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RE: To those who keep saying "proof-of-brain"...
Login: Username + Email + 12 seconds on slow internet = done.
Problem solved
Login: Username + Email + 12 seconds on slow internet = done.
Problem solved
Steem is not Steemit. Interfacing with the blockchain isn't limitable in that way.
I know Steem is not Steemit. I'm just pointing out a fundamental flaw that is the major obstacle preventing any hope of mass adoption and thus a perpetuation of circle jerking. Whether or not its practical or even feasible is irrelevant to me. This is how people expect things to function in 2019, not 'sign up within a week, pay, or contact somebody with crypto that can go through a service for 25 cents, then they have to delegate currency to you otherwise you can't p ost anything for a while' or whatever.
We'll never see a thriving blockchain without that (I know steempress and indeed we are working our best on ways around it)
Well, there is a way to end bidbots, circlejerks, and self voting whales. The Huey Long algorithm. End the profitability of profiteering, and end the extraction of rewards that should be going to content creators.
Enable content to deliver rewards to creators, and thereby market Steem with that content, while removing the objectionable unfairness that has driven so many away from the platform, and a complete reversal of the current plunge in users, market cap, and token price may become possible.
At least tens, maybe hundreds, of thousands of ordinary people navigated the shoals of delayed gratification to get on Steem, only to be driven away. If what drove them away is instead driven away, new users may come, and if enough of them do to raise the token price, ex users may even come back.
That's what it will take though.
You're totally right, and unfortunately, it's not possible on a blockchain to replicate the experience standards set by the likes of Reddit, Twitter, Medium etc. A partial solution, as you pointed out, is to build centralized frontends on top of the blockchain. That can effectively solve the user accounts, moderation and curation problems. However, that will still be far behind on performance and scalability, as one has to rely on the very slow and extremely inefficient Steem blockchain.
Honestly, I don't think the laggy platform matters a lot to new users, or users thinking about coming here. It's the savage profiteering and opinion flagging that drives them away withal. It's we who have tolerated those and remain here that care about UI. People will put up with blockchain speed if it comes with the rewards blockchain promises to deliver.
Steem hasn't delivered, so people haven't put up with it.
Yes, of course, there are bigger issues, but technical performance and scalability is a significant one. It's not the lagginess that's the bigger concern, it's the scalability. Right now, to the end user, it's fine - there are only a few thousand active users, and you only need to have a few SP to be active. But imagine if it goes up to hundreds of millions levels of activity - it'll cost a pretty penny just to make votes and comments. Not to mention, even after MIRA and other improvements, and despite very limited activity only 3.5 years into this, it still takes an entire week to replay a bare minimum Steem blockchain node. Who knows how many weeks it'll take for a full node. You can see how scalability is a very real challenge that makes social networks ill-suited to blockchain.
There are protocols that make replaying the entirety of the blockchain unnecessary while still enabling confirmation of the data, gossip about gossip is one, and recently another method of hashing has arisen. By using such protocols, very low latency nodes are potential, and greatly enable scalability.
I'm not a dev, so my grasp of the cutting edge may not be relied on. I do note that technical advance eventuates, and expect it in this field as it ubiquitously impacts all. These are not the limiting factor anyway, as there's no need to scale up unless gaining users actually happens.
As long as automobiles were hand cranked failure prone devices limited to <60 mph speeds there was no need for highways. Until the social platform potentiates demand, scaling will not be demanded. Regardless of chickens and eggs, both problems require solution for Steem to survive.
I'm sure there are ideas, but it takes years to develop. Steemit Inc spent most of 2017 and 2018 focusing on scalability, which is why there were no major updates in the last 2 years. A hardfork with major protocol updates used to be every 3 months before, then it stopped while they focused on a broad range of scalability solutions - RocksDB, RC, MIRA etc. Scalability always comes before adoption, this is absolutely not a "chicken & egg" problem.
And to what end? Reddit, Twitter, Medium etc can already handle a million times greater activity. Why even bother? I wrote about this before: https://steemit.com/blockchain/@liberosist/why-blockchain-social
Not when configured as recommended for a minimum (witness/consensus) node. It takes about 5-8 hours on a low end system except with 64 GB of RAM (a memory requirement that is designed to increase relatively slowly even under heavier use).
MIRA allows running in less RAM but with much worse replay time, an optional tradeoff.
Full nodes are slower but still only a day or so with good hardware. Again, tradeoffs between cost and time exist but are optional.
So far it is still workable, and could still scale somewhat while remaining workable, while the developers still plod along at making improvements. How their pace of progress will go from here on out I don't know.
Is it really that difficult to get an account nowadays? I myself was not bothered back then. I waited a couple of days, no big deal. What is it with payment and the inability to post? What was concretely changed? I know my friend agmoore did not mention any of that, she created a second account some months ago.
... Why the hurry? Why do we need the masses fast? ...
I hear different views on that "getting an account" procedure. When everything is free and fast it will be one day facebook or twitter. I wouldn't want that, for my part. I'd like to see a different social media where the crowd shows a different/unusual/so far not perceived mind and learns to organize in a new way.