Agree. Look, in the STEEM thread (or other relevant discussion threads) it is impossible to discuss the development and market for the coin without posting links.

There have also been some pure spam link posts in the Steem thread (i.e. not part of a discussion, just someone saying 'Please upvote'), but there needs to be a distinction made.

And one account scammer can probably sign up dozens or hundreds of free accounts (with 3 STEEM each) per day.

Why not?

There has never been a crypto with more than about 1-2% of 50 million users. How do we know what such a thing would be worth?

I think it is a good idea to stop using this thread to promote posts. It could easily been seen as spam on the forum.

I have no authority at all here, but I'm making a friendly suggestion/request to use this thread to discuss Steem not promote links.

Addressing the steemit community with "Why the Steemit Community sucks" and you can't figure out what I have against him? It is pretty obvious, he is not well suited to attracting flies with honey.


That is a good point. A lot of typical social media users routinely joins these viral things that tell them (and all their friends) which character they are in a popular TV series or something. But even then, there is some payoff for the person who signs up (getting silly test results).


I agree there isn't really a clear incentive for people to sign other people up. If you understand cryptocurrency and realize that expanding the size of the network will make it more useful and (potentially at least) make your tokens more valuable then you might see it, but that is kind of indirect.

After looking more closely at that post my opinion of him is further reduced.

That many people don't want to sign up for services that are are going to grab their personal Facebook, Twitter, etc. contacts and promote shit to them is not news. Someone acting upset that Steemit members don't want to do this to support his idea of how a marketing campaign should work is butthurt, yes. And also trolling, and behaving in a hostile manner which will not get more support for his current and future initiatives.

It is quite clear to me the response rate there has literally zero to do with people not wanting competition for rewards.

I agree begging for upvotes should be considered spam and not allowed.

However, just linking to a blog post isn't necessarily spam or in any way bad just because of the platform it happens to be on.

This post was made around the time of the DAO token sale, and was very influential.

https://steemit.com/crypto-news/@dan/is-the-dao-going-to-be-doa

It was widely linked and discussed on many crypto blogs, forums, news sites, widely retweeted, etc. (it even got a bit of mainstream coverage). A rule against posting that link here in a thread about Ethereum or The DAO, where it is clearly relevant, would be a harsh form of censorship. That certainly isn't the only substantive and influential blog post on steemit. Charles Hoskinson made one recently as well, and there certainly are (and will be) others. Those two just happen to come to mind right away.


I'm not sure about the point about links, backlinks, traffic, etc. There are other threads that are just links to other sites that were reported and allowed. One I happen to know about (I'm sure it isn't the only one) is the Dash Nation progress thread. There is no discussion there (other than some early discussion on the thread about the pointlessness of it) and just links posted every day to Dash and Dash Nation web sites and the Dash forum.

If links to other web sites without significant relevance to discussion here aren't allowed that should be applied consistently.

(LOL. I just checked and Dash Nation is posting steemit links now. But the issue isn't steemit links here; the Dash Nation thread was just as worthless a link farm before, and was allowed.)

The above game giveaway post may be off topic. I didn't notice where it was posted.

There is mining but you don't get liquid coins you a sell directly on an exchange. You get Steem Power which increases your voting power on the site. It can be cashed out, but very slowly (two years).

Not at all. Dan and Ned spent months developing the details of their design on paper and in code, and only then did they try to sell it to the world (other than pitching it to some private investors I guess). That is what I am insulating, not that you should give it away for nothing, unless you want to. Certainly the latter is an option if you think that wide peer-review will benefit your efforts, but I'm not telling you how to distribute your work.


Sybils, if they exist, basically have to come from Steemit signups because the situation in the mining market with some high powered miners getting most of the blocks means that only a very small number of accounts can be created that way per day. My guess (without data) is that it is cheaper to cheat Steemit out of $7-10 plus an account name than to mine $7-10 of coins plus an account name.

I agree that if a lot are Sybils than the account signup rate is pretty low. Even without Sybils the absolute rate is pretty low at only 1K-2K per day. That is where I agree with your response to the hype-isn "viral" post.


Of course, everyone is applying some equation, you just haven't necessarily identified the correct equation. That is the disagreement here.

You do make an interesting point about not voting, because a very significant portion of the whales do not vote, or vote very little. I don't know how that translates down to other parts of the distribution, or what the effects of that are, but it seems to me the affects of voter apathy overall have to be pretty significant. For example, if other whales don't vote and I do, then my influence is further increased, at least assuming all else is equal with the rest of the distribution. That may be part of why my votes so-often end up on the top of the Trending list despite my "only" having 1-2% of the theoretical voting power.

There are a number of different ways to interpret that. Maybe I vote for them once they get there (it is after all one of the few discovery methods that exist), maybe I'm effective in picking posts that will make it, maybe my voting a post increases its chances of making it, maybe it is a mathematical (near) requirement to make it to the very top (but not moderate top) that the biggest stakeholders support it. Probably some combination of these.


I'm not taking the general concept negatively, I'm just pointing out that your 'implied' motivation was incorrect. If anything that might be useful information in understanding what is actually going on?


There's no anger, I'm just pointing out inaccuracy. As for the deception, I do pretty much feel that it isn't a big deal. It is deception in the sense of marketing that suggests to people buying a particular brand of clothing or even a beverage will make them happy and successful. It doesn't literally promise that, and when thinking rationally about it, they know it isn't true, but the marketing still works to some extent. It isn't deceptive in the sense that anyone is being promised something that isn't true.

People are being invited to sign up for free and if they enjoy a chance for a larger payoff more than they would enjoy it if rewards were flatter, then it will have more of a draw. I'm not convinced that is incorrect, but I'm not convinced it is correct either.

I have no real dog in the fight over how concentrated the rewards should be, as I pointed out in that comment where I said that n^1.5 or some other superlinear but flatter curve might better, or might be worse. I don't know. Even n^1.1 has been seriously proposed (but probably in connection with other newly-introduced incentives).



I'm not attacking you, except in the narrow context of repeatedly promoting your vaporware. I think that is actually quite a negative way to approach things. Sorry if it was perceived as some sort of attack beyond that.


I appreciate the analysis, but to be frank sometimes the repetition on points already well-covered such as your dislike of the quadratic rewards, when presented without anything new of substance is just tedious.


Well it may be valid criticism of the design, the rate of redistribution, etc. We will have to see how that works out. I think the whitepaper discusses that highly-vested interests are important to some elements of the design (such as downvoting, and other myopically altruistic behavior, which is only incentivized at all by having a large stake in the overall platform and its success). Maybe there are better ways to do this, or maybe the downsides of having highly-vested interests outweigh the benefits. It is possible, but i don't think it is clear.


We agree on that, and I said so. I don't think anyone disagrees? The Steemit developers want to try to motivate people with the chance of something big rather than a guarantee of very little. That might work, or it might not. It is unclear to me.


I think I explained clearly what I was referring to there (in terms of repeated claims to knowing how deliver a better product and claiming to be working on doing so, with no details or peer review to back it up), and it is clearly correct. It doesn't mean you have no useful analysis as well because obviously you do.


I'm still not sure you are correct about actual attrition rates (meaning real users who actually start using the site, not account scammers, or even, as a few people have stated, failed attempts to sign up which leave a dead/"abandoned" account when the user signs up for another one, with only the second being used). We need to analyze the blockchain data better.

More likely his particular particular idea, pitch, reputation, timing, etc. was poor. Many other marketing campaigns have gotten votes. Most posts don't. Complaining that you didn't get votes is silly at best, and evidence of stupidity at worst. The latter reinforces the idea that the community was correct in not supporting him.

This is factually wrong if you believe, as I do, that earning $50-100 for a post, or in some cases even less, is still pretty good (not including heavily researched or longer posts that involve a lot of effort, but most don't). I regularly come across posts with no whale votes at that reward level. This will only increase as the ranks of the middle fish continue to grow.


This is also factually wrong. I reject a majority of what I find that has reasonable content, in many cases because I think the $50-100 it is already earning without any whale votes is good enough.


For the third time, you have no idea why I voted for that post. Implied intent is something you create in your own model that may or may not represent reality. In this case I'm quite certain your statement of intent, implied or otherwise, is not accurate, but this particular case isn't important, except to indicate that your model is broken. Even that doesn't so much matter though.

The rest of your post was basically repetition of you claiming to have ideas how to create something better. In that case, go do it. Or publish them and let others offer their peer review and potentially implement your ideas, which would also be valuable. In failing to do either, you have no actual contribution.

That's not defensive, it is an honest assessment that at this point you are just spewing FUD and repeative promotion of non-existent, non-reviewed vaporware (also a form of FUD). You can stop doing that any time you want.


I certainly agree with this part, because most people, even those who try, just don't have the talent or following for others to want to pay them a lot for their content, and no technology is going to change that. Either being paid a little or getting a chance to be paid more is the only way that pay is going to enter into any social media site for the vast majority of participants. The primary motivations beyond that will be enjoyment, passing the time, and for no particularly good reason but everybody else does it.

Also, one thing that has been stated before by the Steemit developers, and was reinforced in the Berwick interview, is that the social media component is just the beginning of what they have planned for the platform, especially in its current form (in the interview they called it a minimum viable product). I have no idea if any of the other stuff will work at all, whether or not the social media part does, except to say that it could possibly give other reasons to join and use the platform. Maybe that will broaden the ability of people to find value even if they aren't great content creators.

I don't think any comment made from the perspective of "my post didn't get votes/money therefore the platform sucks" has any validity, and the way it is presented almost precludes astuteness (even if a correct observation that is at best accidental).

Aside from the obvious butthurt crybaby aspect of it, that isn't a statistically sound analysis.

Exactly. And no downtime.

You are still attributing motive! Again, #fail.

I sincerely believe that you are falling into the groupthink of "whales control everything" that is widely spouted on that site. It's quite wrong. As I have explained many times, there is no quadratic weighting between users. Two semi-whales are equal to a whale. Ten deciwhales (call them dolphins) are also equal to a whale. Ten decidolphins are equal to a dolphin.

This is happening all the time on the site and the fastest growing group (not counting the bottom rung which is very likely padded by many scammers vacuuming up free 3 SP accounts hoping to be able to cash them out some day) are the middle rungs, the dolphins and semi-dolphins who are constantly growing in influence as they earn rewards. Whales are limited in number and increasingly limited by both attention and voting power dilution in being able to vote at all for an increasing ocean of content. And whales are also mostly powering down, further reducing their influence over time.

Yes whales will pile on to some content when it reaches Trending. But how does it get there? Whales can't find it. Even with a team I miss a lot (I know this because the team members give me few duplicates). The power is already spread out and being spread out more and more daily.


Compared to anything else that exists today, there is probably more opportunity for the masses than any other method of monetizing their work. Typical opportunities for (non-star) writers and artists to make money are minimal to nonexistent. Until and unless there is something better, Steem is quite wonderful, even for the masses and not just the superstars. No, they won't all make money, and most that do won't make much, but more will.

Steem is reaching into a huge untapped market of theoretically-monetizable talent that has been completely untapped because existing vehicles for monetizing it have been so atrocious. I don't know how deep that is, but the bottom is nowhere in sight.


I think nonprofessionals generally make literally zero from their writing and creative work almost always, and even many lower-level professionals struggle mightily to make more than $1.32. So, no I don't think $1.32 is good pay for an hour, but I also don't think social media is ever going to be a job for most, it will be a fun and potentially (occasionally) rewarding way to pass the time.


That may happen. It is indeed a huge competitive advantage relative to the fully-centralized platforms. As yet this is entirely speculative so we don't know how significant it will be. There does seem to be the start of a thriving effort in independent development for Steem with some very nice results. (I really like steemstats.com and use it daily for example.) We'll see if that continues to grow or dies out once Steem is less new and has viable competitors.

As for the much better model, go ahead and create it if you think it is really much better (since much better can overcome a first mover; merely better usually can not). If Steem fails because something much better beats it in the market despite the uphill battle of being much later, it will mean we have a much better platform, and I'll be happy with that outcome.


Just don't.

It is an under-appreciated advantage of Cryptonote that these transactions are significantly smaller and more efficient than Bitcoin.

You can't attribute motive like that. I did upvote it but not for that reason. However, I would comment as a counterpoint to your claim that Steem does, almost by definition, have a significant economic following, as long as it is able to pay competitive rewards to authors. Most authors and artists make so little no matter what they do that it doesn't even take much to be significant here.

You call it parasitic, I call it rent. You pay orders of magnitude more rent for being on the busiest street downtown as compared to out on a country road in the middle of nowhere. But in most cases it is worth it because that's where the customers are. I don't think the value of being on a widely popular platform can be denied, but ultimately it comes down to price. Probably some specialists will not like the platform and its rent and will go elsewhere or self-host, just as happens with bloggers now. The numbers on how this will work out are entirely unclear.

As I said on a Steem comment reply, I don't think n^2 is written in stone either. It could be changed if the price is unworkable. It won't be changed to linear because that would indeed break the system, but there are a lot of other options.

Yes I agree for the most part. Enhancement is needed there. A market solution may be people who offer feeds that feature new and undiscovered content. There is already one blogger doing this that I know about. I bet there are more and I can't find them!


If it gets stuck in a crypto demographic then I agree it will fail.

However, I'm not sure that the push toward what you call groupthink (and I call raw popularity) will reinforce this or overcome it. If people join who are not cryptonerds, then the content that appeals both to those inside and outside the crypto ghetto will do the best. Content that appeals to smaller groups will in some sense subsidize the content that appeals to the broadest audience. Perhaps it is a reasonable cost to pay such rent to gain the network benefits of sharing a widely-popular platform as a small niche that most people don't care about. Or perhaps you are right and niche interest groups won't stay at all.

It doesn't actually do anything for (individual) relevance since the recommended feature was removed so I think that is incorrect.

Some alternate interface and new features may make sense to try to address that need. I think we will learn more as already-planned and developed features are rolled out.


To some extent a groupthink notion of value does add a lot of value (possibly the most value) to a social media platforms, as personally unappealing as that may be to you (or even me). There is reason you and I probably don't spend a lot of time on social media platforms. The nature of the beast is to try to bring people together on common ground so they can be starstruck at who has the most followers, "Like" each other's updates all day long, and occasionally engage in drama (which itself requires commonality otherwise you don't care). Teenage girls love it. Teenage girls are not typically iconoclasts.

There may be room for multiple dimensions of value, but raw popularity can't be dismissed as a huge value driver.