RE: Reflections on the Benefits and Growing Pains of Project Curie, Steem Guild, and Other Curation Projects on Steemit
Back to Steemit, that "focus" phase has already happened during the pre-July 4th launch.
I'd like to make one other comment on this portion of your reply to @dennygalindo.
Sometimes tactical retreat is called for. The explosive growth in July did not sustain. The active user base is now smaller, the rewards pool is smaller, and if we've learned anything it is something that didn't work incredibly well to effectively launch the platform into a large wave of adoption.
In many ways the situation on Steemit now resembles the pre-July period more than the July-August period and perhaps refocusing on some key specializations makes sense, as either a base for slower organic growth or as a platform for another, different, attempt at a large adoption wave at some point in the future (perhaps when social features on the site are better implemented).
Just a thought, but I think a perspective well worth considering.
The sustainable solution is to make people want to power up. Why would they want that?
To get voting rewards and to raise their comment to the top.
This could be done by a curie type org that finds voters to follow, not posters. We have plenty of posters, need more voters. More commenters would be nice too b/c it builds community. Commenters and voters power up and writers take money out and lower the steem price..
Thus far all "marketing" like curie is focused on the writers who take money out to "make a living".
it's no surprise this is causing an accelerating decline in steem price.
Interestingly now that vest are under 90% it makes a lot of sense to power up to curate and comment. Marketing applied now could create a self sustainaing org. People power up, get more voting power and power up more to get more voting power.
Definitely worth considering @smooth, I've been thinking lately perhaps the focus that's required is perhaps, back to seeding posts / accounts that work to perpetuate Steemit both internally and externally. But then again, I think that's the natural participation of most Steemians that will eventually lead into strengthening the currency over time. Maybe the focus should be about that..
Before the July period, the top daily curation lists took about an average of $50-60 per listed entry.
Now with Steem back at July prices, Curie's top daily curation lists are taking about an average $4-7 per listed entry. And this is used to support:-
To add, a decent level of DD, QC and collusion-avoidance with 2-3 layers of vouching for every suggested post, plus the #curie outlet - imo, it's a good mix of decentralisation and self-policing.
Moving forward, we are going to (and have been) implementing the following:-
I understand your concerns.. and it certainly did not escape all of us in the team as well, especially when the daily reward pool is shrinking. Organic curation at grassroots now is way too little for any meaningful curation, even when my vests are > 100M atm. (I could give out a cup of coffee / vote a few months ago, not now).
Personally, I think the overall ops will retain and build a database of close-knit, diversified set of creators. At one point, I think Steemit will have an on-demand gig layer that could provide services to non-Steem related entities, which will drive Steem's value moving forward. Imo, Steemit could be a very valuable database, with everyone in it essentially acting like a HR apparatus.. and I think this will have an edge over stuff like freelancer, fiverr, etc, and could be positioned in many various ways. Still working on that concept to present.. (this is a conjecture, of course, but what's not conjecture is the internal trading that's going to happen through store functions, and the database needs to be pre-populated).
Thanks @smooth, I think it's healthy to continue the discussion. No doubt I'm biased, seeing that I've been with the team since day 1. But we're definitely doing what we can to keep it relevant while working on community feedback, plus adjusting cost dependencies on the ops scaling with the value of the currency.
In a way, I guess a curation group like Curie is all about mass user attention / distribution, a way out of many other approaches to improve the network. What are your thoughts on what should be focused on?
I'm not sure what this means. Before July, I don't remember any real curation lists at all. I know @arhag made a few custom lists of rewards, but that was about it. So I'm not sure what you are describing.
Some of the things you mentioned seem a bit possibly overinvested to me. That may have made sense with 20x the reward pool but given the current size of the economy I'm not sure it really supports that level of 24/7 staffing, layers of vouching, etc. Just a thought, I don't know the details of your business model. Could be time to go leaner though, and try to keep the best of the positive impact that can be delivered with a lower footprint.
Focus on the consumer side of the equation...