Steem pyramid scheme revealed

[brekyrself]

@smooth the flaw in the design is rewards via voting.

The only way to make such a social network correctly is to have an objective reward system.   

Did you ever connect with Ned and Dan?  Curious if any discussions came about?

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[Cryptotraider16]

interested price dump from 3$ or how much its was maxx to 0.23$ omfg i see big lost some some  peoples...i am sure soon new pump will happen.

[iamnotback]

Did you ever connect with Ned and Dan?  Curious if any discussions came about?

Sorry no, I dropped the ball even though Ned responded and offered to speak with me. (Which I can partially blame on my bad health, which won't be resolved until after December at the earliest as I plan to head to a research hospital in Singapore)

Because as I analyzed the design I wanted to create, I became convinced that the whale structure of Steem would prevent any transition to the design I want to do. So then I thought what is the point of talking.

The Steemit Inc whale (the largest single holder by far) could I guess decide to reward its stake via some new objective mechanism that isn't voting. But I presumed they wouldn't be interested in doing that because it would mean giving up control over that stake. Also it would admit failure of the voting system, which would mean sort of admitting failure and would likely be disruptive to existing user base, specifically it might provoke mutiny by the whales. And I am not convinced also that just giving up control over the Steemit Inc stake is sufficient. The other whales hold a very significant stake and thus STEEM will always be at a disadvantage in terms of ecosystem incentive versus a project that does it correctly and avoids too much whale concentration.

When I say objective, it means the ecosystem must believe that the money supply can only be used for objective rewards. I think it is a necessary prerequisite for obtaining significant ecosystem growth.

For example, afaik @smooth has invested a lot (at least effort and thought) in the ecosystem of STEEM. If the distribution included 100 copies of @smooth, and then 100,000 objectively rewarded content producers, then we'd have a revolution going on.

[smooth]

@smooth the flaw in the design is rewards via voting.

The only way to make such a social network correctly is to have an objective reward system.   

Maybe true, but it would be a lot more flawed if 30K free scammed accounts could have significant influence.

[iamnotback]

@smooth the flaw in the design is rewards via voting.

The only way to make such a social network correctly is to have an objective reward system.    

Maybe true, but it would be a lot more flawed if 30K free scammed accounts could have significant influence.

+1 because there is no upvote button here. Irony intended.

[kwest]

interested price dump from 3$ or how much its was maxx to 0.23$ omfg i see big lost some some  peoples...i am sure soon new pump will happen.

Market cap is still pretty high.. in the top 10. I saw this dump coming a mile away when it skyrocketed to 300+ million market cap. That was just not sustainable.

[BitcoinNational]

@smooth the flaw in the design is rewards via voting.

The only way to make such a social network correctly is to have an objective reward system.   

Maybe true, but it would be a lot more flawed if 30K free scammed accounts could have significant influence.

well there is the f/n IRONY ... humanINTEL can id real content ... amplify that and you win ... stick with linear math ... steem_power_down ... forever!

[iamnotback]

interested price dump from 3$ or how much its was maxx to 0.23$ omfg i see big lost some some  peoples...i am sure soon new pump will happen.

Market cap is still pretty high.. in the top 10. I saw this dump coming a mile away when it skyrocketed to 300+ million market cap. That was just not sustainable.

If it could have sustained adoption then that $300 million market cap was far too small.

And for as long as the rewards system is broken, one could argue the market cap is too high. But as we pointed out upthread, there is probably an equilibrium point at which it is not worth cashing out. I'm nearing that point as my weekly cashout is declining to $10. Soon it will only make sense for me to bother to stop by to transfer to Poloniex biweekly. And then eventually monthly. And then I'll probably just forget. If I was earning any other income, I wouldn't even be bother now with cashing out.

But the whales will probably continue to cash out for a long time, so unless there is some belief by investors that they will grow adoption (or engineer a pump) then it may continue to decline.

Also the ongoing inflation pretty much guarantees selling pressure and the only way for investors to counteract that is to powerup, but that locks up investment for 1 year (weighted average cashout).

I thought it might bottom out, but based on the above maybe not.

[bones261]

interested price dump from 3$ or how much its was maxx to 0.23$ omfg i see big lost some some  peoples...i am sure soon new pump will happen.

Market cap is still pretty high.. in the top 10. I saw this dump coming a mile away when it skyrocketed to 300+ million market cap. That was just not sustainable.

What is the most frightening is that there is only a little over 12 million liquid steem, ATM. Almost 180 million steem is tied up in the vesting pool. Just think of how unsustainable this will be in a year when there could be almost 100 million or more liquid steem running around in the wild. Powering up is becoming less and less enticing now. As more liquid steem is created, this will only cause a feedback loop IMHO.

[iamnotback]

humanINTEL can id real content ... amplify that and you win ... stick with linear math

Linear math for the voting rewards can't prevent Sybils. We already covered this in great detail upthread.

Sorry the problem is rewards via voting. That can never be an objective system. Either you have Sybils or you have whale extraction. There is no other mathematical option.

[iamnotback]

humanINTEL can id real content ... amplify that and you win ... stick with linear math

Linear math for the voting rewards can't prevent Sybils. We already covered this in great detail upthread.

Sorry the problem is rewards via voting. That can never be an objective system. Either you have Sybils or you have whale extraction. There is no other mathematical option.

Remember I wrote a blog about that:

https://steemit.com/steem/@anonymint/blog-rewards-can-t-be-widely-distributed

[Daffadile]

interested price dump from 3$ or how much its was maxx to 0.23$ omfg i see big lost some some  peoples...i am sure soon new pump will happen.

It was at $0.21 a little while ago. i don't think it will drop much below $0.20 but the idea that the devs could just dump everything at any given time makes me feel extremely uneasy.

[bones261]

interested price dump from 3$ or how much its was maxx to 0.23$ omfg i see big lost some some  peoples...i am sure soon new pump will happen.

It was at $0.21 a little while ago. i don't think it will drop much below $0.20 but the idea that the devs could just dump everything at any given time makes me feel extremely uneasy.

The devs cannot dump everything at one time because a good portion of their steem is tied up in steem power. They could dump what they have right now in steem, but with only 55 BTC of buy support on Polo and about 17 BTC on Bittrex, that probably isn't overly tempting for them.

[AlexGR]

interested price dump from 3$ or how much its was maxx to 0.23$ omfg i see big lost some some  peoples...i am sure soon new pump will happen.

It was at $0.21 a little while ago. i don't think it will drop much below $0.20 but the idea that the devs could just dump everything at any given time makes me feel extremely uneasy.

The price will drop, otherwise I'll become a zillionaire with my ...5k SP



The above is a calculator that I made in order to estimate the rate of inflation in my SP (which presumably is 9/10ths of the total inflation). I watch how much SP I have in a certain time period, then in another, then check the seconds elapsed and I have both the rate and the extrapolation into the future (based on compounding by the second). I then added a curation calc (SP+curation income) / a blogging calc (SP+cur+bloging income), and a curation-standalone.

I put my blogging performance or my curation performance and it extrapolates how my SP will be affected based on the current rate of what I'm making. Blogging is unreliable but curation is less so. SP growth is also unreliable in the long term (it should drop). But anyway, running rates are pretty high.

I have ~5k SP, and based on current SP growth and curation efficiency, these should be ~13k in 6 months and 35k in 12 months (with the current rate). Now if 5k SP goes to 35k, that's 7x. (+594%). So, if, say, I have 1k USD usd, that will make it 7k usd - if the price just sits at 20 cents.

People are not getting paid all these SPs for fun. It's because there is plenty of dilution going on (if I'm getting ~14.5% in SP growth then the monthly rate of dilution should be ~16%)

The bottom line here is that I can't focus on the price. I can only focus on what I'll have (holdings x price), because the holdings are going upwards due to inflation, curation and blogging - and all the while these are all compounded by their continuous increase and this means that their numbers, over the long run, become astronomical. My 3 year ROI is +73000% based on current rate of SP growth alone, and +232000% if I co-factor curation. In the 232k %, my 5k SP would be ...11.73 mn SP in 3 years which at a price of 0.2$ would fetch me .... 2.35mn USD

These astronomical numbers obviously necessitate a devaluation of each steem as a unit.

However, as a marketcap, the situation is different. In my view, as far as cryptocurrencies go, there is nothing that can convince me that Ethereum is more useful than Steem. I can't see any reason whatsoever on why Ethereum should have a marketcap multiple times higher than Steem. Of course there are big institutional whales behind it, which is THE reason, but the fundamentals regarding its actual use cannot compare with Steem - which has actual, real life use. Either Ethereum should crash, or Steem should go higher. The price is not reflecting the fundamentals which should be reversed. Steem should have a higher marketcap than ETH - no matter how that is achieved.

[brekyrself]

interested price dump from 3$ or how much its was maxx to 0.23$ omfg i see big lost some some  peoples...i am sure soon new pump will happen.

It was at $0.21 a little while ago. i don't think it will drop much below $0.20 but the idea that the devs could just dump everything at any given time makes me feel extremely uneasy.

However, as a marketcap, the situation is different. In my view, as far as cryptocurrencies go, there is nothing that can convince me that Ethereum is more useful than Steem. I can't see any reason whatsoever on why Ethereum should have a marketcap multiple times higher than Steem. Of course there are big institutional whales behind it, which is THE reason, but the fundamentals regarding its actual use cannot compare with Steem - which has actual, real life use. Either Ethereum should crash, or Steem should go higher. The price is not reflecting the fundamentals which should be reversed. Steem should have a higher marketcap than ETH - no matter how that is achieved.

EXACTLY this.  Speculation is the only reason why many blockchains have any value at all.  For the sake of crypto, I hope Steem can fix it's current model and develop into a successful project.

The more blockchain products that become successful the easier it will be for future niche chains to gain adoption.  No reason for all the hate around here when everyone has a common goal.

[rikky05]

part 1.

Everything is connected. Even Martin Armstrong talks about his data in terms of multiple variables. Here is a question, does the torrent network defeat TPTB? or the zeronet? or the legalization of cannabis? or growing our own food? or the internet? or social media? or 3d printing? or alt energy? or large gatherings of free people? or free market places? or freedom over our bodies? or freedom of religion? freedom of speech? free communication etc.

Is the power of TPTB in the regulation of these things? Does TPTB get weaker the more we exercise freedom from them? Do we even need a technology to BE FREE? It's like we are back to the Bill Clinton moment of what the definition of IS is. Who are TPTB and what are their powers and what does it mean to defeat them? If everything is connected then we are all connected and TPTB are also us, as in all 7.4 billion of us.

This is the only truth, stop arguing about the system or TPTB, WE ARE THE SYSTEM, this is like the ending of a rare movie which ends by main character realizing that the one he believed to be fighting with, is himself.

[iamnotback]

However, as a marketcap, the situation is different. In my view, as far as cryptocurrencies go, there is nothing that can convince me that Ethereum is more useful than Steem. I can't see any reason whatsoever on why Ethereum should have a marketcap multiple times higher than Steem. Of course there are big institutional whales behind it, which is THE reason, but the fundamentals regarding its actual use cannot compare with Steem - which has actual, real life use. Either Ethereum should crash, or Steem should go higher. The price is not reflecting the fundamentals which should be reversed. Steem should have a higher marketcap than ETH - no matter how that is achieved.

EXACTLY this.  Speculation is the only reason why many blockchains have any value at all.  For the sake of crypto, I hope Steem can fix it's current model and develop into a successful project.

Ethereum (Classic) is estimated to have higher speculation upside for numerous reasons.

• Another DAO is waiting to happen because it is a programmable blockchain.
• You don't need to lockup your investment for 1 year weighted average cashout in order to speculate.
• You don't have this massive inflation.
• There is a plan to move to some form of PoS and stop or significantly reduce inflation.
• Everyone who runs Dapps needs ETH to play.
• Charles Hoskinson is involved again.
• Etc...

Sorry the utility of Steem for social blogging while it looks pretty on the screen (and it captured the interest of some females and those one or two degrees removed from the male cryptonerd), just doesn't even compare at all for a speculation vehicle. If they removed the 1 year weighted lockup and put more ecosystem programmability into it, then maybe we could say the two (ETH and STEEM) aren't light years apart in terms of speculation value.

As r0ach has said, Dan Larimer builds these complex Rube Goldberg machines that obfuscate that they don't really address any viable market. Bitshares Open Exchange was similarly a complex thing without a market.

They are good programmers though.

No reason for all the hate around here when everyone has a common goal.

It seemed in the past there was a lot of arguments about which projects were scams or poorly designed or what ever, as everyone was fighting for pitching their ICO or P&D to the n00bs here.

It seemed once XMR, ETH, and STEEM all made their 10 baggers, then that animosity has died down for the time being.

I have concluded that men are very stressed and will fight viciously when they have money bet on something. So I am just entirely avoiding any of those discussions.

I am interested in discussing the design of Steem, because I am still interested to make a social network block chain.

[iamnotback]

... while it looks pretty on the screen (and it captured the interest of some females and those one or two degrees removed from the male cryptonerd) ...

Note still a looong ways from capturing the typical mainstream person who has no (even 2nd degree) relationship to crypto.

To get the mainstream market interested, you can't possible be expecting them to blog or even curate.

Mainstream people don't use social networks to blog nor to curate. Duh. Common sense thinking like this is I think what cryptonerds lack.

[smooth]

Note still a looong ways from capturing the typical mainstream person who has no (even 2nd degree) relationship to crypto.

I'd speculate that 2nd degree connections are a good portion of the population as a whole, and certainly a huge portion of the population with any money to spend.

Most people could count a few dozen to hundreds of "friends" and acquaintances to whom they could introduce a social platform if they wanted to (especially if doing so on existing social accounts). Square that and it is between 1000x and 50000x the number of directly involved crypto-heads. You don't really need to reach much beyond second degree, if the product is compelling enough to grab and hold interest once people are introduced to it (currently, Steem is not).

Even if these numbers are wrong (first degrees will have a lot of second degrees in common, for example; I don't know the numbers), reaching the second degree is a sort of proof-of-virality in a way that reaching the first degree is not.

I'd also speculate that Steem has not done very well in reaching the second degree, outside of some particular niche cases like professional bloggers recruiting each other to come and collect thousands of dollars per blog post when that was the case.

You don't need to lockup your investment for 1 year weighted average cashout in order to speculate.
You don't have this massive inflation.

This is double counting. If you do lock up your investment then you don't have the massive inflation. Especially since liquid supply is now over 10%. SP are now effectively deflationary (though one risk is there is no guarantee that continues for any particular time into the future).

"Rube Goldberg", I kind of agree with and actual market remains questionable. I wouldn't say it is as clear from underlying principles that there is no market (as opposed to just a flawed/incomplete implementation and/or bad marketing), which in the case of Bitshares is something I argued with r0ach about way back in his Bitshares pumping days.

[hv_]

humanINTEL can id real content ... amplify that and you win ... stick with linear math

Linear math for the voting rewards can't prevent Sybils. We already covered this in great detail upthread.

Sorry the problem is rewards via voting. That can never be an objective system. Either you have Sybils or you have whale extraction. There is no other mathematical option.

Looks like those behave orthogonal... Only a very small point of correlation...