BlockTrades Witness Report for 3rd Week of August
On the coding side of things, we made several pull requests for features/fixes we recently made to the Steem client. Some I've mentioned previously, but one new one is the ability to send two transactions for the same amount of funds between the same pair of users in the same block. Previously the 2nd transaction would be rejected.
This week we spent more time on business and design discussions versus coding work. Some proposals for changing features related to voting were discussed and ultimately rejected after soliciting community input (most notoriously, the vote nullification feature). Last I heard Dan was planning to go back to the drawing board on this issue, although I have hopes that some other features such as the ones below will take precedence for the near term.
I've been pushing hard both publicly and behind the scenes for an introductory location where new users can get a nice introduction to the Steemit site and Steemit culture, and a recent post by Ned makes me think we're going to make some headway on this issue soon. I think this is critically important, not only so new users don't feel lost, but also to reduce friction between new and existing users and move us closer to a common ground about site usage.
I also participated in some discussions about how to protect people from losing too much Steem in the event that a hacker manages to gain control of their account, as well as a feature for allowing a user to regain control of their Steem account if they lose their password. I think both of these features will be big selling points when making the case for Steem as a safe alternative to traditional money.
I'm still arguing the case that a primary focus for the front-end developers for Steemit should be a feature that allows for new users who sign up via facebook to “Share” that they've signed up to Steemit as a means of viral advertising. If you agree or if you think there's other more important features that the GUI guys should focus on first, please leave a comment.
I definitely agree that the password recovery problem is a good one to work on. People who have been involved in crypto for some time are almost instinctively aware of the importance of safeguarding private keys, but "mainstream" adopters are accustomed to a world of hand-holding where the powers that be can bail you out if you are careless, stupid, forgetful or unlucky. If a method can be devised to facilitate recovery without sacrificing security, it can avoid problems of negative user experience that could hurt the platform's prospects for widespread adaption.
@blocktrades I agree with this post just that I see to sign up using Facebook and reddit, why the feature LOGIN do not use facebook and reddit so users easier to sign in to their account, I just see a lot of people who lose their password and can not access their accounts back
Sorry, nobody deserves that kind of money for taking 10 minutes to write an update that is going to allow them to earn more by being a witness... Might deserve a vote if you didn't upvote yourself, but, you did.
Pretty sure I didn't request your vote, bernie :-) As a side note, it takes me far longer than 10 minutes to write up one of these posts.
@berniesanders
Can you, please, explain why upvoting yourself is a bad thing? It looks like it doesn't have any effect, anyways.
And if it is a bad thing, then why there is a checkbox under the post?
Thanks a lot for the answer. I will be the guideline for future posts (and comments).
It is a bad thing for @blocktrades to self-vote here because it takes rewards from potential new users. @blocktrades, while a good witness, received over 8,000,000 vesting shares from the steemit company on 3/31/2016 and 4/1/2016. To vote for their own post is to use these given shares to award themselves hundreds of dollars at the expense of potential user base.
Even for @blocktrades, giving one's self an award is arguably legitimate in some cases, like for an essay or investigative piece, but a witness update adds very little to the value of steem content. A witness update has limited relevance to most potential users and, like @berniesanders mentions, is merely a justification for earnings elsewhere.
@steemed
Thanks for a long explanation :)
To sum it up:
Correct?
I don't agree with the blanket statement, and that isn't what @steemed said either. Indeed one of the benefits of SP, including owning a lot of it, is being able to promote your own posts.
The issue specifically is generating large rewards on a witness report that is already reporting on the process of earning rewards as a witness. It is unnecessary and effectively a form of double dipping.
In fact this is one of the reasons I don't make these posts myself. It reminds me of politicians who send out newsletters claiming to tell everyone about service to the community, but in fact are thinly disguised campaign ads. If what you are doing adds value then it ought to be easy for people to identify what it is you are doing without another post specifically advertising it.
I'm not sure why you think that. Voting for yourself generates rewards the same way any other vote does.
@smooth
Thanks for your expressed doubt :)
The answer is probably hidden because of this rule:
If this rule is in fact valid - I don't know that - and if only I (with my limited SP) vote for myself then I get - nothing.
Correct?
TNX!!!
That would explain it!
@berniesanders lol, yeah I think also it was done by some other users here
Yes, they could get access to your account even if you lose your password, is an essential key factor in and become a major platform.
Regarding Share function via registration I agree, it may draw more attention was called. Something that also could have been done is and have an auto feed via facebook for example, where you can choose and share item collapsible future on facebook twitter etc when making posts. This can also contribute to several open their eyes, when it comes up several records regularly on user account on other platforms.
If I understood you correctly, you're suggesting an option to "cross-share" to other services when you make a post. I thought someone made a service that allowed something like this, but I think you're right that this would be a nice core feature of steemit.
Yess you understand me right :)
I hope so, sharing is a big opotunity for us to get more users.
I think that could do, a big change in growth.
I want to both upvote and downvote your post, so I'll do neither.
I want to upvote because I think that to gain mass adopoption, steemit or someone is going to need to have a plan for password recovery and to give users more insurance regarding the security of their passwords. There are some tremendous real-world lessons to be learned about password security and retention, but the more users are at risk to learn these lessons the less confidence they will have in steem as a platform. It will be a shame if the technological advancements represented by steem are negated by the cryptosnobbish culture of caveat emptor.
I want to downvote this post because at 800 USD, it's too high for a witness update. Instead of downvoting you, I'm going to upvote a comment that makes this same point.
I agree with adding Facebook share. It is a good idea.
What about these two:
Agree. Step by step.
Respectfully blocktrades your suggestion #1 is virtually useless because many if not most of the new users at this point don't have Bitcoin, probably don't know how to buy it, and don't want to. This will only become more true over time. We've largely exhausted the pool of cryptocurrency participants who have any interest in joining Steem. If they want to be here, they're here already. (The marketplace may change this somewhat.)
If the idea is paid buy-in, the focus needs to be on buying in with conventional payment methods. Otherwise the on-ramp is too steep and nothing here is all that compelling (successful bloggers excluded) for people to want to climb it.
While I can see why you would think that "we've largely exhaused the pool of cryptocurrency participants", I'm not at all sure on this point myself. AFAIK, there's only two ways to join right now: 1) via FB (and maybe still a good karma reddit account) or 2) mining an account. There's plenty of crypto people who will refuse to join via FB on a morality/anonymity stance, which pretty much leaves mining an account, which isn't exactly trivial nowadays.
isnt it possible to create accounts via the CLI for a fee?
For something like that (creating an account vice actually selling crypto) it would probably be relatively easy to get merchant banks and even amazon on board.
If reddit is still allowed (and it certainly was for a long time) then that is good enough for 90% of crypto users. Of those who refused to use reddit my paid/free offer for bitcointalk users got a decent amount of interest for a while, but that has tapered to a tiny trickle. That and the fact that Steem has been very widely covered and known since it reached #3 in market cap a month ago suggests to me that no big pent up demand is still there. Of course, some will still trickle in and an easy method of paid signup would bring some too. I just don't expect it to be big relative to the existing size and rate that cryptocurrency users are already joining. And of course as I said above this will become even less and less significant over time, if it isn't quite entirely insignificant already.
Anyway, if you have a Bitcoin-paid signup process in the works, by no means am I discouraging it, but I'm kind of agreeing with your earlier comments that a lot of growth in user base and investment are needed and I don't see a whole lot of growth coming from cryptos on the user side. On the investment side, possibly. I think the needs there are a bit different though.
I agree the password thing is the only problem i see in terms of potential headwinds. There will be a work around somewhere, and i think we will see the need for total and absolute security come to the for front in the next phase for crypto. I see it tieing in with a general need by every day internet users for online security and data security system/s that will be developed. Decentralised data storage/privacy can and will come to the rescue and by that point people will be accustomed to it as everyday internet users. The more and more companies that are hacked and have to pay with money/bitcoin for their data back the more it will happen, thus driving these security developments to where they need to go.
a robust Intro section would be fantastic! thats the one thing I found tough when getting started is there wasn't a video of some sort that clearly explains exactly how things work on the site, and what to do and not to do.
Luckily I've found a lot of the community members very helpful in pointing out certain things and providing explanations when needed, which is what I really liked about this platform, the sense of community that exists that you don't find anywhere else.
@blocktrades what is use-case of sending two identical transfers in the same block as opposed to a single transaction. Is this related to blocktrades.us, and why was this a priority issue?
What is your stance on the current proposal for voter nullification?
I am not sure if that is wise before the platform leaves beta. There is much work to do tweaking curation algorithms. The users experience when their votes have zero effect is still not ideal for mainstream viral adoption imho.
I respectfully disagree with this statement, and I think we have very different perspectives on the importance of different aspects of this project. I'm going to try to express my point of view a little bit, apologies for the incoming wall o' text.
Right now there's a major rift in "trains of thought", which I'd categorize into two groups of people:
The statement of yours that I quoted falls very much in line with Group #1. I feel the vest majority of "whales" fall into this category simply because it's the world you guys know and excel at. It's great that we have so many people that know the cryptography end so well, but I fear that not enough respect is being given to the best practices that apply to building a social platform.
I feel we need to lean a bit harder into the social networking aspects, the promises to users, the value we provide them and the new user experience they are about to encounter.
Right now what I see happening is new "uninformed" users end up joining, not understanding any of it, and walking away with the feeling of a broken promise. I'd probably say it's a pretty common occurrence, I know at least two people I've convinced to join that have already since quit "because it doesn't work". They aren't power users, they were just normal people, and their expectations were not met based on what they were presented with.
From what I can tell (using some of the data I've been analyzing), the churn rate is incredibly high right now. The total number of users is growing, but the overall daily active user count is not growing. The site isn't sticky enough for a variety of reasons, with curation rewards being one of them (as being mentioned by @pjheinz in the original comment).
If it is indeed as common as I believe, it needs to be addressed before we just start throwing more warm bodies at the site. The retention rates and turnover will be massive and it will just sour peoples opinion. As someone who falls in line with #2, I can't even begin to express how important first impressions are. I'm also trying my hardest to express these concerns and thoughts when applicable, hoping to gain support for these ideals.
My opinion is more efforts should be even more focused at improving the experience rather than increasing the audience. I'm not saying growth should stop, but a stronger emphasis should be placed upon improvements in the experience. The team working on this website is relatively small and has already done incredible things, but at it's size, it's going to take time to make things acceptable for your average joe. Let's get things ready for joe when he arrives.
I apologize again for this huge response @blocktrades, and again, I hope I portrayed an opposing view respectfully. All of this is an attempt to convey my experiences as a developer and how we can make this platform even more powerful.
IMO, this is an awesome comment. there's only one thing i don't necessarily agree with.
At the end of the day, i think that changing the curation problems benefits "group 1" at least as much, if not more than group 2.
I've basically had this same argument fuzzyvest and chrudtzu in another thread. The notion that you'll find even a very few people willing to make a significant investment in steem power when that significant investment only results in a tiny amount of influence is nothing more than a fantasy.
Yeah I don't have a great solution to the curation situation. It's an interesting one that's for sure.
Is the problem with curation rewards that some people are getting way too much? I've seen very large accounts that are getting 10-100 SP just from curation rewards, which is far far too high in my opinion. There really should be a cap or something on the potential reward.
As someone with ~7k SP, if I find and vote something 3 hours earlier than a whale, there's no reason they should get 100x the rewards that I get.
Actually I was a bit surprised that you thought I fell in the blockchain group as you described. The areas where I'm suggesting more focus should be spent is on increasing the friendliness to the site to new users (creating updated intro material, etc) and preventing the pain of loss of funds (something that I think is likely in many cases to result a quick exit from the platform for anyone not already committed to cryptocurrency) versus a lot of blockchain level tweaking.
It's my opinion that monetary rewards are not the primary reason people use social media anyways (well, I hope this is pretty obvious statement given the success of facebook/twitter/etc), so while the money is an important draw for Steemit, I believe the most important thing is to make the site a place where people feel welcome. I also like the uncensorability of using a blockchain to power the conversations. I'm really not sure we're are so far apart in our goals for the platform, except that it sounds like you would like to wait longer before bringing new people to the platform (i.e. when it's more polished).
I didn't necessarily mean to lump you personally into one group or another, I think it was more the philosophy and the approach. After @smooth's comment as well, I think I may have done more damage than good with my "grouping" analogy. But at least it got some people talking!
It really doesn't seem we're far apart at all. I'm with you 100% in everything you just mentioned. Looking back at what I wrote, I probably went a bit harder than I should have on that single quote ;)
Jesta is 100% on point! The churn rate is really high and "average Joe's" are joining today and leaving tomorrow....
I actually agree with both of you. User retention is an issue but I don't believe that introducing huge instability on the investment side is an effective way to address it and indeed it represents a loss of focus away from user engagement and growth.
If there were some specific compelling proposals to improve user engagement, retention and growth, then I think everyone would be very interested in pursuing them, but does anyone seriously believe that voter nullification is that? I sure don't.
Also, Steem is something new in that it combines both a cryptocurrency/blockchain and and social media platform. Thus it is essential for everyone to appreciate the issues from both perspectives, as well as the recognizing the new issues arising that fall squarely into neither. If we find ourselves divided into Group #1 and Group #2 that is a good step toward failure.
I agree with the points you're making and it's something we definitely need to be careful with.
Now that I think about it, and from your comments, maybe
groupswas the wrong terminology to use. It adds an adversarial quality to it to the comparison. Maybe a better way to describe it would be some sort ofsliding scalein relation to the tactics that need to be employed in order to be successful .I hope I didn't come off seemingly supportable of any form of voter nullification, because that's not the message I want to promote. My goal was simply to explain why I don't think promotion of steemit.com is the answer to the problems we're facing.
I've voiced this concern as well.
As a potential investor, I can attest to the fact that I would welcome a change in the value of the steem power i was buying from "no value at all" to pretty much anything else.
replying here due to nesting:
Most investors, potential or otherwise, would like to have their investment have value. A change in the curation system would be a change in the rules to give investors more for their money. Thats not instability, its value.
There is only one type of investor who would be negatively impacted by such a change. I hate to use the N word, but i think here its appropriate.
Ninjas. The people who have millions or tens of millions in SP because of the "ninja mine" that wasnt really a premine or an instamine, it just had precisely the same effect as either of these things.
I know i know. They invested sweat equity. so theyre investors too. But if you give the sweat investors all the return, and the money investors none of it... well.. what incentive is there for money investors.
@sigmajin, I'm certainly not against changes that I think will actually raise the value of Steem (and I'm pretty sure most whales feel the same way). But I watched a promising cryptocurrency (that I held) that went thru too many changes too quickly (all probably with the best of intentions), and it was pretty detrimental to the coin's value. I'm not against changes, but changes that change the rules for investors should not be taken lightly (and certainly those changes shouldn't be made frequently). Also, when you have limited resources, I think it's best to figure out the most critical issues and focus on those first and while I have no doubt curation rules can be improved, I'd rather see some other issues that I consider more pressing tackled first.
The point that I was making is that Steem Power is locked up for 2 years. The constant tweaks cause (in my opinion) the potential investor to be more wary in investing if the rules of the platform constantly change, i.e. if the rules are unstable, then maybe my investment is unstable.
Yes, signing up via FB login would be a good strategy. A lot of what I'm planning to do in the near future will involve bringing outside traffic in. These people will most likely carry a high signup ratio and what better way to spread that activity than the viral wall post about it.
Excellent article again, thank you for the info, dedication and the sharing, namaste :)