RE: Steem post promotion: Past, present, and future
I've read some thoughts that the only way to make this meaningful is if Steemit (as the largest sole stakeholder) burn a large quantity of their STEEM. Which I'd be amazed to see happen.
I also don't see Steemit burning their stake, but I don't really agree that it's necessary. Cutting inflation is a nice start, but IMO, what is absolutely necessary is a front end that really rewards people with higher visibility for post promotion. If post promotion comes to provide a real benefit in terms of building an audience, that's when it becomes possible to actually reverse inflation.
I also wonder if it's a fad. We'll see how long it lasts. I have tried setting a null beneficiary on my own a number of times over the years. We even had the Share n Burn community, but I've never seen it get traction like this before.
It shows the power of an sc01 comment. A lot of people watch (and often reply to) every comment so as soon as something's said, it becomes a new "rule" or "initiative" - most people don't care what the objectives of these initiatives are or what the Steemit team's trying to achieve, they'll just do anything to get a vote.
You were the first person who ever mentioned the idea to me (what feels like a long time ago now) and having just watched my "burn ticker" cross the 300 posts mark, the rate of uptake continues to increase.
Here's a baseline. I'm anxious to see what happens to the top graph on Sunday when the beneficiary rewards start rolling in. (SP & VESTS as curation rewards to @null on top, wallet SBD transfers to @null in the middle, wallet STEEM transfers to @null on the bottom)
The first payouts will start on 29th May 5:30pm GMT.
Total Pending Rewards stands at $3631.417 at the time of me writing this comment and presumably it'll be 25% of the 50% author rewards so roughly $450. The number of posts is increasing (we're at over 100 posts per day) but the bigger upvotes are mostly clustered on the 1st day.