What are community tokens trying to solve?
This is how I feel about these tokens
Recently however @ned seem to have change his stance on community tokens. In this interview
@ned sound very excited about community tokens, he even talks about them having their own paramaters and reward pools.
My concern/question is the same that @ned initially had 6 months ago, what are these tokens trying to solve?
The only argument I heard was that community tokens would give more power to users involved in this particular community and that someone holding a lot of steem power shouldn't be able to influence rewards accross the board.
This means essentially that steem power holders will have no influence at all because every single community will have its own token.
This bring me to my next question, what use case will steem have if every communities has its own token which will ( like ETH tokens) be tradeable for BTC on the exchanges ?
I'm also curious to know why @ned's stance changed on these because as he said 6 months ago these tokens are going to confuse and divide the user base.
The reason this community is so loyal and faithful is because we are all using the same token and thus have the same goal which is to increase the value of it.
Let's take a simple example.
I create a /s/sports community and issue a sports coin. What can this coin do that steem can't within this community? How is the distribution going to be any better/more equal? How will this prevent whales from other communities to influence content in the s/sports community?
To @ned I say, follow your gut! Unless these tokens can only be exchanged for steem ( which they won't) then they are going to divide us and significantly reduce the utility of steem.
This is how I see it:
Tokens are 'added' value to the ecosystem. Steemit is like a 'world economy' and within the world economy there's a lot of 'assets' investment vehicles, that can be structured in a way where communities grow the value together.
I see this as a "+1" that can be repeated many times. The tokens will in advertently creating more trading, movement of steem and steem dollars.
If anything, this suggests to me an increased 'compounding Network Effect'. Resulting in Stronger growth and maturity of the underlying currency - STEEM. It's Brilliant really.
More streams of support is a good thing for everyone. In a way, the 'tokens' are like 'derivatives' and derivatives can be quite cool. I do realize we have a financial market of derivatives that's ....well....a lot of different language could be used to describe it. gongshow, maybe best way to put it.
Community tokens could be a real cool social experiment to how in fact a derivative market can in fact work in ways that are mutually beneficial.
It's interesting because the ways of thinking here are a bit of a 'paradigm shift'. from traditional win/loss relationship math....to win/win mutual benefit math.
Thanks for the post. These are important conversations, that are necessary in directing and creating the best narratives for our mutual benefit.
Steem On, The Dream is Live
Ps, i wrote a post about this the other day after listening to the interview :)
Cheers.
Everyone wants to be a whale: Early investors versus developers
This seems a case where current whales (early investors) of Steem will be against community tokens while wannabe whales (developers) will be for the community tokens because then they have the chance to issue tokens and become whales of those new tokens.
For community tokens
The community tokens will attract developers to build apps for the Steem ecosystem and the apps will attract more Steem users.
Ethereum is currently attracting a lot of developers who are building lots of apps and increasing the value of Ethereum. Maybe this is why @ned is now open to following Ethereum's model. Whether those apps will become popular with users. time will tell.
If the Ethereum model is followed, then the creation of Steem community tokes will require the spending/burning of Steem which will result in increased Steem scarcity and increased value. So there is a possibility for a win-win scenario for both current Steem holders and for developers.
Against community tokens
Steem, unlike Ethereum, is attracting a significant number of users who are not developers and who may end up being confused by the new community tokens. Steem, Steem Backed Dollars and Steem Power are already confusing enough. This confusion might slow the growth of the Steem user base.
Differentiate from Ethereum
I suggest the Steem blockchain should stick to one token and be different from Ethereum. If Steem follows Ethereum's model and is unable to compete, failure is a very likely possibility. If Steem is able to continue attracting newbies without confusing them with even more tokens, then it will follow another path, which may involve community tokens once newbies start coming in with a multi token view of the world. Whether that path will be more successful than Ethereum's path, time will tell.
Thanks for your input
This is a valid use case but it is not solving anything as you could do it just as easily on bitshares ( like zappl did recently)
@ned said that steem tokens could have their own reward pool, which means the creation and distribution of these tokens is going to be independant of steem. Each token will be able to function without steem and are not going to be backed by steem. Moreover people are going to trade these for BTC completely bypassing steem.
Honestly, I did not listen to the podcast.
If the community tokens are going to bypass Steem yet benefit from the Steem blockchain then that would not be fair to holders of Steem and that is not just me sucking up to whales. The Steem bypass would be a move to attract and appease developers.
Developers are most probably the most important netizens of the blockchain world at this time, but harming early investors in order to appease developers maybe sound business but is it fair?
Well, this is the Wild Wide West of finance and technology, and fairness is only determined by market forces. So I suggest diversification because you never now which project will screw you over.
Community development is, above all, a big challenge for steemit.
Further growth of steam is insufficient for steam and steem dollar.
I agree with your suggestion. Do you have a detailed plan?
Steem inflation will drop, as more members will join in. When you start using SCTs then this solves scalling. Steem can still stay strong in price, will even get more expensive over time. While demand grows with new members being added faster and faster. Surely now the linear system has been set.
Now suppose more people from the country where I live, #Nederland, would join in. That could be tens of thousands, all wanting to post in their own language Nederish (Nederlands). So, we are slowly moving towards a #Nederish community using the #nl tag.
The competition for the Steem pre-filled reward pool, with relativel dropping inflation of minus 1% per year, will go up. Yet, for the Nederish language community it will become almost useless to hope for a part of the Steem reward pool.
In comes the Steem Community Tokens {SCT}, some will be made like they do now with ICOs going for gold digging... They will die out. Because they have no real use to them.
The Nederish community though decides to go for the Nederish Florin, #NFL, this will have its own Token inflation, its own reward pool and it can be traded on the internal market, at least. Now, this NL community starts to upvote for NFL Token, they send each other messages with NFL tokens and so on.
Already these communities are starting to form, think of that trending one for example: KR. Now imagine that they have their own Token. They already post in the Korean language, so why not their own SCT?
We are all still on Steem. All this will still be made possible thanks to the Steem blockchain technology. We are like the Steem humanity, all with our unique being and being equivalent at the same time.
Imagine what lively trading there will be on the internal market! Steem for NLF, NLF for SBD and SPORTS tokens for JAVABEANS. Which are a colab of coffeebean farmers that took matters in their own hands, thanks to Steem Community Tokens.
To me this is the next big thing, besides Steem going to 12$ before autumn of course (NOTE: that is my speculation.)
Steem Community Tokens will unite us even more, interact with each other even more. The danger is that it might become some kind of a cult though, but that is only a minor danger I guess.
So, I can hardly wait! And I believe it will also boost the market price of Steem beyond imagination...
(EDIT: text-corrections)
Yeah .. I don't understand either ... HAve lot of this and that community coins will surely impact steem .. It is just like Using steem platform to affect steem.