I've been a member of Steemit for about a month now and almost everything I've read on the site (written by it's talented members, journalists and bloggers) as well as the community interaction I've had has been amazing.
There is so much potential here and positivity from Steemit's members that I've been overwhelmed by hope and excitement as a fellow contributing member of the community.
However, upon further research I've come across a few things that concern me and as an active community member I'd really like someone from the Steemit management team to address these issues brought up and debunk any of these points if possible.
Is Steemit too good to be true?
The following points were made by Block by Block @AceOfWallStreet and were posted in an article entitled 'The Ugly Truth Behind Steemit.'
1.) The site's developer has been accused of rigging the mining process in which Steem (the main cryptocurrency) was created.
In the article, it discusses how the developer gave incorrect information that prevented miners from mining while the developer got a head start on the mining process. Eventually this process created errors in which the developer was unable to mine Steem while other miners were still able to do so. What resulted was a re-launch of Steem in which the developers maintained over 75% of the total Steem supply.
Please refer to this document:
What does this mean?
If this information is true, it means that minnows will not easily be able to become whales because of the 'centralized' nature of the Steem supply. It takes whales to boost post profits and the developer may be holding many accounts and therefore be acting as a 'pod' of whales hoarding the supply of possible Steem to spread around.
Refer to this image provided from the article:
2.) The developer has also been accused of 'making sure certain users get extravagant payouts to lure in more users (the payout is a tiny fraction when compared to how much STEEM you and your friends own)'.
What does this mean?
Everyday more people join Steemit and STEEM becomes more ‘valuable’. As a result the minority population with a majority quantity of STEEM gets richer due to the price increase.
This is alright as long as the platform has been made in a way that fairly supports contributors for their content. The question is, are there statistics that prove that the average Minnows are benefiting in a proportionate way when compared to the Whales?
The Flip Side
The author of this article then goes on to promote an alternative to Steemit called 'Yours.' It is touted as a more fair and evenly distributed network which offers the potential and functionality of Steemit but without the ethical concerns.
This makes the entire article less credible. It's one thing to bring up flaws in a company or organization, it's another thing to then promote an alternative service. This is an example of bias and takes away from the credibility of the entire article even though many of it's points may indeed have merit.
For anyone reading this article, please don't think that I'm trying to slam Steemit. I think the Steemit community is amazing and it's a wonderful opportunity in direct competition with sites like Facebook which offer extremely low value and require insane contracts which violate privacy and take ownership of it's community's content. I really like Steem, its vision, it's implementation and most importantly it's community.
Call to action: Steemit, please respond to these accusations and if statements made about the distribution of Steem is true, what are your plans moving forward to make this a more progressive movement in which everyone big or small has equal opportunity and a chance to become big like it's developers.
To my readers:
Do you feel there is any merit to these concerns, if so can we as a community bring up some of these issues (assuming they are real) and try to find constructive solutions to these problems?
We are Steemit's main asset, it's driven community of content generators. We deserve to have a say in the way it develops.
Please leave your thoughts and comments below.
Source:
'The Ugly Truth Behind Steemit' - https://decentralize.today/the-ugly-truth-behind-steemit-1a525f5e156