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Steem looked like an interesting idea, but your content lives and dies with the platform's whales, which are either insiders or a few people who believe in the

Steem looked like an interesting idea, but your content lives and dies with the platform's whales, which are either insiders or a few people who believe in the platform. If the whales don't interact with your content, you're not likely to get much revenue. You voting power -- the amount you contribute to content you interact with -- is directly tied to your steem power, so unless you put money into the platform or managed to make money and kept it in the platform, you're not going to contribute much. Similarly, as a user, contributing upvotes, comments, etc. nets you a curation reward, but this comes in trickles mostly unless you lease your steem power to vote bots. Also worth noting that the whole steem platform on the currency end of things is completely centralized, so if that matters to you, this is important to know.

mmjaa 9y ago
>whales Thus, the importance of community. We all yearn for a return to the era of community-oriented sites, built by enthusiasts and maintained by the life-force of real people, whose intentions are not commercial in nature but rather community oriented. So, I look forward to the eventual retiring of this heinous term, "whales". It is the community that matters.
- bringtheaction 9y ago
  For a community whose intentions are not commercial why would they need a crypto currency baked into the voting aspect? In other words, is it reasonable to expect STEEM to not primarily attract those with commercial intentions?
  - mmjaa 9y ago
    Communities engage in forms of exchange. If I were using this to communicate with other members, for example interested in retro computing, it'd be nice to have a way of exchanging hardware with each other, with some kind of economic exchange to fit. Its not unreasonable to give people - no matter whether their intentions are commercial or otherwise - a means of safe exchange of value, without commercialising that exchange. Or, is it?
- j0hnM1st 9y ago
  >whale and community The trouble with the current way "influence" or money is distributed in STEEM blockchain is that, 2 - 3 whale accounts has more influence and means to influence the entire community even if the entire community stands together. Though I am hopeful that this will be addressed by the EOS's community project.
synctext 9y ago
> Also worth noting that the whole steem platform on the currency end of things is completely centralized This is a central Youtube-like clone it seems. I can't scale in bandwidth and has a central governance model. Plus the coin is worthless: "The number of Steem available is set to double annually, making its supply growth exponential - a possible drag on its future value in the market" https://www.investopedia.com/news/steemit-disruptive-blockchainbased-media-community/ https://www.investopedia.com/news/steemit-disruptive-blockch... "IPFS is cool, but there is no magic. Someone needs to seed the files, and your browser cannot permanently store huge files (local storage is limited to 50MB on most browsers), so seeding through the app directly is not possible as of today. " (https://steemit.com/video/@heimindanger/introducing-dtube-a-decentralized-video-platform-using-steem-and-ipfs https://steemit.com/video/@heimindanger/introducing-dtube-a-... thnx ForkLDing). Disclaimer: working for 13 years on an academically-pure Bittorrent-based decentralised solution with my university lab.
- rebuilder 9y ago
  In this instance, heavy inflation might actually be a plus for STEEM. This is because it doesn't appear to be intended as a store of value, but as an influence market. As far as I can tell - and I'm sure there's a lot I've misunderstood - STEEM is essentially a market for on-line influence. You gain STEEM for upvotes etc. and the more STEEM tokens you have (STEEM Power), the more influence you have in terms of who gets STEEM tokens. Now, this sounds kind of pyramid-y to begin with, but without significant inflation, such a system would seem doomed to form an oligopoly of a few users who, by virtue of their "STEEM Power" would gain an ever-increasing share of the tokens minted, pushing everyone else out and probably killing the whole ecosystem. Of course, that may still happen even with inflation.
  - truthforce 9y ago
    It is proof of mind, and there are no miners anymore. By posting and someone upvoting you they are allocating the rewards that the steem witnesses generate. Witnesses all run servers and are chosen by democratic votes from all steem users to represent steem. The list of current witnesses who have power changes from time to time. Someone who was in power last month might not be in power for a few months as it changes between witnesses, giving an actual chance of getting rid of bad actors, whereas in proof of work mining there is 0% chance of taking out a bad actor as the miner owns their equipment and there is nothing you can do. There is a lot more you need to read and that is ok, you barely have any understanding of the fundamentals. People are able to allocate their steempower to other users. If large accounts are misbehaving, small and medium sized accounts band together to make it stop, it is mutually assured destruction. Anyone can band together with anyone else and allocate power from their account to someone else. The super majority of people are good natured and want free speech and band together to combat against abusive/bad actors, of which there is only a handful on steemit and there is no issue at all
kaolti 9y ago
Alternatively, you can regularly post content you are passionate about and over time build a community of people who are genuinely interested in what you have to say and will gladly support you.

mmjaa 9y ago

>whales Thus, the importance of community. We all yearn for a return to the era of community-oriented sites, built by enthusiasts and maintained by the life-force of real people, whose intentions are not commercial in nature but rather community oriented. So, I look forward to the eventual retiring of this heinous term, "whales". It is the community that matters.

bringtheaction 9y ago
For a community whose intentions are not commercial why would they need a crypto currency baked into the voting aspect? In other words, is it reasonable to expect STEEM to not primarily attract those with commercial intentions?
- mmjaa 9y ago
  Communities engage in forms of exchange. If I were using this to communicate with other members, for example interested in retro computing, it'd be nice to have a way of exchanging hardware with each other, with some kind of economic exchange to fit. Its not unreasonable to give people - no matter whether their intentions are commercial or otherwise - a means of safe exchange of value, without commercialising that exchange. Or, is it?
j0hnM1st 9y ago
>whale and community The trouble with the current way "influence" or money is distributed in STEEM blockchain is that, 2 - 3 whale accounts has more influence and means to influence the entire community even if the entire community stands together. Though I am hopeful that this will be addressed by the EOS's community project.

synctext 9y ago

> Also worth noting that the whole steem platform on the currency end of things is completely centralized This is a central Youtube-like clone it seems. I can't scale in bandwidth and has a central governance model. Plus the coin is worthless: "The number of Steem available is set to double annually, making its supply growth exponential - a possible drag on its future value in the market" https://www.investopedia.com/news/steemit-disruptive-blockchainbased-media-community/ https://www.investopedia.com/news/steemit-disruptive-blockch... "IPFS is cool, but there is no magic. Someone needs to seed the files, and your browser cannot permanently store huge files (local storage is limited to 50MB on most browsers), so seeding through the app directly is not possible as of today. " (https://steemit.com/video/@heimindanger/introducing-dtube-a-decentralized-video-platform-using-steem-and-ipfs https://steemit.com/video/@heimindanger/introducing-dtube-a-... thnx ForkLDing). Disclaimer: working for 13 years on an academically-pure Bittorrent-based decentralised solution with my university lab.

rebuilder 9y ago
In this instance, heavy inflation might actually be a plus for STEEM. This is because it doesn't appear to be intended as a store of value, but as an influence market. As far as I can tell - and I'm sure there's a lot I've misunderstood - STEEM is essentially a market for on-line influence. You gain STEEM for upvotes etc. and the more STEEM tokens you have (STEEM Power), the more influence you have in terms of who gets STEEM tokens. Now, this sounds kind of pyramid-y to begin with, but without significant inflation, such a system would seem doomed to form an oligopoly of a few users who, by virtue of their "STEEM Power" would gain an ever-increasing share of the tokens minted, pushing everyone else out and probably killing the whole ecosystem. Of course, that may still happen even with inflation.
- truthforce 9y ago
  It is proof of mind, and there are no miners anymore. By posting and someone upvoting you they are allocating the rewards that the steem witnesses generate. Witnesses all run servers and are chosen by democratic votes from all steem users to represent steem. The list of current witnesses who have power changes from time to time. Someone who was in power last month might not be in power for a few months as it changes between witnesses, giving an actual chance of getting rid of bad actors, whereas in proof of work mining there is 0% chance of taking out a bad actor as the miner owns their equipment and there is nothing you can do. There is a lot more you need to read and that is ok, you barely have any understanding of the fundamentals. People are able to allocate their steempower to other users. If large accounts are misbehaving, small and medium sized accounts band together to make it stop, it is mutually assured destruction. Anyone can band together with anyone else and allocate power from their account to someone else. The super majority of people are good natured and want free speech and band together to combat against abusive/bad actors, of which there is only a handful on steemit and there is no issue at all

kaolti 9y ago

Alternatively, you can regularly post content you are passionate about and over time build a community of people who are genuinely interested in what you have to say and will gladly support you.