First Post After HF20 - Some Initial Thoughts

Hello Steemians! HF20 is officially completed! However, many of you probably was affected by the negative Resource Credits (RC) issue, which prevented you from performing any action on Steem. That has been resolved since last night (Singapore time) and I am starting to see new posts on my feed. This is my first post after HF20 and it will be a quick one written via Hive account@partiko.

Some Initial Thoughts

One of the key changes after HF20 is the implementation of RC. After the hard fork, every transaction made on Steem blockchain requires certain amount of RC. Post HF20, the platform calculated our current RC based on our past activities, therefore most of us active Steemians would have negative RC to begin with. This had been fixed by setting all our RC to zero and allow it to replenish over time. Similar to voting power, RC replenishes at 20% per day.

You can check your current RC at steemd.com. Simply head over to https://steemd.com/@yourusername and you will be able to see your current RC.

Good Thing About RC

With RC, Steem platform had firmly established it's positioning as a freemium platform. Why? Because the maximum RC you can have is calculated based on your Steem Power. The more SP you have, the higher your maximum RC. In my opinion, this will incentivize powering up to SP and purchasing of STEEM. As a result, this will inevitably provide more support for STEEM price and form a stronger correlation between the amount of transactions on the platform and STEEM price.

In addition, since there is a now an apparent cost to every comment and votes, this will probably reduce the number of spammy bots. Which I believe is a good thing.

Things to Watch Out For

Apps that are integrated to the Steem platform will need to think and plan for the UI/UX. One other key change from HF20 is that accounts creation will be easier moving forward. I expect that apps like Hive account@partiko, Hive account@steemhunt and etc will start building their own sign up process. While this is good for the platform as a whole, the developers will need to make it very clear to new users that every interaction they make costs them RC. To further complicate matters, RC requirements are dynamic and calculated based on current utilization of the blockchain. Hence, it will be nice to constantly show users their current RC bar so that they know if they will be able to make a transaction. I think users will hate it when they have written a 1000 words comment to later find that they have ran out of RC to post it. In addition, we have to balance usability and RC consumption so that we do not turn new users away because they are unable to interact with the platform meaningfully.

Bullish of This Change

Overall, I am bullish of this change. I think it is beneficial to Steem platform in the long run. The next feature I absolutely look forward to will be an easy fiat to STEEM exchange service. With SP rising in importance, we should make it easier for users to purchase STEEM. Since Steem is positioning itself as a freemium platform, there should really be a fiat to STEEM purchasing function during sign ups. Thanks for reading and do share your thoughts on HF20!