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> 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'

> 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
- synctext 9y ago
  > Now, this sounds kind of pyramid-y Unlimited money creation is never sustainable, history shows. An online attention coin can't change economics. The future of television probably is not build on a high inflation economy or destructive hyperinflation. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=high+inflation+~economy https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=high+inflation+~economy
  - DennisP 9y ago
    It sounds like they're not trying to create general-purpose money. They've made a token to track influence. They use inflation so old stored influence loses half its value every year. You can't rest on your laurels, if you want influence you have to have provided value recently.
    - truthforce 9y ago
      You are completely wrong, and the above people, about steem doubling every year for the total amount, it only increases by something like less than 10% per year.You or someone above you linked an article from 2016 that has very outdated information. I figured people here might actually do any amount of research instead of just saying vague statements like "resting on your laurels". You have no idea what you are commenting on because it is 2 year old information, but you are acting like an expert. Pathetic.
    - erikig 9y ago
      I’ve been a fan of half-life based ratings/reviews because they allow improvement by increasing the weight of recent input - this feels somewhat similar.
- mihaifm 9y ago
  Just curious...how do they implement inflation? Do they just double everyone's wallet every 2 years, or do they introduce the new coins through mining?
  - Kiro 9y ago
    It's mining but most of the mining rewards are distributed to content creators and only 1 out of 20 blocks are going to the actual miner while 19 go to the witnesses (Delegated Proof of Stake).
- osteele 9y ago
  It's interesting to compare this with HN karma. Karma is similarly inflationary, for the same reason: HN would incentivize a very different kind of dialogue if you only gained karma that someone else lost. The difference of course is that there's not a market that I know of for buying into or cashing out of karma, although it's easy to imagine how this could emerge.
  - otoburb 9y ago
    Karma is inflationary, but not in the same monetary sense because karma-as-a-signalling mechanism is more valuable precisely because they cannot be traded between accounts. I guess using the popular blockchain buzzwords of the day we should be calling karma a type of "proof of valuable comment history".
mailshanx 9y ago
Is there a link to your project?
- synctext 9y ago
  https://github.com/Tribler/tribler/wiki https://github.com/Tribler/tribler/wiki "Tribler: an attack-resilient micro-economy for media", first code April 2005
  - indescions_2018 9y ago
    Think there would be substantial interest in that "Blockchain Engineering" Masters program if you put it online ;)
    - synctext 9y ago
      Most material is covered in the most recent Stanford talk listed here: https://github.com/Tribler/tribler/issues/3472 https://github.com/Tribler/tribler/issues/3472 The following Github issues all contain the detailed class project descriptions, as first item. Engineering projects are creating a storagecoin, fully self-replicating bots, self-sovereign identity. All for 4-5 engineers to do in 10 weeks. Last post is the final project report. https://github.com/Tribler/tribler/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen+label%3A%22MSc+course+work%22 https://github.com/Tribler/tribler/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3A... Key lesson of "Blockchain Engineering" class: blockchain is 1% hashing/crypto and 99% Engineering. (thank you for clicking around on our website!)
  - igorkraw 9y ago
    Very neat project. Since you are one of the contributors, I'd like to ask a philosophical question: The wiki has this quote (emphasis mine) >Tribler is a Bittorrent-compatible alternative to Youtube. It is designed to protect your privacy, build a web-of-trust, be attack-resilient, and reward content creators directly. We are building a micro-economy without banks, without advertisers, and without any government I see this sentiment in almost all blockchain/crypto circles, including a lot of government funded research groups. 1.) How does that get unified in the mind of contributors? How does working to abolish the very thing that enables you to do your research without having to make bank doing it 2.) It seem to me that in general people want government. See Thomas Hobbes et.al. for studies in academia, or whichever region descended into anarchy most recently. Whenever things are "improving" you see government emerging. Why is so much rhetoric directed against government, when really what everyone is talking about is abusive government?( Which is a much messier problem to even define, but seem to me to be ultimately the correct problem people are trying to solve. That might be be done through building decentralized government -I think so -, but there are cases where centralization makes sense.)
jestemkioskiem 9y ago
The coin is far from worthless - the way Steem's blockchain is structured (DPOS) makes liquid steem constantly disappear from the market, since a vast majority of users that actually generate a significant amount of steem invest in their account - freezing their Steem in the process (effectively removing the coins from the market). Also, I don't think I need to mention the fact that Steem is not a coin for trading (even though it has 3 sec transactions and literally 0 transaction fees thanks, again, to DPOS), so the big initial inflation that will slow down by a big margin every year is potentially good for the coin.
heimindanger 9y ago
The STEEM blockchain is not centralized, and the governance is done through voting witnesses (people running the steem source code). There are hundreds of people running it => https://steemit.com/~witnesses https://steemit.com/~witnesses Also the supply is not set to double every year, this source is completly outdated. This model was changed more than a year ago. Current inflation rate is 9.5% per year, reducing by 0.5% per year until it reaches 1% per year (I believe) The coin isn't worthless at all... It's publicly traded at around 3$ today on many exchanges. Lastly the quote about IPFS is mine, and I actually believe we will be able to make people seed the video they are currently watching through our embed player soon, thanks to the progress of js-ipfs.
sneak 9y ago
FWIW the high inflation in Steem was forked out well over a year ago. Its inflation rate now approximately matches that of bitcoin.

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
synctext 9y ago
> Now, this sounds kind of pyramid-y Unlimited money creation is never sustainable, history shows. An online attention coin can't change economics. The future of television probably is not build on a high inflation economy or destructive hyperinflation. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=high+inflation+~economy https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=high+inflation+~economy
- DennisP 9y ago
  It sounds like they're not trying to create general-purpose money. They've made a token to track influence. They use inflation so old stored influence loses half its value every year. You can't rest on your laurels, if you want influence you have to have provided value recently.
  - truthforce 9y ago
    You are completely wrong, and the above people, about steem doubling every year for the total amount, it only increases by something like less than 10% per year.You or someone above you linked an article from 2016 that has very outdated information. I figured people here might actually do any amount of research instead of just saying vague statements like "resting on your laurels". You have no idea what you are commenting on because it is 2 year old information, but you are acting like an expert. Pathetic.
  - erikig 9y ago
    I’ve been a fan of half-life based ratings/reviews because they allow improvement by increasing the weight of recent input - this feels somewhat similar.
mihaifm 9y ago
Just curious...how do they implement inflation? Do they just double everyone's wallet every 2 years, or do they introduce the new coins through mining?
- Kiro 9y ago
  It's mining but most of the mining rewards are distributed to content creators and only 1 out of 20 blocks are going to the actual miner while 19 go to the witnesses (Delegated Proof of Stake).
osteele 9y ago
It's interesting to compare this with HN karma. Karma is similarly inflationary, for the same reason: HN would incentivize a very different kind of dialogue if you only gained karma that someone else lost. The difference of course is that there's not a market that I know of for buying into or cashing out of karma, although it's easy to imagine how this could emerge.
- otoburb 9y ago
  Karma is inflationary, but not in the same monetary sense because karma-as-a-signalling mechanism is more valuable precisely because they cannot be traded between accounts. I guess using the popular blockchain buzzwords of the day we should be calling karma a type of "proof of valuable comment history".

mailshanx 9y ago

Is there a link to your project?

synctext 9y ago
https://github.com/Tribler/tribler/wiki https://github.com/Tribler/tribler/wiki "Tribler: an attack-resilient micro-economy for media", first code April 2005
- indescions_2018 9y ago
  Think there would be substantial interest in that "Blockchain Engineering" Masters program if you put it online ;)
  - synctext 9y ago
    Most material is covered in the most recent Stanford talk listed here: https://github.com/Tribler/tribler/issues/3472 https://github.com/Tribler/tribler/issues/3472 The following Github issues all contain the detailed class project descriptions, as first item. Engineering projects are creating a storagecoin, fully self-replicating bots, self-sovereign identity. All for 4-5 engineers to do in 10 weeks. Last post is the final project report. https://github.com/Tribler/tribler/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen+label%3A%22MSc+course+work%22 https://github.com/Tribler/tribler/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3A... Key lesson of "Blockchain Engineering" class: blockchain is 1% hashing/crypto and 99% Engineering. (thank you for clicking around on our website!)
- igorkraw 9y ago
  Very neat project. Since you are one of the contributors, I'd like to ask a philosophical question: The wiki has this quote (emphasis mine) >Tribler is a Bittorrent-compatible alternative to Youtube. It is designed to protect your privacy, build a web-of-trust, be attack-resilient, and reward content creators directly. We are building a micro-economy without banks, without advertisers, and without any government I see this sentiment in almost all blockchain/crypto circles, including a lot of government funded research groups. 1.) How does that get unified in the mind of contributors? How does working to abolish the very thing that enables you to do your research without having to make bank doing it 2.) It seem to me that in general people want government. See Thomas Hobbes et.al. for studies in academia, or whichever region descended into anarchy most recently. Whenever things are "improving" you see government emerging. Why is so much rhetoric directed against government, when really what everyone is talking about is abusive government?( Which is a much messier problem to even define, but seem to me to be ultimately the correct problem people are trying to solve. That might be be done through building decentralized government -I think so -, but there are cases where centralization makes sense.)

jestemkioskiem 9y ago

The coin is far from worthless - the way Steem's blockchain is structured (DPOS) makes liquid steem constantly disappear from the market, since a vast majority of users that actually generate a significant amount of steem invest in their account - freezing their Steem in the process (effectively removing the coins from the market). Also, I don't think I need to mention the fact that Steem is not a coin for trading (even though it has 3 sec transactions and literally 0 transaction fees thanks, again, to DPOS), so the big initial inflation that will slow down by a big margin every year is potentially good for the coin.

heimindanger 9y ago

The STEEM blockchain is not centralized, and the governance is done through voting witnesses (people running the steem source code). There are hundreds of people running it => https://steemit.com/~witnesses https://steemit.com/~witnesses Also the supply is not set to double every year, this source is completly outdated. This model was changed more than a year ago. Current inflation rate is 9.5% per year, reducing by 0.5% per year until it reaches 1% per year (I believe) The coin isn't worthless at all... It's publicly traded at around 3$ today on many exchanges. Lastly the quote about IPFS is mine, and I actually believe we will be able to make people seed the video they are currently watching through our embed player soon, thanks to the progress of js-ipfs.

sneak 9y ago

FWIW the high inflation in Steem was forked out well over a year ago. Its inflation rate now approximately matches that of bitcoin.