RE: An Objective look at Dlive's exit
The naivety drools from this post. DLive was SF based. The valley works faster generally.
I’m sorry, @meno but you’re not going to tell me that if you could validate your concept and possibly grow a starter base already for a year, rather than having to wait until [unknown] you wouldn’t have done it. That’s BS.
The announcement post was timed, yes. It’s always pitch season in SF. That they used anonsteem for account creation? Are you blaming a team for doing their homework and circumventing a weakness in the system?
I was mesmerized with the fact that when the STEEM blockchain halted, @dlive continued to work as if that had nothing to do with their app. Please take a second to think about that.
Yes, please think a second about that. Their system was designed to operate almost independently and have an almost safe failover. Every developer should work that way, that’s a benchmark right there. That oozed only good architecture. Especially given that steem doesn’t host video.
While it seems they acted with a vision, a vision which doesn’t suit Steem but yet a vision which shows they were an ultra-focused team, we can opt for two things:
- Admire their vision and target
- Choose to see malice in it as if the Steem community is the holy grail
It is known that stealth never works well and from the response they certainly have learned from that.
But the only stone we can truly throw them I see is specwork, a much loathed upon method. Yet, specwork only works if there’s a community rabid enough to also contribute to said contest. And, of course, that they didn’t reject rewards for their final post.
All the rest is kneejerk butthurt. Butthurt for not being kneeled for. I’ve never used DLive but I've always admired their focus and what they contributed to the platform all without taking one percent beneficiary. That they always were targeted and seemed professional in their dev is nothing I will hold agains themselves. That they validated their concept and an initial userbase on Steem... well done, guys. That will most definitely contribute to your funding/valuation - if you still need any.
There’s too much hate being spewed for never guaranteed upvotes lost.
I won’t follow them, I thank them for the distribution they have done, and for showing what can be done on the Steem blockchain. Hopefully the 500lbs gorilla leaving results not only in the vacuum being filled by multiple alternative solutions but also in more innovation. This is healthy for the steem ecosystem and for the community. I Doubt that the community will resist the call of the next specwork.
I understand your words my friend, and because I'm well aware of the temptation that such situation would represent for absolutely any mortal, sincerely understand exactly what you mean with your first lines.
However, in a world of hypotheticals, I could be a super early adopter of BTC that acts like a bully too and that would not change a single fact regarding the events transpired.
All this to say, point taken. And that I appreciate your need to bring some balance to the emotionally charged conversation and the archetypal pitchforking everyone is partaking of. You are what I would call a chaotic neutral character.
I won't follow them either, I also expressed my gratitude for the lesson learnt, but unlike you and I do mean this with much respect, having spent fiat on this platform I'm invested in more ways than most of its users. But again, point taken...
Thanks for your understanding.
As someone who follows startups closely, they did the right thing. Despite my interest in startups, and thus also the Valley, that doesn’t necessarily mean I agree with the common Valley MO.
But given common practices, I can not fault them for what they did and investors will be very tempted by their ultra sharp focus and super validated already product. That is a reality.
I remember telling @acidyo about their first post (I accidentally spotted it when it was below $3) and I told him the timing was interesting as the announcement post could serve as “concept validation” for the then upcoming Y Combinator pitch season. The fact that they were razor sharp in focus and had a vision they pursued IMHO should be admired.
They have contributed to the ecosystem. “Thanks for the fish and sorry that the door hit you in the back on the way out but you deserved that”, comes to mind. Even if solely for a specwork contest, irrespectively of timing even. Other than that I hope the grass is indeed greener for them on the other side. But we all know how that, and stealth, often goes and LINO will also be tested in all its pores by maximizers too and it will make them cringe too.
Yet, investors (in teams - not tokens) will value their work. Big time.
For us, who are vested in this platform, the side to see should be: thanks for leaving after showing us, and the world, what can be done. Hopefully the successor candidates have learned from their rather solid platform and will build on that. Both build and innovate.
This is positive for $TEEM. It paves the way for innovative competition rather than having a niche pretty much locked out already. Steem is an open ecosystem and I myself am happy they are gone. The 500lbs half-hearted gorilla left the house. Midterm that’s absolutely positive for our ecosystem. We can only celebrate that.
PS: Please make no calls about which degree people may be vested in the platform. It is entirely possible that I could be more vested than you but I understand the feeling. And we better brace ourselves for more of the same, especially with the expected low cost for SMT creation.
Great discussion @fknmayhem and @meno, you have represented both sides of my thinking on the matter better than I could have put it so there goes the need for me to put that together in a post!
Fkn I'm kinda surprised you're the only one I've seen saying that this is just cut throat business led practices. I know the guy doesn't get much love around here (get ready to be triggered) but as George Soros said, the market is amoral. That is the reality of how people operate in business and crying about it is pointless.
I'm also baffled why people are not saying that DLive did actually contribute a lot to Steem. So it can all be boiled down to a broken promise that was never made: DLive is here for the long haul.
However @menos has convinced me that the level of ninja operations is counter to the spirit of Steem. That they didn't integrate more with the blockchain is a red flag. We definitely want to encourage any and every company to use Steem as a payments layer, but only those who integrate well in the full ecosystem should even be considered for Stinc delegation. Hands down.
I think people need to calm down and sit back to reflect on the assumptions they had which have been exposed as a result of the DLive exit. In what way did they not do what was required of them? Why did we think it was a requirement?
There are sharks out there and it's foolish to blame a shark for chowing down. What we need to be skeptical, rigorous and honest. DLive made no promises that have been broken - to the best of my knowledge. If it turns out there were promises broken in private conversation with @ned and co that's a problem that we don't know them.
One thing I have considered in recent hours is whether the license should require apps to be opensourced. AFAIK DLive never opensourced.
Yet, AFAIK that’s not compliant with the MIT license of Steem. A license I vastly prefer over the much more restrictive nature of its obvious copyleft GNU-GPL alternative which would de facto require that for almost all. Yet even an opaque app could function within the GNU-GPL as happens for example with Akismet spam filtering for WordPress. The plugin is open sourced as required by WP’s GPL3.0 license yet not the matrix. So we wouldn’t be much further either, we would merely have a more restrictive license.
Open sourcing, or rather the lack thereof, is a red flag to me though.
That's a good suggestion, and requiring it by license inheritance a neat trick.
Except, of course, that by enforcing it you would be deliberately and aggressively limiting access to creators who want to create digital applications which might be terribly successful, and thereby increase the value (both physical and personal) of activity on the steem blockchain.
Not to mention the impossibility of enforcing that requirement. Given the general lack of governance in the context of the blockchain as is, trying to suggest policy which requires governance which has no mechanism of enforcement is like wishing in one hand and spitting in the other. I suppose at least you have some spit.
What we really need are more reasonable applications that provide actual value to someone's personal experience which just happen to use the steem blockchain.
The problem is that for most of the developers around here, the blockchain comes first – and the idea that the digital application should solve some problem will provide some value to user comes much further down the list.
Fix that first, and the rest looks after itself.
Aside from that, all of which I wholeheartedly agree with, I truly don’t think that it would be compliant with the MIT license.
And if by inheritance then only the connection layer could be required. Not anything which happens outside of the BC.
Personally, I much more prefer the more open nature of the MIT license over the restrictions of GNU-GPL3.0. Plus the MIT license is compatible with more licenses than the copyleft licenses are.
It is a significant challenge to make things compatible with open source licenses as they are written these days, at least if you ever want to make significant money off of it. This is a bit of a carryover from a lot of the social assumptions of the people who actually write these licenses and have written these licenses, who believe that making money is morally tainted in the first place.
My position is that I think that trying to dictate whether digital applications which touch the blockchain are open source or close source is inevitably doomed to fail, upfront, because it's simply unenforceable and flies right in the face of the design of the technology.
Unless we want to demand that all the voting bots on the steem blockchain prove that there open source and provide that source to us, which would then require that we be able to detect them immediately upon touching the blockchain, keep them from being able to interact until they were checked off, and then allowed back on.
We can't even detect bots consistently.
So – since it's impossible to actually make this policy happen, discussing it is at best a waste of time.
You're correct. The context under discuss here is about improving Stinc's delegation policy.
Which is just not going to happen. They have a vested, very direct interest in getting as many digital applications using the steem blockchain as possible. To that end, they have an aggressive pressure not to care whether or not the project is open source or not but rather whether or not people will actually use it – which is entirely orthogonal
And if we're being cynical, often the closed source solutions end up being better developed. The developers end up having I'm much stronger vested interest in doing a good job because no one else can take their work and run.
That doesn't apply to all things, of course. Anything that depends on a level of trust of the user in order to get the product they desire is going to have a certain extra level of cachet if it's open source. Anything that makes claims about how things work is going to have an extra level of assurance if it's open source.
But streaming applications? That's not a big deal.
Steemit Inc. has made a lot less reasonable, less explainable delegation policy decisions than the one that went to DLive. And notably, even if DLive were an open source project, everything that is happened could easily have happened just the same way because that has nothing to do with whether they decide to take their work to another blockchain.
Policy that would make no difference makes no difference, no matter what.
the STINC delegation did not cost any time or money. Steem gained more investors because of dlive and the delegation. End of story.
I'm interested on how you came to that conclusion, since steem has lost so much valuation since @dlive showed up.
Could you show me a chart that shows STEEM increasing against satoshis and cross reference it with @dlive's contribution timeline wise?
I mean no offense when I ask, I'm simply putting this out there, because it seems that many investors don't understand that inflation is a "tax" on people who bought tokens with BTC.
But please, explain your point.
(edit)
I'm not blaming @dlive for the valuation drop. I'm simply stating how you say it brought more investors and how you draw that conclusion.
I would not have invested much in to steem if dlive had not existed. I know many people on the same boat.
If your argument is that the inflation created through dlive's curation outweighed that of investors they created, that is possible. To be fair we have been in a bear market for 8 months.
That could be anecdotal, and the conversation to be productive must be looked at in macro. But I don't dismiss you words, because this is your personal truth and as such is valid for you and your positions.
In order for this to make more sense, or at least for you and I to talk with the same information as a foundation. Look at the price of STEEM against BTC since the launch.
The inflation has always pushed STEEM down, it's a downtrend overall.
I completely agree with your entire comment, but this in particular strikes me as relevant going forward.
Thanks!
Interesting, take. It may have been a good showing what is possible. But it is sad that they seem to be planning from the start to move on to lino.
We should brace ourselves for more of the same come SMT, that mostly due to the expected low cost of entry to start a SMT.
I totally understand the feelings about they ‘always planned’ and from a personal perspective, it isn’t anything I would ever be comfortable with. Yet, that’s their right to do so but also, from a tech angle we need to raise the question whether LINO was actually already a viable future or merely a planned thing at that point.
Looking at LINO’s code on Github the initial commit is merely 8 months old. DLive joined Steem long before that. What had happened if LINO hadn’t raised such vast amounts?
But, once more, this is healthy for the Steem ecosystem. :)
These are from their public testing livestreams, removed by them after images being publicized.
checkout these images, zoom in... they can't deny a thing!
I don't actually mind the specwork, but I can throw a couple of other stones.
They flat-out lied about why they're leaving Steem. However legitimate the criticisms of the system in their post may be, they have nothing to do with dLive's decision to leave Steem because that decision was made before they ever came to Steem. Pointlessly trashing your incubator on the way out is not something that's likely to be appealing to future investors.
They encouraged their users to commit to holding their funds for thirteen weeks and then gave four days' notice that those funds would become useless in a dLive context, when they could easily have done otherwise. I know shitting all over your userbase whenever it's convenient is part of a particular segment of the cutthroat SV environment, but it's still bad business nevertheless.
You will need a jury for 1, not a rabid pitchforking mob.
The timeline connects dot so based on assumptions, territotialism can not change my opinion here. I will need concrete evidence beyond refutable level.
I’m so sorry. The reasons brought up dont add up sufficiently to unilaterally condemn and pitchfork them. What’s happening is mobbing.
And I think, looking at the responses they received it’s time for Steem the I had hold some introspection because they may very well validate one of their given reasons.
PS: Test platform and incubator are two entirely different things.
Quite the opposite, in fact. Lying to us about why they're leaving is not illegal; the appropriate consequence of the lie is the anger of the people lied to.
Yes, but not in a way that helps your argument. Steemit Inc. provided dLive with funding; some of that funding was used to compensate their staff for developing their project. That's an incubator, not a test platform.
I did say techbros are brutal. I did say the Valley has a MO I don’t necessarily approve of.
But:
The rest is trying to spin it to fit the rabid mob born from territorial “we are the holy grail”.
Facts:
A. They may be friends and may fully have coded on each other’s platforms. That does not constitute of a crime nor does it automatically imply malicious intent.
B. I have had my mugshot in launch photos wearing a startups’ shirts without having an actual commitment with them and yet I may have helped them more than other’s I have actually had a commitment with. That is entirely possible and thus you will need more to reach beyond refutable doubt level in this whole $hitstorm in a tea glass where no Code is Law was violated.
Yet, I admire their focus. I think they have set a decent benchmark for devs to aspire to. And, at this point I’m happy they’re gone and I hope that we will see more and hopefully more innovative entrants in the streaming niche.
And, also, I am totally prepared for more of the same come SMT. The Steem blockchain is an open ecosystem which requires no commitment and as personz said maybe it was a promise never made [which is now held against them].
I have spent enough time on this topic, I think my neutral and hopefully rather objective position is all over it. I will not waste one more word at this.
I don't, though, because I am not taking this to court. Preponderance of evidence is plenty for me to dislike and speak out against a corporation. I'm sorry that you don't seem to recognize my right to do that, and everyone else's, but it exists nevertheless.
None of this is in evidence, and I have a hard time believing that you are the one person on Steem who is privy to how these delegations work, especially given this bit:
This is completely false. The cash flow is actual handover of funds, and would be considered so in any court. If this does end up litigated I have no doubt that will be confirmed. Of course whether Steemit. Inc. gave themselves standing to litigate over this is something none of us know.
As a mod at Steemhunt I can confirm that the delegation to Steemhunt was made to happen without any prior request, pitch and also without any conditions or terms. That’s how misterdelegation’s delegations happen. “Boom... that just happened”, is the reality of receiving a delegation from Steemit Inc. so far.
There is no cashflow involved in the case of the delegation. You mean the curation rewards, yet that is a result of using the voluntarily offered stake. That is not a handover. Remember that we are a Code is Law based platform, only that decides beyond very few arbitration possibilities, which were never triggered.
Until Steemit Inc says that anything was violated nothing was violated. We have a healthy justice system, thank you.
And, of course, you have the right to express your dislike, even I did such. Just like I have the right not to buy into to your argumentation and respond to your replies. That right is implicitly and expressively expressed merely the fact that I actually respond. At which point, you benefit the right to both accept or disagree with my answer. Isn’t such a beautiful life and world, a life and world without needing to resort to implicit passive aggressive claims such as ‘I’m sorry that you don’t seem to recognize my right to do that...’ since disagreement does not mean I don’t listen nor don’t allow you to express your sentiment. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Dlive did contribute lots to the ecosystem and public awareness of the Steem blockchain. They are one of very few who achieved mainstream media mentions. All which brought more eyeballs to the existence of this beautiful platform.
Anyway... time to move on, move on to the next $hitstorm. And it will require more for me to take a condemning position. Now and then. Connecting dots is not a position I am in, that’s for courts to decide or for our governance when arbitration. Until then... code is law.
Well said. Steemians are bit too naive in these things. Next time when delegating so much SP maybe have something on paper too. There are fundamental flaws with this blockchain and i feel like there is no proper discussion about it.
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