Listen to the full episode at:
https://www.buildingcryptotoday.libsyn.com/episode-7
https://www.buildingcrypto.today
https://dsound.audio/#/@josh-bctpodcast/steemit--suckerburg-talking-decentralization
SteemIt The Blockchain & Next Gen Facebook
If you're like most people, you share your life and cool things from other's lives on the regular over FaceBook & YouTube. This doesn't do much for you beyond waste time and generate revenue for the news/social media giants. This causes some hard feelings for a lot of people. We share things we might want others to see and FaceBook or even YouTube then decides to take it down because some snowflake got their feelz hurt. Even better is when you've built a business and life on one of these platforms and they decide overnight to completely change the business model and cut you off. That garbage ruins lives! This is why I laugh when I hear Mark Suckerburg talking about decentralization, he doesn't want that anymore than a government. Al decentralization means is a way for central authorities to cease to be of value or use. No, he's not serious about it anymore than wanting to boost stock prices and launch a token to make more money. It will continue to be centrally controlled and funnel all value into their company and away from the real value producers, us.
A better solution to FaceBook and Youtube, Steemit
SteemIt isn't quite like Facebook and DTube is remarkably similar to YouTube, but neither is ready for showtime. They are getting closer by the day. D.Tube is opening up the gates for video producers and viewers. SteemIt is the platform both use, but the awesome part about blockchain is that they allow for various interfaces to the exact same data. D.Tube, SteemIt, and D.Sound allow anyone to post content, no big deal though, right? For every like your post gets, you get crypto, just a little bit, but you get some. If you post the greatest meme of the week, you make a couple hundred $$$ worth of Steem. Steem isn't a company, but a community, so there is no benefit to making anyone rich without making everyone rich. You're finally paid what you're worth for the content you create. You can also check out cool info on different interfaces like Busy.org and Chainbb.com, it's too cool! You can even get paid for liking and sharing quality content.
Don't get too worked up, you're not going to get rich for nothing or overnight. There is a great deal of competition on SteemIt and you'll have to earn your rewards. Get some STEEM ($40 worth?), power up your Steem Power and start creating and curating content. What that means for you if you're brand new, post, like, and Share stuff, then you get some money. Now, let's get into some of the more technical & ugly details.
What is SteemIt?
Put simply, a content creation, distribution, and management system. For SteemIt, time is money and your time's value is determined by the crowd. If you post quality content, the crowd likes and shares it, then you get paid. If you like and share something that others find valuable, your "curation" is rewarded. It's all about rewarding people for the value they bring. If Reddit had figured out how to do this in 2015, they would be the leader in the crypto market, but they chose to sit on their hands. In the next few years, we'll likely see them go out of business and SteemIt or a similar competitor take charge because of the profit sharing model.
SteemIt & their promises
- Curated news & comments
- High quality answers to personal questions
- A USD$ pegged asset
- Jobs through the people required to do 1-3
2. Answers are occasional, the community just isn't there yet. The organization method of the platform is lacking, making it rather difficult to target your audience. This link right back into #1, the curation is still lacking. Even the ability to only see content in your native language would help immensely.
3. The USD pegged (SBD) Steem Backed Dollar is a total flop. There is no real way to do that anyway, but it is all over the place. Not that anyone is complaining as it is sky high at the moment, still a bad promise to make.
4. This is beginning to happen. Some people are starting to see a reasonable income stream come from SteemIt. They put in the time and work to build up a reputation and they're finally starting to see a return on their invested efforts in exchange for the valuable content they've posted. It really does work.
How did SteemIt actually do it?
They made STEEM to be the answer for all the social media problems. This is the currency for the SteemIt platform and is used in a multitude of ways across it, but still hasn't been made into much of a currency just yet. 1 vote is NOT equal to 1 vote, confused yet? If you hate the politics and manipulation that happens on any of the big social media sites where bot armies report a post to get it hidden or like a post/page/group in order to drown out competition or make it appear more appealing, you'll love SteemIt. If you haven't invested in the platform, your vote just doesn't matter that much. If you've invested the time to like something, but not any STEEM into the platform, how are you any different from a bot? Now think of it from the other side, say you've invested $20 into the SteemIt platform in hopes it will grow and to support the cool idea. Now you actually have a vote with some power behind it. You do first have to vest your STEEM into STEEM Power (SP), but you keep it, it's not gone. This ensures there isn't a huge dump or similar market manipulation while showing your dedication to the platform. Keep in mind, there are plenty of Steemians with millions of STEEM, so you're not going to walk into the slums of SteemIt with $100 and suddenly be able to control the market, but it does give you some sway. This ensures you're actions are for the benefit of the platform and you're not a FaceBook employee trying to kill it.
SteemIt is dedicated to rewarding givers. They're quite explicit in the white paper that any imbalance of freeloaders getting paid just because is unacceptable and can't be allowed. They designed the entire system to reward creators and investors. There is no free meal in STEEM-land.
I find GREAT relief in SteemIt's understanding of free market & their mitigation of corruption.
With a firm understanding of basic economics & the reality that most readers aren't going to take the time to tip someone a couple cents for their content, they created a more abstract free market approach. They also understood that a paywall would just turn people away due to so many free alternatives. Seriously, who pays for the Wall Street Journal? This is why the voting buttons were adopted. If you're going to receive micro-payments from people, then it's probably a good idea make it easy for consumers to reward the content provider.--- How to get paid ---
Steem Power - This is achieved by vesting your STEEM. While it may sound complicated, once you go into the "Wallet" tab, it really is that easy. Now your actions will have far more effect.Curate - Go out and explore SteemIt, upvote the things you like.
Create - Make videos on D.Tube, make audio on D.Sound, post articles to Busy.org or SteemIt.com. The bigger the following you generate, the more likes you get, the more money you makes. Just like traditional social media except you don't have to worry about conversions for a product, you just get money for making good stuff.
When a payout comes, it comes in SP and SBD, but with options. You have the alternative choice of declining payout so that other can get more from that reward pool, or you can choose to get all your payout in SP. Great options for folks needing to pay rent still.
Why Steem Power (SP)
Like any good investor, you don't want to have to deal with the whims of newbs & crooks selling for a quick profit every-time you see a gain in your stock value. Staying on for the long-haul is VITAL to the success of a project. If you've been in crypto for any length of time, you know that after an ICO the token takes a DUMP and then take a while to recoup. Then only after some luck and some serious press coverage does it rebound, if ever it rebounds. Steem Power is the answer to that. Flippant investors simply can't play the pump & dump game with their STEEM earnings. They're vested and can't pull out for 13 weeks. This way you can still sell some Steem Power for rent money if you're working Steem like a job, without killing your reputation score and influence on the network. Steem Power also has a really cool bonus of interest. Leave your SP vested for a year and you get a 15% reward. That's 15% of the annual inflation (creation of new STEEM) is divided up between all STEEM tokens. If you have a lot, then you end up getting a lot of STEEM for vesting with the platform.Steem Backed Dollars (SBD)
This was intended to be a debt instrument for gorwth and investment purposes by the creators. It comes with several built in safety features like a 3 1/2 day wait time to convert your SBD and the same time length to create a median price feed to dictate the price, you get a fairly solid currency. That being said, it has no peg to the USD$. It's just not possible and I don't think it's a surprise to anyone. The witnesses (masternodes on other blockchains) create this pricing feed as they are voted on by SP holders, establishing them as the most trustworthy and competent in the network. This begins to exceed my understanding of debt instruments, but impresses me greatly at the system put in place. They really thought this out well and created it to be a fully functioning economy at some point in time. The system is designed to create less SBD if too much sell-off occurs, in order to reduce the amount of debt. I wish governments would do that. Interest rates for SBD throughout December 2017 & January 2018 had to drop due to SBD price soaring to $4-$16. This type of control is typical of a fiat and only responsible economic policy will maintain the value of the SBD. The witnesses have the ability to also increase interest if the price drops, making it a good, conservative investment, in my opinion.Foundation of SteemIt
SteemIt was designed upon the principle of 2 forms of communal buy-in, nobody gets a free ride. You either buy your way in, or work your way in. They understood that most people can't afford to buy their way in and you often times need more work than money in this sort of grass roots project, so they made it achievable. This wasn't strictly programming and technical work, who would create the content that would eventually be the primary driver of value? They understood that humans are very much like crabs in a bucket, going so far as to tell the story in the white paper. They understood that a down vote would assist in mitigating abuse by whales, it would just as likely lead to anyone too successful being pulled back down the the pay level of mediocre content producers. Abuse simply can't be limited in a mechanical manner. This brought us rate limiting, the most recent solution to abuse mitigation. We don't want bots liking everything by a couple authors or getting paid for liking everything, so we dilute their power for each vote. 1 vote is 100% of your power, so vote wisely, or spread less wealth around to more people, your call. Remember, your voting power emanates from your SP, so power it up! The actual vote distribution evens out to the best content producers getting paid the majority, but everyone else who produces something found to be any value still getting something.Witnesses and Block Production
The witness lineup for SteemIt is rather unique with the top 20 being voted for via Approval voting which is a system championed by Frank Atwood of the Libertarian Party of Colorado. The 21st and final witness is chosen on a rotational basis to spread the wealth and opportunity. Any witness that misses a block and hasn't produced one in the past day is kicked out of the lineup until the update and signal they're fixed. This ensure that censorship can't occur, which is a concern for SteemIt's baby brother, EOS. There has been a lot of concern that the next iteration will allow censorship in order to keep certain members in the block as witnesses permanently. I can't imagine that kind of corruption being tolerated in this community, but that is what was passed onto me. Great thing about the current mechanism is the pressure on witnesses to be honest and timely, producing a block every 3 seconds. They all synchronize by a central Network Time Protocol (NTP) Server, which gives me concern for a potential vulnerability. If that were to be attacked, the entire system could be taken down pretty easily.No Transaction Fees
While SteemIt killed transaction fees, they didn't remove fees all together. Rather than charging you to post something, change a password, or even login, they required that you first bring some monetary value to the table. Without some money in your account, you can't do anything. This can be a frustrating barrier to entry, but certainly helps in reducing spammers and malicious actors.All in all, Dan Larimer and the team that helped write the SteemIt whitepaper and design the platform are economic geniuses. The fact they aren't running a nation's economic policy is a travesty. That being said, who is to say that this isn't the precursor to an entirely new concept of nations? SteemIt may be the first virtual nation, completely independent of geographic boundaries. I'd be happy to see the day where blockchain can be accessed and interacted with from a phone just as easily as your desktop computer.
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