I write this after a very long day and I want to put upfront a full disclaimer: I'm writing this mainly to clarify my own thoughts, not to give some definitive opinion.
So, after 2 days, it looks like RC (Resource Credits) are a very restrictive filter for people wanting to use the platform. Before that, we had bandwidth, which, as opaque as it was, allowed for a much higher degree of interaction. And that degree came with a huge amount of unneeded interaction. Also called spam.
But beyond this spam, something else was allowed by the previous throttling mechanism, something visible only at the business level: by abusing the platform, people were also abusing the token. It was so easy to post here, so easy to make some quick money.
If a platform is such an easy thing to play around with, posting meaningless things and getting pennies, then the token behind it must be worthless.
RC may steer that - at the cost of blocking out a large portion of the bottom food chain, I agree - to a much more interesting direction (please understand that I'm not talking about the mistakes in launching HF 20, which are still there and must be accepted as mistakes, but about the actual goal of this hardfork, which seems to become more and more obvious).
RC is making the platform harder to use by people who are not yet invested. So the token behind the platform becomes harder to obtain (or more expensive).
In other words, it creates scarcity.
And scarcity created demand.
Now, if you want to really use this platform, and this blockchain, and this community, then you will have to own more SP. This is demand. Yes, it creates an entry barrier, because not everybody will afford to buy (or otherwise obtain) some SP, but will also act as a natural quality filter.
How many of the minnows are writing quality posts? How many of them are actually curating? How many of them are really engaging in conversations?
And how many of them are here for some quick bucks? Money for nothing and the chicks for free?
These are hard questions and some of them may seem harsh, but I think we have to ask them and find an honest answer.
I've seen many writing platforms starting and failing gloriously. I remember tsu (how many of you still remember that Facebook clone?) and how it collapsed after 3-4 years. I never met anyone interesting in tsu. Pretty much everybody there was talking to himself, waiting for some rewards.
Add to this context the rise of Steemit clones (WeKu and alike) which are doing nothing but copying the blockchain and the launch model, hence creating confusion and piggy backing on the efforts of the Steem community.
I don't know if this layer of difficulty was really intended or it's just a coincidence, but it surely gives me something to ponder about.
Do we want Steemit to be the next tsu? Or do we want it to be a better Medium? With quality content and quality curators.
And things get even more interesting if we start thinking about the dapps built on top of it. Now people creating dapps can play with this RC (read: start using their SP in order to attract and maintain a user base) and actually control, in a way, who is joining their platform. I know that now, while the system is still balancing towards the famous 'equilibrium' many dapps are suspended because they can't even vote. But the RC may allow that in the future, once the voting power is restored.
I would appreciate any of your thoughts here, as, I already said, I'm after quite a long day (and a long week, with all this bumpy hardfork) so let's just brainstorm.
I'm a serial entrepreneur, blogger and ultrarunner. You can find me mainly on my blog at Dragos Roua where I write about productivity, business, relationships and running. Here on Steemit you may stay updated by following me @dragosroua.
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If people can transact with the blockchain for less cost than what it takes to run the blockchain, you are set up for a tragedy of the commons situation. Eventually, in this scenario, useless or unwanted transactions (spam) will take over the network until the point of collapse.
https://www.khanacademy.org/economics-finance-domain/ap-microeconomics/ap-consumer-producer-surplus/ap-externalities-topic/v/tragedy-of-the-commons
HF 20 is a type of paywall - the more SP you have, the more useful your account is.. And at some point it will be vital for the continuation of the platform.
@snubbermike very interesting perspective! But with HF20 establishing such a paywall, do you think that Steem can ever reach mass adoption like other social media platforms (e.g. FB)?
Thanks! 😊
It was never possible even without a paywall.
In theory, perhaps, this will lead to better content. In practice, we shall see.
I see the ecosystem here being to varied. There are some who think it must be an easy place for newbies, meaning anyone can get started fairly easily and be rewarded somewhat decently. Others think this should be a serious blogging platform. Others believe that Ulog is the way (personal posts). And every Dapp that joins the system will throw a different spin into the mix. It’s too much for one chain.
The bottom line is, as you said, this is all open source, and perhaps the real answer is for many chains to be made from it. Then value will be put on the social chains that people really find valuable. This melting pot is a hard thing to control. And the centralization behind it makes the moves that are happening out of synch with the users I think.
I don’t view this hardfork as good or bad yet. It’s too soon to tell. But it certainly looks like it could shake things up a bit.
Scarcity only increases price with organic demand for a product, though.
If the platform is inaccessible to on boarders, it seems like demand with fall precipitously. Calling new accounts “bottom feeders” hardly seems to solve anything, doesn’t it?
Reminds me a bit of the BTC Core position. Smells a little elitist.
Just my two Steem.
You might have a point about scarcity and the price of Steem going up, but from my point of view it shifts the balance towards the large accounts, yet again.
Excuse me for asking, but do you ever look down? I mean, do you ever bother to go out and mingle with redfish and minnows? Have you ever heard of @abh12345's Engagement and Curation leagues?
I agree there is a lot of crap being posted, but the questions you ask yourself there, are a slap in the face of all those smaller accounts that actually do write quality post, curate manually and write tens of thousands characters a week, simply engaging.
I see some whales, orcas and dolphins posting content that is absolutely not up to standard too. Part of them engages and curates within very small circles.But hey, why would we mind, because they have invested.
I always asumed that the HF would make the chance to grow a little easier for a redfish or minnow with potential but no fiat to invest, but it looks more like a wipe out to me.
What happened to fair chances??
I don't think you were harsh enough... In fact I would say you were restrained. The bottom line is that the population of people using the platform is shrinking and its been shrinking for a good reason. You and I know that reason, I will bet you that many that think charging people to make comments and vote for witnesses don't know that reason. You can only explain it so many times until you realize that those people don't listen.
I'm proud of you and what you have done here @simplymike. And I know for a fact that you know more than any of these people that make these stupid statements (and implement such things as a "freedom to speak" tax.
I have a feeling i'll be delegating out to small and keen accounts again soon.
The latest @steemitblog talks about boosting everyone's RCs by 10x - this will help, but is it enough?
So a new account can make20 comments a day - if he does nothing else? Give me a break hahaha.
The top has yet again made changes that are beneficial for tbe top. Reading thhe post above, it's obvioushow they think about smaller accounts, and want to make this an elite-thing only.
I'm so frustrated the've put a limit to engagement. How else can you grow and build your netwerk?
I'm all for going back like it was. I see a lot of people that intend to leave if the RC system stays in place...
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20 good comments a day will take hours. I'd rather see that than a meaningless (to others) conversation that could be held on the phone or in discord.
Perhaps they will change the parameters again, and perhaps we'll need posts like 'Are you a redfish struggling to breath?' and need to delegate to the 'good' ones. We can build a less spammy, better community this way.
Don't throw the towel in yet :)
It won't be 20 comments a day.
It will be 20 comments every 5 days (it's currently 2 comments every 5 days).
Out of all those comments, maybe 2 will get upvoted with a 2 cent vote - so they're looking at making 4 cents every five days if they're lucky.
I wouldn't be surprised if people moved onto other platforms - Golos, Trybe, Whaleshares and so on.
20 comments in 5 days. C'mon, they can't leave it like that. That's plain suicide for the platform. I know I would run and go join one of the competigors, for sure...
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I'm glad you will be there helping and I love that you do that... If everyone were like you, you wouldn't have to be so kind!
Needing to invest sp/cash to use the platform may mean more quality posts. But for new accounts with 15sp and only able to make 2 comments on a full RC recharge why would they hang around to read and upvote quality post. Much easier to go back to facebook and twitter and instagram where they don't need money and where they can talk nonsense and post photos all day long
Steemit may end up a quality platform with quality posts and nobody to view them
The fundamental difference between Steemit and centralized social media is that in Steemit you get paid if you interact, whereas in the other networks you’re the product being sold.
I don’t expect everybody to understand or agree with this. For some will be comfortable to continue to be sold. But a certain part will want something different.
I don't actually think people care if they are the product or not its about engagement and ease of use.
If someone new comes here with no understand of crypto or programming and you say to them...
We have 3 currencies here steem , steem power and SBD and you are allowed so much mana and resource credits and you can comment twice a day and we pay you pennies that you can't have for 7 days and you get them in a currency you don't understand.
will they stay? probably not
I guess only time will tell but as the saying goes you live or die by the decision you make.
You certainly raise an interesting point. I've never been one to accept 'fairness' as a self-contained argument; for many reasons.
If I understand correctly, we're potentially looking at a future where buying a stake, say $100 each, is the only way to participate in the chain, the trade-off being that participating in the chain is generally more worthwhile.
We may even end up with a bit of an 'old boy's club' where anyone who can't stump up the dough needs to have a friend with spare credits to delegate.
Interesting times.
I'm thinking of looking into the intro tag a bit more often, or putting out some posts for the little guys to stick their name in the pot for a small delegation.
I'm all for stopping the trash interacting, but we can't be losing keen real folk from getting involved.
yeah, that was exactly my point. Technically, the Steem blockchain can be copied in a few minutes, it's all open source (and it's good that it is like that). So the only real business advantage is turniing the early adopters into the founding fathers that may or may not allow other "citizens" into their "country".
So we are giving copycats a high hand?
If they copy it now and disable the RC, they'll be free and we'll be freemium :thinking:
hahaha :)
After the initial shock and disappointment faded following this fork, I started enjoying how relaxed things are right now with reduced activity. After all, most scammers/spammers usually have small amounts of SP and any amount they make they power down.
I've thought for a long time that "parasite accounts" on Steemit do little to propel us to a better future except contribute to blockchain bloat, fill all comment threads up with spam making them harder to read, and generally expect handouts which they promptly change to fiat.
"Freemium" is a good model. When people don't pay anything for something, they appreciate it much less.
Unfortunately guys like me with quality posts, but relatively little SP are being left out.
Better than being drowned out.
Also gives us pause to consider each response.
What we acquire too cheaply we esteem too lightly.
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I really believe this update will lead to a better long term future - I get why this is being done and understand there will be some unhappy people for a bit.
However in terms of RC and the ability for people to comment, it's currently too aggressive. Sure it will stop bots and spammers etc, but if Minnows can't get in and participate...they won't!
For the love of god, to any witnesses or people in charge tweak this update so people can make more then a few comments in 24 hours...I see the point and think it's great but it's just too aggressive - It needs to allow at least 50% more comments for minnnows then what it appear now - must be a happy balance??
Just one Steemians view/feedback :)
It's definitely too aggressive right now, but I understand the RC cost of everything will continue to reduce in the coming days.
Fair enough this will help allot of people with immediate issues.
I guess my main concern is on the number of comments/replies/post a minnow may do in one sitting..From what I can see I agree with the logic of everything else the Witnesses/Dev's are doing, but I think in stopping bad behaviors it might hurt the new people coming in (which could inadvertently have the opposite effect to all the good coming from these changes). I believe it's just a tweak (they need alittle more) and would be gold :)
Hopefully it balances but right now Steem really seems to be pay to play only. I liked HF 19 better.
Well you know from our previous convo that I lean in the direction of making it easier for newbies to succeed on here. It is true that it stops poor spammers to make it harder for those with low SP to comment much, but it does nothing to stop spam by spammers who can afford SP.
Don't you think a spammer from Germany will be able to still succeed, whereas a genuine writer from Venezuela may not be able to? Actually a spammer from anywhere if they can just borrow the "startup costs" for their new business. They'll make the money back off spam.
I know there are going to be tradeoffs necessarily either way. I would lean towards being a truly international platform.
Perhaps the secret is to factor in UA scores so that we can differentiate between spammers and newbies by something other than ability to buy steem?
Totally agree!
re: UA scores
Good point on UA. Though it only makes a difference when one is posting, and a lot of the witnesses don't post or only post their witness report. And often they don't accept rewards. So while it is redundant to give them bigger UA votes, it doesn't come into play that much percentage wise.
It wouldn't necessarily have to be using the actual UA scores though. It could just use their parameters and then diverge from that however seems most reflective of contribution to the platform.
What I like about it is that it rewards people for having an active followership (people commenting on and upvoting your stuff) not for how much SP they have. I think that gets to the point much more.
This is not a general truth. For example, I want to remember you the RunCoin. It need one more property... to be a need for it in the market. Steem is a smart social platform, but in order to be the next fb, this needs people to socialise, more people. Not investors, but simple people (aka plankton). And with HF20, they can only do 2-3 comments a day... Why should they stay here?
Well, to me this hardfork (which for all practical purposes was a major fuck-up by the way) looks like one of those "currency reforms" common in communist countries during 1950-ies: in order to restore market equilibrium in an "economy" where scarcity of tangible goods was a norm they introduced new currency but conversion rates applied to cash and prices were different. In Poland for example they exchanged cash 100:1 but prices of all goods and services were converted at the rate of 100:3
As the result the population was robbed of 2/3 of its cash holdings, or better to say that buying power of cash was reduced by 66%. And here the same was done while converting "bandwith" to "RC".
Results of those "reforms"? Social unrest, inflation, run from local currency and effective devaluation versus those currencies not subjected to such experiments.
And I am afraid that probability of such scenario materializing here is very high.
By the way-I heard rumors of RC being tradable like ram markets in EOS-is it true/you heard anything about it?
I think alot of the rumors were speculated by this post by ned:
https://steemit.com/gathering/@ned/secret-steem-advantage
As far as I know, at this moment RC is not being tradable.
I've heard speculation that that's one of the reasons to change to RCs, that they would be able to be delegated in the future. I think that would be awesome and a benefit over the old bandwidth system.
I think you are totally right! I saw so much scam and non-quality posts and it got worse. The new RC-system will definitly put a stop to it.
I’m copy pasting my comment done in another post:
Still one thing is not clear to me, aside of the Lack of information we have... and it is the following:
How can we attract more users and how can we retent them?
We need a plan and I think we would need as well promoters, commercials and the like...and I am starting to think that it would not be a bad idea to create "a fund" to, somehow, pay professionals on that matter...
We, the steemians, are doing a great effort in order to attract, mainly family, friends and, sometimes other stakeholders but I think we cannot work individually, we have to work as a team here...
an action plan would be perfect...and leadership as yours...
Thanks for a different perspective on this. I think this type of conversation will be important once everything "settles". Way too many people are hurt/angry right now.
Thanks for providing some info on this RC issue. It's very confusing to me still. Is there a list somewhere where we can view the RC cost per action? I've no idea what the cost of each STEEM interaction is currently.
You can check it here http://steemd.com/@pandorasbox
It seems like you have 11 comments left, so don't thank me, save it for another time :)
I wonder if we'll have power up stores, since we have mana's like in RPGs. I wanted to buy a comment-pack. lol.
check out my last post https://steemit.com/steem/@dragosroua/steem-supply-update-how-many-actions-your-current-mana-resource-credits-allows-you (and, alternatively, go to steem.supply.
First question, do you mean minnow by minnow or you wanted to say plankton which is the newly created accounts' level. (Under 500SP.) Which took me 9 months to achieve. In this case it doesn't make much difference tho, because even minnows has quite limited with the interactions, I got 600SP and had to lease some after HF20 in total of 1200SP I'll be able to comment max 18 times a day, without any votes or transactions. Since then I'm looking for some casual games because I know I can't use this place with an almost $1k investment. Are you kidding? (not you :))
Yes HF allows dApps to bring people to ecosystem but who would invest in a system in day one? In current situation without the calibration (equilibration) newly created account is only allowed to power up. They don't have 14M RC. Yes bots not going to make it but also the real people won't make it. I've talked to many dolphins/whales, asked them if they invested or just grow their account. 80% said they grow with 0 investment. Whoever invested is gave a number of $500 top and it's not from the day 1.
And please stop losing empathy, when you were a newbie. You think you worked hard to get where you are, but when you were a newbie, there wasn't that much competition, people trying to tie people around here so they were much more generous etc. It's much harder these days of course if you want be ethic. (these "you" also not you.)
Sorry but we don't have it, we are looking a peaceful feed right now just because bid-bots also lost their power during the process. When they came back to full power, we are going to face the rich people spam again.
This RC thing, will solve the spam with the comments, and many tags but those were already easy to get rid of, it would only take a minnows 1% flag. Is this going to solve rich people's spam and ROI methods? Does an investor bothered with the comment spam or the guys who riots the front-page.
Steem called ponzi in many places, now this change also back this argument. Because poor one were able to earn some, now they lose that chance as well. But rich ones (early birds) will be able to take from the pool as much as they want. And this path shows us it's going to be worse. A week before everyone free to do whatever they want, today planktons unable to speak freely, tomorrow minnows will be under barrier. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Now I'm a 9 month steemian thinking about setting a curation bot and leaving the account still.
Oh, lastly I don't think we have any impact on steem price. I never check how much money going through exchange accounts on steem on daily basis but I don't think it's enough volume to affect it.
Agree 100% Dragosroua. This Knight was looking for the words and you found. Steem now has a genuine value in utility and this will eventually lead to a higher price. And if the cost is the loss of 5 days of generating income and a few enthusiastic plankton - it is a small price to pay.
The way I see it - newbies are expected to invest $100-$200 to play at a respectable level for life. A small price to pay now... but will become more expensive later. So they should buy in now.
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This is something that I am putting together in my morning post. I believe you are onto something here. This is one piece to a larger puzzle but I think you hit upon a major point. The value of STEEM is tied to what people value...when there is a lot of spam and abusers, that is not valued.
We will see a shift. If some of what I think is happening, just from connecting the dots, it will really make this place a desired location.
If things are proportional Steemit will have much less spam and scams and mediocre articles and also much less quality content, unless against all logic the only quality content has been and will be that produced by the people who have invested relatively large amounts of money. Actually I think we will see less quality content, the bigger guys don't even post. That would mean less interaction, how could this increase Steem's price? Unless of course the price of Steem is in no way tied with what happens on Steemit.
Wasn't one of the reasons for these changes also to make it easier and cheaper for the new users, big numbers of them, to join and use the platform?
Deducting from your explanation it's the other way around.
To be honest, I like the serenity of this place as it is now 😉
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The introduction of RC established a stronger link between SP and interactions on the blockchain. I think it will certainly be useful in providing support for STEEM price and increase the price further
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I'm still not voting :) The reason is I want to see for myself what the new normal looks like. I'm pretty sure I've been hit by chunks of falling sky, but the truth is, I don't know exactly where I'm going here.
That said, I don't mind a little entry barrier. As I understand it, most created new accounts will need to be funded by the creator too. A good thing. The way it was people just had to wait two weeks and Steemit put them in the game.
This way, new people need to put some skin in the game. They can either buy a little steem or do the time dance to advance their account. Either way it should help content creators and curators both.
We really need to be able to bring new accounts on board. Not just creators, but readers. But having a little of your skin in the game gives you something to protect.
I'm still optimistic. I'll let you know by Monday night what the current impact is on me.
Reducing spam looks like one of the big benefits of this change, but I'm seeing reports that new users can't do much at all.
I used Tsu and there was a good community there, some of who came to steemit. There was some great charity work done there.
If the current RC will work as intended I think is a genius ideea for a freemium blockchain.
These changes have their advantages, I agree that small players are limited, but now we know that they have to invest money and buy Steem Power. I've always said that Steemit is a business network and not a social network, so we need to set ourselves up in this way and to protect our business. I think that these changes will bring quality improvement to Steemit.
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