Hardfork 20, particularly the Resource Credits system, and discussions around them made me recalibrate my expectations, believes and inner-thoughts.
First of all, it is said about Steem that it is a freemium blockchain, probably the only one functional.
But in what way is it freemium? It is freemium to the new user who joins and starts treating it as Facebook or Instagram.
It is not free for the blockchain, for its investors or the witnesses. Starting from creating the new account to every operation made on the blockchain, they all cost.
But new users are granted their share of free daily actions. The trade-off is good and necessary. Everybody else pays for these free actions, but at the same time Steem grows, userbase extends, communities can thrive.
What is everyone who's paying the price hoping for? That Steem will live a long life and the price of Steem will grow as the time goes by and the platform matures.
Can this happen if freemium is what we focus on and make it a priority to be as giving as possible?
Let's see.
Facebook is free, someone will say. Yes, but there are a few things we need to understand:
- Facebook is not a start-up, and thus its users are not early adopters; as late adopters they traded potential high rewards but at high risks, for the expectancy of a platform that never breaks and is very easy to use
- costs on centralized systems are lower than on decentralized systems, because they only have the central infrastructure to worry about, not the worldwide nodes of a blockchain
- on Facebook, users are the product, "sold" to advertisers (and other beneficiaries, as we've seen), so it is not really free, because Facebook makes money off them (and keeps all of them, obviously)
- advertisers, as well as investors, pump almost unlimited amounts of money into Facebook; and before you ask why don't we have advertisers on Steem, I answer that I think it's premature.
On the Steem blockchain, investors are the ones which determine the value of STEEM, which in term gives the value of rewards and everything related.
I like the freemium component of Steem. I believe it allows us to grow a community far larger that it would without including it.
But we have to keep in mind that all the freemium benefits come right out of the pocket of every investor in STEEM. This is called inflation. And inflation is only good when there are new investors buying in, or products and services being sold for SBD and STEEM. Otherwise we'll end up with more and more STEEM worth nothing or close to nothing.
That's why I'm cautious when I see positions taken that we should give more, more, more to new users. In my opinion, rather than making 25 shitty comments a day, they'd better make 5 awesome ones, which may even be upvoted consistently, if they are lucky.
I like the new RC system. I know there are enough who don't agree right now, but I think THIS is or will eventually be FAIR under the conditions I've explained above.
Mass adoption. I previously thought this should mean as many people as we can sign up.
I'm not so sure about it any more. But I don't know what should we focus on either.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I wouldn't like Steem to be known as merely a social media with rewards. It's so below its potential.
Investors? Going for the 100,000 investors that 
Freemium users, but with an investor mentality?
Gateway to crypto?
Your thoughts?