What's the final use case of the currency that makes someone invest fiat into it? <<<< Not sure what you mean by this. Can you please elaborate?
Steem Power represents more voting power. The more you have, the more influence you have over the distribution of awards.
At Lab Ledger, Scholar Points (the equivalent of Steem Power) represents influence over the distribution of rewards. Users will also have a unique "Influence Score" that will be compartmentalized towards their specific field (meaning influence can't cross "subject borders").
It will work very similarly to Google Pagerank. So you could think of it as a hybrid between Google Pagerank and Steemit.
How are we going to prevent circle jerking? The same way Google does- paid links, particularly among centralized monopolies who hold a lot of Page Rank, hold no little to no weight. Just one example of many.
Trust me: every problem running through your head we've thought of thousands of times. We've played Devil's advocate over our idea more than you possibly ever could- and that has provided us with many promising solutions.
Also, if you think of anything novel that could go wrong, we'd love to hear it, because then we'll fix it and make our platform better. So please, any feedback is appreciated.
As of now, we haven't heard anything new or novel, although we do appreciate the feedback.
No idea how to elaborate that. I don't see sustainable investments into a limited-use, inflationary token with permanent selling pressure and no clear benefit for the investors happening, that's all. Steem works because it targets everyone, your target audience is way too small to build that kind of traction.
Besides, your plan to solve problems that arise in open decentralized environments with solutions "like" a proprietary system gives me the impression that your Devil's advocate may have been a bit biased towards yourself.
Time will tell I assume. Good luck with your endeavor!
Thank you, and good luck to you as well.