Is right now the best time to ask questions? I believe so.
It comes down to patience. I honestly believe 10 million DAU on Steem is one the worst thing we can do right now. I'm an investor in Steem, but I will be the first one to say we have a long way to go before we start onboarding the masses of normies. Set the economy aside (I think the economy is broken it incentives bad behavior while disincentivizing good behavior, but let's set that apart) - we don't have RC delegation pools or enough accounts to sign up even 5% of Facebook, let alone go for the throat. So, let's say you make a killer app on Steem, you have 10million people beating down your door for accounts and RCs. Are you going to tell your grandma to go to Binance and buy some Steem, or are you going to delegate 15 SP to 10 million people? If we had a foundation in place where people can lease RCs to apps, like Chintai or REX on EOS, then apps could handle the traffic.
I'll tell you a little story about NLC. I invested in NLC when it was 10 Satoshi, and had 0 - 24vol. The site was old and beat up, but I noticed it had a legal license for fantasy sports in more than half the USA, so I reached out to the CEO. I liked Rafael as a CEO, so I helped rebuild the website. I funded the work and brought in the workers. The site went from having words misspelled to rivaling Fan Duel with the features and UI. I went HAM on advertising, did all I could and before I knew it the price was over 10,000 Satoshi! There were tons of players, and we were getting shout outs from everywhere. Life was good, but I knew there was a big flaw I saw and knew it was going to bite NLC in the ass, and that was that there was no dollar peg. So, as a player, I was forced to be at the whim of the crypto market. On the way up, as you imagine it was great, but as soon as the market turned, and players logged in the next day to see they have less USD, that wasn't good. All the work I put into advertising NLC backfired because every player we had started to lose USD values during the bear market. Every player we brought basically hurt NLC at that point, gave a lousy user experience. The dollar peg I envisioned would require a hardfork to add a inflationary/deflationary wallet (sorta took the idea from Bitshares/SBD but tweaked it) so it got pushed off. I learned from this, now NLC is building out a robust dollar peg for players, and next time they kick advertising into high gear, with the dollar peg, it should be able to get players but most importantly keep them.
Now, getting everything as close to right before we blow up should be the goal. We have community members that go up and beyond, look at the work with Steem Engine and how it stood up and made an SMT like protocol; before this, we didn’t even have a way to scale rewards. Imagine 10 thousand sites with millions of users all using just the inflation from Steem to reward new content? Ya, you may get one upvote a year if you are lucky.
My point is, I invested a lot of $$ into Steem, and I did it fully aware of all the issues we currently face. If you never invest in something because it isn't fully grown, while a safer bet, don't expect to achieve great things in investing. I like taking the risk, I love it when my vision pays off, and I believe Steem will be a top 3 crypto, despite any flaws.
I do believe this is the best time to make changes and experiment when we have 10-20k DAU across the board. Look at what happened to Bitcoin; it became so big that no one could even agree on a block size limit without causing billions of dollars in drama. Changes to Steem, esp. the base layer, will become much hard to get passed as Steem grows up. When you have millions, even billions using the platform the weight of every change is magnified much greater and the politics start to take over. Before we get to that point, I believe we should be keeping everything on the table and really taking the time to get the base layer right. Am said the base layer is broken? No. I'm not even saying the distribution of 25/75 is broken, I am saying I think it is broken, but this is just my opinion.
I also believe the core groups of 5-10k Steemains we have here are the lifeblood. For every Steemian we have that is 10-100 FB users. Your avg Steemian uses exchanges, knows proper private key protection and most importantly are on Steem already and have stayed here. Early investors that HODL and don't dump Steem to 1 cent are heroes IMO, it takes balls to power up a lot of Steem, plan and simple. Look around at other blockchains, and you would be hard pressed to find what we have on Steem. And we are only getting better, so let's not neglect our own in the pursuit of 10million future normies. Let's build something we as a community like to use and we will be beating normies away with a broom because they will takeover and our small town will turn into NYC before you can realize.
While I have high self-confidence, it isn't nearly high enough for me to think I have all the answers, that is why I spend my time focusing on me, not others. Now, you are free to do whatever you want; you want 10 million people here? Go post some twitter ADs, go hire the next PewDiePie, go do whatever you think it takes. I could easily do that, shift my focus from building to deploying, but I don't think we are ready yet. I not asking for anyone to do anything, I am too busy building infrastructure and using countless hours to brainstorm ways to help Steem. So, you do you, and I'll do me, and at the end of the day, the chips are going to fall where they fall anyway.
And this is to all the buidlers, do you, don't listen to the noise that will only slow you down.
"If it's not broke, don't fix it" - I dislike that line...
Replace it with: "If it can be better then it currently is, then it's as good as broken."
Keep challenging ideas, keep asking questions but most importantly always speak your mind!
This is the reason I focus on minnow tips and have since I got here two years ago. We need more people. Not the zillions right now - as you say - but we still need worker bees who can negotiate this place, learn and test dapps, create a presence, create examples, and be future leaders.
I help new people to try to cut our 95% kill rate. 35 whales does not an ecosystem make. We can't all be investors, but someone has to be here to make the wheels turn.
EVERY ONE of the maybe 25 content creators who came here in two years because of my example on social media is gone now. My posts look great, I'm doing well and like it here, so my friends think they can do it too. But they can't. It takes a certain kind of drive/lunacy/commitment/passion to make it on steem right now and most people do not have that.
But during the same two years I have helped I do not know how many more "strangers" to succeed. If someone is posting here with 7+ posts a week - they want to succeed, and can succeed. I can give you lists of promising redfish and small minnows in various niches who are trying hard and not giving up. They just need to learn 500 things as they go. The people I work with down here are willing to learn all of it - or at least targeted parts of it.
We have so much good here. The development in the infrastructure is far ahead of when I got here. Babies now have curation support from people like you as well as curation projects. But we sure cannot handle a flood. A little better trickle of enthusiastic newbies would be good though.
I'm so glad to see this post today. You are a real bright spot here for me and for others in so many ways, Dan.
How does one delegate to minnow tips if one was so inclined?
Wow. Well, it's me, myself and I. You can see what I'm doing on the bottom of any of my posts like this one:
https://steemit.com/esteem/@fitinfun/enter-contests-on-steem-and-win
That post is Part Six of the "Minnow Tips Updates" I've been writing for April 2019, but will now spill into May. Soon I will give a recap and just keep going, since this is just such a vast vastness of "Things you need to know on STEEM."
At the bottom of the post, you can see all the rest of the Minnow Tips I give people as needed, when they ask me, or when I find them. It's what I've been doing since I got here and will keep doing no matter what.
I'm an accountant and had to do these tips for myself to stay same, so I started publishing them about a month after I got here. People still find some of the old ones or get referred to me or...
I too think steem has great potential to bring in huge returns
RC pools will be a big thing going forward,
but at the same time, so will second-layer / off-chain scaling solutions.
There are a lot of projects here that put information on the blockchain for no reason.
Take the games Drugwars and NextColony for example. Neither of these projects needs to be putting database information on the blockchain. If RCs were actually worth something they'd move off chain in a heartbeat.
Imagine playing a game with someone on Steem but never passing the information through Steem. Imagine signing transactions with your posting key but instead of sending it to the blockchain you send it directly to your opponent to avoid RC costs.
If anyone tries to cheat you can prove cheating occurred by bringing it back to the main chain. This is the same concept as Plasma (ETH) and the Lightning Network. Because there is a penalty associated with cheating and it can be proven that you cheated... no one will do it.
This is what makes Steem the best prototyping platform. We have a built in community willing to try out new dapps. These dapps piggyback off the main chain and the full nodes. if the dapp becomes popular enough they can move off chain with the bulk of transactions and only use the blockchain for value transfer and security/logins.
@Theycallmedan, am awed at your passion in pursuing vision. The above excerpt really shows how much you prioritize investing in little beginnings and helping each grow.
With this, I think its time we all ask "WHAT CAN I DO TO GROW STEEM?" If we all get sincere at our wish, then the below quote of yours be true.
I'm glad we have people like you to push us up the game.
But one thing really keeps me curious:
What's the actual problem of STEEM?
I hope the #crypto gurus would come share here so we have a direction on where to go.
If it's onboarding then, I think @blocktrades could create a market to purchase RCs.
Personally, I need such a market withe the volume of the tiny promotion am engaging on. At a personal level, I onboard at least one steem user daily with the help of @steemhunt.
I think we can achieve more!
Replace it with: "If it can be better then it currently is, then it's as good as broken."
I like this! I just want to add to it...
Fix the most broken parts first.
I believe in building, but sometimes people don't really know what to fix about steem and the truth is we're too decentralized to understand where it's ailing steem, it's more than bull and bear we can say steem may not be broken, but it's definitely not up to par as well, at the end it all boils down to individual building, when can we be perfect?
I agree that while we have a small number of people it’s a good time to debug the platform.
I would suggest that those interested in increasing the reward for curation consider a different path to accomplishing their goal. I understand the desire to change the author/curator split across the board and I usually see posts responses which are pro and con. I suggest that instead of pursuing a global change in which every one is forced to change to 50/50 split, that you pursue individual choice to modify the split post by post, by modifying the existing code which allows reward sharing between collaborative authors. I think this code change is consistent with the desire of people who invest in cryptocurrency to be in control and it will allow those who seek to change the economic system a mechanism to change the split on their posts and not elicit resistance from others who wish to retain the 75:25 split.
Shortsegments
I think many are calling to fix something the owners don't think is broken in the way they are. Decentralization goes out the window in stake based structures when one enters into the structure that is owned. This seems something many would understand, yet I see a disconnect by so many here.
Steemit is a centralized corporation, and one can ascertain quite a bit by not only what they do, but by what they don't do. I don't see any indication that their vision for this chain was for this demo site to be the point of strength sending the chain to the moon. It had the potential to be, if enough who came invested something (even a little). But most who come here want something for nothing. Based not only on what hasn't been worked on by the corporation that brought us the chain, but by tactics being revealed by those who have ended up on certain whale shit lists, it seems logical to conclude they see the conundrum they are in.
Until someone(s) understand what Steem could do for their already cash positive structure, or structure that has enough financial backing not to need Steem as the primary source of revenue, I think at best we can hope for somehow treading where we are. Onboarding more will only exasperate things.
A lot of anger continues to be created by the cultivated misconception of what Steemit is and wants to be and many who come here. I believe that is why a chain with such application possibility compared to others finds itself slipping behind other projects that offer less. The dis-ease grows, and sadly, the future forward will only be prosperous if other applications come. Onboarding waves of new people to come to this centralized, privately owned application will only create more FUD and rage. When people have it good, they are rarely as vocal as when they are pissed off.
To end on a positive note, for those who want their own version of a social site that isn't counter to their own views, there is a project in testing called SCOT that would allow for you to create your own tokenized website that would be free from what you may be considering censorship. All it would require is your funding to build and maintain it, and enough others who agree with your views to come who feel it is a worthy investment. Just don't forget that as Steemit has discovered, many want their free speech to be free from out of pocket investment.
Good to hear some bullish talk, I been in a lull along with many recently.
Thinking ahead of the stuff that might need a fix, this is a fair point.
Claims so far, 422367, creates from those claims, 117157. That's 300,000 accounts that could appear quite quickly, if we had a decent mechanism in place to offer them out, which I don't think we do at present.
It's just taking a while, I'm tired man!
That's why I focus on myself now and stopped inviting people here. A year ago, I spent so much time and effort helping these people get board on Steem and I had to baby sit them, make sure they know everything that I know but 99% of them are gone now.
I remember when my upvote was $10, I barely make blogs but am sure helped a lot Steemians . I focused on helping the red fish and minnows, but now they're in graveyard and I look at their wallet, it's empty. I was hoping that they might saved a little bit of their earnings. It's so sad and upsetting at the time! 😞 I only see few swimming around which makes me proud of them. I know I can't blame those who left, maybe they don't see Steem avaluable asset but am done baby sitting, it's time to focus on myself.
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The geek is strong in you.
@theycallmedan
To fix voting Problems we can be add Like and Dislike and rename Upvote to Donation/Support. So everyone can unlimeted like and Dislike. So the System isnt Broken
And we can give Donation some cool Icons.
Like a 1k Steempower get one 10k, 50k etc. This must build on Blockchain so every Front end can use it ( maybe with different icons or whatever).
In Future with real Smt we can add more smart Stuff to it :)
So it feels not that much unfair to new people. Because its a Donation :)
I really like the idea.
To account creation we should make it 1000000 Times more easy to get a account. The account should be super cheap ( so frontends can buy) or free.
Because more people make the Blockchain strong. We cant oversleep it. We are the first social Blockchain so we need this.
Btw, do you know what Stinc is currently doing?
Edit: Look this: https://steemit.com/utopian-io/@steemlogin/steemlogin-a-new-and-easy-way-to-sign-in-to-steem
Thats nice to make Steem more User friendly
Hiring a next big youtuber for STEEM is a great idea because more common people will aware about blockchain tech and they will accept it why? Because big you tuber is using it to do his stuff.
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Like @fitinfun I am concentrating on minnows. I also support various accounts that I think could make Steem more attractive such as musicians and comic artists. We need a variety of topics.
I just did a post about getting some open source projects to blog here. They are good candidates as they should like the openness of Steem and their users are probably technical enough to find their way around. Steem does require some commitment to get into, but I see a lot of non-techies sticking with it.
I've been creating accounts for various people and delegating some SP to them so they can start off.
I just saw your recent post and was getting ready to comment on it @steevc. I'm thrilled with your initiative of helping 4-6 minnows at a time with targeted effort and help with delegation and votes. This is exactly the help needed to give optimism and strength to carry on.
I agree that taking care of minnows is important to keep them engaged. I will just add that we have YouTubers, etc. with well over a million subscribers on the aggregate regularly posting here. They are almost hidden in plain sight. They aren't evangelizing this platform as much as they could be because this community isn't incentivizing them to do it. If 'STEEM' had a marketing department, it would be all over these guys to keep them happy and engaged, because they have the potential to bring in the new users.
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Steemit do not seem to be marketing the platform as we would expect and so it is up to the community to do so. There are various groups doing this, but it's slow work. I had hoped to see several million people on Steem by now, but it's still only tens of thousands of active users.
I'm trying to identify them and follow with a separate account (@steempatron). I have a big chunk of my SP delegated to it for the sole purpose of giving them upvotes. Even so, with my resources, that is like running uphill on an icy road wearing bowling shoes.
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Aqui mi visita a su trabajo,invito a visitar mi blog y contar con un buen voto de apoyo,ya que aqui es mi fuente de trabajo para ayudarme en esta situacion critica quevivimos en venezuela y necesito de ayuda para poder obtener comida,aqui he encontrado amigos que me han tendido la mano,gracias y feliz tarde del domin go
Powerful stuff man. I had a STEEM account for a while but didn't start to get active until I followed you to DTUBE for your videos. I saw all the activity here and had to get involved. I've been through the whole cycle with NLC2 going to .50 then a penny, but still believe in the project and stake/DCA. I like mining and building nodes on various projects. STEEM just seems like a natural extension to that-- like mining creativity and experience. I hope everything gets sorted out, and the long-term thinkers gain enough influence here to overcome the short-term exploiters and system gamers.
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I agree that we are Not Yet Ready For Most Normies. I know a lot of people who would be utterly baffled by the user experience, let alone wallets and markets. People like my mom, who I explained everything to at one point, and who remembers enough to ask, "So, how is your ...bitcoin?"
That being said, I do try and tell my friends about it, because I also believe it will pay off in the end if they can ride the rapids now. Just not many people are willing or able to do so.
Maybe that will change not only as new innovations are made here, but as new regulations or lack thereof happen in government - for instance, I know one friend who was interested but is afraid of joining because she's on disability, and if the price suddenly spikes she'll have earned "too much" and will lose her disability, which then if the price crashes again, she'd be SOL. An opportunity to one day possibly not need the disability payment, ruined by the current regulations around crypto earnings and disability payments. But I've ranted about how our social welfare programs are not meant to be a hand up, but to keep you stuck there before, so I'll refrain from another rant today. ;)
I hope the killer app never shows up.
And I must thank you for the effort you make to maintain a community.
my concentration is with the steemian who works hard to stay in steemit.
If I support them and help them stay here, I support myself.
I do not make quality content, I still do not understand what that is.
Nor what parameters are used to measure.
But I know it's not easy to go to Steemit every day and try to do something to encourage or support others.
I try to give my support to these people.
Happy life.
🖕Wisdom filled!
We need more people like @theycallmedan on Steem Network!
...am working to be one! Nothing is impossible!!
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You bring up a lot of good points.
Many of us are worried that changing the 25/75 curation rewards thing to 50/50 will discourage people from posting quality content. Now, I share my content no matter what, and although many have gone to try out other similar platforms on other blockchains, I have been on posting regularly on Steemit, participating in communities and delegating SP even if I have very little of my own, since day 1. Since my day 1, since I began here, in June 2017.
What I need is not the why or how 50/50 is better or should be better, what I need is to see the numbers. Show me the math. Let's hypothesize a post that earns $10.00. Calculate the current curation and rewards calculations, with how much the content creator receives. And I need to know how many upvotes is required to arrive there, if everyone voted at 100% and their upvote value was 0.01, because let's face it, most of us have upvotes worth that much in this bear market. Now do the same math with 50/50. How many MORE upvotes will we need to feel we are not LOSING from posting quality content, and then HOW to find those missing upvotes. Show me how much I COULD be losing as a creator and show me how those who would be implementing the change would be helping us RECEIVE the necessary upvotes in difference so we don't lose out.
I am not one of those who says "I'm gonna stop posting." Because I'm gonna KEEP posting, but so far it's all too vague for any of us to have faith in the 50/50 system. So show us the real numbers and the solutions. This is what I need to see if I'm going to get behind such a change.
We all need each other, curators and creators. Creators keep posting content, curators support us. That is why I am delegating to curator communities. If any of us, curator or creator, feel we are losing out, people will want to jump ship. During a bear market we can really see who is loyal to the cause and believes in the Steem blockchain and community, but we must all find a solution that makes us feel valued and that neither of us are losing out. If changing the curation rewards thing is best, then we need to fill the gap for creators.
That's my 2 cents, anyway. 😉 All in good stride.
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RC's delegation will be what will push steem forward when those millions users will knock on our door. You said it mate....there are dozens of flaws but we all know the potentials. And it's really beautiful when you see active members/devs doing exactly what will make steem shine.... Look at steem engine latest developments.
It is just great. And I am glad that you are so bullish on steem. Top 3 coins huh...I really hope so more than anything. It could be the life changing factor for thousands of people all over the world.
But we have a long way to go, still
@Theycallmedan, I'm surprised by your passion and the vision you have. The analysis shows how much he prioritizes investing in small beginnings and helping everyone grow. Now, the goal is to get the best we can before we burst. That must be the goal.
I have told myself that I won't worry about technical things I do not understand fully. And when it comes to the size of the steem blockchain I think we have enough capable hands to build. The major problem I see is the attitude towards this blockchain. The money comes first, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but if we did have that genuine community spirit a lot will work well for us. A lot of people including myself just care about what we earn here and don't see the bigger picture.
Another issue, we want to move fast. Like you said patience is key. The late Nipsy said something, a lot of people are moving fast with no direction. Steem for me is a project that needs time. And I'm not talking about a year or two. Most of the core users need to grow to a level where they can support the blockchain--not the other way round. A lot of people here depend on steem, including me. If we can change that, that for me would be the game changer. This would happen if we have a healthier distribution of the reward pool.
I don't so much believe in the social aspect of steem. That drains a lot of the blockchain's resources. I'm thinking SMEs on the blockchain. The more businesses on the blockchain the better. Reliance on the reward pool decreases and more revenue is generated for the blockchain. I would someday like to own a business someday that runs on the steem blockchain but my ideas are not fully developed.
Like I said earlier I think what needs to be addressed first is the community spirit and enabling communities. Communities should receive as much support as dapps and funded well. With genuine communities, we can have an online and physical presence across the globe supporting different incentives.
A lot needs to be done but a step at the time. I think things will start to change when we want it to. I'm not so eager to see millions trooping in at this point. A lot of work needs to do done first.
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I think that there will be a plan for RC market and ability to delegate it soon @theycallmedan
Great words that really should be emphasized across the community. I was just ready about the amount of new users that lose their keys and how accounts have been lost; that is another sign that we are not ready. However, I do see some progress as projects are starting to focus on onboarding new users and getting them educated. Also, the Hivemind upgrades to true community like features could go a long way to engage users and improve retention. It is still early but if each of us does a part, we can get it ready for growth when the time is right!
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Doing me has always been my trick here. I won’t pretend to know how to fix steem. Sure, I like so many can see the simplest fix is to not allow paid upvote/bot on trending. A trending section of actual quality that got there through real trending has been spoke in so many ways that I just can’t figure why someone smarter than I haven’t changed that bit.
Really though. I wish there was less complaining. He says while complaining about complaining.
But seriously... just doing what ever it is you do and doing it well means so much more to steem than all the words wasted on this or that drama or unfair distribution this or steeminc has failed us that.
I’ll just stay in my little corner trying to put out content that I’m satisfied with and supporting those I appreciate.
I have listened or read many of your posts over the last months. I’ve not engaged... but I would like to say... I like your style. Your words and thoughts often resonate with me, while you may be opinionated.. I appreciate the guts and action that seems to prop those opinions up. So yeah... you should keep doing you!
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Boey you are inspirational, not just strong on business ethics but moral ethics too.
Not sugarcoating
but the ending of this blog really got me
So many of the cryptos that have a market cap larger than Steem are really not much more than effective marketing wrapped around a White Paper.
Thanks for sharing! I like the fact that your words always simmer in me for a while!
I agree with fixing the bugs before Facebook fans show up.