We need to level up our game, NOW. Transform the Steem ecosphere for the good. [Club100]

_{Source: Canva}

This morning I was going through my old papers and notes to see if there was anything that needed my attention. Whenever I work on something, I tend to write down any ideas or information I come across into my note taking diary when possible, but if I don't have the diary, I write them down on plain A4 size paper.

My eyes looked through the notes that are kept in this note-taking diary in search of important information written on the pages, and I noticed something that I think might be of interest to my readers as well. Therefore, I am here to provide you with the information that I would love to share with you.

The following page is from the same diary which I use to record important information in. Even though the diary as well as all of the information it contains is very old, the lessons we can learn from it remain valuable for us individually as well as a community of members who believe in the Steem blockchain.

_{Source: My Note-Taking Diary}

Almost five years have passed since I had jotted down this information in my diary in 2017, and today, almost five years after writing it down in my notebook, I wanted to see whether the information written then had any value today or not.

I suddenly got all the memories flooding back into my head when I saw Steem written on the page. I remembered that when I was writing all this information, I was exploring blockchain and cryptocurrency. The concept of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency was brand new to me, although I had heard about them about five years earlier, when one of my juniors at college worked on an exchange and the team got a large sum of money from an angel investor. My interest in cryptocurrencies peaked again in 2017 when I decided to delve deeper and learn more about them. In the beginning, I merely wanted to spy on prices and marketcaps of the top most cryptocurrency coins.

The below table has information on prices for two specific dates from the picture shared above.

Rank	Coin	Price - 24 May 2017	Price - 19 June 2017
01	Bitcoin	2392.160	2555.090
02	Ethereum	201.760	371.060
03	Ripple	0.3522	0.2855
04	NEM	0.2596	0.1985
05	Litecoin	32.900	40.640
06	Ethereum Classic	16.580	22.970
07	Dash	151.280	202.300
08	Monero	55.800	49.870
09	Bytecoin	0.0039	0.0026
10	Stellar Lumens	0.0567	0.0387
11	Dogecoin	0.0038	0.0032
12	Golem	0.4985	0.6803
13	Zcash	273.710	376.240
14	Augur	30.950	32.140
15	Stratis	3.360	7.960
16	Steem	1.330	2.160

_{Note: The red color is applied to the prices to show the decline in the timeframe selected in the above table.}

At that time, the price of Steem was floating between 1 USD and 3 USD, and we were placed on the 16^th place on the marketcap list. These were the days when people joined us in thousands every day and the whole world was expecting something big from us, as we were the first blockchain to have a Delegated-Proof-Stake mechanism in place that was working perfectly also.

Problem #1: Bots

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In the whole world of blockchain and cryptocurrency, everyone was interested in our project since it was something completely new and nobody had considered the possibilities of social media running on a blockchain. Even though this trend did not last for a long time, as people with large investments became increasingly occupied with delegating their Steem Power to bots, which they then exploited to their advantage.

This delegation to a bot and people sending Steem or SBD in exchange for votes was the norm then and even if a person's content was not good enough, they got a good vote just because they had liquid Steem/SBD to participate in the vote auction.

Nevertheless, there are still a handful of bots like this that are working the same way and I think they are not essential for our ecosystem. If anything, they are doing us more damage than good.

Problem #2: Negative Marketing

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A screenshot of the Coingecko app below shows the information that is displayed to the public. This information can be found on Steem's info page on the Coingecko app.

_{Source: Coingecko Android App}

This image of our platform is stopping new investors from joining our platform, and in turn is stopping the value of Steem from increasing. I request all the users who are reading this post to raise their voice against bad and plagiarized content that is still being rewarded using bot and self-help accounts.

Problem #3: GitHub Issues & Development Stagnation

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Our code is getting old and nobody is giving priority to solving all the issues pending in the GitHub directory. Even people from Hive, who were outstanding developers are still looking at our directory on GitHub.

The below shared picture shows a previous witness commenting negative words on an issue raised on the GitHub directory.

We should start resolving all the issues pending on the GitHub repository of Steem and pave the way for new projects to use this development to develop their projects on our blockchain.

_{Source: Github}

I think developers and designers must be given more support to develop and take the Steem project in the right way. Right now the Steem blockchain is stagnating in terms of development.

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I have shared the problems that I think must be looked upon as soon as possible and entertaining these problems will only get us in the right direction and help our platform in the positive way.

I hope the people reading this post will share their thoughts on this in the comment section and share their views and their suggestions with the Steem community.