RE: HF21: What Makes Steem Valuable?
I agree that doing something over and over and expecting different results is bad. But the EIP is the same thing being tried over and over.
In reality, we could change the economics all we want and it won't help. Constantly changing the economics so that investors have no clue what the true goals of the potential investment is would also qualify as insanity.
The real thing that Steem needs is a clear vision and marketing that clear vision. The EIP just adds more confusion. The original n^3 + 100% inflation would have been fine if it was marketed. Instead we keep fiddling with it, hoping investors will magically get it by osmosis.
Steemit, Inc. currently says that their vision is sustainability (ads and programmatic selling). There is no mention or focus on STEEM Power (which means there is no focus on the fundamental unit of accounting for the blockchain).
So yeah, do your EIP. I think the only marketable aspect of this hardfork will be the SPS. In fact, once the SPS is launched, I'd like to see a proposal to switch all inflation to SPS, then make witnesses beg to fund the author/comments rewards pool, curation, interest and witness pay monthly.
The three years I've been here (three years as of today, actually), I continually chuckle at the challenges of coming to human consensus. Some are freaking out about HF21 changing things too far in one direction while others are saying it doesn't change things enough. Still others say there is no real change at all.
Steemit, inc hasn't ever fully focused on selling the vision of Steem Power or of making Steemit.com a world-class website. Both, I think, are problematic. Without a fantastic interface demonstrating the value of SP, I don't see how the SP story can be sold to investors.
Switching all inflation to SPS would certainly be a radical move. Would content creators and curators stick around? Would it matter and if so, how much?
Personally, I'd still post here even without rewards. I did it for months when bernie would auto-downvote all my posts before payout. Most people would leave though. They were sold on a "get paid to post" story and they are sticking to it, even if it's only a few cents here or there (still more than Facebook/Twitter). Meanwhile, investors are, as you said, confused without a clear vision of exactly what Steem is meant to be.
Since investors don't seem to really care much about STEEM anyway, I think the EIP is worth doing because it demonstrates we can make changes and hopefully evaluate them accordingly. If we have too much opposition making this change, how would we implement your suggestion? I think we have to start slow, see how the SPS works out in terms of funding value-creating action and go from there.
If it works, I'm open to increasing the percentage to SPS. Doing so before we know how it will work is not wise. EOS had 4% inflation set to go to a SPS-like pool and it just caused a bunch of drama and uncertainty. The funds were burned and investors didn't really know how to respond. I think it's best to lay out a plan, follow it, and then evaluate. Maybe we should all be focusing on determining metrics of success for these changes and then determining what we will do next based on what those metrics tell us.
My idea is just that SPS would be in-between the various existing funds. For example, the author rewards would not get funded unless it's released from the SPS. And stakeholders would campaign for more or less funding in each round.
Basically, make the SPS the priority to fund the other pools. Maybe content creators would get more funding for certain rounds and less funding for other rounds, for example.
That's great, except for one thing. Hardly anyone is making this aspect front-and-center. You point it out. Witnesses talk about it. But it never makes it into a sound-bite or tweet or any other marketing material. Just "Look at how agile we are" would be a great official video from the biggest marketing arm of the blockchain (but who is that?). Dash does it all the time. They can even market "sporks" of all things.
See, that's another example of bad marketing. I am certain we can spin burn workers into something really positive. Dash manages this just fine. Some people even come away from Dash saying, "They'd rather burn Dash than accept my proposal." That is a marketing opportunity. If we're really that discerning with our inflation, investors will take notice.
By the way, I'm also pretty excited by the notion of a SteemDAC, that you mentioned in the root post. I'd love for that to be explored. That is also pretty radical, but worth looking at, even if it's never actually rolled out and just an additional way to model the existing blockchain. "We did this because EOS did it and it seemed to work well for them" is marketable and aggrandizing.
Aggrandizing!
Heh. That single word brings back so many emotions, most of them not good (though I guess I can laugh at it now, considering the harm has already been done).
Maybe with an SPS in place we can act a bit more like Dash. Prior to that, the money spent on Steem only came from Steemit, inc. Still does. If the SPS was truly a DAC with full transparency, I could get behind your idea of letting that DAC dynamically direct things. I also think it would be confusing for investors who like Steem for passive income (which, ironically, may be the thing hurting Steem the most via bidbots, automated self-voting. etc). If the returns fluctuate each month by the whims of the SPS board, that could be really confusing.
Either way, having to demonstrate value created for value received sounds like a good way to ensure value is distributed responsibly. In theory, that's what proof of brain is supposed to be doing. Instead, it's easier to put things on auto pilot with a bot.
As to the many good points you make about marketing, does that really have to happen from Steemit alone? Witnesses, app owners, authors... anyone in the community can put together larger marketing projects and seek funding to implement them.
Maybe part of the problem is we are decentralized. We don't have a single entity representing us other than Steemit, Inc and (IMO) they haven't done a very good job so far (and I think, personally, that's due to inexperienced leadership up to this point).
I totally agree it does not need to come solely from Steemit, Inc. In fact, probably the best move Steemit, Inc. did for the whole platform was to lay off 70% of its staff and switch to survival mode. It clearly informed the rest of the stakeholders that:
When they emerged from "survival mode" there's no mention of STEEM Power. The final sticking point is the ninja-mine, but we can just just proceed as if they didn't have it. There's not much value in STEEM Power. It's not being marketed. It's a dead end unless someone else starts marketing it. And no one is marketing STEEM Power right now. So time to move on to Steem Engine based solutions or something else on the second layer.
You are employed by Steem(it) and you feed people propaganda.. kindly go fuck yourself
Thanks
YOU HAVE BEEN @kawaiicrushed LIKE THE LITTLE CONSPIRITARD BITCHES YOU ARE!!!
False.
Don’t amuse the retards. They bask in their ignorant statements.