Let's try to learn something from this: it's not a good thing to give a lot of power to unknown people whose loyalty is also unknown. This is what happened when the blockchain was launched and random people had a chance to mine steem for free.
Next time somebody launches a new blockchain they should give power to only a small group of people who can be trusted to work for the ecosystem until it is mature. Otherwise there will be problems.
That is exactly the lesson I have taken from this whole experiment. Unfortunately, the legality and regulatory environment around such a solution is far more questionable.
People claim they want decentralized, free market, open, and censorship resistant, but in reality what they want is a well managed, curated experience designed to meet their needs.
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It is definitely.. and as much as loyalty is concerned, there's no way to force anyone, as people are free to flip-flop whenever and for whatever reasons. I'd like to think that everyone's on the same boat though, just perhaps that FUDding could be well replaced by better ways of communicating, I guess.
Just to quote off someone in steemit chat:-
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Yeah, this really is true. Nobody cares if a service is decentralized if it doesn't work as well as centralized alternative.
We have seen thousand of "let's put this service to the blockchain" projects and pretty much all of them fail because decentralization is expensive and makes the service more difficult to use.
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Yup.. if anything I've always thought centralized beginnings are much better. I think Steem / Steemit is off to a good start this way, for its rather centralised user experience (are there any other activities on the STEEM blockchain other than Steemit-related stuff?). But I guess something that most didn't foresee is that we should've spent a longer time managing small amounts of money as a group (although arguably pre July-4 were supposedly those times). After close to a year running, I guess there are lots of lessons to be learned from whatever has happened in the community. Very valuable, just because no other platforms pulled this off :)
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Also an important lesson to be learned: don't launch a blockchain in the USA, do it somewhere else where the regulations are not so bad.
Steem is still suffering from the way how launch was made. There are still some people who consider Steem to be a scam because of it. There should be a full explanation why it was made like that on the steem.io website (I might be able help you with that).
Yeah! There are usually quite big differences between preferences people say they have and preferences they actually have in the market. Especially in the cryptoworld, where people say they want all kinds of egalitarian communities, but don't actually use them because they fail so easily.
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I hardly think that paying for AWS or any other servers or amassing the technical skills necessary to mine (in whatever way that is possible) comes at no cost ... In fact, it's quite risky as there is no known market at the time and the entire venture is speculative, and, as such, those people are securing the blockchain at a potential loss.
And can you define 'a lot' -- maybe in terms of percentages? Is this more than 5% but less than 15% (combined)?
Also, what happens if someone decides to purchase STEEM at these low prices (or possibly even lower ones) and becomes vocal (meaning, they decide to do what they want with their stake) ? What's the difference between buying it and earning it from mining rewards?
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It's important that any kind of young community includes only people who share a common vision and are willing to work for it.
Cryptoprojects are suffering from delusion that everything should be decentralized as much as possible even in the beginning. But it's very rare that random people who don't have anything in common can work effectively together.
It would be much better if a small community ruled the whole project when it's still young. There would be very little drama and other stuff that will distract developers from doing the important job. Over time the decision making power can be distributed to a wider group of people when the platform matures.
I have written about this earlier: How to design efficient and resilient DAO
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I like how you used the opportunity to respond to my questions.
/end sarcasm
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What happened at launch of Steem is irreversible, so it's not very interesting to think about it anymore. Individual cases are all different. For some 15 % might be too much and for some it's not an issue at all.
It's better to use this case as an example to see what works and what doesn't so we know in the future what kind of problems are possible when launching a new chain.
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... from a very small group located in an isolated section of a forum 99.99% of the inhabitants of Earth (especially those who actually use social media) never knew existed.
I'm curious what the result of this "experiment" would have been had things been done differently from the beginning.
Perhaps instead of focusing on people who have no clue when it comes to social media and giving them all of the power (to destroy), the initial offering should have been posted in a more "social media" type environment.
Had the site been allowed to blossom with social media oriented members, instead of power hungry crypto-enthusiast (no offense to any of us), before the bootstrap I think we could have seen much more positive results.
Also I feel the economics of the platform was not fully tested prior to launch and due to that many changes have been thrown at the userbase repeatedly and we never know what the rules are from month to month.
It ends up being more of a site about game theory and how to maximize rewards against others instead of a group of people freely sharing information and the off chance of getting some tips for their post.
The atmosphere here is cutthroat compared to any other social media experience alive today. "Toxic" is the most oft-used word to describe Steemit from those who've left, and I tend to agree. The entire site is "toxic", not just a few individuals. The design invites it, hell encourages it to some point it seems.
Which is exactly why smart contracts will be dominated by companies like Google in the future.
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By "random people" I mean people who just happen to be in right place in a right time. Better way would be to give tokens (or an opportunity to mine tokens) only for people who have clearly indicated that they are willing to commit for the project in the long term.
I'm not sure if that would have been any different.
My choice would have been to give power to the people who actively work for the blockchain and ecosystem. Basically something like the reward pool system that Bitshares has. Most of the money should be in the reward pool in the beginning and people would have to earn it by blogging or with worker proposals.
Well, for me this was pretty clear. Steem is totally new system, nothing like it has been existed before, so some parts of it are necessary to adjust along the way when we see how they actually work in the real world.
I've been thinking that it's not have been a good idea to promote the idea of "make money by blogging". It means that most people who come to the site want to make money, and if they don't, they complain and finally leave the platform telling everybody else how it sucks.
Better choice would be to market Steemit as noncensorable platform for people who actually need something like that. They don't care how much money they earn. They don't give a shit about little bugs. All they need is a place where they can communicate freely with the world. That would make much better userbase for Steem.
We might be able to steer the userbase to that direction by reducing author rewards and giving them to witnesses (who are underpaid currently).
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