WHAT WE HAVE WITNESSED HAPPENING ON STEEM

We've been running a witness ever since creating all those cool witness tools we talked about on this post

• Vote for @steempeak here
• See all witnesses here

1. What we have learned from Steemit Inc issues?

Steem should be and is becoming more decentralized because of these steemit inc financial issues. We've learned...

• Companies/Projects should have a back up plan if api.steemit goes away
• Companies should do their own marketing and not be dependent on steemit inc to do it for you
• We shouldn't be dependent on new users loving steemit.com because it may sunset and at the least it's not going to get better anytime soon. So don't try to sell the idea of steem via selling steemit.com
• Are companies in charge of their own future or are they or were they too dependent on steemit inc?

2. What have we learned economically speaking?

Price of steem has gone down under .25usd

• No company or person should be dependent on rewards pool.
• Rewards pool has some amazing potential to incentivize lots of people in small ways but it shouldn't be viewed as a place you can depend on for a business or to pay your bills.
• We've also learned that a whole lot of new people can now become big players in steem by buying up a lot of cheap steem. Will we may see some new whales? Everyone has the same 24cent opportunity right now.
• We have learned that people are posting less probably related to much lower financial incentives.
• Which means we learned that content creation was too dependent on rewards pool reasons.
• Therefore we should perhaps not sell the idea of steem too much on rewards pool... there is so much else steem blockchain is good at.
• Let's focus on making other reasons for people to post and people to use steem and make sure we never go back to selling steem as a place to get rich from the rewards pool. (A good content creator in other places makes a really good living without rewards pools, they don't need it but they can perhaps use it as a bonus steem perk. But let's figure out what they need. Hint: Probably on-boarding their fans.)

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WITNESS SURVEY

These were questions by @witnesssurvey we've answered most of them

Current projects?

• Main project https://steempeak.com
  Specifically: On-boarding solutions, using keychain/steemconnect3 and 30+ other features
• Partner project https://peakmonsters.com
  Specifically: Bid-Market, Market Statistics, Game Play statistics

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How can we make Steem more user friendly?

• The key word is INTUITIVE ... good design isn't just pretty it is focused on the experience and "just making sense" and there should be very few things that you have to teach a new user. For example intuitive design eleminates even the need for educational videos.
• That has a lot to do with the USER INTERFACES. The different app interfaces need to step it up and actually talk with NON users or NEW users and get their input... we should stop only catering to long time users/whales/witnesses and start catering to retention of new users or the viewers (don't all us content creators want viewers to be happy?)

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How can we solve on-boarding?

• This is perhaps the number 1 focus of SteemPeak on our upcoming list. We believe we have a technically great multi-part solution to this we will start working on soon... and if you know us that means once we start working on it you'll start seeing it very soon after.

The foundation of this system should have these principles in mind:

1. EASE OF USE: Making the interface intuitive is part of on-boarding.
2. THINK OF THE CONSUMER: Thinking about the content creators means focusing on those who consume the content. We need easier and faster ways to connect a consumer to the creator. For example having to wait a week even to comment is not acceptable.
3. EXPECTATIONS AND CONNECTIONS: Involving the whole community instead of making it seem like it rests solely on the shoulders of steemit inc or other apps. A good solution will involve real people because it's those people who have the connections they are wanting to "On-board" their friends we need to empower them with easy great tools and a slick idea.
4. EARNING: Finding ways for an influential content creator to earn better money is important. And steem voting rewards will not be sufficient as it stands right now. (It is our belief that no business, which includes steem bloggers, should be dependent on the rewards pool)
5. CRYPTO PROBLEM: The golden ticket is solving fiat to steem and back... that's a hard governmental issue, an issue we don't have a solution for ... yet.

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What is your position/stance on bid-bots?

• Investment should be a part of the blockchain and crypto currency, doesn't mean that it has to be a part of content discovery. Also paid promotion is a normal every day idea... doesn't mean promotion has to be a part of algorithms and sorting methods. Again we're thinking like a UI.

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Should Witness votes be permanent?

• The idea of a decay in the vote (aka a need to re-up of the vote) is very compelling. Voting in almost any other place in the world works that way. We don't need a re-election perhaps just a need to come back from time to time to show we are still users and still believe in that witness and the witness should still feel compelled to keep working and impress.

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Do you think it should remain 30 witness votes?

• In our personal experience it seems to be fine, no one should be compelled to use all 30 of them... one way to view the math is that a vote for 15 is a bigger vote for them.

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Do you think 20/21 top witnesses a good number?

• I personaly (@jarvie) think it should be a bit more, however 25 cent steem isn't a good time to change it. If rewards are high again then perhaps voting can better support other great witnesses who have great ideas, technical knowledge and projects.
• I (@asgarth) think that with the current size of the blockchain and the number of users on Steem 20/21 is ok. If the popularity of the platform increase probably the number should be increased too.

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What is a concern that you have about the #steem blockchain?

• ACTION: Too many people waiting on the future instead of using what they have already
• DEPENDENCE: Too much dependence on the rewards pool... and selling the idea of steem way too connected to rewards pool and selling it almost as a get rich quick.
• MARKETING: The lack of smart marketing projects by app creators, which means we need to perhaps to solve on-boarding so app creators feel more comfortable marketing... or perhaps we need better marketers on here.

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What are you hopeful about for the #steem blockchain?

• Creating a content focused social network where users have control of their experience.
• I'm hopeful for apps that focus on creating a community / users more than just creating ideas.
• Awesome potential for content creators and consumers in a more connected relationship
• We see steem becoming more decentralized with more solid apps coming in that do marketing and have a solid business plan not based on rewards pool.

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What is the monthly cost of equipment?

We are currently running a small node (we are not in the top 100 witness yet). Excluding the one time setup fee the cost is € 45 per month. If we start gaining popularity and our witness move to the top of the ranking we'll probably deploy a new (better) node moving the current one as a backup.

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Where do your earnings go?

They ALL go to helping to pay for servers (both for the witness and to run https://steempeak.com)

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What are the benefits associated with being a witness?

• To be more involved and have a small seat at the table in helping Steem go where we would like to see it go.
• If you're top 20 then having more money can give you more time to spend on projects.
• It's useful to better understand how steem works and how to use some of the tools available to us.

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How does someone become a witness?

Have technical understanding, start a server and have a compelling reason for someone to vote for you.

What do you think the new account fee should be?

Seeing that Steem costs 25-30 cents these days it should be more than 3... I don't think it should be permanently stagnant.

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What takeaways do you have from the Hardfork 20 issues that occurred?

For content creators and consumers a hardfork failures isn't as big a deal as it could be for a business that wants to use Steem. With the focus on SMTs and the desire to bring in business projects stronger testing should be even higher priority.
Also better to have this sort of things now that steem is still relatively small, and be better prepared for the next time ;)

Post beneficiaries go to @witnesssurvey for the questions and @jarvie for writing the post.