I hope you don't mind me saying, but I'm secretly happy to catch a post of yours that isn't about Steem in one way or another. - @Minismallholding
This was a comment left on my last post and, I don't mind at all. The reason I write a lot about Steem these days is that it is a very large part of my informational life and, a large part of my learning and future direction. At this point, it is important enough for me to spend my time writing about it and hopefully, my writing helps others develop their own position.
Last night I was tuning into the State of Steem conversations organised and moderated by 
While many topics came up, one of the things that is evident is that applications need to start finding their own funding, rather than relying on survival through the inflation pool. This is easier said than done of course as the blockchain industry is in a bit of a weird place for investors as a lot of the development is going to look like a lot of other development, just on a blockchain. Youtube, blockchained. Facebook, blockchained. Twitter, blockchained. This might hold back funding in some cases.
However, projects are going to have to increasingly find ways to fund development without relying on delegation or community backing and the more that arrive, the more true this is. It is a difficult problem because while investors are looking for mass adoption, the cryptosphere is tiny. For example, people look to advertising as a way to finance Steemit but, how much ad revenue do 15,000 users in total create?
The projects suitable for investment have to be compelling enough to appeal to investors willing to wait for the scene to mature somewhat significantly, at least for the large scale projects. This means that they have to appeal to mainstream users but for the most part, the projects are inward facing looking to leverage the community for their earning, a very small community with limited and volatile value streams. I am part of the problem of course.
My content is lately largely Steem orientated because that is where my head is and where my current focus for the future lays, both personally and from a business perspective. It is mostly an inward facing discussion with the Steem community about various Steem related topics and ideas and if someone was to come across it from the outside, it would be senseless. Does this make it not valuable?
Not at all.
It is valuable because it is part of the development process that adds to the conversation of Steem growth but it is going to hopefully become increasingly and hopefully totally irrelevant in the future of Steem. Part of my imagining of SMTs for example is to be able to separate communities and content by niche interest areas to a greater degree and through the application onboarding, Steem would barely be known by most users.
In my head, Steem would be a fantastic inflation investment pool that would provide the funding and capabilities like Resource Credits to empower the decentralized SMTs. This would make Steem holders vital in the success of SMTs and, SMTs vital for the success of Steem through the apps, users and content they deliver. Having a core of invested users developing and stabilizing the blockchain while the decentralized apps went out and were the face of Steem, without ever mentioning Steem.
What this would mean is that the apps and their SMT would be independent entities that find their own funding but they leverage the Steem infrastructure and staked users to support their growth. The apps shouldn't be focusing on selling Steem as that will be just a part of the process, they should be selling themselves. Stand alone products that are engaging enough to attract external interest and investment but, powered by Steem, much like a Wordpress created site sells whatever it is geared to sell, not Wordpress.
But if they can stand alone, why use Steem?
Because there will be one community of many communities under the umbrella of a large Community. Steem would be a network of decentalized projects and people all connected to each other and, all able to compound, leverage, traverse and cooperate in a host of varied ways and, will still have the benefit of the Steem core investors to help stabilize, protect and empower them in various ways. In that kind of ecosystem it means that a community that fails is never a complete failure, and risk can be spread and loss absorbed more readily. Less risk should mean, more risk taking activities.
I have been talking of aligning incentives and building a common narrative for Steem which means bringing together investors, developers, contributors and consumers into some rough form of cohesive movement in some general direction. An opt-in process where the benefits of cooperation outweigh the benefits of disassociation. Having Steem as the investment driver of decentralized applications where there is incentive to earn on investment passively and increase value through supporting communities is what would likely drive that narrative development.
What it does is align people's future position to their actions now and puts us all in different position but, in the same boat. The fastest way to make money on Steem for a large account isn't through the inflation pool, it is through driving the value of Steem skyward, and that requires the developers to create for the contributors and the consumers, not for them to find creative ways to get Steem from the pool.
This means that we should be less concerned with earning from and increasing the value of the inflation pool and more concerned with developing valuable applications that draw in users, and therefore investment opportunities too. In this way, the value of the inflation pool and therefore Steem takes care of itself through demand and usage.
Valuable communities aren't going to be the ones who have access to the inflation pool, they will be the ones who have access to people, products, businesses and an increasing group of investors wanting in on this whole blockchain thing. In time, the goal is to have as much everyday stuff being developed as it always has except, blockchained. And that being, business as usual for investors and company alike.
There was talk last night of Steem needing more business-minded people thinking about creating business for Steem yet many people think this is maximizing the inflation pool. That is not the business we are directly in, I think. Price will become a symptom of creating businesses on Steem, attracting investment and building use cases compelling enough for a large number of people to make a switch to an ecosystem where they are partners in the process at the levels they choose.
Tokenized communities who are valuable for being people with hopes, dreams, skills, ideas and talents - not products to be sold by slave traders to the conglomerates.
Yep, more inward facing content.
Taraz
[ a Steem original ]