I see all bad signs for Steemit. First, I see the Steem price getting hammered everyday. There are hardly days the Steem price goes up. Secondly, when I have a look at the new posts, I don't see as many posts as there used to be a month or 2 ago. So I am wondering whether Steemit is dying a slow death ?
The problems of Steemit are very clear. First of all, as I am mentioning from the first day I came here, the whales have WAY TOO MUCH POWER here. They are the Gods of Steemit that determine which posts get hugely rewarded. This is really problematic because it kills the spirit of free markets. This is exactly what the Steemit white paper warned for. There is a literal statement that when people get the feeling that things here are not being fair, they will leave the platform.
Secondly, the rewards are too assymetric. Those that are lucky to get rewarded by the whales can get 1000s of $. The others get rewarded nothing or a very small amount. It is my opinion that it would be much better to make the gap in reward smaller than is now the case. Steemit is almost like playing the lottery which makes people frustrated and let them leave the platform.
Thirdly, I noticed whales upvoting people they know ... friends, girlfriends, ... In the beginning I didn't see this but when I started to look on youtube I could derive from some youtube comments that some girls that got rewarded with 5.000-10.000 $ for 1 post, actually knew the whale that upvoted her. Remember ... the unfairness principle. The whales might think this is fair but many people will regard this as unfair.
I don't want to kick the shins of the people of Steemit. I really wish Steemit become as big as Facebook. But I can not keep pretending to be blind and behave like a Steemit prostitute that only post lovely things about Steemit just in the hope to get money for it. Steemit has a HUGE flaw. The flaw Steemit has is the whole whale structures. Some called it communism, others captalism of friends ... no matter how you call it, but the extreme power that whales have here, will kill Steemit. Very soon competitors will come. Synereo has his competitor, Bitcoin's yoursnetwork is a competitor, ... and who knows which other competitors that will arise. If these competitors come with a more honest scheme, they will send Steemit to the land of the forgotten. OR ... Steemit thinks about how they can make the platform more honest.
I already warned for this in july, repeated myself in august and now in september I repeat myself. My warnings can be ignored but I believe that if these warnings are not dealt with, future looks very bad and dark for steemit.