What I Really Think of Steem - Truth Talk
So recently I was called "Anti-Steem" by a few individuals.. one who really needs to just grow up, and others who are just offended I won't wank them, like everyone else does.
Alas, here we are.
But because it seems that some were curious of my thoughts.. I figured I would share them in my traditional, ranty.. justine you are such a dick...way, so here goes nothing. ;)
I am a lot of things.. I am an asshole, I speak too much, I come across harsh sometimes, I am too opinionated and just all in all - An extremely flawed human being.
This is something I know, acknowledge, and try to work on. As I think growing as a person (becoming better than you were yesterday) is pretty important.. and it's a top priority of mine.
But I am Not Anti-Steem
And my actions prove that over and over again. I just am not playing the game you want me too.. and that pisses you off.
Here is a tip, I don't care. I am not here to please you.. so GFY.. ;)
I could end it there, but after a conversation last night with amazing people here who I have known since I joined Steem, I felt the need to make a post to say what I actually thought..as apparently some have misinterpreted my "absence" for something else.
What I think of Steem
Steem to me has always been a way for individuals to take back our biggest form of communication, the thing that holds many of us together - The Internet.
Yes, to me Steem is the basis of Web 3.0.. where individuals and communities have ownership, and the tools they need to build their own economies, social platforms, marketplaces, games, or anything else they can imagine.
Steem to me is removing the middle man
You can see that expressed in my Steem Vision shared last April.
- It is the peer to peer revolution of the internet.
- It is connecting creators to their audience.
- It is connecting businesses to their customers
- It is setting a stage for citizen journalists to share what is actually happening, rather than us depending on the narrative the news is shoving down our throats this week.
Steem is taking back the power of the digital world and giving it to the people, that is what it has always been to me.
Steem makes this possible due to the underlying technology that is quite unique to what is currently available. This to me was always the original goal, and you can see so by just reading the white paper or listening to those responsible for building the chain in the first place.
The tech is solving the problems that are standing in the way of Web 3.0 to exist.
It does not happen overnight.. and some things have to be rolled out to even make other things possible, it's a long damn battle.
That is what Steem is for me, and what it will become.. if we don't ruin it first.
Steem is Flawed
Steem is not a ready for the market product in it's current state. It is flawed. AND THAT ISN'T A BAD THING.. the tech takes time to develop and those building are constantly working through challenges that arise due to building something that doesn't exist yet.
There is no users guide.. it is all figure this shit out as we go.
Pinpointing these flaws and improving them is part of getting to the end result.. that is just how this works.
And anyone who is telling you to not point out flaws, saying nothing is wrong, or telling you it is perfect as is .. is blowing smoke up your ass. They probably are quite happy with their rewards, and don't want anyone rocking the boat.
If we can't admit we are flawed,and accept that.. we will never improve and therefore - reach our end goal.
But I also think we could be promoting it as is
No, it is not ready for market.. no it is not complete.. but I find it damn frustrating to see projects that are sooooooo far behind where we are being more "popular" due to them actually understanding marketing and putting it as a priority.
I don't think we need empty shills, or expensive bullshit.. I think we need to be showing people what the hell Steem is and what it can do. What they can build on it, how they can grow their business.. what it damn means longterm.
And I don't think "come here for rewards" should be any part of it.
But my god.. wouldn't it be great to have an intelligent person, who actually understands how it works, out there telling other people? Not just staying in our echo chamber to pat each other on the backs...
This is also a frustration that led me to "opt out" and wait for the future.
Steem is not about rewards
It is about building something bigger in my opinion.. and the focus on rewards is one of the biggest flaws there is in my book.
Way too much focus on doing what one needs to get rewards, wanking the right people to be in the "in" club, only doing things or interacting with people if there is an upvote involved, not questioning specific people due to their public standing.. what kind of a fucked up world are we trying to build here?
Being able to tokenize the web is pretty cool, but that actually means empowering communities to grow and build within themselves (and the tools to do so), giving businesses a way to reward their customers, replacing "points" with "tokens" etc.. but quite frankly I don't think that means a shared rewards pool drained from inflation that is pretty much killing the STEEM price.
We aren't ready to tokenize the web yet
Yeah, we aren't there. BUT WE ARE SO CLOSE! SMTs and Communities are key to this.. not one platform where we all watch the inflation that affects all of us be automatically rewards to shitposts by bots.. that is not, and should not be the end goal, in my humble opinion.
Steem is bigger than blogging to me, it is literally individual freedom of the internet.
Currently we are just playing in the sandbox while the cool shit gets built.. this isn't the end game.
But then why did you leave??
I didn't leave.. calm the fuck down Karen.
I stopped posting, that's it. I still run a damn curation guild, and have been talking with big projects about integrating to Steem. blinks
I stopped posting due to realizing that most of my frustration here was being caused by the damn rewards pool. So I decided to opt out.
I fell out of love with the shared rewards pool
Since the day I got here I have been fighting for valuable content creators to be seen and be rewarded for the value they add.. for us to "showcase the best" in our storefront of a trending page to attract eyes in. This means I was fully aware of what content we had, and what we were rewarding.. and it was annoying.
Then the rewards got even more automated with the fork and it just seemed to get even more meh around here (for me). To me, while I know that "auto votes" are just necessary for many.. they sort of take the whole point of it out for me. No one is reading what they vote.. it's all just bots voting each other in my head. It's just something personally that resulted in a "meh" feeling.
I also realized that the rewards were making this place not very social.. people didn't feel free to post what they wanted, engagement is rough sometimes, it's not "fun" to just "hang out" for one reason or another.. I believe that is just due to everyone being in a big bucket, with no way to find what we like, the people we click with or what we want to see.
This is why I have always been a huge fan of communities .. as they solve this issue.
I simply decided to opt out of some aspects of this place and wait for the solutions that are on the horizon.. as they would fix it. I didn't like who I had become, or being so wrapped up in something I had absolutely no control over. I decided to simply stop fighting it, and wait for the needed improvements.
But then why are you shilling Bitcoin on twitter and not Steem?!?!?
ok.. just wow.. couple things - twitter is a random place to share random thoughts.. and nothing I say there should really count for much... it is just me saying shit and having fun, and I am a terrible shiller if that is the case.. but since we are here, I will try to explain my position-
I am one who believes that Bitcoin and STEEM are two very different things with two very different use cases.
Bitcoin - is a longterm store of value and a widely adopted digital currency
STEEM - is the utility coin that will power web 3.0 built on top of the Steem Blockchain
This is how I see them.. you don't have to agree with me, that is totally ok.. it won't hurt my feelings.
What is with the change in narrative?
I have always spoken on twitter about crypto.. hell I barely even used the thing until recently. Bitcoin has always been part of that, and then sharing about Steem, and whatever else random thoughts crossed my mind.
I stopped sharing about Steem because-
- I was being trolled pretty hard here with some pretty vulgar things.. and quite frankly didn't want to send anyone here to see it.
- I do not agree with how somethings are being done currently (see above), so because I am a person who is flawed.. and can only speak of what I believe in and not just what people want me to say - I just decided to stop talking about it.. and wait for the solutions to roll out.
I am in watch and wait mode.. I am doing my thing behind the scenes and waiting for the upgrades to roll out that I believe will be pretty important to making Steem what I have always thought it would be.. Web 3.0
Until then I share my random thoughts on twitter occasionally, and am in discord working.. my DM's are always open.
I hope that clears things up for anyone who cares, if you think the above is "anti-Steem" fair enough.. I am not one to try to push what I believe on others.. but maybe there is a possibility that you're just an asshole
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Much Love and Happy New Year!
You filthy animals
pretty much
As I am sure you can tell from my name, yeah, I definitely don't see Steem as a web 3.0, that's Ethereum, possibly Polkadot and Filecoin as well. But Steem is just 21 witnesses that can be voted in or out by a single company. That's not exactly a great foundation for a future decentralized web, not unless Steem changed the design of the witness system to completely rotate the 21 witnesses to a totally different set of 21 nodes. And if soft consensus is how blockchain is going to scale, then might as well do STARK chains off Ethereum I say.
That said, I agree with you on the shared reward pool. It just does not work to have all these people interested in entirely different topics working for the same reward pool. But does SMTs solve this? Maybe, but why does it? Perhaps its the stake oriented voting system that sucks. SP for the sake of RCs makes sense, but SP for the sake of having higher influence in a blockchain sucks. That is the same model that video games do, which ruins the game. It might pay off devs, but any game that gives paying customers god-mode equipment in an item mall destroy the entire game for everyone not buying that stupid item. This concept is not the best way.
Well I disagree with that, for a few reasons. The witness positions cannot be controlled by a single entity, and that’s been proved repeatedly. Not that I don’t agree that witness voting could use some improvements, many of which have been discussed recently.
I have nothing against ETH, but I do believe it will need to make improvements to solve the issues of congestion as well as high gas prices that make running many Web 3.0 aspects not feasible longterm. RCs are actually an interesting way to over come those issues specially, and I think that gives Steem a good chance at being a base for the technology.
SMTs would only solve the rewards pool issue if STEEM then is only used as the utility token itself, otherwise they wouldn’t improve at all imo.
Stake weighted voting in essence makes sense - as those who have the most to gain or lose would be the ones to make decisions in the best interest of the platform.. whether that model is working is up for debate, and I can personally see why.
But this may just be one of the many learning lessons of this uncharted area.
First, appreciate the reply.
So it is not my intent here to debate or anything, but I notice that a lot of people on Steem/EOS believe that the "free" transaction thing is more scalable than the fee market system and, I'd like to say why I am confident that is not true.
We can look at how the two systems work:
ETH2 minting/fee system looks like this:
Validators > Users > Validators
Steem minting/fee system looks like this:
Witnesses > Holders > Users > Holders
No one experiences RC scarcity because RCs are extremely cheap, but that's not how it is at the mass adoption stage. The profit holders are hoping to make would be coming from people buying RCs from their RC generating Steem Power. This is a rent-seeking profit model, token holders perpetually earn value without putting new value into the marketplace.
Transacting on Steem only has the feeling of being free because new people are delegated 15 SP for free by Steemit Inc. in hopes that they will buy in later. But long term, Steem transactions are not free at all. Every action that requires RCs is not free at all and would require people to pay something to someone holding SP. It really only appears free because the Steem blockchain is not busy enough for RCs to be expensive.
One way or another you always have to pay for the security. But on Ethereum you only have to pay 1 party, on Steem there are 2 parties that make money off users.
I agree with you to a point, except why RCs are truly “free” is due to the fact that they regenerate, not due to the fact of the initial delegations.
Yes you are absolutely right that the actual cost of each transaction will increase as transactions on the chain do. Meaning when mass adoption levels took place it would cost a lot more RCs to transact than it does now, as you said.
They are free because while I have to have an amount staked to use the chain, I am allocated a certain amount of RCs to use based on the staked amount.. and they regenerate each day.
So yes if I was a person who wanted to build a game let’s say, I may need to invest 100k SP (random number there) to allow my users to transact. But at any time I can power down and remove that 100k SP.. it doesn’t cost me something out of pocket for each transaction. It’s more like a deposit to use the chain, imo.
You’re right, the value comes from RCs needed to use the chain, and you’re right it’s sort of a pay to play model.. difference is you get you money back.. just simply cash it out.
My understanding of ETH is it’s a pay per transaction set up, and it does not regenerate. You pay for each one, out of pocket.
I understand that ETH’s transaction volume is much higher and therefore the cost of transaction is. I just wanted to explain what I meant by “free”, as it wasn’t due to them being cheap (as you are right, that changes with increase of transactions), rather that they actually regenerate so costs nothing out of pocket in the end.
Also, just wanted to be clear - I’m not debating either, or saying which is better.. actually I quite enjoy the conversation, so don’t think you are offending or anything! 🙂
I understand how you see the RC system and it is a legitimate viewpoint.
You might have the opinion that it is similar to buying a solar panel for your roof, which then provides access to energy over time. That certainly sounds reasonable. But solar panel businesses seek for supply to match demand, STEEM is not like that.
Here is my concern. The game is not about getting rich by selling everyone 50 SP for sovereign blogging, but about being early so that they can charge people for RC delegation. I believe the RC delegation will cost more than ETH2's fee market because in Steem there is a middle-man (RC delegator) involved.
A self-sovereign blogging platform allowing people to have censorship-resistant free speech is important, so Steem is valuable. But what if the majority of Steem Power ends up in the hands of a small group of entities? If they can choose who gets RCs and who does not, then you have a deplatforming issue all over again.
BINGO!
You know... I'm going to get some heat for what I'm about to say here ,but what the hell this is Truth talk after all right!? I'm thinking we are kind of new territory when we involved other people from other countries (not isolating any one country) who alignment doesn't match what normal rational business practices ( this is just a cultural thing). You see many cultures don't know or care about long-term innovation/business as much as they do about getting rewarded for their actions and bettering their situation . So you get dev's from other countries who have misaligned goals and not really thinking past what they can get out of the system vs. what is best for the platform. I mean , I'll be fair there as many western country apps on this platform (I think) doing the same ,but it does lean heavy toward European/non-western countries who don't really care about what the potential is. We might be expecting to much general consensus from people who don't know any better, or don't care really what this blockchain do. I could be writing out my thoughts wrong so I might have to revise a million times but whatever. Good post though!
It makes sense that when you mix a bunch of different people from different cultures or perhaps just different ways of doing things etc, into one group .. yeah. Things get tricky.. it is crazy to think everyone will agree on something like shared rewards. I think it is just tough, as it truly does affect everyone. So it's not just "oh some people are popular".. like elsewhere on the web.. as the reward is shared inflation.. not just some sort of outside advertisers. Makes it way different than anything we have seen I guess.
I think having communities will help this a bit.. as well as of course SMTs.. then it is not just everyone in one big bucket.
As long as steem is a reward token nothing will change with communities. On the contrary; it'll get even worse.
What if it’s just the utility token and SMTs are rewards?
Curious of your honest thoughts.. as quite frankly I have high hopes for what Steem could be, but if things don’t change in that regard, we won’t get far.
And if the main concern of those running projects on this platform is who can take as much of the inflation as possible, not really sure what the point is.. so in my head having STEEM as utility and SMTs as rewards at least means they can just shit on their own token, and not everyone else’s too.. but I’m not sure what that would look like for STEEM either.
Steem as dapp blockchain and steem token only as a utility token is the only option. SMT for rewards.
I can easily see this thing working. We're early in the game. You're making mistake not to try to get as many steem as possible. In five years no one will know or care how you got yours. Buy, earn, spam or even steal.
You'll either have them or not.
Oldtimer, Justine, Acidio, Bernie or Ned. We'll all be dust when big boys join the party.
If that ever happens. I definitely count on that but you never know.
Right now I would bet on 60/40.
Yes you’re right, and I’m completely aware I don’t play the game well. But quite frankly I don’t want to.. I’ll let the others fight over the inflation and wank each other...
You said it. It's a game not fight.
I rather upvote shitpost of the person who I know that will power up the rewards than so-called famous censored and demonetized YT crybabies who don't invest a single penny in the platform and immediately cash out the rewards. You're free to call that wanking if you want.
That's my stand, right or wrong.
We all paying the cost of being early and all these awkward teething process aren’t very different from a centralized business and creating something with the help of others!
I still find it more exciting than most of the internet and I go pretty deep in these things since I do make my living online
I think that this was proof of concept and we shouldn’t be tied to it, it’s going to change and evolve in many ways and we will follow the way we like most
I’m also watching and waiting I don’t really worry about the rewards I’m happy to contribute my thoughts and banter every day
i agree...being part of it too early means many aspects of the project will be broken, not work very well etc...a level of being tolerable to the tech side of the chain is helpful lol
Oh yeah, totally agreed. Also, it isn't just like building a website.. the issues are complex and many times chain level. We as individuals have become so used to having everything right now, that many get frustrated when it doesn't happen.
NOW I do have to say that these things were promised like 2 years ago (communities and SMTs), so I understand the frustration there.. but many times people are raging over small stuff, as they don't understand what is involved. Perhaps that shows our failure to set up a platform that sets realistic expectations and gives users the answers they need etc.
So many comments, hard to keep up. Anyway, I'm resteeming this.
I was going to make a post about exactly this topic! and it's exactly what I've been telling people. I did make a tangentially related post where I talked about the fact that people promote Steem by telling people "come here to earn money", but they never say that it's just pennies and you can't live off of it.
I have friends who've come thinking this was some get-rich-quick scheme for blogging and left in disappointment because it was so much work for a little chance of getting curated.
I've taken to promoting Steem recently, but using the "honest" tactic. I was inspired by this post by @paulag where she talks about the fact that we've got a ton of content creators, because that's what it's being promoted for! And we don't have viewers or interaction. It's just post post post, no actual life in most places here. Yeah, featured and popular posts have tons of interaction, but even I, having 1500 followers, only get a comment on my posts every once in a while (mostly I just get bots and spam).
So when I talk about Steem now, I say it's a cool social place where you can come hang out, make friends, be free and uncensored by "Big Media", like you said it is, Web 3.0, the logical no-middle-man evolution of social media. I wish people paid more attention to designing stuff toward that end, but the incentive is in the wrong direction.
Lol, I have so much to say about this, because I've been thinking all that you said for so long, but I hadn't solidified it into a thing yet, but thanks to you I've got many more of my ideas in order about it. I hope I can make a few posts about this and outline some open source marketing plans for the sake and the future of Steem. I still have to think some things through; thanks again for bringing up this topic.
Yes that is a great way to share it with people! And I mean, I totally get how rewards are something people want to share with others, but as you said.. they aren't guaranteed and quite frankly this place could be so much more than that.
I will read up on the few posts you linked here and also look forward to your future one sharing your thoughts on it, I would love to hear them!
lol, that actually got a audible chuckle out of me.
I agree with your rationale here, I think Steem is a beautiful flawed beast. I think a lot of these issues can actually be semi-fixed by on-boarding more people ( the rewards pool becomes a whole different kind of beast when 100's of thousands & not just 10's of thousands are dipping their toes into it ).
Here's a interesting question for ya:
How do you feel about getting rid of the rewards pool entirely, and instead relaying on user-given tips ( similar to how the site cent.co does it )?
hehe, glad I could make you laugh.. I was trying to bring some humor to this random ass post.
Beautifully flawed beast is a lovely way to describe it actually.. I like that. And yes more users is the solution to many things.. but it still is one big bucket of everyone trying to figure out where the hell they are. I do have big hopes for the upcoming changes though.
This is something that has been brought up a lot and quite frankly I used to hate the idea.. but the more I think about it the less value I see in the rewards pool.
I am just conflicted though as I think having creators being able to own and monetize their work is important.. just I don't think that every damn post necessarily needs to be monetized on the platform.
But how can we build a place where both exist? A fun place to hang out and share.. and then a place where content worth something is rewarded? Tipping is of course a simple thing that could be added in to help with that part too I guess.
Communities with their own SMT's could solve this.. and I think that is the idea.. for them to take the main stage and STEEM sink back to just being a utility coin, one needed to interact on the chain itself.. but I have a hard time visualizing how that goes exactly.
Currently rewards are the only draw we have, if we remove them.. we better replace them with some damn cool to attract and keep people here is what I will say.
I haven't checked out cent.co.. will do so and finish my opinion haha
Just an idea, very rough & maybe not perfect:
This plan, again, is not perfect, but I can see it being an interesting take on the current situation. It allows newcomers time & resources to build up a fanbase, it gives a buffer to people to warn them they're about to lose pool-access & should start thinking about how they are going to remain sustainable in the near future, and it gives whales less influence on the dwindling shared rewards pool, instead shifting their focus on long-term sustainable business models (are you going to include ads in your blogs? start up a dapp business venture? maybe include some sort of STEEM-based paywall for certain content?)
I don't mean to sound egotistically, but I seriously think that this discussion is incredibly worth having. Steem is broken, we shouldn't just sit & whine, we should continue pushing in new changes & hardforks until something "clicks". We're still early enough in the Steem timeline where the method of "throwing shit at the wall & seeing what sticks" is a legit valid option we should be doing.
Hey Justine, I'm not steem-savvy so rather than embarrass myself trying to pretend that I am I'll just say that I'm flawed also, like every single other human on the planet. It's human nature to be...Some just make the mistake to think otherwise of themselves...And forget that people are.
I'm optimiistic about steem...If I wasn't I wouldn't be here still. It's people like you that make me want to stay.
Sorry, not a very tech-savvy response...But I'm flawed and broken, so the best I got right now..🙂
Who needs tech savvy?? I am over here bitching about Karen ffs ;P
Thanks for being you and being apart of this dysfunctional little family of ours <3
Haha, well you're not special you know...We can all bitch and moan...You're bloody good at it though J! I don't know who Karen is, but you did a good job bitching about her.
"Thanks for being me?" Well, someone has to...I'd rather be someone more handsome, intelligent and humorous but I have to leave that to other's I'm afraid... 😝
Thanks for being the perfectly [bitchy] flawed and broken human being that you are too! It's all those things combined that make you unique.
One happy family of nutbags huh?
lol so much truth there. And damnit.. the Karen meme hasn't made it to Australia yet??
Nah, we may be ahead in time Justine, but we're slow on the uptake sometimes.
(Cute and loveable though...) 😃
Hi!
I'm a newbie here. Just registered today. Found out about steem when I was reading about crypto. Total noob on that too!
So many cryptos out there, but steem have a really nice concept that I just can't move on from.
Its like a platform for authors/journalist/experts to publish their findings. That was my first thought when I read about steem.
Still trying to understand how to dive into the community. Really like your pov on steem.
Awesome, welcome!! Glad to have you join the community, and you are right.. it really is a bit of hidden gem.
Communities are a bit hard to break into as some of the "chat" happens offchain, in an app called discord.
But, if you havent, feel free to check out Steempeak.com "tribes" as well as the beta communities site https://beta.steemit.com/ to be able to search some of them.
The beta is just a live test version of the upcoming community features. You may have an easier time finding content you like and the people who write it etc.
If you are on discord, or want to join it.. I will gladly get you in touch with a few that way too.. but honestly I think with these new features less and less of that will be happening on discord.
Feel free to ask any questions you have.
Print out all your keys first!
Agree that it may not yet be ready for market but it should be more marketed. I recently came here from Medium, looking for a place to post. I much prefer the decentralized model. I bet other would as well, if they were more aware of Steem.
Hey welcome! Glad you made your way over. I agree, I think there is a way to showcase what we have here, even if it's not completely "done" yet.
We will get there, eventually.
I think this is very important point. Cannot say that I saw this opportunity initially on Steem, although it is a big one. Specially as fake news continue to grow.
Oh yeah, to be honest I think social media is quickly replacing news in a way. I mean right now, when an event happens.. I go check twitter for tags, and see what people "on the ground" are saying. Sure that means many opinions could be thrown in, things taken out of context etc.. this way requires taking many sources and trying to find the truth.. but quite frankly the same could be said about news these days as well - as what they choose to report is simply that.. what they choose.
3speak's core vision actually mentioned this.. and I believe still does. Their goal was to empower citizen journalists and give them a place to share that wont be censored etc. With all my frustrations with the way they do things.. I still think that vision is a powerful one, and I hope they continue down that path. As they show tremendous potential as a project in this regard.