So You Want To Be An Early Adopter
The recent upheaval about STEEM and the challenges with Hard Fork 20 are simply baffling.
It amazes me how many people "want their cake and eat it too".
I often write about how anyone of us who is here now is an early adopter. That being the case, it will entitle us to payouts that could be mind-boggling. This is an advantage of being in on technologies at an early stage.
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We truly are the pioneers of this industry. If it takes off like most of us expect, we will have a front seat for the emergence of a technology that changes the path of humanity. We are forging into unchartered territory.
People want the payoff yet complain when there issues arise. It is as if they think being an early adopter entitles them to the huge returns yet things should run as smoothing as a 20 year old centralized technology.
Welcome to reality. Part of being an early adopter means there are challenges. It is akin to people wanting to be in the early California gold rush and land grab yet complaining there are no convenient stores and paved highways.
Yesterday I wrote that my feeling is that people who want to complain and get upset about what is taking place should just leave. I do not care if we lose a few thousand people over this. Good for them. Go back to the cozy centralized systems that thousands of developers are working at destroying. Allow emotionalism to take hold and prevent the taking of advantage of one of the greatest opportunities to come into most people's lives.
In other words, if you can't take the heat, get out of the fire.
Talk to any developer on here and you will get the same answer. Every issue on the blockhcain is 10x more challenging than on a centralized system. Centralized servers are a cinch to get up and running. Any software updates can take place from point forward. With blockchain, at this point, everything has to go back to the beginning. This requires time for replaying the entire blockchain.
At the same time, trust is a crucial issue. If things are done that invalidate consensus, the entire system risks collapse. This not only applies technologically. We cannot risk things being done that cause the basic rifts we see with other chains. Their forks are mostly out of dispute and result in two chains. This never happened with STEEM. We might not like some of what takes place yet nobody can question the validity of the blockchain.
Were there mistakes made? Sure there were. Could a case be made that delay was the proper tactic? Yes it could. Nevertheless, the witnesses accepted the upgrade, so here we are. Are there things that require attention and improvement? Of course.
The bottom line is you cannot have your cake and eat it too. If you want the payoff of being an early adopter, then you must put up with the issues that arise. There is no other way. If you want a system that can be restarted in a matter of seconds and where upgrades are easily implemented, then Facebook will always welcome you (unless they banned you).
Every situation is a learning opportunity. Technologies advance forward, not from the successes, but, rather, the failures. It is the hiccups along the way that open up the discussion to how we can do things better. It is also what allows someone to take a look at open source software and say "I can do better".
I hope people settle down and realize what is before them. If not, I honestly hope they drift away to another platform. STEEM is for people who are serious about making a change in the world and lifting humanity to levels it never dreamed about.
If you found this article informative, please give it an upvote and resteem.
I agree with the underlying sentiment of this post, but I actually think "serious" early adopters should be vocal about what just happened. I always try to keep an optimistic and forward-looking mindset, but the implementation of the past fork was embarrassing for two main reasons.
I do agree with you that anyone who wants to leave STEEM because of this should. Most of us that are seriously committed will be sticking around even were the ship to go down completely. There's billions of people in the world, loss of a few thousand is insignificant in the long run.
Many have made good points regarding the lack of organization and difficulty coordinating/ coming to consensus with decentralized systems. When it comes to code development it means that proposed changes are poorly documented and scattered.
I think it is fair for early adopters/ witnesses (including non top-20) to request that things are documented and streamlined better by setting up dedicated teams/divisions to ensure the consistency and quality of code. If militaries and huge corporations can do it, you better believe that STEEM should be doing it.
Or perhaps the are doing it, but not enough, and certainly never explaining it to the masses. The communication increase on @steemitblog is nice, but why not a post every day? And why not have more than just @andrarchy dedicated to reply to Steemians but a whole liaison team?
TL;DR complaints are a waste of breath, specific criticism/questioning is something I'd like to see more of on here, not just trusting that Steemit, Inc. will take care of everything.
Actually @drakos posted last week that he thought the HF shouldn't happen. He was obviously "brought onboard" at some point.
hahahahahaha fuck yea and well said!
I feel ashamed when people who making money on steemit for two years are complaining and criticizing.
Yeah a real lack of gratitude. They made boatloads of money with the potential for a ton more and they want to slam the golden goose.
Be aware that 99% of all users did not complain. Some loud voices might give another picture but most just wait and try to understand better what is going on (which is hard I must admit myself).
That's an excellent point. Negative voices often seem the loudest. Try not let negative drown out positive. And vice versa is also important.
I agree with d-pend that it's important to focus critique in a constructive way, not a destructive way. Just like voting for witnesses, downvoting spam/trolling, and such, I think in a decentralized environment every user has a responsibility to contribute their ideas on how things should be run. There are a lot of experienced developers and PMs on here (myself having previously been a PM and a BA) who have done many implementations, and it is wonderful that so many can contribute constructively to help these upgrades go better and better each time. We must examine what went wrong before we can plan for how to prevent those problems in the future.
Now bitching, that's another thing. That's not helpful to anyone except maybe the person venting. (Actually, I think even for them it would be better if they decided to go for a run to work off the energy that way.)
My issue (as I mention in my post from today) is with how things are NOT going wrong. What's going according to plan raises some concerns, particularly in how much SP is needed to do basic things like commenting.
I'm still not clear on whether the way RCs are being used right now is correct or another area in which things need to adjust over the next week. As it stands though, a plankton can only comment twice per 1-5 days. (I'm also unclear on how long it takes RCs to replinish.)
If that really is as intended, not a temporary snafu, that makes this a pay-to-play platform, and that is a threat to all of us. It is those of us who are committed to this place that care the most about these things.
Nailed it, mate.
Anyone who's ever done a better job of co-ordinating a hardfork to completely revamp the bandwidth system of a DPOS blockchain is welcome to criticise the team who just did it.
Well said. I know Im no expert on steem blockchain, but ive been around for o ver a year. Last couple of days we had little troubles on steem it, trying to post and upvote, but still you where a le to access the platform as usual. I mean, during a hardfork what do you expect to happen???? I am trully impressed by the smooth transition we are going through. Again, as I said, Im no expert and sure there are many challenged to overcome yet... But it is a remarkable work that going on, specially for an open source as ambitious and big as steem is TODAY. Congrats to all involved!! (yes, that incluyes you too 😉)
Being an early adopter does not mean to have to suffer from fuckups of untested code. I'm a very positive person and willing to go through a lot of issues with technology, but I'm also not amused when hitting roadblocks that could have been avoided by proper dilligence. Projects like STEEM who try to build INFRASTRUCTURE should act like it.
What untested code?
Was there not a testnet set up? How extensively was it used over the last month since it was put into place? Did the witnesses who approved the code test it to the degree it should have been?
It most certainly does especially since you, yourself, did not do you part. I see you voted for 2 witnesses; Is that because you have not found anymore than that worthy? Or is it because you cant be bothered to even do you part and vote on 5 or 10 witnesses who you believe will do the job.
I wonder how thoroughly they tested on the testnet. I also wonder if they felt rushed to push HF20 through without enough testing because of the constant stream of complaints they get about how they need to hurry up and fix everything.
I'm content being patient. I understand some who have a lot invested in Steem, especially the big players running businesses on here, are a bit pissed off with the current situation. But that's the risk of building a business on new technology.
BTW, thanks for always being a positive voice around here. With all of the negativity spewed around here, it's good to know that there is someone who always see the bright side. And your posts are the ones I look forward to reading the most every day,
its just frustrating not being able to post when clearly other accounts are.
wort the wait though
I don't know why some are just odd about the HF20. The most annoying part is that most of them yelling cannot even make ordinary coffee without lumps. If you expect things to move smoothly without any challenge,then you need to watch your back. Patience is all we need here. All hands should be on deck in this kind of situation since its all for the best. I strongly agree with @taskmaster4450. Tell them more.