Steem: From Surviving To Thriving
This basically was the focus of Steemit Inc throughout 2019. The year kicked off with people still reeling from the layoff of 70% of their staff. The company was forced to change direction to survive. This led to a number of cost cutting measures, many of which are providing benefit to the ecosystem today.
It is also the story of Steem itself.
Steemit Inc's story is not unique. This bear market claimed a number of entities who were not able to weather the downturn. The fact that it is not only pronounced but also long in duration is making it very difficult. Of course, the situation is not behind us. Today, another company announced it succumbed to the bear market.
Bitberry decided to close its doors. This wallet got a lot of attention because of the ability to access cryptocurrency via Kakao Talk, a popular messenger in South Korea. It is important to note that South Korea has one of the highest rate of crypto adoption in the world and the fall out is still being felt there.
We decided to close the business due to the market deterioration and uncertainty of the blockchain industry.
This was from the CEO of Bitberry's parent company, Jang Sung-hoon.
We are seeing more carnage across the South Korean landscape.
The fallout from the crypto winter is still being felt now, as evidenced by Bitberry’s closure. The South Korean crypto markets have been hit especially hard. Business Korea reported that 97% of Korean crypto exchanges were close to insolvency and bankruptcy.
https://bitcoinist.com/korean-crypto-wallet-bitberry-calls-it-quits/
This is just a small microcosm of what is happening across the cryptocurrency space. The key is simply survival.
We tend to talk about growth rates and attracting the masses. However, at times, survival as a goal is the proper path. Presently, all the applications and projects operating on Steem survived. That said, we might see a few fall if the bear continues for another extended length of time.
Nevertheless, Steem is still here. In fact, I can easily make the case that Steem, as a whole, is stronger than it was two years ago when the token market peaked.
@aggroed is on an interesting kick of late that I think is worthy of considering. At some point, the market will bottom and reverse course. Many feel we already hit the bottom yet it is taking a while to get the momentum going in the other direction. Whatever the case, it is good to explore what the next phase will be.
So what does thriving in the world of blockchain/cryptocurrency look like?
According to Aggroed, the key moving forward will be the ability to scale.
This is a topic that is not new to the blockchain world. We read about the issues that many blockchains are having. The Bitcoin family obviously is not able to handle a lot of transactions per second. For the last few years, Lightning was the proposed solution with it being implemented. However, that project is not without its challenges.
Ethereum is looking to solve their "CryptoKitty" problem by switching from POW to POS. This is a multi-year project that is underway. Nevertheless, when looking at a switch like that, there are many moving parts involved to be pulled off successfully. At present, it looks like some of the earlier applications are going to suffer a loss in the transition.
EOS has the horsepower to run most anything. It was designed as a highly powerful chain. The challenge there is the price of interacting on the system. We already saw the price of RAM go through the roof.
Steemit Inc, in order to survive, implemented some features into the running of the chain that makes Steem even more powerful. Projects such as MIRA and the use of HDD as opposed to RAM have reduced the cost of operations. This mean the witnesses can run their nodes for a lot less money. It also means, for the same money as before the switch, the nodes are going to by much bigger.
The other point to consider is that Steem is a specialized blockchain. At the base level, it operates within a very small scope.
Aggroed colorfully summed it up this way:
On the other side of things you have to ask yourself what transactions do the whole blockchain have to process. Because if the answer is EVERYTHING-THAT-EVERYONE-WANTS-TO-DO then I'd urge you to GTFO. That's not scalable either.
https://steempeak.com/scalability/@aggroed/how-to-sell-steem-scalability
The advantage to Steem is that, at the core, it only handles about 8 or 9 different types of transactions. We have things such as account set up, voting, transfers, commenting, etc... The blockchain does not seek to accommodate everything.
What does this all mean? Being targeted means the Steem blockchain should be able to scale a lot easier than most. The number of variables that the blockchain needs to deal with is limited. It does not seek to handle every situation.
That does not mean, however, that Steem is limited. We are rapidly moving into a space where Steem can do anything, from a functionality standpoint, that any other blockchain can. The difference is that all the newer DApps are built on top of Steem, not at the base layer.
Steem-Engine is the most obvious example. All transactions on there take place off chain. They do get registered on the blockchain providing the immutability and transparency that we so often discuss. The same goes with the games developed. Each Splinterlands battle is registered on Steem via JSON. As mentioned in a post yesterday, JSON transactions are increasing at a significant pace. This means the activity on Steem is changing. Essentially, we are see a lot more taking place on the secondary layer.
When all of this is put together, we see that Steem does have the ability to scale. The goal is, ultimately, to be able to handle billions of transactions. This is the dilemma the decentralized blockchain world finds itself in. Like we saw with CryptoKitties, it does not take a lot of activity to completely lock up a blockchain. EOS recently had that issue too.
From what I understand, Steem should be clear of these problems. We could have an application go parabolic without a problem. On-boarding issue aside, if we get the people on here, the blockchain should be able to handle hundreds of millions of transactions per day without a problem.
The big question going forward is going to be how blockchains can handle the scaling issue. If we know anything about the markets, when the bull kicks off, we will see a massive increase in activity. Some blockchains might find they have issues because of that.
From what I can see, Steem appears to be in a great position when this happens. The moves made during the bear will pay off tremendously when the bull emerges.
I firmly believe thriving will be a part of Steem's future.
If you found this article informative, please give an upvote and resteem.
Posted via Steemleo
What if we focused as a steem culture on changing our standard for success to how many users we get AND more important Retain. The users we get these days may not be coming for the quick-money so when that goes up or down that won't impact them because they weren't here for this.
We have seen what happens when we build an audience that is here for the money... they leave when the money is less.
I would agree with that @jarvie. We see a different group of people. The days of come to steem and earn $1,500 in three posts might well be done.
People could be here for the money but realize it is not a get rich quick scheme. The reward system is vital to what Steem it, however, people are interacting for reasons above that.
Posted via Steemleo
As someone who is new to steem I would say I am not really interested in making money here I'm just here to learn about how it all works and the new decentralised internet.
amazing after I read several articles related to steem with the steem-engine all solutions can see clearly and easily for us as small users! who likes to write as is.
maybe you are a great and experienced person about steem
Posted via Steemleo
I think within the next six years we'll be seeing off-chain scaling solutions with Steem. You can basically sign transactions and send them peer to peer, then if someone tries to cheat the smart contract you take it back to the main chain, prove they cheated, and penalize them.
Something like this is bound to happen during the next bubble (or the one after that) when throughput becomes a huge issue again. Well know when big RC pools actually become worth something organizations are willing to pay big money for.
Posted via Steemleo
I would like to see some real proof that steem is really capable of that. For now, it's all just talk. But I know nothing about the technical side.
I'm just a simple milker, as would @whatsup say.
I would submit that the "crypto winter" we have been in was pretty much inevitable. It's much like the "dot-com" boom/bust cycle of 20 years ago. Back then, all you needed was to say "dot com" and "web site" in your business plan, and greedy fools stood ready to throw millions/billions in funding at you. This time, the key words were "blockchain" and "cryptocurrency."
As was true then remains true: 95% of those "companies" had no business even existing. Of course, what we feel is the fact that everything — good, bad, horrible, indifferent — gets tarred with the same brush. But the good news was that the companies with a solid plan in the 2000's came roaring back and made their investors very, very rich.
Which is all a very long-winded way of saying that Steem seems poised as one of the ones that will end up standing tall because there is actually something HERE. And we keep seeing new things coming online... at some point, that means investors (and developers) will see this as a value play and then — I suspect — it will be "off to the races."
=^..^=
Posted via Steemleo
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