to have some dev effort in that direction before applying more "stick" to top witnesses that don't run API nodes.
Oh, that would not be a reason for me to unvote a top 20 witness, specially because the contributions can't be measured in only one dimension. However, I share your preferred approach, incentives over deterrents.
Regarding the overheads, the newest updates kind of take care of this. No longer will a ridiculous amount of ram be necessary to run a node, which would allow 32GB servers to do just fine.
These news are huge, or to be more with the times YUGE. So, I would love to see more of them embrace it once it launches. I will sure make some noise about it.
division of attention
You know as well as anyone what kind of time the "good" witnesses have to dedicate here. It's impossible to do two, primarily competing, things and delivery anything with efficacy.
Continue to appreciate your insight, periodic mentoring and opinion checking and your witness vote. I will in turn continue to stay as focused as possible on things that serve our common interests in humanity at large, to protect and enhance the future of this platform for your investment's sake and to preserve the sanctity of loyalty and allegiance to the delivery and service of the reasons you chose to invest a vote in our team and our ideals.
I do find it a shame some of the witnesses don't understand that kind of loyalty and service delivery, but I suspect they will learn some hard lessons about voter loyalty in the coming days as well.
Love your work @sircork. Pleased to support it, incl. @youarehope, where I can.
When Lambo!!!???
Heheh. Thanks for a great addition to the discussion.
I agree, but I don't think loyalty is the right word. Trustworthiness? Absolutely. Value creation? For sure. Expertise, experience, and a proven track record? Without a doubt. Loyalty, to me, is not what an investor wants as much as they want results. If one witness is involved in 10 different things and, through that experience, providers more consistent value than other witnesses, then an investor would be irrational not to support them. The witnesses "loyalty" should be related to the value they create for the blockchain and the primary role they have as a block producer to consistently and securely produce blocks for that chain.
To me, this is the benefit of DPOS. Those with the most to lose and the highest claim on the rewards pool, witness pay, and other forms of inflation on their holdings have the most say in who gets to protect their investment as a witness securing the blockchain.
I'm curious to know more aobut this bitter taste. What, specifically, is bothersome? I'd like to know more.
Edit: oh, I forgot to mention, I originally put in around 10 BTC into STEEM right around the peak of that chart. One of the worst (in BTC terms) trades I've ever made. But, on the long run especially when considering "social profits" (I like that term, nicely done), it's been one of the best decisions of my life (not just my finances).
I guess my word was used poorly, because that is exactly what I mean. if they can remain being a valuable contributor to this ecosystem, efficient and consistent in their endeavors (loyal is not the word, but it seemed right at the time) then I will feel like they are still worthy of their witness position.
In other words Nepotism or the equivalent of it for Steem should not play a single hand of poker ever.
This is more directed towards Sneak. I know he is not a diplomat, he is a developer, but I would have hoped he would know better. There is cost in morale that he failed to calculate when he said that, even though I appreciate your being upfront about it, because it helps me understand Steemit Inc's collective mind a little more.
I tend to worry (as Im sure others too) about their lack of communication, the typical "coming very soon", the lack of outward projection, and I was putting all that into a giant bucket of "inefficiency, they are learning, its OK". Now, I've shifted it to a "they know, its not important to them, not right now". (although they seem to recently have gotten 10 times better)
It makes me question also some of the "battles" that are taking place on our platform. The protection of a reward pool, and how futile the whole thing might be in the big picture.
I may be wrong, I may even insult someone, but I'm starting to think that the flag war with haejin is not effectively doing more "good" than the League of Curation did when it was in full force.
Thanks for clarifying. Yeah, that conversation was a bit frustrating for me also, as I mentioned, and maybe it wasn't the best way for him to describe things. It was not only a long time ago (last year), but it was an open, informal public conversation we had with many people around us, not a PR moment in front of the camera or anything like that.
I agree with you that Steemit, inc through @steemitblog is 10x better than it used to be concerning communication with the community. I really, really appreciate that.
To me, if this goes on forever, it's incompetence and not okay. If they aren't fixing what is most important they are failing.
On the other hand:
This may actually demonstrate expertise, experience, and professionalism. They may not be incompetent, but instead working on the most important things, even if they aren't sexy. To me, that's a good thing, I just wish they would do it all a little faster (as do many). That, also, is a good thing because it means I'm an engaged user in their product. I love it. I want it to get even better.
In any case Luke, I give you major props for putting yourself out there to have this conversation with the little guys. As emotionally charged as the conversation got, specially with a special someone, you chose to see it through.
I learned a lot from the conversations that sprouted out of this, specially when Paula and Asher joined. I needed that perspective.
Yeah, they provided some great value to all of it.
I have these conversations often, but I guess I should go out of my way to continue having them more openly (this may be one of the few times I used a root post for them). If people have concerns, please let them know I'm always available, and I don't mind controversy, as long as people are respectful. I have better things to do than feed trolls, and unfortunately that happens here too from time to time. :)
When Lambo!!!???
Well, I showed you how to know when! Just use my When Lambo calculator and you'll see how short you fall or not right now!
http://steem.agency - top right menu item. ;)
I agree with you. Competition is good .
If there is something better out there,
or something that can be better, I do not
see anything wrong with checking out the
competition. Who knows, it could help
make this platform better...
As with many things, time will tell....
This is only true if you treat the period when there was hardly any Steem and hardly any trading volume as if it matters equally to everything else. I bought in with 1.2 BTC in March; even without any profit made here, and even including the Blocktrades fees, if I sold that Steem today it would be worth 1.5 BTC. Not a bad return in three months.
Personally I think the best thing that could happen to Steem in the medium-term is to have the cryptocurrency markets decouple. Way too much of our valuation is being driven by speculation on BTC. But coins aren't going to individuate and develop their own independent markets until there are more of them that are actually useful for things. So I believe that it benefits us to support any coin that has functionality, and EOS is the big new one right now.
this could be currently correct, but when the bitcoin rally happens, unless steem keeps up with the pace (possible, but unlikely) it won't be the case anymore.
To be specific, for this to be true, if we are sitting at $7500 for 1 BTC today, and Steem is sitting at $2.45, then that means that if Bitcoin jumps to 22k or so by the end of the year, steem needs to close around $8 dollars. Is it possible? yes of course, but it could also be Bitcoin closing the year at 40k and steem at $5.
The chart doesn't lie my friend, I'm not complaining, I'm simply outlining how this hole thing has played out so far.
Also whaleshares is about to launch and I will try because from my day zero I met friends who supported me on that server. I still have encountered feelings, I do not like to duplicate content, does not feel right to do so, and I struggle with time, but will try. Now eos, shoot! I cannot officially catch up.
For me it is not a competence per se because I move on humble user level.. But I have invested valuable time on Steemit and I trust it will go on strong, and here I will be.
Then I stmble upon fights and teams and I like to see from afar, not stepping in...
But I have the feeling that social network value from steemit will have strong inertia and momentum
Well my dear @yidneth communities are more important than the actual technology they are reliant on, but of course a better platform will be more conducive to their growth. I say that amazing magical talents like yourself need not worry much about these things and keep on creating amazing content, and powerful bonds with others. Those survive all the crypto crashes...
<3
Don't worry, some of us will be here for you, 100% applied to the matters that concern you HERE, and not distracted by trying to be all things to all people on divergent, competing platforms.
It has been 4 months already on Steemit, feels ages. I have been working hard to build a consistent feed, there is love I have put into it and love been given, have made friends. I hope you are willing to bear me a little bit longer, wink
You are working the work, and it is why at 4 months in, you are already becoming a standout. Keep it up. We'll keep the lights on for you.
When you said you wrote a post that was a bit heavy you see not kidding and showing that graph was the same thing that Future thinker and I were talking a couple of weeks ago about the value of BTC and Steem and how it has been dwindling.
I answer Luke on his post but appreciate his honesty on this. Any sneaky witness would have left some wiggle room or outright don't answer yet Luke told it as it is .
Like you I was angry when I first read it and was still made in the 2nd reading so I had to go out and clear my head and realize how the things happening right now makes sense.
This entails that Steemit. Inc is not as just sitting on their assess but might actually have a plan.
We can only hope Meno but as long we are a existing as community maybe we can turn the tides.
Communities > Code & Communities are Crash Proof <--- that's my new slogan