Steemit how can this thing be workable long term?

[AlexGR]

Implying the founders are keeping 100% of the 80% premine is disingenuous in and of itself. You condone lying too? Most of it is being given to people who register new accounts on Steemit.

No cryptocurrency is decentralized, as Anonymint will be happy to explain to you (or at least link to the 100 page thread where it was proven). Yet, all of them use the buzz word decentralized in advertising materials. If you support any other cryptocurrencies, and I am assuming you do since you're here in the first place, then you are being a hypocrite with this point too.

I think there are two ways to see this

1) As a cryptocurrency investor

You see steem has a lot of stealth/pre/instamine (no idea what happened at the start) for the owners and you don't see that as good for investment or as a positive trait for a cryptocurrency

Others see it as a very good investment regardless and want to invest.

2) As a social network user.

In a sense, Steemit is more of a social network / platform, than a currency.

So as a user: Do I care about how many shares Zuckerberg has in fb? No. Am I getting paid in fb? No. Am I getting paid in steemit? Yes. Do I need to care how my money was generated and given to me? No. Do I need to keep "steem" or "steem dollars"? No - I can dump them right away - with the exception of SP which gives 1/104 per week. In any case, it's money you never had, and you are now making and if it is improving your life, why not.

So there will be this "clash" of perspectives between (1) and (2) - because (2) don't care and they will outnumber (1) pretty quickly. And the criticism of (1) will be irrelevant to group (2) as they have different starting points, interests and profit vector. One wants to put money to make money but is afraid of "the scam", the second comes and writes content to get paid out of nothing. There is not much overlap in what these two groups "see" in steemit.

[iamnotback]

Actually the 67 - 80+ million STEEM "pre"mine (I don't know the exact figure) makes fixing the funding model impossible. I realized I could not publish my idea for fixing it, because it is incompatible with that design choice they made. I don't yet know if there are other viable ways to fix the funding model. I am still in deep thinking mode. If the funding model is not fixed, the project will eventually implode.

Be aware that I am very talented with creating these sort of websites in PHP. I've done that several times.

But extreme scaling of usership and also the tie in with the blockchain is new territory for me.

Also realize most of the marketcap is illiquid because it can't be cashed out because it is Steem Power. Thus the liquid market is (I guess, didn't inspect blockchain) only about $40 - $80 million, if you are comparing apples-to-applies with other coins such as Monero listed on coinmarketcap.

Apparently most of the bloggers are powering up all their earnings to Steem Power and going for the long-term compounding. So they would be very pissed off if Streemit had a competitor.

If you don't have a wide enough cross section of people who invested when it was cheap, you are very vulnerable to being overtaken by fairly launched copy, especially if that fairly launched one is actually superior in functionality.

[Master_dandosha]

I missed the opportunity to buy it cheap at bittrex early....

[iamnotback]

I have noticed that useful posts can't get seen by most of the users until a whale upvotes it:

https://steemit.com/steemit/@anonymint/get-33-more-steem-for-your-steem-dollars

The design choice to give whales quadratic (votes x votes) influence coupled with the huge "pre"mine, seems to have crippled the utility of the site (either alone might have been okay). And apparently they had to do that for another reason, which is otherwise the free signups could be Sybil attacked and then users could amass 10 SP per free signup.

And that same design choice and "pre"mine is what is I think preventing a funding model that will actually work.

I think I see a catastrophic design error on their part, but I am not sure yet. I need to think this through deeply and carefully.

[AlexGR]

Well in the front page right now: https://steemit.com/financial/@complexring/authors-can-obtain-a-30-premium-on-steem-backed-dollars-sbd

...with 6.2k USD

[rycon87]

Well in the front page right now: https://steemit.com/financial/@complexring/authors-can-obtain-a-30-premium-on-steem-backed-dollars-sbd

...with 6.2k USD

I'm pretty sure that the main reason for that is due to complexring being a whale already, with about $1 million of vesting STEEM. So all he has to do is post, upvote his own post, have his whale friends upvote his post and voila, instant publicity in the trending section where all the little fish continue showering it with upvotes. I've seen this happen with seriously crap posts also (like links to virtual reality youtube videos pulling in $7,000, seriously?), and as long as it gets publicity from whale votes it will make huge bank. This can also be seen when someone posts breaking news about steemit and no one notices because it's instantly buried by other crap, but then a whale comes along 3 hours later and posts it and pulls in $10,000+.

That's the part of the system that I think is seriously broken right now.

[CoinHoarder]

I have noticed that useful posts can't get seen by most of the users until a whale upvotes it:

https://steemit.com/steemit/@anonymint/get-33-more-steem-for-your-steem-dollars

The design choice to give whales quadratic (votes x votes) influence coupled with the huge "pre"mine, seems to have crippled the utility of the site (either alone might have been okay). And apparently they had to do that for another reason, which is otherwise the free signups could be Sybil attacked and then users could amass 10 SP per free signup.

And that same design choice and "pre"mine is what is I think preventing a funding model that will actually work.

I think I see a catastrophic design error on their part, but I am not sure yet. I need to think this through deeply and carefully.

To be honest... your post kind of sucked. It was... yawn worthy.

There is already a similar post on the front page someone posted 14 hours ago.

You are stating obvious and basic information that anyone can see for themselves.

[iamnotback]

There is already a similar post on the front page someone posted 14 hours ago.

You are stating obvious and basic information that anyone can see for themselves.

You mean the post I linked to? Which isn't comprehensible to a female n00b, yet my post is. And you want your site to be widely adopted.

I wrote the post expecting to earn nothing on and it was to perform a test.

I wanted to see if the male bias of the whales would reject it as a duplicate. And they did. As expected. Depriving the females of the information.

Well in the front page right now: https://steemit.com/financial/@complexring/authors-can-obtain-a-30-premium-on-steem-backed-dollars-sbd

...with 6.2k USD

I'm pretty sure that the main reason for that is due to complexring being a whale already, with about $1 million of vesting STEEM. So all he has to do is post, upvote his own post, have his whale friends upvote his post and voila, instant publicity in the trending section where all the little fish continue showering it with upvotes. I've seen this happen with seriously crap posts also (like links to virtual reality youtube videos pulling in $7,000, seriously?), and as long as it gets publicity from whale votes it will make huge bank. This can also be seen when someone posts breaking news about steemit and no one notices because it's instantly buried by other crap, but then a whale comes along 3 hours later and posts it and pulls in $10,000+.

That's the part of the system that I think is seriously broken right now.

Exactly. And he doesn't have a clue how to explain it to a general audience. His post was incomprehensible to a newbie n00b.

complexring is the same guy who wrote an incomprehensible comment in my first blog about Grassmannians and obtuse math that perhaps only 20 people on the site might have a clue what he means. I asked him to clarify and I still don't really understand what he is talking about. Manifolds and all that... (I have a clue about his point but I haven't yet tried to delve into it...)

[CoinHoarder]

Just saying... your post sucked. I know females that already knew that information and were cashing in, well before you made your post. You are showing your age with your derogatory rhetoric against females.

Take @Camilla for an example: "18 hours ago   transfer 2000.000 SBD to poloniex"

https://steemit.com/@camilla/transfers

You are allowed to give your negative opinion on my posts, but I am not allowed to give mine on yours?

You should consider yourself lucky to get 36 votes and $1.41 for that post. My post today was much better, but it only received $0.03 with 8 votes because my name isn't Anonymint. https://steemit.com/steem/@coinhoarder/g-day-steemians-the-reviews-are-in-click-me-to-see-what-bitcointalk-forum-users-saying-about-steemit

[iamnotback]

Just saying... your post sucked. I know females that already knew that information and were cashing in, well before you made your post. You are showing your age with your derogatory rhetoric against females.

I am speaking factually that many females joining the site (if you want worldwide coverage) will not know WTF his $6.2k earning post was talking about.

Of course there are some females (especially in the affluent countries) which are technically and/or trader savvy.

If you want to deny reality, that is fine by me. We can get into demographic statistics if you don't believe me.

Btw, I also wrote "(and males)" and many males thanked me in the comments. The point is I bet you are turning off the females and they have left (and for other reasons as well). Females want to congregate where other females are being chatty. Go to the posts of females and nearly all the comments are from males. Where are they building their community.

And Reddit doesn't have this extra male overhead of exchanges, trading, arbitrage, and the lack of the ability to organize communities (subreddits) centered around female interests with rankings in those communities controlled by those who vote there.

[iamnotback]

https://steemit.com/@camilla/transfers

She is apparently (quick perusal of her first blog) an intelligent lady.

What smooth doesn't understand is that bringing the best bloggers doesn't mean you bring in the most or best readers, not on a site designed this way. I don't think anyone is using the site to read it, except to get ideas on what to write, upvote, and researching/promoting the viability of the site. I don't think it has transitioned to a site with 1000s of communities, who come there to interact with the content. Rather I see a one-size-fits-all focus on "how to write a post that earns money" and "how to I appease the circle-jerk" and "how can we pat ourselves on the back and tell ourselves we are going to conquer Facebook" and "ideas on fixing any weaknesses". Ladies who come there to social hobnob I think quickly see they are on stage with a bunch of males in the audience.

Besides we long-ago transitioned from non-interactive (reading only) media (TV) for the Internet.

Community has to be a group thing. When the individual votes are meaningless except in HIVE mode, then you've failed to create any synergy related to "social networking".

http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/a9335/upvotes-downvotes-and-the-science-of-the-reddit-hivemind-15784871/

Reddit's ranking algorithm uses logarithm to dilute the voting power of the HIVE or Sybils (i.e. the whales). Streemit does the opposite and amplifies the problem.

If we only reward high IQ, and we exclude other readers because the prose doesn't speak to them, then we eliminate 99% of the population. Attrition rate skyrockets, acquisition cost skyrockets, ... any many other metrics of failure. The only way you have an economic site that targets high IQ is if you have a very high profit margin (valuation) per sticky user, i.e. you can produce 100X more income per user.

I bet many of the ladies who are doing well on the site are the gfs or in the circle of friends of males who were already in CC. I read many of the female introductions and it seemed many of them mentioned being invited by their bf who was into CC.


Remember this. Females don't argue. They just leave silently. Females are non-confrontational. You have to be nice and chatty if you want to elicit their true feedback.

So just because you don't see them complaining, doesn't mean they are contented. Again where is the data on the attrition rate?

Also I don't know if someone isn't creating Facebook accounts and gaining lots of voting power at a very low cost. So I don't know if signups are even unique real individuals. This will sort of mess up any naive data.

[brekyrself]

Long term Steem can evolve into something besides just random blogging.  Take the current "News" as it is today.  Much is just regurgitated information while others hold extreme bias, rather political or financial.  Individuals could go back to actually investigating and get paid in a way similar to steem.  Wiki-leaks, whistle-blowers, the list goes on and they could have an outlet to put the power back with the people.  Why should current news outlets only provide the "news" they want you to see?  Let the people decide by up-voting good investigative content or coverage.

[iamnotback]

Long term Steem can evolve into something besides just random blogging.  Take the current "News" as it is today.  Much is just regurgitated information while others hold extreme bias, rather political or financial.  Individuals could go back to actually investigating and get paid in a way similar to steem.  Wiki-leaks, whistle-blowers, the list goes on and they could have an outlet to put the power back with the people.  Why should current news outlets only provide the "news" they want you to see?  Let the people decide by up-voting good investigative content or coverage.

Paying for content could potentially evolve to create new markets, but we have to crawl before we can walk. Seems we haven't even solved yet how to fund the site long-term and we haven't gotten the ranking economics to be compatible with rewarding building community and followers.


Be careful with "know it all" young males. They will lead you to another Bitcoin demographic.

I dedicate a theme song for this effect.

White & Nerdy

[iamnotback]

You are showing your age with your derogatory rhetoric against females.

Evidence:

How do I add pictures?

if you have pictures on your computer, then go to www.imgsafe.org. browse files, find your pictures and download them through this site. Then they get their own adress that you open in a new tab. Copy the adress and paste it into your steem post. Let me know if you have problems.

Your @camilla has to teach the other females how to use the site.

[iamnotback]

But content quality will go down quickly because good bloggers aren't going to bother picking up pennies when they can make more from donations/advertising/paid gigs elsewhere and the incentives will start to reward low effort posters who just spam bullshit.  It'll be like signature campaigns here, or online dating in general.

Bloggers can't target their readers on Streemit (and make money).

A blogger can't target some new demographic of readers and bring their readers into Steem (even if they don't care about making money because there are no such features). The blogger must target the current dominant voting power demographic's preferences for content for their content to even be read!

I challenge anyone to refute that.


P.S. I am not trying to be a jerk to Steemit supporters. Just trying to be honest with myself.

I might be willing to help improve this, except I am thinking the vested interests are already well entrenched and would fight against changes to the status quo where whales are dominant with voting power.

I thought about writing some blog posts to try to have a "let's improve this together" community spirit, but I am thinking anyone who attempts to rock the boat away from the white, male, technophile, sarcastic, Steem-da-moon dominant demographic will be eventually viewed as a pathogen.

I might attempt another blog post to test and give it another chance to prove me wrong. Or I might not because it is already sort of making me want to puke that I can't write to sub-audiences and that I have to cater to groupthink. I like money and I really need some, but I am the sort of person that can't do something if I am not passionate about it. I have a really difficult time lying to myself, even for money. I feel like a prostitute or a lackey.

Steemians thank for the $3000 cashed out for my own blog post. I hope you all have also gained from my participation and feedback. Social networking should be designed to be mutual. I am/was sincere in my effort. The above is my honest, sincere analysis.

[CoinHoarder]

Morals are not subjective, lying and scamming are universally frowned upon, what he meant was "If i'm making money its good therefore I'm good", I'm not really judging people but I wont condone it either.

Who is lying and scamming? I already explained that someone might not agree with your definition of "lying and scamming". Others (me including) might see things differently.

To some a "sneaky mine" is immoral. Others may liken it to starting a business, and equate it to the developers/organizers of a start up obtaining equity in their project. Are all start ups and corporations immoral? Is capitalism immoral? That is subjective...

To some 12% annual inflation is an unsustainable pyramid scheme. Others may liken it as a good way to gain a huge userbase quickly, then leverage that userbase in the form of profitable features that are yet to be implemented. Can a business not change its business plan, or never expand into other markets? To judge something based on exactly how it exists today instead of where it is headed in the future may be a mistake.

There was not a premine or an instamine. It was announced on Bitcointalk with 2 days notice before it actually started. Everyone had an equal chance to throw as much hash power as they wanted behind it. Steemit and co. just threw more hash power at it than most people. That is fair though... anyone could have done what they did.

It was announced on March 22, 2016, 07:13:52 PM here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1408726.0
Since there was a restart, mining didn't start until March 24, 2016, 10:34:24 AM here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1410943.0

That's how the whales like abit and smooth go their stake. They were at the right place at the right time. I wish I would of been paying more attention around then, but hindsight is 20/20 and I am not going to cry about it, as everyone had a fair shot to mine some STEEM.

You guys are like the same people that cry about the Nxt distribution when anyone could of participated in the IPO and it was announced on Bitcointalk with fair warning too.

Get out of here with your socialistic self-centered condemnation.

[iamnotback]

I am going to bust your balls a little bit, but it is sort of in jest. I am just curious. Why are you so religiously aligned to everything Dan makes? Do you receive something from them for that   I am just really curious why you love Bitshares/Larimer Inc. so much?

Btw, I tried to cash out via the Bitshares Open Ledger and the damn thing won't run on my older Linux browsers and I can't easily upgrade them on Mint. I mean he isn't producing perfect products, yet you think he is like the God of crypto. Why? I am really curious why.

I had been holding STEEM waiting to decide if I would power up or cash out. I was trying to formulate what my correct priorities should be. I was trying to analyze the potential of Steemit.

...it was announced on Bitcointalk with fair warning too.

fair
fer/
adjective
adjective: fair; comparative adjective: fairer; superlative adjective: fairest

    1.
    in accordance with the rules or standards; legitimate.

adverb
adverb: fair

    1.
    without cheating or trying to achieve unjust advantage.


So 57 of 80 million were mined to the Steemit corporate account. The other few who mined got on the order of another 10 - 20 or so million tokens. So it is something like a 80 - 90% mining-only-for-us.

Saying a mining-only-for-us isn't a premine seems to be slicing a hair on semantic games.

I am not against them asking the community if they can keep perhaps 5% premine for their efforts (or what ever the community thinks is fair and positive for the project). But they will always be subject to the will of the community, if the community thinks the amount they partook is unfair and detrimental to the project's potential to succeed.

I realize the 57 million is supposed to be spent on development, marketing, signups, and promotion, but in that way it can possibly end up back in their pocket via kickbacks. Also the SP being awarded to free signups may largely be burned (abandoned) since it can't ever be powered down (apparently can't power down until you earn 100 SP from blogging).

Thus their personal premine tokens will be amplified in proportion to the actual liquid market cap of the project, so in effect the 57 million ends up largely in their pocket.

Personally I'd like to work on a successful project and be paid well. So their resources seem in one way attractive to me, but then I realized that their outsized token stake means the project is likely unable to have the degrees-of-freedom to succeed. So why would I work hard for SP tokens locked up for 2 years and then the project dies at some point over the next several months.

And what if I busted my ass on the project and then it all ended up being for nothing because the whales shoot themselves in the foot and there is no recourse, because for example even the Steemit code is not open source and now smooth told me the Steem open source has a license preventing forking. Why should I work on code like that if I am not confident they can succeed and even the SP I earned can go to 0 before I can cash it

[smooth]

But what is their attrition rate? We don't know yet as the data is not organized for us.

You can analyze the blockchain and look at how activity drops off on new accounts. Only posting and voting is visible (not reading) but I'd guess the number who read and don't even vote is pretty small (and likely somewhat constant so irrelevant to analyzing trends).

This is pretty easy to do and can be done in any scripting language, though you would need to compile and run a node (doing this kind of bulk analysis using a remote node would be impractical or impossible).

[iamnotback]

But what is their attrition rate? We don't know yet as the data is not organized for us.

You can analyze the blockchain and look at how activity drops off on new accounts. Only posting and voting is visible (not reading) but I'd guess the number who read and don't even vote is pretty small (and likely somewhat constant so irrelevant to analyzing trends).

This is pretty easy to do and can be done in any scripting language, though you would need to compile and run a node (doing this kind of bulk analysis using a remote node would be impractical or impossible).

Thanks, but there is 0 chance of me building a node and go figure all that out, just to get some data they should be publishing any way. I presume not publishing attrition rate data indicates one or more of (but not necessarily all):

• Hiding how bad it is.
• Lack of knowledge about how to analyze the launch of a usership website.
• Sybil signups are so ambiguous that can't measure attrition rate.
• Disorganization.

None of those are good. Attrition is absolutely the first thing you measure.

[CoinHoarder]

I receive little to no love from Dan and company. I would say far too little for the hours I have spent defending them and their projects. I am not even sure he is aware that I do so, as he does not come on Bitcointalk.

I supported BTS because I think decentralized exchanges are needed. Gox, Cryptsy, Mintsy, the list of exchange defaults will continue to grow. The community just doesn't yet realize how bad a decentralized solution is needed. I would like to think that I am more forward thinking than most, and I thought people would eventually realize decentralized solutions are ideal and Bitshares would eventually be a big success. I'm still not convinced that won't happen some day. Bitshares was the first DEX-centric cryptocurrency project, and I support any cryptocurrency project aiming at solving this problem. BTCD's PAX has promise, as does SUPERNET and B&C Exchange. I will support those projects just as much, but they are all mostly vaporware, and for some reason those projects aren't trolled as much as Bitshares so there is never really a need for me to come to their defense.

I support STEEM because it is different from other cryptocurrencies with the social networking angle. It has a chance to be reach the masses more so than any other cryptocurrency. It also solves a problem that I have always thought needed solving... kicking back profits of social media web sites to the users that make them so valuable. Legacy social networks are like sweat shops, but worse considering they don't provide their users with any wages at all. There may be better social networking cryptocurrency designs, but I don't trust that they will be implemented in a sufficient amount of time... they are vaporware. Until they are actually released, I will continue to champion Steemit. Which brings me to my next point...

Dan can actually deliver working cryptocurrencies which are mostly as advertised in the road map or whitepaper. There are way too many projects to name that are perpetual vaporware. Dan has a good team that helps him too. SVK, in my opinion, can make some of the best looking modern user interfaces I have used in crypto.

Dan is also a creative and hardworking guy, as evidenced by his Github account. He is never happy with the way his project exists. He is always scheming up some way to improve them, and as I said a moment ago... he can actually deliver on the improvements and get them into a release. He always seems to come up with some good ideas as to what direction the project should go. He is dedicated to improving his projects, as evidenced by how much Bitshares improved from 0.xx releases to the Graphene release. The only reason why he left Bitshares was because the Bitshares stakeholders didn't want to fund his development efforts any more. Mainly the Chinese stakeholders were very vocal about that. I am sure he will continue working on Steemit for years to come. He is at least invested for 2 years, so I expect to see a lot of improvements during that time frame.

At the same time, I was very critical of Bitshares within the Bitshares community. There were a lot of people that don't like me over there because I was always speaking my mind, a lot of the time going against the grain of whatever groupthink was popular at the time. I defend him and his projects on here because he doesn't come here to defend himself. Which is probably a good thing, because otherwise he wouldn't be able to get much work done. I realize this post sounds obsessive or brown noseyish, but you asked why and I have now told you. I don't really care what people think about me. I honestly think he is one of the best developers in the cryptocurrency industry.