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RE: Proposed Changes to Steem Economy

in #steem8 years ago

I'm curious what the largest financial investors think about this proposal. Some have spent tens of thousands of dollars on Steem Power and watched that value drop to fractions of what they invested. How will they feel about these changes?

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I spent 400 BTC on SP a few month ago, it's worth about 20 BTC right now, i am the largest financial investor so far, the follow is what i think:

  1. I think the design of Steem Power is flawed, it should be removed completely, a lot of investors don't want to hold SP because of the long withdraw time, and few of them want to hold STEEM because of the hyperinflation , with the new change, the Steem Power holder only have 1.425% (9.5% * 15%) interest yearly, so most of the users would hold STEEM only, few of them would hold SP in order to earn curation rewards, i think this new change would attract a lot of short term and long term investors.

  2. I don't like the idea of rewarding bloggers with stakeholder's money, there are two kinds of bloggers on steemit, write for money, or write for pleasure, the first kind produce low quality contents, it's not worth to pay them, the second kind, usually produce high quality contents, they do care about money, and appreciate and enjoy it, but they would still write without it anyway.if Amazon.com pays for the e-books with shareholder's money and make the ebooks free for everyone, then the price of their stock would drop as shitty as STEEM. We should use stakeholder's money for promotion purpose and for developers. We should develop features like pay per view, tip, trade etc on steemit.com.

  3. We should focus on entertainment purpose on steemit, I don't like to read those original long posts on steemit, they are boring , if i want to learn, i prefer to read books. I think most of the active users here think the same as me, because they are leaving, the bots are voting, few people read and comment the boring posts.

We should focus on entertainment purpose on steemit, I don't like to read those original long posts on steemit, they are boring , if i want to learn, i prefer to read books. I think most of the active users here think the same as me, because they are leaving, the bots are voting, few people read and comment the boring posts.

I agree. If steemit only aims at being a kind of medium blogging platform it will lose a lot of potential users. Steemit should aim at being the best social network with many different ways to earn money. I wrote a post about this 2 months ago https://steemit.com/steem/@snowflake/steemit-needs-more-way-to-earn-reward-than-posting
By only rewarding people for writting stories steemit won't appeal to the vast majority of the people.

People should be paid for doing many different things that adds value, predicting the future correctly like augur does on ethereum, or people could be paid to fill survey, or even play games,or answers Q&A
Even a daily steemit lottery could be interesting, we could allocate 500$ to the lottery and make a happy user every day. And there people have one more reason to stick around..
I think the funny part of making money is lacking on steemit, it needs more diversification

@snowflake I believe it is a happening. There is steemsports (plus all the differents accts. under it) and I have recently been seeing different types of games such as guessing numbers, or what a zoomed in picture or @virtualgrowth plays poker with the steem generated by his post and rewards the upvoters and commentators . There are many great artists that draw and paint, there now some musicians posting original music and even some making unique videos here on STEEMIT. I recently posted how a steemit user's pic was used in a news article.
I my investment in steemit pales in comparison to @laonie 's but I was not worried with the recent price. I feel that Steemit has so much potential and not enough time has passed for us to be freaking out, but I understand. I have been averaging down so this price jump does help with my investment and my attitude.

These things are great but the interface is not very organized. All I see every day in the trending page is steemsport everywhere
The gaming/lottery aspect should be seperate from the usual posts.
If I was developing the interface for steem , I would create nice profils pages like any social media and on these pages i would add a section called earn which will show all the different ways to earn ( post,bet,fill questionnaire,etc..)
The way things are displayed to us now is too confusing and it's hard to know what steemit even try to be.

The trending page has definitely changed since I first started here, and it currently does not appear to be "steemsport everywhere." I do not believe Facebook new what it was going to be or how it would look either when it first started. Steemit is the first of its kind and it still says "BETA."
Just wait until it announces itself as Live to the World.

Thank you, @laonie. You were certainly someone I had in mind when I made my comment. I don't agree with everything you've said here (I really like the concept of vested shares which represent a long-term commitment, along with the idea of purchasing influence on the social network side of the ecosystem), but I really, really appreciate your perspective. I really hope, in the long term, your investments turn around, and you are made whole here. In a very real sense, you have been funding Steemit for the past few months and Dan and Ned (IMO) owe you a rather large debt of gratitude.

I'm curious why the change would attract long term investors as you described? To me, Steem Power was a long-term investor's dream. Unfortunately, the liquid steem dumped on the market caused that dream to turn into a nightmare as the price of steem fell through the floor.

I don't like the idea of rewarding bloggers with stakeholder's money

That's a really interesting way to put it. If we don't reward them with that money, who's money do we reward them with? Value can't be created from nothing. I don't know what the balance is, but if we're going to continue to have valuable payouts, the money has to come from somewhere (i.e. investors propping up the value of the rewarded token). As you said, though, if other systems did this, their share price would tank.

I agree entertainment should be the key, but I also think different people come here for different things. Some value the long posts more than any other posts anywhere else. I hope there's room for everyone's preferences.

Thanks again for your reply. It means a lot to me.

For long-term investors, if the price increased tenfold in a short time, most of them would want to sell most of the stakes, they don't want to be forced to hold. The long withdraw time is a big turn off for them.
We should treat every investor equally, it's hard to tell who is short-term holder, who is long-term holder.

If you are a reader, you like a post, you can reward the author with your own money, if you reward the author with other's money , that's called corruption or tragedy of common.

Paying users for content is a market differentiation for Steemit and is it's biggest selling feature to gain adoption. The revenue will come from the attention economy and advertising.

Bringing in ad revenues is the real solution that will add value for investors.

This is what I have been saying for a while now too. The content brings viewers, so it should be paid for by those who want exposure. The pool of rewards needs to be neutralised by income somehow, or it destroys the investment potential.

Ads are dying online.

Way better to allow for topical writing prizes, of which steem keeps some fraction. See: Rancher's article bounty system.

@laonie wrote:

If you are a reader, you like a post, you can reward the author with your own money

Tipping will never be viable.

I understand that perspective of rewarding them with other people's money, but bitcoin rewards miners with investors' money as new bitcoin is created. I see steemit doing the same thing by rewarding those who create the content which give the social media ecosystem value. Other cryptocoins are investments only whereas this one includes author rewards. As long as the price is going up, it works well for everyone. Whenever the price just goes down and investors can't get out, it does seem fraudulent.

@lukestokes

I understand that perspective of rewarding them with other people's money, but bitcoin rewards miners with investors' money as new bitcoin is created.

The beauty of PoW is that there's no centralization of power, bitcoin treat every miner and every stakeholder equally , and bitcoin has the first move advantage, but STEEM doesn't , if steemit cann't grow it's user base, it would be dead.

If people don't get paid to post, what exactly is the selling point of steemit.com?

If people are leaving even they get paid to post, what exactly is the point to pay for ?
That's waste of money.
If you want to win a user's heart, money just won't work.

@snowflake Thanks for asking. An update will be released after Steemfest.

How is steemQ doing? Any progress report for the community? :)

@laonie wrote:

If you want to win a user's heart, money just won't work.

You are correct that users won't stay just for money and the site must be enjoyable/meaningful even without remuneration, because it is mathematically impossible to pay users enough for blogging from debasement of investors.

However if users stayed because they are investors, then they could have both their heart and mind vested in it. That was one of my key insights when I realized how to make a better Steem "clone".

Voting is the problem (because as one of my blogs pointed out, it is impossible to avoid Sybil attacks without handing that voting power to the whales which thus centralizes the ranking and reward system).

Btw, remember I responded to one of your blogs in August and warned you that you were throwing your BTC down a rat hole. Maybe next time you listen more carefully to what I have to say.

@laonie wrote:

If you want to win a user's heart, money just won't work.

You are correct that users won't stay just for money and the site must be enjoyable/meaningful even without remuneration, because it is mathematically impossible to pay users enough for blogging from debasement of investors.

However if users stayed because they are investors, then they could have both their heart and mind vested in it. That was one of my key insights when I realized how to make a better Steem "clone".

Voting is the problem (because as one of my blogs pointed out, it is impossible to avoid Sybil attacks without handing that voting power to the whales which thus centralizes the ranking and reward system).

Btw, remember I responded to one of your blogs in August and warned you that you were throwing your BTC down a rat hole. Maybe next time you listen more carefully to what I have to say.

Yes, you did warn me, thanks for the warning, i wasn't thinking clearly at that time, and i learned the lesson.

I invested 40btc... so I totally agree with your position!

I am developing a social network blockchain project somewhat similar to Steem, but different in very important ways which address all of your points and even points you have not yet thought of. It is also intended to fix all the centralization problems of Bitcoin, so it is to be a major announcement in the Bitcoin ecosystem when I get close to launch. Also the name I have is superior (the domain is already registered), on the caliber of "Twitter".

The DPOS which Steem is based on is less than ideal. I wrote down the issues at least one of which afaik no one else had enumerated. I have also been creating a new programming language to replace JavaScript and Java, and this ties into my plans for the social network. I must keep some of the details secret until I get closer to launch, otherwise other projects would possibly attempt to copy them.

I will be in Singapore in second and third week of January (for a medical trip to deal with my liver & digestive health problem) if anyone wants to meet to talk with me face-to-face. It would probably be best if there was some angel investment now to help hire another top programmer to accelerate my progress. I am a top programmer and only want to work with the very best due to the Mythical Man Month loses of productivity due ridiculous amounts of communication load (or miscommunication outcomes) incurred when working with junior programmers.

I can be contacted at my LinkedIn, which is linked in my first blog post.

I don't think it is in my best interests to apply my design and ideas to changing Steem, because I am not one of the whales who mined the stealth mining. The prior concentration of ownership disincentivizes me from being a full partner in the ecosystem. I had thought about contacting @ned, but then changed my mind when I became aware of how most of the tokens had been minded for Steemit, Inc.

I have appreciated that they did this experiment and demonstrated the potential value of a Steem-like concept and I participated sincerely to see what would come of it (which is a concept I was working on before they launched and before I had heard of Steem). I presume they have profited commensurately. And they can make changes now and see how much they can salvage from the existing design and inertia. I am not claiming they can't make some design improvements. I will be watching intently to see what they do.

@laonie, want to make you aware of banano's insight.

What's the URL of your blog?

Voting is the problem (because as one of my blogs pointed out, it is impossible to avoid Sybil attacks without handing that voting power to the whales which thus centralizes the ranking and reward system).

What's the URL of your blog?

https://steemit.com/steem/@anonymint/blog-rewards-can-t-be-widely-distributed

I don't like the idea of rewarding bloggers with stakeholder's money, there are two kinds of bloggers on steemit
It's the chief differentiating factor. The primary selling point. If you're not getting rewarded then there is no point being here. Other than the fact you can be paid for posting short term trendy content and ads, steemit offers nothing compelling at all. Plus there are a lot of good reasons to not bother being here and the financial incentives help balance that out.

Bloggers aren't being rewarded with stakeholders money. Stakeholders have something worth >$0 because some of us are trying like hell to bring people to the platform and build out infrastructure and ecosystem, and the financial incentives ARE A HUGE PART OF THAT DECISION.

I can no longer stomach the subpar, bottom-dwelling quality on Steemit and I have moved back to Medium for both blogging and reading. At least on that platform my posts won't endure senseless flagging and collapsing when I speak my mind. I have over 1K followers on Medium and people who disagree with me leave comments. They don't have the power to collapse my thoughts. I'll probably write first on Medium then copy my stuff over here, just to keep up appearances. I'm also thinking of setting up a bot to vote as I no longer want to sift through all the junk myself.

The trending page for me has become like a bad dream, a writer's nightmare. I think Steemit suffers from an identity crisis, but the thing is, my attention is not something I'm willing to plunder. Quality writers have pretty much bailed and we're left with yesterday's sandwich crusts. This video pretty much sums up my current feelings about how this ship is going......can you find yourself in it?

Quality has gone down along with the pay rate. I guess when people find out that they can't get paid enough to survive on Steem they go back to blogging on other platforms where their audience is bigger or on Youtube where they at least know they will get paid by views.

Steemit could change this by making it's UI/UX better and make it as good as other platforms but right now Steemit isn't even as good as Reddit and already people act shocked about the low price of the Steem token? Steem token prices go down because we don't even have groups yet.

Developers shouldn't waste time on these useless parameters and should focus on developing utility like groups and subscription. Even a friends list would go a long way, with private messages, but instead we have this debate about changing the economics without even the first 2 years going by?

It looks like the founders aren't confident in their own platform and want out. So who will buy Steem Power now?

Steemit could change this by making it's UI/UX better and make it as good as other platforms but right now Steemit isn't even as good as Reddit and already people act shocked about the low price of the Steem token? Steem token prices go down because we don't even have groups yet.

Developers shouldn't waste time on these useless parameters and should focus on developing utility like groups and subscription. Even a friends list would go a long way, with private messages, but instead we have this debate about changing the economics without even the first 2 years going by?

I definitely understand how you feel @stellbelle, especially for getting reprimanded for voicing your opinion or trying to create balance. Also the feeling of the people or your group that your used to being connected with leaving.

I understand that all of this is upsetting and hurts you in someway. but at the same time it is unnecessary to attack the people who are still writing on steemit. To make a blanket statement that the majority of quality writer have left and every one else is just "the crust" is hurtful. Especially since a good majority of people here value your opinions and really look up to you. It is even more depressing for the writer who are still learning by expanding their writing and may not actually be "the best quality writers above others" but still wanting to write on steemit.

We all respect your decisions to switch over to medium as your main platform, especially because of the inequality that it sounds like you are feeling. But there is no need to try to burn this bridge and "ship" down as you are leaving too. Especially for all of us 14k+ of us that are still on this ship that fully support you with whatever you do and everything that you have done.

I know your feeling emotional but please try to be aware of what your saying when you speak to "us". Your influence is greater than I think you even realize.

I'm not burning anything. The design of Steemit did that itself.
Everyone should lead themselves. I am a writer and artist first.
If people choose to follow me, then that is their decision. We are all adults here.
When you approach things from a sentimental perspective, that is when your judgment fails you. I write for a living. I read a lot. I did think that writers would start slowing sifting over here, but I was wrong. They tell me that they want nothing to do with a sketchy place. You are all attacking me because I speak my mind without filters. I am providing useful information, if you could just stop being so defensive. Attachment does this to humans, obviously.
I'm not attached to any platform. I'm looking for a digital home that solves my basic issues while at the same time giving me a sense of real value. So far, I have been very lucky because i joined early. I am grateful for that. I consider it a real blessing. I am cautiously optimistic now instead of being over the top enthusiastic. It will take a long time for this place to attract quality people. And it could self-correct, sure, I am open to that possibility. But the main centralization of power issues will take a long time to sort out. That is my main concern.

Flagging is one of the biggest reason that we have so many abandoned accounts. Flagging was designed to get rid of spammers and abusive people. We want them gone, but it should take many flags to even show up as a red mark on someone's opinion.

I suggesst a graduated flagging power - like Steem Power (could even be SP) which could take out abusive posts slowly. I would also suggest that the ability to flag be given to all, and taken away when powering down. And given in perportion to reputation. A new account cannot reward posts (zero impact), their flags should not impact users with higher reputations (zero impact). Solution...

For posts and comments

  • Rep-25 users could have flagging wars all day and it should be inperceptible to the network!
  • Disgusted users who are trying to leave Steemit - can't burn the ship down on the way out - I have not seen it but it could happen. Power down = no flagging power.
  • You may need 10 different dolphins to flag a particular post before anyone knows it has been flagged. You may only need 3 whales to flag it in order for it to be collapsed.

We also need something to stop people from flagging an entire account! Let's say I join, blog for a month, limited success, but I am growing. I flag someone for good reason, and they come to my home and red mark everything I have written.

  • If I flag you, you cannot flag me back. Others will have to control me if I am being "bad"

Flags are like farts at a party. Too many and nobody wants to stay.

Well then, @stellabelle

Please, define and describe an ideal digital home. I'm serious by the way-- while my other posts may seem to you obnoxious, I'm really curious what you think would be better, because its' clear we've got to hammer on steemit a bit to improve it.

but at the same time it is unnecessary to attack the people who are still writing on steemit. To make a blanket statement that the majority of quality writer have left and every one else is just "the crust" is hurtful.

Hate to say it, but this is kind of what I came to expect from @stellabelle. Try not to look up to her so much and you will feel better. It has been made clear to many of us that though she is a good writer she tends to speak from a the vantage point of expertise on issues she really isn't qualified to speak on. Sure free speech is fine, but the simple fact that she believes that steem is a place where she can be censored kind of proves the point that she is looking at everything from the perspective of someone who knows very little about the meaning of beta level software.

There are MANY high quality content creators I consistently see on this platform. And after less than 7 months being alive, this #blockchain has proven it can scale above and beyond all other blockchains that propose to compete.

Medium is fine, but stellabelle has not stopped copying and pasting to steemit. Why? Just to keep up appearances? or maybe because medium doesn't give her even a chance to get paid and she knows it?....Me thinks it is the latter.

Yep, it was really strange reading her. I don't really know what people expect when the join a venture...It's a kind of weird mind set. Why not stay in Medium if it's better. People are posting good content here. I'm reading good content daily and I'm witnessing all the projects going on around the world. That's the value of Steem and please in less than a year.

I think she needs a hug.

I've no idea, but yeah, it was a very...

"wow"

kinda post.

Get over it, she's right. I still put up a few things, but with very few exception the remaining posts are either dry as dust technical drivel, or English as a Second Language. It's bad, worse than Wattpad.

how old are the other platforms? right and wrong are subjective man. ;)

@stellabelle U HAVE 2 months ranting and venting about quality of steemit posts, leaving from here and etc. Is this comment ur real farewell? no worries, I have more than 700 friends on facebook, 754 tumblr followers and 547 instagram followers and I am not even a good writer. Social media is supposed to be fun, not to find the next Nobel winner in literature.

Totally agree. Not everyone wants to be an author, and although I enjoy Stellabelle, I feel pretty confident I could find her work with a single google search at any point, no matter where it is posted.

@thebluepanda so this is in fact where you are wrong: Social media is a little bit of both which both?

  1. Fun
  2. Totally a place where you could find the next nobel prize winning writer.

Social media encompasses the very wide range of human experiences and expressions.

Hi @faddat I couldn't respond to you in the other thread so I came here. Can you please share with my why you think internet advertising is dying? It really isn't. Online advertising is actually growing not dying. Next year online ad spending is predicted to overtake TV spending for the first time.

I think you may be misinterpreting current struggles with ad blocking technology. The industry is adapting and expanding not contracting and dying.

Without some sort of future advertising monetization, steem would be nothing more than a pyramid scheme reliant on an infinite stream of new users paying up to the old ones.

I will bet that we either see some sort of steem, steem power or SBD based advertising system like the promotion tab coming in the next year or we will see steem die.

Where is the value in steem if not in advertising money?

what are you talking about? social media is both of what?

oh please, if i want to find the next Nobel winner, I go to a library.

never miss a chance to victimize yourself :D even if you are right - thrending sucksm you are not helping your case by putting yourself first.
Also, trending ALWAYS sucked but when you were on it it was ok for you.

If you are so sick of the sub-par writing on Steemit, perhaps you should start reading my posts...

Oh.... that was cheeky!!!! hehehe

add me to your steemvoter :)

If Steemit is only a place for professional writers, I wouldn't want to visit.

Didn't you make god damn near a million dollars on Steemit? Fine by me if we only count SBD earnings-- how much was the tally, anyway?

Oh, poor poor you and your writer's nightmare.

You're so full of yourself. Like your crap is high society... Keep your drivel at Medium, and stop publishing plain wrong pseudoscience at IE while you're at it.
Bye now.

@lanie " I don't like to read those original long posts on steemit, they are boring , if i want to learn, i prefer to read books. " Why didn't you buy Amazon stock then? You knew you were buying a hard to explain - cryptocurrency hedged - "pay for blog" platform and now you don't like it because you think the users are stealing your money.

If you had taken that money and put it into Amazon - you would have received a quarterly prospectus, you could vote for the board of directors AND you would still have most of your money.

But you probably wouldnt understand them either - you see they take shareholder money and buy up ebooks so they can offer them for free. The part you would understand is they also don't turn a profit because of all their "investments" in "entertainment".

Some sites add value with content - some with savings or a reward. Steemit provides both.

I don't think the users are stealing my money, but i do think this platform is like a charity organization , i still remember that we paid a make-up post for $40k , that's insane. That's how a tragedy of common works.
The platform still works that way, everybody is milking the cow, the cow is nearly dead.

Steem needs to implement posting reward max limits

So because your investment is not worth what it was the business model makes no sense? What makes no sense to me is why you didnt do a private deal and make sure you had a say before parting with so much money.. In your analogy you want to kill the dying cow - the currency depends on the platform which depends on the people which depends on the.. Am I the only person who read the white paper?

I want to save the cow, stop milking it or at least be tender, i believe money cann't buy the loyalty of users, maybe i am wrong, time can tell.

@laonie

  1. Thanks for supporting our platform despite its difficulties. You're a trooper.
  2. Agreed, 100%.
  3. I like the long original posts, but I think that we would do very well to make steemit more medium-like.

Understand that point number three is an entirely subjective opinion and irrelevant.

As to the idea that you should begin to capitalize off my work, without offering to pay me, fuck you. My stuff is stuck here, for better or for worse, from now on. Without the writers, what is this site? You're witnessing it. That's why you must pay. Otherwise, you end up with the same crap other blogging social sites have.

As to the idea that you should begin to capitalize off my work, without offering to pay me, fuck you. My stuff is stuck here, for better or for worse, from now on. Without the writers, what is this site? You're witnessing it. That's why you must pay. Otherwise, you end up with the same crap other blogging social sites have.

I am sorry my personal opinion might hurted your feelings, but you are acting like a mad dog.

I tend to get like that when someone thinks their simple cash investment is worth more than my art. I'm not acting like a mad dog, I'm acting like someone defending their work. It's an "opinion" not an "option" for the record. but, you go ahead and invest in a platform where only people like you write the content and see what the fuck happens. You think Facebook is huge because of written posts? No, it's huge because it became an avenue for sharing huge amounts of quality content. You don't understand anything about social media, obviously, but because you put in a little cash (not even that much, by the way) you're voice is bigger than mine. Now, you want to steal what I worked hard to share here. So, yeah, fuck you.

I tend to get like that when someone thinks their simple cash investment is worth more than my art. I'm not acting like a mad dog, I'm acting like someone defending their work. It's an "opinion" not an "option" for the record. but, you go ahead and invest in a platform where only people like you write the content and see what the fuck happens. You think Facebook is huge because of written posts? No, it's huge because it became an avenue for sharing huge amounts of quality content. You don't understand anything about social media, obviously, but because you put in a little cash (not even that much, by the way) you're voice is bigger than mine. Now, you want to steal what I worked hard to share here. So, yeah, fuck you.

It's "your voice" not "you're voice" for the record, i understand why you act like that, you have 8 kids and 3 dogs and a fat wife to raise ( BTW, your kids are cute, but i hope your 3 dogs are not as mad as you ), but the sales of your gabage e-books on amazon is pathetic , if you want to defend your work, barking like a mad dog is useless.

Maybe it's time Steemit embrace XXX content and let people purchase Steem Power for greater access. That could create demand for Steem Power without these parameter tweaks to appeal to crypto gamblers.

I really like you comment @laonie and although I don't agree with everything said, finally someone who understand how this all thing can really work long-term from investment PoV. There are some things:

  1. Three months SP is ok, it is like fix term deposit providing some bonuses to a holder and helps to avoid the worst kind of daily volatility. It's optional, it has its added-value and restrictions, seems to be fair to me. It also helps to identify long-term non-daily trading holders.
  2. I partially agree here. Still I think there should be author rewards also from investor money but much less, like 10% of newly created Steems only. It would mean like ~1% of investment goes to rewards. That will not harm investments (with huge money outflow) and will provide some reward for authors without crashing funding development, improvements and growth.
  3. I believe any content can find its readers, let's just provide a better selection, categorization and filters so anyone can find what he likes avoiding the rest. We also need good social features and decent advertisement content support.

@laonie, stakeholders pocket money which time they vote.

I have powered back up tens of thousands of dollars. Most of that was at much higher prices (some probably at least 10x the current price, if not higher, though most at 2-5x).

I have no strong expectation of this proposal being a magic bullet that will suddenly recover all those losses. I do think it is an improvement overall and gives Steem a better chance to succeed assuming other good work continues to be done at a reasonable pace, such as making the platform more compelling and less narrowly targeted as well as better marketing and promotion (actually just having some at all would be good).

My biggest concern is that the focus in this proposal on tweaking coin parameters is seen as a "fix" and takes the pressure off of absolutely essential platform development. The large cuts to witness rewards will withdraw funding (ideally not abruptly) from valuable independent developers and development efforts, making this an even more centralized ecosystem dependent on Steemit for funding and development. More than ever, Steemit needs to step up on creating something with broad appeal and utility. If not then the changes in this proposal will not matter. At best they will buy some time.

Agree. However, I DO like the attempt to make Steem a viable cryptocurrency. IMO, that will be good for the platform overall and remove some of the ponzi stigma (however unjustified).

I agree with your assessment of people seeing this as a "fix". Creating something with "broad appeal" is absolutely a necessity since other platforms are about to be launched that could potentially slow the momentum here.

"About to be launched" is much different from actually launching. They COULD hypothetically compete but dont look for it anytime soon if at all. Dont hold your breath is my point. Just because someone has great marketing and tells you they are going to build a blockchain based social media platform, does not mean their blockchain will support the kind of volume steem does and can today.

For instance, Ethereum has a team of highly intelligent people telling everyone at the final quarter of 2017 (next year) they expect to have Casper completed, which should enable ethereum to scale to be able to reach the kinds of transaction volumes you see on things like bitshares and steem. Meanwhile back at the bat cave....
BitShares and Steem are doing it TODAY--Steem long ago surpassing the transaction volume of both Ethereums combined... It is imperative that when you speak, you know what you are talking about. Otherwise you're misinforming.

Now that I feel like I have had a beatdown session on you, I will say I hope you realize it is not with ill intent that I speak. Rather, it is with a sense of hope that you will recognize that the 73 beside your name does not mean you know everything there is to know about blockchains. Wielding that reputation to spread wrong information as fact will not last forever.

"About to be launched" is much different from actually launching.

I don't think that even matters. If Steem/it does not move ahead with a successful and effective development process that rolls out compelling improvements to the platform at an accelerated pace, it will not be successful in capturing the attention and interest of users (and therefore not successful at all) regardless of what others do.

I'm beta testing next week.
Why would you make the assumption that I "know everything there is to know about blockchains?"
I have never claimed that. You are guilty of assumption based on opinions not facts when you claim "wrong information". You don't have any idea about this information, but instead choose to use opinions.
I've never criticized the technology, and in fact I am quite impressed with it. I am not impressed with the leadership and communication so far. I know that you are very passionate about this place but it would do you some good not to suffer from tunnel vision. Have a look around and see what others are doing. More importantly, see how leaders operate by asking questions, creating surveys and building their network around what users want. If this was supposed to be a blogger's destination, why have most of them left? By avoiding the elephant in the room, not listening to those who provide the content, it's showing some serious vulnerabilities in the leadership.

I've been in the IT industry for +15 years and launch some venture by myself difficult to move to next level. From day 1, we new competition will come and they haven't launch. Even if they launch, do they have any tested infrastructure.

Always a voice of reason. Thanks @smooth. When I saw this post, I quickly scrolled down to see if you had replied. I agree with everything you've said here (including a more gradual approach to changing the percentages).

This is a complicated economic experiment. I agree, these changes aren't a "fix" because ultimately we can't really create value out of nothing. Bitcoin supports a million dollars+ in new value a day because investors want to buy in. The same can't be said for STEEM... yet. That's the main concern I have with too much tweaking too early on. If we try to "fix" things with adjusting this nob or pulling that lever, are we really any different than the central bankers playing with interest rates? Sometimes things need to work themselves out over time with some winners and some losers, even if that means I'm one of the losers (short term). Some things just take time.

I bought in at 10x some of the lower prices today. Some bought at much, much, higher. The discouraging thing is to think anyone could just show up today, spend much less, and have much more SP. That said, what really has given me value here is the platform and community itself. I'm even working on my first fiction post. Seriously. :) The value of this platform is the relationships and the creativity it brings. Like bitcoin, maybe it just needs a few years for enough people to realize that as well for the value of the token to catch up with it. I'm interested in long term investing here. The high interest rates (I mean in terms of the changing VEST to Steem conversion) are one of the reasons I bought it when I did, knowing they would settle down later on. At the same time, if the fundamental economics are actually flawed, then surely we have to do something. Then again, 10,000 bitcoin for a pizza sounds pretty flawed as well. It's all a matter of perspective and timescale.

I'm looking forward to whatever marketing takes place in the future. I think the social media platforms of the world will eventually have to adapt to the new paradigm Steemit is bringing to the category. Whatever the future of social media looks like, I'm quite proud of being an early adopter here on the blockchain, even if that means I lost out in the beginning. Thankfully, I never invested more than I was willing to lose.

making the platform more compelling and less narrowly targeted as well as better marketing and promotion

If the price keeps going down, how do you reinvest at higher levels? That is an amazing thing.

agreed with both stella and smooth that these parameter changes do little to help increase the broader appeal of the platform. If we get some of the things built that I am trying to get done, I suspect you will see this change ^.^

Heck yeah to that. I think we'd all like to see higher prices. 40 BTC is quite a bit. In a sense, you were an early angel investor, paying Dan and Ned to do what they did. Unfortunately, it seems the value of your shares have declined significantly (as they have for us all). For what it's worth, thank you for taking a risk, seeing what many of us see, and putting in some real money. I hope, on a long enough timescale, it turns into one of the best investments you've ever made.

I love how we've already arrived at a point in time where we refer to bitcoin as the real money :)

Hell yeah. More real than the currencies many citizens of many countries are trying to get out of right now. :)

You will regain your investment one day. Change is on the way!

As.an.investor.who.bought.50BTC.at.2dollar(ouch)
I.approve.these.changes
I.also.hope.steemit.will.hire.some.designers.to.get.us.a.badass.interface
Its.very.important.that.users.can.personnalized.their.steemit.webspace.so.that.they.feel.at.home(avatar,backgroundwall,etc..)

I like the idea of taking the interest earned on Steem Power and using it for rewards, because we would actually be investing that STEEM back into great content that continues to better the site, but I think it would be better to make the "Power Down" cycle more like 6 months.. The point is to NOT be able to just pull out :/

People are able to pull out now with a 2 year period. Reducing the lock time period would actually result to less people pulling out, this is just how human psychology works. Throw someone in a cage and ask him how eager he is to get out, now throw someone in a cage with the keys and ask the same question, you will be surprised what their answer is.

No way. Why would anyone want Steem Power if you don't value it? And if we change the smart contract before it even finishes then how does this create confidence in any of the other economic parameters of Steem?

I mean imagine Bitcoin developers debating increasing the cap, or adjusting the inflation rate, or any of the economic promises that people bought into? With Steem we bought into a certain set of rules, and now before the 2 year period is up the developers want to change the rules. Maybe we should set it to change after the period is up?