What does the future hold for Steem? We will discuss 6 major things that will happen to Steem soon and how they will affect us all.
1. Easier account creation
According to , the upcoming hard fork will reduce the account creation fee and possible remove the manual verification process.
Steemit Inc may no longer have to manually moderate the account creation. This change should both streamline and speed up the account creation process.
2. A boom in the number of users
By removing the manual account verification process currently in place, Steem account creation will be quicker allowing lots of people to join Steem.
If this were to happen then it will mean that we could be back to the days of automatic and instant account creation when you could create Steem accounts from Facebook or Reddit!
3. Steem tokens will go down
According to the algorithm behind the creation of Steem tokens, the number of Steem tokens created each year will go down. Yes this means that soon there will be less Steem available for everyone - despite the increase in users.
Just like how the amount of Bitcoins generated every 10 minutes when a new block is created is set to reduces every four years until all Bitcoins are mined(called halving), so does the number of Steem tokens mined each year decrease.
Here is the table as generated by in the report on Steem tokens.
| Year | Supply | Inflation | New Supply |
|------|-------------|-----------|------------|
| 2016 | 250,000,000 | 9.50% | 23,750,000 |
| 2017 | 273,750,000 | 9.08% | 24,854,398 |
| 2018 | 298,604,398 | 8.66% | 25,854,554 |
| 2019 | 324,458,952 | 8.24% | 26,727,942 |
| 2020 | 351,186,894 | 7.82% | 27,452,027 |
| 2021 | 378,638,921 | 7.40% | 28,004,740 |
| 2022 | 406,643,661 | 6.98% | 28,364,989 |
| 2023 | 435,008,650 | 6.55% | 28,513,181 |
| 2024 | 463,521,832 | 6.13% | 28,431,762 |
| 2025 | 491,953,593 | 5.71% | 28,105,742 |
| 2026 | 520,059,335 | 5.29% | 27,523,204 |
| 2027 | 547,582,539 | 4.87% | 26,675,768 |
| 2028 | 574,258,308 | 4.45% | 25,558,997 |
| 2029 | 599,817,304 | 4.03% | 24,172,733 |
| 2030 | 623,990,038 | 3.61% | 22,521,348 |
| 2031 | 646,511,386 | 3.19% | 20,613,886 |
| 2032 | 667,125,272 | 2.77% | 18,464,106 |
| 2033 | 685,589,378 | 2.35% | 16,090,399 |
| 2034 | 701,679,777 | 1.93% | 13,515,587 |
| 2035 | 715,195,364 | 1.51% | 10,766,608 |
| 2036 | 725,961,973 | 1.08% | 7,874,074 |
| 2037 | 733,836,047 | 0.95% | 6,971,442 |
| 2038 | 740,807,489 | 0.95% | 7,037,671 |
| 2039 | 747,845,160 | 0.95% | 7,104,529 |
| 2040 | 754,949,689 | 0.95% | 7,172,022 |
| 2041 | 762,121,711 | 0.95% | 7,240,156 |
| 2042 | 769,361,868 | 0.95% | 7,308,938 |
| 2043 | 776,670,805 | 0.95% | 7,378,373 |
| 2044 | 784,049,178 | 0.95% | 7,448,467 |
| 2045 | 791,497,645 | 0.95% | 7,519,228 |
4. Less earnings on Steem
There are two reasons why this will happen;
- With the decrease in Steem tokens, there would be less to amount to users for upvotes received. This will mean that future earning for posts on Steemit will go down - unless you get more upvotes than you are currently getting.
- Then again, with many more users, there would be more content and it readers will have more posts to read and be more frugal about which post to upvote.
5. Steem price will explode
The explosion in the number of Steemian due to instant account creation and the increasing scarcity of Steem tokens will cause Steem tokens to appreciate in value.
As a Steemians, perhaps this is the right time to buy up as much Steem tokens as you can afford. Currently the price of Steem is down; this is a good time to buy Steem.
6. More Steem clients
As at now there are a few Steem clients such as Steemit, Busy, eSteem, Chainbb, Dtube and DSound. In the future there would be more clients built by developers and possibly corporate entities.
Users will have the flexibility of choosing from a variety of clients to blog from as well as having special purpose clients such as blogs, social medias, forums and file sharing sites.
What should you do about these facts?
Perhaps buy as much Steem as possible, particularly when the price is down. You can also blog more, to gain followers and build your reputation.