Revisiting @justinsunsteemit's "Open Letter To Steem Community"
Time and patience are the two greatest warriors, Seal Team
In February, 2020, @justinsunsteemit wrote this Open Letter To Steem Community, in which he described some of his plans for Steem, STEEM, and STEEMit.
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This was before a period of turmoil that changed plans for many in the community (and I'm not, particularly, interested in revisiting all that drama), but now that the turmoil seems to be mostly in the rearview mirror, I thought I'd review that letter and see how we're progressing against the plans that were outlined fifteen months ago. This is not meant to be a "cheerleading article" or a "hit piece", hopefully it will be as close as I can get to an objective and dispassionate review of where these things stand.
Really, my own thoughts on the topics are mostly irrelevant, but I thought it would be useful to offer some commentary in order to bring these plans back to the community's collective awareness.
Given that it's been 15 months since this letter, and Steem has seemingly passed through the worst of the turmoil, perhaps @justinsunsteemit and the @tronfoundation could be persuaded to update the community about their current vision?
In my reading, I see nine main points that @justinsunsteemit had hoped to address, and here they are (some in his words, some paraphrased by me):
- Bridging TRX, TRC10’s and TRC20’s into Communities
- Marketing
- Growing steemit.com
- Invitations and referrals
- Simpler and instant signups
- New listings of STEEM on ALL the greatest exchanges
- Integration in critical hardware products
- Bringing influencers to the community and creating more content
- There is so much I still want to give you from documenting and marketing my vision for steemit.com
So let's take look at where each of those things stand.
Bridging TRX, TRC10’s and TRC20’s into Communities
TRX bridging has begun with rewards integration that was established last fall, and I cannot overstate the importance of this. Effectively, in addition to accomplishing its own purpose, the Steem blockchain has now become a TRX faucet. If word of this gets out, it should make STEEM even more attractive to Tron's massive community.
TRC10 and TRC20 bridging have not been implemented.
Marketing
On one hand, Steem is growing a decentralized, grassroots marketing movement and these promotional activities are being supported, generously, by STEEMit's curation accounts. Also, I have seen modest marketing efforts by STEEMit and by @justinsunsteemit on Twitter.
Additionally, STEEMit's "100 days of STEEM", "1,000 days of STEEM", and "SteemitCryptoAcademy" have driven effective recruiting efforts.
What I envision when reading the Open Letter, though is a formal and professional marketing campaign. To my knowledge, nothing like that has been launched yet.
Growing steemit.com
I'm not totally clear on what this meant. If it meant growing the web site functionality, we can recognize that there have been modest improvements in functionality. And to be fair, we have to recognize that the events of spring and summer 2020 threw a big monkey-wrench that interfered with this goal and several of the others.
If it meant growing the number of users, then we can reiterate what I said above. IMO, Steemit's various curation initiatives have definitely been successful at bringing in new users and bringing back some former users.
In all, this is a perpetual, continuous improvement sort of goal. Some growth has been accomplished. More growth is needed. And both of those statements will almost always be true.
Invitations and referrals
I don't think I have seen any advances in these directions, except as informal curation activities. Please let me know if there's something I'm not aware of.
Simpler and instant signups
I believe this was accomplished. And this is a big accomplishment, because the signup process was always one of Steem's "Achilles Heels".
New listings of STEEM on ALL the greatest exchanges
Not a whole lot of progress that I'm aware of on this front, although I do recall hearing a couple exchange announcements in the last year or so. I'm not really a trader, so I could be unaware of some activity.
Integration in critical hardware products
I guess this means hardware wallets and/or partnerships with cell phone manufacturers? I haven't heard of any progress on this item, either.
Bringing influencers to the community and creating more content
We have new accounts and blog entries from @officialcmc and @tronfoundation, but their volume has been low. I'm not aware of any individual influencers who have been brought to the platform. I welcome corrections.
There is so much I still want to give you from documenting and marketing my vision for steemit.com
To the extent that @steemitblog represents the perspective of @justinsunsteemit, there have been somewhat regular communications, but @justinsunsteemit last posted on March 8, 2020.
In conclusion, I'm trying not to make any judgements about the "goodness" or "badness" of the progress above. It's important to note that things changed dramatically after this post was published, so it's understandable if some plans had to be postponed or revisited. As I recall, however, this post was well received by the community, so I thought it might be useful to remember what it said and take a look at where things stand 15 months later.
Personally, to me, this still looks like a pretty good roadmap (aside from simplifying sign-ups, which was - I believe - completed).
In summary, here's my "checklist" understanding of where we stand on accomplishing these 9 goals - 1 complete, 4 (or 5) in progress, and 4 (or 3) not yet started:
- Bridging TRX, TRC10’s and TRC20’s into Communities - Partial
- Marketing - Partial
- Growing steemit.com - Partial
- Invitations and referrals - Not begun
- Simpler and instant signups - Complete
- New listings of STEEM on ALL the greatest exchanges - Not begun / Partial (???)
- Integration in critical hardware products - Not begun
- Bringing influencers to the community and creating more content - Not begun
- There is so much I still want to give you from documenting and marketing my vision for steemit.com - Partial
Thoughts, comments, or corrections?
My guess is that the trolling and spamming campaigns, and the expectation that they might start up again if Justin Sun makes any big moves regarding Steemit, is a big barrier to marketing-related stuff. For example, if some big influencers were brought here but they and their fans were immediately bombarded with anti-Steem comments it could easily do as much harm as good.
Good point. There might still be a few hostile actors with enough SP held or delegated to pull something like that off.
If I remember correctly, I think that you and I talked once about seeing more participation of Justin Sun in steemit, since in his official twitter account I have not seen that he promotes the steem currency in focuses more on the Tron currency.
It is obvious that I would promote your own currency even I would do it myself, but with the purchase of steemit all the rights of the Steem block chain became Justin, so why not advertise steem, I understand that the world of crypto Justin is an influence or am I wrong.
I think that promoting steem more frequently that would attract the attention of new investors, its objective described in its letter is a very good point that would undoubtedly improve the platform and the price of the steem.
Having more exchange house other than Poloniex than the market is full of bots, who buy and sell there is almost impossible since bots do not let you generate profit by trading. Binance and Bittrex are more advisable although bittrex is prohibited here in Venezuela but trading there is easier, but having more exchange house would cause the total in circulation to be distributed in several exchange houses, which would cause the price to rise considerably.