How can the Steem blockchain distinguish itself in the marketplace?

in #steemlast year

Thinking about low-effort ways to distinguish Steem from other Steem-like blockchains...


According to Jagdish Sheth, in The Rule of Three: Surviving and Thriving in Competitive Markets Paperback, three players in any competitive market will dominate the marketplace. If we want Steem to be #1 of 3 in the marketplace of Steem-like blockchains, it needs to distinguish itself from all others. As the next halving cycle approaches, it seems to me that time to do this is running short.


image.png

Pixabay license from Daniel Schmieder at source. Search keyword "marketing".


Two things that currently distinguish Steem from its copycats are the 28 day powerdown window, and the TRX integration in rewards. What else can we do? Here are some scattered thoughts:

1. Rebrand TRX Integration as a "tron faucet"?

TRX Integration is an underappreciated benefit of participation in the Steem blockchain. By participating in the STEEM ecosystem, account owners can also receive Tron rewards. Yes, the number of TRX tokens was recently halved, but the value of those tokens doubled in the last couple years, so it sort of balances out.

Even though STEEM has a larger nominal value, TRX has a bigger community. Another way to describe TRX Integration that might resonate with the "crypto community" is to describe TRX integration as "a Tron faucet".

This is just a cosmetic change, but marketing matters.

Rebranding TRX Integration as a Tron faucet could attract participation from Tron enthusiasts. Maybe these folks don't care about collecting STEEM rewards, but with the right branding, they might be attracted by the previously unknown ability to blog for TRX tokens.

2. Should we recreate the 1-day payout window?

Idle hands are the Devil's playground.

When I started on the Steem blockchain, there were two payout windows: 1-day and 30-days. Somewhere along the way it was decided to go down to a single payout window at 7 days. When the decision was made, it was already known that most posts were mostly idle after a day. Four or five or six years later, that's still largely true. I'd propose going back to 2 payout windows, the first after one day, and the second after seven (or less) days.

A one day payout window would enable faster feedback, and therefore more experimentation. Leaving a second payout window at seven days would provide time for manual curators to discover the posts that they might have missed in the first day. Yes, this requires a hard fork, but hopefully the original code is still available so that it wouldn't be a major undertaking.

If we look at the Steem blockchain as an evolving organism, with a 7-day payout window it only gets 52 iterations per year. With a 1-day payout window, it gets 365 iterations.

3. Having rebranded TRX Integration as a TRON faucet, make it into a universal faucet for any/all TRC20 tokens.

Would it be possible to use the same mechanism that's currently distributing TRX tokens and generalize it for all TRC20 tokens?

In order to attract a larger community of users, Steemit could even sell this service to TRC20 community leaders as a product that would help them distribute their tokens. Eventually, it could be modified to let the customers achieve a more targeted distribution by tying them to hashtags or communities in the way that is similar to what SMTs were intended to achieve, but step-1 is just to duplicate the TRX distribution on-demand with any/all TRC20 tokens.

4. Rewards as ranking.

Fundamentally, post payout rewards are not about value. The purpose of rewards is to rank the posts in some sort of order. If post-A gets more rewards than post-B, there should be some way of understanding that post-A is better than post-B. Further, if Post-A gets more than Post-B, and Post-B gets more than Post-C, it should also suggest that Post-A is better than Post-C.

The purpose, then, of the rewards is to take every post that's submitted and to put them into a ranked list. Then, market factors determine how much a position in that list is worth. If the list is random, then the market's not going to value it very highly.

How is the Steem blockchain performing at this? I have no idea, but we should come up with ways to measure it, so that curators can make the blockchain ranking system better. For example, here's a naive approach:

Let's say that every day a random selection of posts from the day are evaluated in pairs by a variety of ranking metrics and points are assigned for the ranking quality. Simple examples:

  • Measure 1: Number of votes
  • Measure 2: Value of median vote
  • Measure 3: Value of average vote
  • Measure 4: Number of words in the post's body

Whatever - for the purposes of this post, the metrics don't really matter. We'd just need to start with something and make improvements as time passes.

For each pair of posts under evaluation, a score is assigned based upon how many of those metrics the payout ranking agreed with. If it agreed with all four, then it gets four points. If it agreed with just one, then it gets one point, etc.

Then, the average score is published daily so that curators can assess how their votes are contributing to the overall effectiveness of the blockchain rankings and make adjustments to improve the results. By continuously improving and publishing our ranking capability, we get better and better at valuing, attracting and retaining content creators.

If I get some time, I might start playing around with #4, but everyone should feel free to do it first. ;-)

That's it for now. Just thinking out loud. Please me know your thoughts.


Thank you for your time and attention.

As a general rule, I up-vote comments that demonstrate "proof of reading".




Steve Palmer is an IT professional with three decades of professional experience in data communications and information systems. He holds a bachelor's degree in mathematics, a master's degree in computer science, and a master's degree in information systems and technology management. He has been awarded 3 US patents.


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Pixabay license, source

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Some interesting ideas.

#1 - Definitely a good idea - and easy to implement ?
Only downside maybe - if people come for the TRX might that encourage them just to dump the STEEM all the time?

#2 - How about a 1 Day and a much longer window, maybe 365 days, to satisfy the long tail reward market (more like YouTube)?

#3 - Not sure on this one.

#4 - How would the Upvu, Upex etc mega-voted posts fit into this?

How about a 1 Day and a much longer window, maybe 365 days, to satisfy the long tail reward market (more like YouTube)?

That's an interesting thought. Not sure if there would be computational limits for the witnesses to calculate rewards for that many active posts, but from a functional perspective there's definitely an argument to make for it.

How would the Upvu, Upex etc mega-voted posts fit into this?

Not sure, but I guess that's a small (highly visible) percent of the total. I guess they'd continue to stick out like a sore thumb, but maybe it would give investors the information they need to shift from short-term to long-term strategies.

Forgot to answer this..

if people come for the TRX might that encourage them just to dump the STEEM all the time?

I'm sure there would be some of that, but there would be others who figure out they can get more TRX by holding STEEM and voting with it. I guess the mix wouldn't change much compared to what we see now.

Having rebranded TRX Integration as a TRON faucet, make it into a universal faucet for any/all TRC20 tokens.

I think that what we've seen historically is that the "get rewards for posting" has been a strong incentive for spammers, scammers, self-voters, and self-voters-via-bots, so they tend to get an uncomfortably large share of the rewards compared to quality contributors. Until that issue is fixed I'm not sure whose interests it would be in to add more reward types.

Yeah, I agree, hence #4.

Still, if Steemit could use that to build a revenue stream that doesn't depend on selling STEEM, it might create capacity for hiring and development to solve some of the harder problems.

capacity for hiring and development to solve some of the harder problems.

Personally I'm skeptical that hiring and development are the biggest barriers. I think social factors are a bigger problem, the ecosystem is stuck in a bad equilibrium. For example, Steemit Inc doesn't want to use their power to squish the bot services because the bot services are the some of the biggest non-SteemitInc holders of Steem Power. Nobody inside the system will (can?) change the status quo and it's not in any outsiders' interest to buy enough Steem to do it.

You may be right about this:

For example, Steemit Inc doesn't want to use their power to squish the bot services because the bot services are the some of the biggest non-SteemitInc holders of Steem Power.

And it seems like it's getting close to the point where they're not going to be able to, even if they change their mind.

I'm still holding out hope for a next generation bot that uses beneficiary rewards in a clever way that enables investors to pursue rewards + audience at the same time, instead of trading one for the other.

In the end, though, all we can do is to make improvements in the spheres where we have influence and hope for the best elsewhere.

I'm still holding out hope for a next generation bot that uses beneficiary rewards in a clever way that enables investors to pursue rewards + audience at the same time, instead of trading one for the other.

We'll dig our way out!

lol. Maybe. But, it's pretty clear that [audience + rewards] is more valuable than [rewards], so I think something will eventually work itself out, even if I'm not sure what that looks like.

I think your ideas are very interesting and think some should be very useful to stabilize the Steem and be taken more seriously by crypto world.
Yes, even returning to the 1-day payout window could be interesting especially for the users who see the Steem primarily as an investment. At this point, however, my belly ache begins:
Of course, it's hard to draw a line between "Steem for profit" and "Steem as an attractive blogging platform" or to find an appropriate balance. However, I fear that the 1-day payout window would manifest a trend that has been observed for the last 2-3 years (since "high-return-of-investment-services" and "engagement-challenge") especially among the "young boomers": blog posts as disposable items. The hunt for rewards, rewards, rewards through posting, posting, posting has become so fast-paced that it's unfortunately already the case that you write an article that you can virtually forget about the very next day. The day after the "fast voters" were all already there. With any luck, then still comment your loyal followers and deal with your contribution. The vast majority of articles are written for the latter but hardly, it is only about the fast production. That is so sad. Quality falls by the wayside, also seems hardly in demand anymore. But it is this that should make our platform attractive and unique for new interested users. But if even old hands don't pay attention to their feed anymore because it is spammed by mass production, we have failed to strike a balance at this point. Ambitious writers and readers are turning away. Is that what we want? Do we just want the quick Steem? Then we need to provide a faster payout.... :-(

The hunt for rewards, rewards, rewards through posting, posting, posting has become so fast-paced that it's unfortunately already the case that you write an article that you can virtually forget about the very next day. The day after the "fast voters" were all already there.

So having two tiers for payouts might actually help with that, since the "fast voters" would have to choose whether to vote in the 1-day bracket or the multiday bracket. This means that manual voters might have less competition from the bots. Maybe not, but I think that the 365-day idea from @pennsif is especially interesting in that regard. To be honest, it seems to me that the attention span has always been about a day, no matter what they did with the hard forks. I'm trying to change that with some of the things I'm doing in Popular STEM, but I don't really have enough stake to make much of a splash.

I honestly don't think the payout length matters much to the quality of the content. We think that authors create content, but maybe that's not really true. Maybe it's the curators who create the content by signaling the things that they'll vote for. If a high-value curator signals that (s)he'll vote for pictures of your lunch, we'll have lots of lunch pictures. Doesn't matter if the payout comes in 1 day or 7.

But... and this is why I suggested it, a 1-day payout might draw quality producers in from the derivative chains.

To be honest, it seems to me that the attention span has always been about a day, no matter what they did with the hard forks

On this point, my feeling is different. In the "old days" there were not so many "daily bloggers". Of those, a few were good writers, with most you quickly noticed why they blogged daily. And so it was easier to follow your feed. If I - out of interest - followed someone, I also took the time to deal with his article later (just when the time window fit with me) (actually, as I did it after the first skim now with your text). And I had the feeling that users did this also "for me". Today it often seems to me that some "mass producers" have already forgotten their article from, let's say three days ago, themselves.

We think that authors create content, but maybe that's not really true

Users loyal to their own work do so.

Maybe it's the curators who create the content by signaling the things that they'll vote for.

Sure. And that's what the masses respond to, and we get to read a clear majority of the same unattractive material.

but I don't really have enough stake

Isn't that sad? And unfortunately also proof that the balance between interaction based on "social media" and pure profit thinking has been lost here.

But to return to the point of payout time. Presumably - with different points of view, a change to one day will make neither better nor worse. But we can only verify that if it is tried.
So: Courage to hardfork (after more than three years)!

You didn't think that such a discussion would go on without me, did you? But I needed a lot of time to think. Now let me add my 5 cents.

Actually, I don't think that the time after which the rewards come will affect anything. I would think along these lines.

STEEM has known issues:

  • Spam due to the desire to get rewards easily.
  • Voting bots that reward this spam.

@chriddi dreams that here on Steemit people will post rarely but very cool. It is a utopia worth striving for, but one we will never be able to achieve.

@danmaruschak very rightly pointed out that the "get rewards for posting" model is also the cause of a lot of spam.

What to do? Revolutionary changes that will require a hard fork cannot be dispensed with here. But we know that now the witnesses can be in the top 20 only if they are supported by UPVU. Will these witnesses be advocates for change?

STEEM Representatives were elected today. Note that there is not a single user among them who has a lot of SP. Why? Because none of them are interested in working for the platform, but only in making a profit. Therefore, it is necessary to make such changes in the system so that the profit depends on the benefit brought to the platform. Easier said than done.

To combat spam, changes need to be made so that, under certain conditions, curation is more profitable than writing posts. A new algorithm for calculating curation fees is needed. This algorithm should include the amount of SP as it is, but other factors should also be added here, such as:

  • Voting CSI
  • Reputation
  • number of followers (why not?).

All these factors should increase curatorial fees. At the same time, if the SP is delegated, the curatorial fees should remain at the base level. In this way, we will increase the value of crowd curation and reduce the attractiveness of bid bots.

Well, so "my dream" is shown very reduced... ;-)
Of course, this is utopia. But it doesn't have to be utopia that responsible curators and - above all - really interested people look for exactly this and set signs in this way. But the fact that exactly this is probably also utopia frustrates me a bit right now... ;-)

  • Voting CSI
    Nothing easier than to drive this one up the wall. And in a way that does not really correspond to the former idea of curation...

  • Reputation
    The reputation became questionable as soon as the first buy-vote bots appeared. The intervention of the whale called sc01 in the voting process (and of course the upvu & co) has made it a meaningless number.

  • number of followers (why not?)
    Why not? Because the „follower“ arise more, the higher your stake. I have many followers - most of them do not care. But anytime I vote somebody, I did not so far, there is a new one… ;-D

Hey, this really isn't meant to sound too negative and I appreciate your enthusiasm. But please take off those rose-colored glasses before they fall off....
Still too negative? Hm.
If I had applied to be a sc for April (like actually thought about it for a brief moment), I would have wanted to collaborate with you! Only with you... 😎

Nice that your appearance in the discussion is proof that there are still articles that are not written just for one day...

Edit:
I forgot something very important!
Remember? „Who if not you?!“
Congratulations!!!

Congratulations!!!

Thanks, actually I didn't expect to be chosen.

I like how you leave no stone unturned from imperfect proposals. This allows us to ultimately arrive at something better.

I am still in favor of changing the distribution of rewards. But now I have a better idea. I believe that the number of unique views and the average time spent by the reader on the page should be hidden in the calculation of both author's and curatorial rewards.

Under these conditions, outright spam will receive small rewards even if it is voted by a bot. Owners of a large number of SP will have to look for a readership. Of course, this will not solve all problems, but it will significantly reduce the attractiveness of bid bots.

Thanks... ;-)
Only that I do not come up with good ideas myself afterwards, I do not like. May be the so long already tortured blinders... ;-)

Your idea with the view counter is brilliant.
The frontend once had a view counter. Even at the time when there were already auto-voters (must have been partly very frustrating for some ambitious writers). At some point it disappeared - and I miss it a lot.
Did it disappear with the buy vote bots? A rogue who thinks evil of it... ;-)

TEAM MILLIONAIRE

Congratulations, your comment has been successfully curated by @o1eh at 10%.

Oh, vielen Dank... :-))

@chriddi dreams that here on Steemit people will post rarely but very cool. It is a utopia worth striving for, but one we will never be able to achieve.

We may not be able to achieve that utopia on the blockchain, but all we really need is a front-end/dapp that makes it easy to find these types of authors and filter the others out. I want to see all kinds of content getting posted (except spam, plagiarism, illegal content, etc... of course), but have an interface that lets the audience control what they see. So Utopia happens at the front-end, not on the blockchain. ;-)

STEEM Representatives were elected today.

Congratulations on being included!

To combat spam, changes need to be made so that, under certain conditions, curation is more profitable than writing posts. A new algorithm for calculating curation fees is needed. Before I joined here, I understand that curators were getting 75% of rewards for a while. I'm not sure why they changed it, but that strikes me as preferable. If it's one author sharing with tens or hundreds of voters, a 50/50 split seems off-balance (and when I first came here, curators were only getting 25%!)

I definitely agree with this. I think the overvaluing of posts is as big of a problem for the ecosystem as when they're undervalued. But, as you said, the people who could make the change don't have the incentive to do it, because (aside from Steemit) they're benefitting from the flaws in the current algorithm - at least in the short term.

So, we're left with individual curators acting in their own spheres of influence: "accept the things I cannot change and change the things I can." ;-) Which is why I proposed item #4. Definitely, CSI, reputation, and followers could be factors in that sort of a quality measurement. Similarly, I seem to remember that someone once used the total SteemPower of an account's followers as an alternate reputation score... maybe it was the people behind busy.org (when it existed)... not sure. The logic was that if lots of people with lots of SteemPower follow you, you're probably saying something that's worth listening to.

Congratulations on being included!

Thanks, it's actually a big responsibility and I don't know if I can be useful to the platform without enough resources. Sometimes one desire is not enough.

I agree that the role of manual curators is very important. We need more manual curators that are driven not only by the Steemit team, but also by the community.

However, changing the reward calculation algorithm would not be superfluous. Perhaps such a variant would be interesting:

I am still in favor of changing the distribution of rewards. But now I have a better idea. I believe that the number of unique views and the average time spent by the reader on the page should be hidden in the calculation of both author's and curatorial rewards.

Under these conditions, outright spam will receive small rewards even if it is voted by a bot. Owners of a large number of SP will have to look for a readership. Of course, this will not solve all problems, but it will significantly reduce the attractiveness of bid bots.

Unfortunately, I don't think there's a practical way to get that information to the blockchain at payout time.

Views and reading time are counted at the front-end, so the blockchain doesn't know about them... and in fact, you'd have to combine data from a potentially large number of front-ends.

I suppose something might be possible through the use of "oracles", but that's beyond my knowledge.

If I were the decision-maker, I'd commission a study and use a development environment to try to optimize the algorithm. Probably by testing 3-5 candidates (including trying to 'cheat' them).

TRON enthusiasts are undoubtedly enthusiasts of other cryptocurrencies, I think that people have realized how valuable time is and they invest it trying to get the most profit possible, among these people I.

I like the part that says that it gives curators time to see other interesting publications, I think this is a good option.

In relation to the TRC20 tokens, I think that the mechanism that you propose is more acceptable than leaving the same one that TRX currently has

On this last point I will tell you, on some occasions my comments have more value than the post itself, so I would not know what to say.

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