I'm recently home from #SteemFest and it cemented in my mind just how much promise SteemIt has. The community is incredible, so dedicated and, as @andrarchy talked about, full of future-oriented people. We have people of all kinds, a huge amount of development going on both technical and social. Everyone present wanted Steem to succeed and were willing to work to make it happen. But I can't shake this feeling...
If Steem is so Amazing, Why Do We Keep Hovering Alongside Dogecoin?
For the last few weeks, the Steem market cap has been above, below and never far from the market cap of Dogecoin. And that's with ~90% of Steem locked up in long term smart contracts, Dogecoin is fully liquid and has no artificial way to increase the apparent cap, you can see that in how Dogecoin has considerably higher trading volume. Similarly, as you can see below, Google searches for Steem have been comparable to Dogecoin for months, even the spike in interest during July didn't bring us much above it.
Of course, long term Steem has had trivial social awareness or "mindshare" compared to Doge, which exploded in 2014 but is now by all accounts completely dead.
I invite you to visit the Dogecoin subreddit. The most popular topics are about how dead the place is, and reminiscing about the good old days when they used to sponsor racing drivers and bobsled teams. How is it that SteemIt seems so alive (despite the price) while actually we have less search traffic and less trading than a seemingly dead currency with little if any technical advantages over those competitors from which it was cloned.
Wow Such Community
The one thing that Dogecoin had going for it was a really vibrant community with a distinct culture and a lot of optimism. The tipping culture permeated the entirety of Reddit for a little while, and they actually had a conference which was larger than SteemFest. It was held in San Francisco in 2014, and entry was free. Around 300 people turned up.
The motivation for this post is that I don't want to be under any illusions about the likelihood or inevitability for Steem to succeed. Dogecoin seems to be a lesson that a vibrant community isn't necessarily enough. We have other examples such as BitShares which show that technology may also not be enough.
Why Will Steem Succeed Where Dogecoin Failed?
* Note: Truthfully, I don't think I need convincing after writing this up. This post is just to explore the possibility that we've gotten caught up in our own little fad, as it's something which happens all the time, and I'm sure that those looking in from the outside may see us that way.
I have a huge Dogecoin background, my current OpenBazaar store started originally as a shop that was selling comics for Dogecoin / Bitcoin / and Litecoin. I think without having seen the magic of Dogecoin and been present during it's earlier days it may be easy to think that being on par with Dogecoin is something negative. You should take it with great pride that most coins never reach the level Dogecoin has done. I am just seeing your post from a different perspective is all.
300 people turning up to a Dogecoin event is super small to the amount of radical and real world weird changes the coin made, being a part of Nascar, giving water to communities who did not have a good viable source for it, the Jamaican Bobsled team. Steemit has a long way to go, but is such a great system, if people would stop focusing so much on the value itself and instead focus on more and more use and users, things will only grow.
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Well, we never even approached the peak of Dogecoin. We beat it in terms of peak market cap, but only with over 90% of Steem locked away unavailable to sell. In terms of the amount of people involved or the public mindshare, it is clear that Steem has never approached Doge's glory days.
Incidentally, I may not have been involved but I was present, I followed it on Reddit just as huge numbers of Reddit users did.
My post is not a slight against Dogecoin. The fact that Dogecoin was so huge and did so much, only amplifies the point that the enthusiasm of a community and the powerful network effect which comes along with that, is not necessarily enough for long term success.
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Well, I think that because most the Steem is locked away in those contracts for 2 years is part of why there is no real trading, and why the market cap is not moving. As people move their coins out to trade that will bring about a change in the price, Steem has a community, and SteemIt is a way to distribute new value, I did not follow Dogecoin much but I never saw much value in it except that it was another coin to trade. Steem has a delivery platform that more than just the miners are able to get Steem, as far as I know, and like I said I never followed Dogecoin much, mining or faucets were the only way to get more outside of the exchanges. So, as I see it, Steem has a much better potential to out do anything that Dogecoin could have done.
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The big thing with Doge was tipping. You would be tipped Doge for any and every reason, especially if you used the subreddit. So Dogecoin permeated widely, but arguably while that caused the mindshare explosion, it also made it seem worthless. The fact that it was started as a joke, treated as a joke, likely had its downsides.
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True, yet it seems as though it will never go away, I have seen it rebound a couple times in the last couple years, yet, your right I never thought much of it as I hear it started as a joke.
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Because Dogecoin is amazing.
Such currency. To the moon. Wow.
DON'T SAY THAT!
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The price of a coin has nothing to do with its objective usage or application.
Just look at Gridcoin, the only coin that pays you for helping dozens of scientific projects.
Market cap? It just plunged under 2 million. It should be number 2 if you ask me ;)
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It's easy: the voting algorithm is flawed. It does not recognize or reward TRUE virality. If this doesn't get fixed, it will not have a good future. This is an opinion that many, many people share, not just me. Steemit will remain a niche platform, circle jerking, if this is ignored.
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Would I be wrong to go out on a limb and assume you may be alluding to the share-to-earn (the pyramid schemes that reward those who bet on posts and share early) mechanism that other crypto-social platforms are planning for? They are easily possible here too.
IMO saying that the voting algorithm is flawed for not rewarding virality is conflating issues. Posts can go viral just by shares and votes. Posts don't need to have money involved to go viral. Today, there is no system today that 'rewards TRUE virality' except for maybe YouTube sharing ad revenue.
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So in the end, user error, the system works, right?
I actually agree with this to some degree. People will continue to use bots, and the hive mind user base groups that exist I think are no better than bots. But all is fair game and the best content will hopefully win.
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rewards are new and there's no precedence that says they're needed in the equation of post virality.
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http://2damnfunny.com/doge-is-dead-comic-by-cicero-the-doge/
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