It's so sad to see BTC and all the altcoins increasing in price while steem reminds low. With the official release of facebook's Libra, the crypto world is finally getting some form of validation from one of the biggest companies in the world, this is excellent for crypto investors in the long term.
The hype surrounding the crypto is real and it's pushing the prices up except maybe for steem. In fact, steem is losing interest over time and that's heartbreaking because it has so much potential to succeed.
Who am I?
I'm no one, well at least compared to some of the biggest influencers, content creators, whales, and witnesses of this platform. I've been on this platform for two years now, more than most users, I've experienced the ups and downs of this community. I've witnessed the all-time high of steem which was 8 USD and even at that time I never intended to sell any tokens, Why was I so fucking stupid back then you wonder?
Well because I had so much faith is steem. Unfortunately, this faith is fading away day after day. Contributing to steem can be done in a variety of ways whether you are an investor, developer, entrepreneur or simply a content creator like me. Although witnesses are the ones who decide for the big things, content creators are the true core of this community. Without us, there's no community, just a bunch of whales who abuse the system and take advantage of it. They are getting wealthier, while others are barely making few bucks, this is capitalism at its finest.
How many great content creators did we lose in the last year? How many talented people were simply ignored?
I couldn't count, something is surely broken here and needs fixing.
My thoughts on the SPS:
The first time I've heard about this, I was excited! Financing good projects from the annual inflation is an excellent initiative, what could possibly go wrong?
You see the problem here is that we already have an identical system, whales generally finance good projects with massive upvotes and donations, so why we should try to change that now?
It's not a problem of money but the community lacks good projects and by 'good' I mean projects that could benefit the ecosystem not only their owners.
Content on steem is either project-related or non-project-related, maybe the only advantage of SPS is to create a more specified system to reward projects but it also lays the ground for more system abuse as it takes away accountability at some extent.
Just remember how many unuseful projects were given more than enough funding in steem with no results, that's definitely wasted money.
The second is the source of SPS funding, it was discussed that it should be taken from the reward pool, why the reward pool? why not the interest pool?
I don't know if decreasing the reward pool is a good idea, on the other hand, decreasing the interest pool is economically awesome because it takes away some of the inflation and directs it to good usage.
The SPS could be amazing if we implement control methods to avoid abuse and eliminate the excessive interest which does absolutely nothing besides harming the price, couple of steems a day will do absolutely nothing compared to an overall increasing price, this is why I don't see investors and stakeholders oppose to this change if it means higher and more sustainable price in the future, just basic maths and good investment tactics !
Now what about EIP?
The proposed EIP is composed of 3 main changes:
-Convergent linear curve: Its main reason is to limit the usage of bid bots, any economic system where there's no risk is doomed to fail, that's a fact!
With bid bots you can be sure to always make money when you boost your post, the element of unpredictability should minimize this problem but it won't eliminate it completely. The flatting point of the curve should be discussed between the experts but overall this idea is good.
-50/50 rewards: This is a good idea because it incentivizes curating and theoretically accumulating more steem power but there's no guarantee because this platform is pushing away more users than ever. Human behavior is not always predictable, Ask yourself why should anyone invest in this broken project? How can they secure their investments if the bear market has lasted about 2 years with consistent lost of interest and no good signs whatsoever?
Put yourselves in a big investor's shoes, would you invest millions of dollars on steem?
Of course not! You need greater incentives such as a clear vision for the future, an attractive platform, a competent team, good marketing, etc.
All we can do is create these incentives and hope for the best case scenario, finally, this idea is good but does not set your hopes very high.
-Downvote separate pool: Good for battling spammers but when you give a man a gun don't expect him to avoid harming innocents!
As I'm totally convinced that this implementation would be effective, it has also some minor risks but I think this is totally acceptable regarding its benefits.
Final thoughts:
Personally, I would like to see these changes (from the most to the least urgent) in the near future if we want to save steem:
- Creating a more attractive platform
- Applying the previous changes in the new hardfork...
- Implementing revolutionary marketing strategies as soon as possible which focus on the advantages of this blockchain.
- Creating an advertising system where some of the paid steem goes to STINC and burn the others to reduce even more inflation.
- Eliminate the delegation and I will explain this point. You see delegation creates a risk-free based business when someone launches a new project he needs financing, what he will do then?
He asks for help from steemians who are very generous and rarely refuse a good project, this will takes away incentives to buy steem and takes accountability. Banks, for example, will land you money and ask them back after a period of time with an interest, you're now obliged to work hard in order to pay your debts. This scenario will never happen with this broken delegation system, project owners have no incentives to work hard and lose accountability soon, who will stop them from making thousands of steem from these delegations and stop delivering at any moment after they fulled up their pocket?
This game is all about human psychology all we can do is to create incentives and wait for big results but honestly, I see little to no incentives except for maybe the numerous advantages that this blockchain provides. Even after three years, sadly, many people still believe that steem is a scam which accentuates my point.
I've made approximately 5000 steem in my two years on this platform from organic votes, this is an insignificant amount compared to how much some stakeholders have in their account. I don't want to see such a potential getting wasted due to selfishness and incompetence, a call to all those who want to become rich in the future, gather up your forces and do what's best for steem, big rewards are waiting for us all, otherwise, the apocalypse of steem is on the horizon...
Disclaimer: I'm no expert, if I made any mistake please enlighten me. The following thoughts are not mine alone, they are the simply the opinions of many experts steemians. I'm just a messenger of those who can't speak for themselves and all small users of this platform.