Do You Know What 'The Sweat Equity Principle' Is? || SMTs To Address One Of Steem's White Paper Promises
In the age of information, ignorance is a choice. - Donald Miller
Sometimes we don't know the right answer ad hoc, but we know where we can find it. Then we start to dig deeper and suddenly find ourselves learning a whole bunch of new things.
Isn't information the real power in our today's world?
Thanks to @erikaflynn and her extraordinarily valuable comment on my yesterday's article, I read the Steem white paper again and found a really interesting paragraph about capital and value in it.
Then I started to talk with a couple of people about my finding and it suddenly dawned on me.
Did you know that according to Steem's white paper, investing time vs. investing money in this network is equally valuable? And did you know that SMTs will address exactly that principle?
Picture kindly provided by pixabay.com
Time is valuable
Now that's nothing new to us, but put into the right context you might actually be surprised.
Here we go, the first quote to study from Steem's white paper:
An important key to inspiring participation in any community, currency or free market economy is a fair accounting system that consistently reflects each person's contribution.
Fair? Does the Steem white paper effectively mention the word fair? That's astonishing! Well I don't know how you interpret that paragraph, but to me that's been a real eye-opener!
What the white paper doesn't promise - and we have to be fair again - is a guaranteed reward for that contribution. While it wants to ensure transparency about contribution it doesn't assure users of generating a specific amount of benefits.
That's quite important when it comes to expectation management!
Now the good news is that SMTs like the @communitycoin will be able to finally carry through on the given promise.
I haven't studied all the details about SMT Oracles yet, but according to the information given by Steemit Inc's CEO Ned Scott they're goal is to turn this game into a fair game.
I hope @ned doesn't mind quoting him here :-) The following description helped me a lot to understand the concept and goal of SMT Oracles - so probably it will also help you:
Currently Steem is like scrabble where every time you play a word, you get your letters back plus more, and the longer you’ve played, the less any new player can catch up. Oracles will individuals help move toward games with even starting points at regular intervals, just like regular board games. Or equal voting power based on being an individual.
To me that sounds really promising!
Time investments are real investments
That's also nothing new. The attention economy teaches us on a daily basis how important the currency time actually is.
Still reading it again in black and white in the Steem white paper really made me feel good.
All forms of capital are equally valuable. This means that those who contribute their scarce time and attention toward producing and curating content for others are just as valuable as those who contribute their scarce cash. This is the sweat equity principle and is a concept that prior cryptocurrencies have often had trouble providing to more than a few dozen individuals. - Steem white paper
Wham! Now honestly, how many of you knew that this was written in the books?
Of course I read that paper when joining Steem, especially because it was the very first time I ever got in touch with cryptocurrencies. Having some nerdy friends was of great help since they could translate the more cryptic parts of the paper then.
Still reading these parragraphs of the white paper again after 1.5 years was a true inspiration!
Maybe it's been the same for you :-)
Enjoy your weekend,
Marly -
Thanks for your valuable time!
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Original content. Quote found on quotefancy.com.
The whitepaper says "fair accounting system," not fair distributions. We will be able to account for the distributions, and shine a light on players that are bad for the ecosystem. In today's non-blockchain world, people can say what ever they want, and it's almost impossible for anyone to track short of the government. So, when I see the word fair in this context, it means transparency, which is impossible to find anywhere else! Also, you can't guarantee a fixed contribution which is subjective. Like this comment, I wouldn't be here if I got paid for words per comment. You get paid in the subjective value you bring to the platform by anyone willing to show their support for it. You also get paid to curate, so really that is your set earnings amount. I believe SMTs will have the ability to bring people in on more stable footing, where they can provide services without being left behind from day one. There are a few ways I've been considering looking at SMTs for my business! Great post! Thanks for the support of the community and I look forward to seeing what the rest of 2018 brings! :-)
Great comment, @brettcalloway!
That's correct. Now one might ask if transparency is enough fairness. We won't be able to redistribute wealth but we could try to find ways to provide more equality in opportunity. That's definitely something SMTs will be at least trying to address, or as you said:
I'm definitely looking forward to it, too! :-)
Have a nice weekend.
I like how you put that:
This encourages people to dedicate themselves and their skills to something rather than wait for it to be handed to them.
When our twins came to live with us, a lot of people helped out in the beginning. Unfortunately, they also said some very unhelpful things - "How on earth are you going to cope with twins and work full-time? I don't see how you're going to manage." I started to think I really couldn't do it on my own ... and then the help stopped.
People went back to their lives. But I felt entitled to their help. I started to become bitter. When I finally realized that and crawled out of the self-pity hole I'd been digging, I took initiative. I started figuring out how my husband and I could cope alone. And how we can try to get ahead.
I think the best way is going to be through Steemit. I just read your "trending" post (congrats!) and that was encouraging ... and then I read this! <3 I don't have money to put in Steem right now but I have a little time ... and this is where I'm going to be investing it!
I recall reading the white paper as closely as I could manage to understand it eight months ago when I first dove into Steemit. It did seem to be an eye opening, optimistic document. However it was also pretty honest about what a long-shot it would be to achieve major success:
It's basically saying, "Most people are going to contribute a lot more work than they're going to be compensated for, because they believe there's a small chance of striking it rich.
So, points for honesty. I dove in anyway, since the small chance of some compensation was better than the zero chance I was getting on Facebook or on my personal blog, and I feel compelled to write, anyway.
It also shows that being consistently active on here is the only clear way to success. You've got to play the lottery a lot of times before you ever win a thing. And at least it doesn't cost anything except for our time to be able to buy a daily ticket, or three.
Points for honesty, definitely!
Still the chance to win on Steem is incomparably higher vs. winning in the lottery. On Steem we're able to pimp our lottery tickets through networking and like that manipulate luck :-)
Great comment, thanks for stopping by!
The post is amazing, permit me to follow you and I hope your vote.
Thank you in advance
Oooookayyyy... thinking things over again:
So Steemit is just like our society. But it also is not. I haven't spend any money until now for Steemit. I haven't bought me a lottery ticket. I have just invested my time to participate. I am though allowed to participate with investing my time as a lottery ticket. So Steemit is fair in it's way. But I have to admit:
I don't want the whole world to be one big lottery! ;-)
And when we want to get more people to play the Steemit lottery, we will though have to care for a certain kind of fairness. You know my point @surfermarly: I just wish for a better interface, better functions... a bigger draw pot we can still put our hand in and rummage around to chose a ticket without getting stucked.
I tried an app for that yesterday, but I couldn't even login with my phone. It would be better to improve some things on the frontend itself.
I'd have so many ideas for it... what about a category "lost and forgotten", showing posts older than 3 days, that didn't get a vote until then? What about a function, where the author of a post can chose the best comment and show it as the first one on top, so people can't upvote comments to the very top, the author doesn't even agree to?
There are many chances to improve things and provide more fairness/equality. The chances that your lottery ticket gets drawn should at least be some kind of equal. Or it will be a lottery people lose their trust in. We already are on that way.
That's cute :-)
With regards to votes on comments, I'd even go one step further: self-voting should become expensive! Whenever one decided to vote their own articles or comments it should be punished, directing 50% of the allocated MVESTS back to the rewards pool - or even to a seperated pool which could be used for Steem promotion, to finance meet-ups or whatever community building events.
I really believe we need to force people to think more about the community and less about themselves.
From my point of view, Steemit will not solve these problems, it's gonna be the SMTs.
I'll be off surfing now (waves in real life, no computers) - yeeeehaaa! :-)
I agree. Have fun calming waves with waves!
:-)
Thank you for mention!
Honestly, I first read White Paper a month or two ago. After several months of its active using, finally read and understand how it all works, it's like watching a story about filming your favorite moovie. Then, I was impressed by how cool Steem is in terms of organization and using the basis of human behavior. But later I noticed that it contains some contradictions, like those mentioned above: about the equal value in one hand and principle of the casino in another hand.
For some reason, those who invest money are more likely to win than those who invest only their labor in the form of posting and curation. How much time you did not spend on the curation, if you do not have money (= Power), you will get scanty curation rewards. See it? You need Time+Money
Whichever cool article you write, if you do not have the money to promote it (get to the trendind page using bid-bots), you will not get a broad audience. You need Talent+Time+Money
If you have money (Power), it's enough just to create a bid-bot and automatically get profit, supporting posts, regardless of their quality.
Money is enough.
Steemit is not fair, and it is also written in its White Paper, as an explanation to Zipf's law. "Everyone gets at least something" - this is just a concrete argument in any dispute about the fairness of the distribution of rewards.
Great comment, thank you for stopping by once more!
Do you think that we have an expectation management issue then? According to @paulag's statistics we only have a user retention of 12%. That's terribly bad. Do people join with expectations that are far away from reality, or why do we lose 88% of them after short time?
You ask interesting questions, that's why you see me here:-)
About statistics... Maybe. Probably something is wrong with the promo campaign. When people are told: "You can do here the same things as in other social networks, but you will be paid" people register and start doing the same things here, sharing other people's recipes, spreading funny pictures / quotes / memes. And then they are noticed by the Cheetah / Steemcleaners, they understand that it's hard to work on content and its promotion, that it's not just copy / paste for money.
Perhaps then they try to spread the original content, but they simply can not be seen behind a bunch of shit posts. I do not know about you, but it's hard for me to find something original and interesting in our "New". It will sound sad, but more often than not, my visit to New ends with catching cheaters. This may be the reason why many oldtimers are limited to voting only for people from the circle of their friends, without giving chance to beginners.
I'm not saying that everything is exactly so, it's just my opinion, as a person who spent some time here and looked around. I watched as some of my friends stop writing original stories and become shit-posters. Really, why do you need to work hard and waste a lot of time if, as a result, you get the same votes from Minnosupport, Busy, eSteem, Curator and 5-10 more random people. Due to unjustified expectations and lack of attention, even honest and talented bloggers can leave the platform.
But this can only be one of the reasons. When you analyze the level of adoption of a platform, do not forget about people who are purposefully creating accounts for fraudulent activities, such as post / comment farms, and then simply leave them after their scheme is uncovered and there is no more possibility to cheat with these accounts. One user can have 100-1000 accounts. You can ask Patrice how many names Dart has.
In addition, a large number of accounts are created for resale. They are simply created and waiting for their turn to be sold. Who wants to remain anonymous or unwilling to wait few weeks for confirmation, can buy it for only $ 10. Nearly 2,400 such accounts were created on one of the Russian sites as paid jobs. Yes, we lose a lot of accounts, and this is bad but not each of them is a real user.
Haha, I'm happy to hear that. Asking questions is one of my favourite hobbies :-)
It's definitely a communication issues. I believe that it's not only due to marketing claims but also to a lack of education during the onboarding process.
People join this place without having any idea about the rules of the game. I had weird conversations with users about copyright during the past weeks. Actually it annoyed me that much that I stopped doing it. Many many users don't even know what copyrights are. No kidding! There was a point in time when I thought: screw it, it's not gonna be my problem if major copyright claims are addressed to steemit.com and dtube.video.
Definitely. It has taken place and it will in the future, especially thinking about competitors like EOS that are just waiting to get their apps launched and invite frustrated ex-steemians to join.
I love how your posts are moving into these topics more to do with the structure and sustainability of the Steem ecosystem and the challenges and opportunities ahead.
Not sure if I'll be mentally able to do that more often :-D
There are only few people who are able to debate without taking things personally and getting emotional.
This is why I have confidence in the future of Steem. Changes and improvements in the system make it more and more prolific. Great post thanks fort the insight.
Amazing post, and it gives positivity and boosting essence while reading because you quoted some amazing inputs from the Whitepaper which is really pleasing to hear and yes Steemit Platform is for open minded people. Thanks for sharing this post with us. 🙂
Stay Blessed.
You did a great job pulling out the pertinent points as to why Steemit is such an incredible platform. Steemit is the embodiment of, "Being the change you want to see in the world" - a world where ALL capital is equally valued. I'm new here, and it is the very points that you've mentioned in your post, from the white paper, that brought me to Steemit, and will likely keep me here, long-term. I appreciate your efforts, and hope you have, and ARE a wonderful day!
When I was first getting into management, there was a work triangle that this post reminds me of.
When you are scoping a project, you get to play with these three variables. If you have unlimited amounts of any corner, you'll get a perfect result, but in reality, you always have to balance the three.
The same is similar with Steemit.
"Cost" - If you can invest a lot, you will get good returns.
"Quality" - If you produce good quality of post or curation, you will get good returns.
"Time" - If you "donate" your time to the various initiatives, you will get good returns.
Nice analogy, even though the actual aim regarding time and cost (invest) would be to invest the less amount possible in order to generate the highest possible outcome.
In the beginning of your steemit career you might be investing as much time as possible in order to maximize the impact. Still if you've reached a certain level, you try to reduce your time invested in order to become more efficient.
I should write more about Steem. Had some amazing and profound conversations during the past 24 hours, including this one :-)
Thank you!
The same can be said about life. You want the most enjoyment for the least stress. 🤔
Pretty much :-)
well i think thats awesome a really good info about smt .. really good knowledge