Comparing Steem with Whaleshares
A word of caution: read this whole post before coming to a conclusion! This post ends with "an unexpected twist"! ;-)
This post is part 1 (of 1?, or more? in total) of me comparing Steem to Whaleshares (and similar platforms). Posting this is an experiment for me personally, and I'll share its content on both, because, it being a comparison, it's relevant to both.
Whaleshares, yet another Steem clone?
Recently, a few people invited me to register for an account at https://whaleshares.io; a Steem-like platform I knew nothing about at first, and a little more, but surely not all there is to know about, right now. Developing and running 
One of the people I talked to about WhaleShares.io in person, is 
I even wrote (my first? and last?) "ShitPost" ;-) , which got me absolutely nothing in terms of "rewards" ;-) , which brought back the same feelings of utter confusion I had when joining Steemit almost 1 year ago and I almost decided to leave Whaleshares for what it is, never to return to it...
But then...
But then... I somehow got caught up in an interesting conversation on the WhaleShares Discord to talk about its platform, its differences and similarities with Steem. And while there always are the typical "Fan Boys & Girls" that frown upon any form of platform critisism (I think I was initially seen even as "an enemy" being a strong Steem Supporter & Dev), while I kept asking questions and expressing some constructive criticism, especially
About a few platform differences
A few platform differences as compared to Steem, at least for now, that were explained to me regarding Whaleshares.io, are - summarized - as follows:
no vests (SP / Whalestake) delegation mechanism
As I've been told, in an effort to avoid "Promotional Services" (a.k.a. "bid bots") on Whaleshares.io, the concept of Vests Delegation is absent. It's reasoned that, without such delegations, it would be highly unlikely that such services would emerge on WhaleShares.io, which is apparently seen as "a good effect", as these type of services appear to be held responsible for over-the-top promoted content that makes the "Trending Feed" completely unusable.exponentially decayed vested powerdown
While it is possible, as with Steem, to set a 13-week powerdown schedule, at the moment only a small fraction of your "vested whalestake" can be converted into liquid via a powerdown. The available powerdown percentage is directly connected to the exponentially decayed whaleshares inflation mechanism, as is explained in the following picture.
For example beginning Aug 15, 2019, only 50% of an account's "whalestake" can be powered-down, meaning that if an active "WhaleSharian" would decide to build up its Whaleshares account from now to then, it will take a full year (as of today) to be able to convert 50% of the Aug 15, 2019 total into liquid WLS.
- (currently) no 50/50% author rewards, only 100% power-up
To my surprise I found out it's (currently?) impossible to set 50/50% author rewards on your posts on Whaleshares. You can only decline rewards, or choose a 100% whalestake powerup. As it was explained to me, the Whaleshare team wants accounts to focus on individual growth (same reasoning as with no vested delegations, I guess?) and gain influence over time, in an effort to circumvent too much focus on "money". Long-term account & platform engagement is focused on heavily, instead.
And another aspect, to add to this, is that it's apparently planned for Oct. 8, 2018 to enlist the WLS token as tradable on bitshares.org (which is strongly connected to whaleshares.io). Being able to trade a WLS token for something else, is of course essential to define "monetary value" to both vested "whalestake" and the liquid WLS token. Without the ability to trade, owning (for example) 1,000 Whalestake is identical to owning 1,000 "Flippos" (as many Dutch people will understand immediately).
Some causal reasoning regarding the forementioned platform differences
When Steem was rolled-out initially, early 2016, both its concept and platform mechanisms were revolutionary: nothing like Steem was ever done before, and you can think whatever you want to about its problems and shortcomings, but the concept of Steem is nothing short than brilliant. When Steem began, it had zero competitors: surely, a boatload of "social media" and "blogging platforms" existed, as did quite some brand new crypto concepts, but being able to spend some time, blog, get "liked" (upvoted) with stake-based token redistributed inflation ("the rewards pool"), and then being able to trade / convert those "rewards" for - for example - BTC, to which a real-world financial gateway exists, meant being able to enter the world of crypto without pre-owning capital and/or technical skills to mine it. The only thing needed to "earn" crypto, was to share your content and engage with others (curators) owning some already. The world has never seen anything like it, and therefore Steem is nothing short than a World Phenomenon. Not having any competitors at the time made joining Steem a "no brainer" for many.
At the same time, crypto was booming & hot. Both BTC and alts were all "mooning" and "FOMO" & HODL" was the only "strategy" needed to become wealthy from nowhere in a matter of months. ICOs were seen everywhere, and initiating and investing in them was done all around by many. These were ideal circumstances for Steem as well to thrive on.
But since then, fast forward ~ 2 years later, beginning early 2018, the entire crypto sphere entered a "bear market": some "crypto scams" were identified, high transaction costs, slow transaction rates, environmental challenges regrding BTC became clear, many speculative investors learned they "bought the (local) top" in December 2017, and as a consequence many people learned it's not that easy anymore to "get rich quickly" using crypto.
In short: things have changed.
On Steem, many people have joined thus far, but also many have left the platform (at least for now). Why they left, has numerous reasons. Some may feel it's "not fair" a few select Steem Prominents, and Steemit Inc as well, own so much Steem / SP, while the majority of accounts does not. The existence of "spam bots", "bid bots", flag wars" and "self-voting reward pool abuse" have caused an environment that's not liked by some. For newcomers, spending a lot of time on post writing, only then to find out the "author rewards" for it are worth nothing to pennies, comes as a nasty surprise and/or set-back after finally being able to create a new account and seeing others getting rewarded into the hundreds or even thousands of USD.
What made stay on Steem, initially? In short: SP delegations to communities
To date, I have invested zero fiat into crypto, and I've also not cashed-out any. When I joined Steem in october 2017, I too got rewarded close to nothing initially. And as I was about to "give up", I wrote my 7th post A Conceptual Guide to Make it Big on Steemit, which got rewarded $136,96 at the time as compared to $0.25 on my (carefully written!) intro post 2 weeks before it.
With 321 upvotes (to date) that post of mine was noticed by both "self-owned SP Whales", some "dolphins & orcas", as by 
I was "embraced" by the
Coming from Europe, being highly educated, living in a "high-cost-for-life" environment, being able to freely work at many employers for a decent salary, and not pre-owning crypto, you can well ask yourself if without the presence of
Personally, I'm a firm believer that delegations to communities such as 
Yes, I also see quite some downsides to delegation mechanisms, of which over-the-top promoted posts all the way to trending and highly inflated "rep scores" are examples of, but the upsides outweigh the downsides, as I've argued about at least.
Not having a delegation mechanism on Whaleshares.io - therefore - is something that intrigues me.
Liquidity vs Vesting
In those early Steemian months (Q4-2017), under the wings / umbrella of Utopian, I befriended quite some people I met in the Utopian community, and I kept contributing (mostly) with Open Source contributions on Steem. I (slowly) grew my SP holdings, but then I got lucky: SBD mooned to ~ $17.- per SBD. And I was lucky enough to having some of those (shout-out to 
I could not have made those trades without the 50/50 rewards mechanism. They were crucial, for me at least. The combination of
Not having these abilities on Whaleshares.io makes it highly doubtable, so I reason, that people will abandon Steem for Whaleshares. Being acitve on both platforms remains an option. But, I argue, if Steem would be gone, and if the only rewards option for Whaleshares.io would remain a 100% powerup, then I highly doubt that people would keep engaging on Whaleshares alone. Or in other words: currently Whaleshares needs to co-exist with Steem, but not the other way around. I'd be curious to find out how many Whaleshares.io users are not active on Steem...
100% Power-up only, a realistic option for WLS investors?
Let's say you're a crypto whale, owning a few million in crypto. Would you now buy a boatload of WLS starting October, 8, 2018, and power it all up to whalestake? Because as mentioned, you'd need a full year from then to be able to power down 50% of that Whalestake. That, to me, seems to be a "risky opportunity". Sure, WLS price could go up. But it could also go down. Its price action is assumed to be mostly specuative. Therefore I suspect - and of course I can be wrong on this - that WLS buying volume would be relatively low if and when the 50/50 author rewards and current power-down schedule remain the same on Whaleshares!
100% Power-up only, for 2nd World Country users (e.g. from Venzuela)
Now, suppose you're 
For her (and I haven't checked / am not sure if she uses Steem for that even) the 50/50 author rewards on Steem combined with DLive receiving SP delegations, Steem might be a "lifesaver". And leaving Steem for Whaleshares.io most certainly doesn't seem her prio 1 option right now.
Not having such an option on Whaleshares.io, seems like a missed opportunity.
Is Whaleshares.io doomed to fail? No! :-) It has an EXCELLENT chance to grow!
My answer to the question whether Whaleshares.io is doomed to fail... might surprise you at this point: I think Whaleshares.io has an excellent chance to grow big and successful using the current strategic choices such as "no delegations", "limited power-downs" and "100% power-up only"!
Huh
The reason why I think whaleshares.io has an excellent chance to grow using the strategic choices its team members have made for now, is that it is able to CO-EXIST WITH STEEM. Every aspect I mentioned regarding Steem's success factors that kept me, and others, onboard, are in fact lacking on Whaleshares.io, but the fact remains that zero users need to choose one platform over the other. You could well do both!
You could even post the same post content on both platforms (provided it's meaningful to do so, and because for example this post compares the two, this post can indeed be published on both). But if you won't do that, and choose to be original on both, then you could "get liquid" via Steem, and "vest" at the same time on Whaleshares. You can engage with different people in a different way on Steem, regarding more or less the same topics on Whaleshares.
So, because Steem exists and you're actively engaging there anyway, you might as well also choose to do so on Whaleshares. When you're not even close to being a whale on Steem, you might grow to be one if you begin to participate now on Whaleshares. And while "being a Whale" on Whaleshares might never lead to a serious holding in terms of monetary value, at some point it might be exactly that indeed...
What the Whaleshares Team is doing very, very smart, is "flying along" under the wings of Steem. It's giving an opportunity to mostly planktons and minnows on Steem, to "spread their risk" without sacrificing much or anything at all.
Steem, as a platform, benefits as well!
And now comes an even more interesting prediction I'll make right here and now: Steem will benefit from Whaleshare's existence as well! I hereby predict that Steem user retention rates will increase, partly because Whaleshares exists. Whaleshares is giving new Steem users, that also become active at Whaleshares, a chance to one day become a dolphin or orca on both. Because of Whaleshares, Steem will remain the primary source of income to new users, and Whaleshares will make sure they remain active on both platforms.