This is my first post on Steemit and I'm pretty excited! Being an enthusiastic participant in quite a few blockchain platforms for more than a year now, I invested in crypto mining, crypto trading and few ICOs; witnessing both the highs and lows of this crypto world. This experience enabled me to understand the strengths and shortcoming of the blockchain as a whole. I'll brag more about myself in an introductory post and would love to get in touch with all the wonderful people of Steemit community.
Being a blogger myself, I clearly understand the importance of quality content, quality audience and also getting paid for the work. I have worked on multiple blogs and used multiple Ad networks over a period of 3 years now, and in this period, there have been drastic changes in search engine algorithms, social media algorithms, and ad network RPMs. These changes made by the big players (more like monopoly), indeed affect the website and the community as a whole.
Tech giants like Facebook, Youtube, Snapchat, etc., run by billionaire CEOs, are valued at hundreds of billions of dollars; earning from the end users and paying pennies to the publishers or content creators. The end community has always been neglected or overlooked, which is very frustrating!
Steemit : As I look at it.
Steemit is one platform, where I see a lot of scope, in terms of the technology behind it, the "crypto value" it has, providing quality content and also getting rewarded for the same. More importantly, the platform grows along with the genuine users contributing to it. I wish I could recognize the opportunity at the beginning itself, but I guess it's better late than never! Before registering on Steemit, I searched quite a lot for beginner tutorials and realized that most of these basic intro posts or videos are either unorganized or were published a couple of years ago. So I decided to start from here; for all those newbies out there, my series of posts will cover all the basic Steemit tutorials. As and when I learn and experiment something new on this platform I will make sure to post it for the nascent members of the steemit community.
To start off, here are the 5 key reasons that intrigued me about this wonderful platform.
1) The foundational principle:
Steemit relies on an interesting principle that all forms of capital are equally valuable. Few people invest money as capital on certain platforms whereas few will invest their time and efforts to create and curate content for others. Both these contributors are equally valuable and such a principle is called the sweat equity principle. Steemit acknowledges and implements this principle effectively, which prior crypto-based platforms are still struggling to achieve.
2) Identifying and Monetizing contributions:
Steemit’s algorithm rewards contributors based on the number of upvotes each post gets from fellow community members. It rewards in the form of the cryptocurrency token STEEM. The more upvotes your post gets the more STEEM you earn. This seems like a fair assessment as everyone's contribution to the community is recognized for the value it adds. More valuable your post is, the more upvotes you get and thereby more STEEM. Therefore, the users who contribute good stuff to the community and strive for the growth of the community are always embraced by this platform.
3) Entry fee & Transaction fee:
To try out any blockchain based application we got to pay some price initially. We need to first purchase some BTC or ETH to play around on any platform right? This will definitely stop some users from trying the blockchain network. The best part about steemit is you can register, start using and make money from it without spending a penny from your pocket. Secondly, In any decentralized networks, a fee is charged on every transaction. The major problem with transaction fee is micropayments. For a large transaction users wouldn't mind it but for a micropayment, it is definitely frustrating. To tackle this steemit comes up with an account based system with publicly known balances. Steem rules out the transaction fees, because when a user upvotes it is the community that pays from the reward pool and not the individual user.
4) Delegated proof of stake:
Like Bitcoin, Steem does not rely on proof of work. In case of proof of work, the miners with more computational power earn more bitcoins. Only big organizations/ minings firms are able to generate such results with heavy investments. Coming to Steem, delegated proof of stake is implemented wherein individuals called witnesses with reasonable computer configurations can create blocks and generate steem. Further details about witnesses and delegated proof of stake will be covered in the upcoming articles.
5) Multiple Ways of Making Money with little or no investment:
Cryptocurrency as a whole created a new opportunity for people to make money out of it. There are thousands of early investors who turned millionaires through trading and mining, once the market picked up. Unlike most cryptocurrencies, Steem allows any user to make money in different ways: By contributing quality content to the platform. This means the user need not be a “pro” at crypto or trading or any other technology; just write quality content. Once people recognize it and upvote, you start earning.
- By commenting and participating in discussions.
- By trading Steem on trading platforms.
- By vesting Steem to the 13 week vesting schedule.
- By becoming a witness. This involves a bit of technicality and is already packed up with big players, but there’s still a lot of scope.
- Creating useful bots.
- Maintaining a genuine profile and being a curator.
- Consistency and quality is the key here. One needs to invest time and energy into it.
As one would say, "nothing can be perfect", Steemit also has its own drawbacks. The community has taken measures to eliminate these, but I feel there's still a lot of work to be done.
Few Drawbacks I observed:
1. Irregular advancements in the technology, which leads to some negativity.
2. The upvoting system is irritable because the power carried by a single vote is determined by the money held in a user’s account. This leaves smaller content creators craving for a decent compensation unless their work is recognized by a “whale”.
3. Steemit only pays out rewards for the first seven days that a post is live, meaning creators of evergreen viral content could potentially miss out on years of earnings.
4. Can be easily manipulated by the whales of the community, who are majority holders. Which means the basic fundamental point of a “decentralized” community could be questioned.
I've come across one new community, called UNNIO, which claims to have addressed these flaws and resolved it in it's improvised platform. We still have to wait and see.
Though these are few considerable problems, the positive side of it gives a lot of weight to the users, especially because there’s no other strong player in this sector. Moreover, the above-mentioned flaws could be solved with small changes to the core structure. So let’s hope for the best!