Hardfork 20 is just 5 hours away and is a change that is going to hopefully limit some spam, cut out some underpowered comment bots and add a few layers to the curation games. Essentially, every change that is made effects the entire ecosystem. It is kind of like releasing a swarm (flock? herd?) of butterflies and in a decentralized system populated by human decision makers with a diverse range of needs and desires, it is impossible to predict with certainty how any one change is going to ripple through and impact and influence all other aspects. Some are predictable to some degree, others come as surprises.
One thing that has some people concerned is the 'free signups' based on the new Resource Credits (RCs) and no one really seems sure how this is going to play out. These are essentially a limited supply credit that can be used for account creation and, they do not degrade from my understanding, they are a forever valid. The creation of them is decided by the witnesses which means they could release large quantities and then heavily restrict supply if they choose to. Accounts can still be made without these though, they are just paid for.
What this means is that those with large stakes are able to collect quantities of these account creating credits for their own use (I don't know if they are transferable?) and that means that the Dapps with stake will have the opportunity to scoop up credits and also take control of their own onboarding activities. This is a great thing and unties the hands of the active interfaces and platforms to market their product without having to use steemit as a middleman account creator.
This also hints at why limiting Spam through the 1.2 SP shift is a good idea as it means that if any one Dapp screws up, there is some kind of safety to stop full on Spam floods. But, it also means that the Dapps are protected also. They run on the Steem chain and are therefore limited by its capabilities too. This is why they all stopped (except for a famous one) last week during the premature forkulation.
You know what else this hints at though? Giving access to account creation through the Dapps is a reduction of responsibility of Steemit, it is a further decentralization of functions and empowers are much more niche based user experience for new users who can now ( 🔜 ) come in through the Dapps. They will never need see Steemit.com or Trending at all, much like a sole Instagram user need not see Facebook interfaces although they are connected.
We have already seen steemit.com drop below the 50% mark for posting app and this is set to continue to decline and perhaps rapidly so if onboarding takes place on the Dapps. Of course, there are some people who enjoy using Steemit.com and will hold on if for nothing more than sentimental reasons. I actually like using Steemit.com a lot because I have built habits to do so but knowing what the future holds, for how long will I continue when there are so many new ways to interact with the Steem blockchain now and coming?
I figure that the role of a decentralized community is to actually continue to decentralize and even though people like to blame Stinc for much of the negatives on the platform, as they continue to find ways to give up responsibility, those who are to blame increasingly become us, the users and the developers. This is a decentralized community, that is what it means to agree to be in one.
But, Stinc is not dead, there is still the infrastructure to maintain and upgrade and what this will likely result in is the Dapps, communities and of course the witnesses becoming somewhat of a closed off group of developers who look to improve their abilities for their customers (users) by making development changes to the blockchain. The average user is going to get increasingly further away from this decision making process, not because of a closed circle but through a dilution of power through many more users coming aboard.
Must new users coming into use any platform whether centralized or decentralized does very, very little research into how the platform itself works other than the veneer of the User Interface. How many people researched Youtube the company and how Google manages it before joining up and posting a video? How many have been on for years and still haven't bothered to look into it? Most users of Youtube most likely.
This is the same with those who sign up through Dapps as they might only be interested in using 
This is the strength of a decentralized community and the reason why not only distribution of the token is important but, onboarding is important for stabilization of token price and platform. Decentralization is a risk management approach to community building where both trust and responsibility is spread across the network without (one day) no single entity having a large influence over many others.
As I see it, this is where Steem's strength in the future will lay as it not only has a community that supports it, it has a community that supports it from very diverse points. It is a large network with many hands holding up each node and if any one node fails, there are still many hands holding on adjacent. This is potentially where 
On Steem though, the failure of a video platform gets absorbed by the community across all points and, that same community can immediately build and populate another platform like 
The more Stinc releases control of the reigns, and the more we take control, the stronger the Steem network can become and HF20 is another step to reduce responsibility and leave it up to the community to deal with the way the community develops itself for the future. These are my thoughts on it, other might think differently of course.
4 and a half hours until another batch of butterflies are released.
Taraz
[ a Steem original ]