It's as good as time as any to list what I thing Steem needs ASAP:
- User/platform configurable rewards distribution: The hardcoded 75%/25% Author/Curators split is something I'd like to see customizable. This ratio should be configurable within the
comment_optionsoperation and support between 0/100 and 100/0 ratios. Each Steem powered website could either set this ratio at the platform level or surface the choice to the end user via the interface. Different types of content deserve different types of rewards and by allowing this option to be configurable, it opens Steem up to different opportunities. - Reimagining Bandwidth and Account Creation: Account creation sucks right now, and while I know HF20 is set to address some of these problems, we very much need a way to create free accounts for people. Free accounts would also imply that the bandwidth system will need adjusting as will the requirements on account creation. This is the biggest hurdle towards adoption in my opinion, I can't really market chainBB to the wider world yet simply because most of them probably won't go through the trouble of creating a Steem blockchain account. I don't have a silver bullet solution for this but it needs to be a top priority.
- A more advanced account/key structure: The account management via keys right now has a lot of blemishes. I believe we need to reimagine the levels of account security and go above and beyond
postingandactive. A dynamic key system where I could create a key pair and grant it permission to specific operations would be ideal. I want to be able to create a specific key for my price feed and failover, which doesn't have access to transfer my funds out. I'd like to be able to assign a specific key on the powerbot accounts specifically for delegation operations. The more fine control we have over this system, the better types of apps can be built upon Steem. SteemConnect could do amazing things with a key system like this. - Rethinking content storage: Steem at this rate is going to grow unfathomably large, with a lot of garbage in the blockchain. It's going to need some method of pruning/sharding/subchains/sidechains/something to reduce/divide it's overall footprint. I'm identifying it as a problem, but I don't have a great solution. I just know it'll be an issue in the future if Steem has any sort of monumental growth to it.
- Standardization around content and it's meta: We need standard practices for how different frontends interact with data on the blockchain. Currently each frontend has no respect towards the custom data other platforms are setting within a post. It would go a long ways to have a set of best practices, guidelines and set methods to respect the data between all the platforms being built on the blockchain.
- Beneficiaries Payouts: Currently beneficiary rewards only pay out in SP. These rewards should pay out in whatever method the author of the post chooses (50/50 SBD/SP or 100% SP).
I'm sure I could list more - but I'll stop here :)
I am strongly in favor of this idea.
One concern that I have though would be that this could create a 'starvation' problem, where curators start only going after the posts with a higher and higher curation percentage, and ignoring posts with lower percentages (even if the quality of the content is high). Authors will be forced to increase their curation percentage in order to get noticed/considered, until it reaches a point where 80-90% curation percentage is needed if you want to get votes. Do you see this becoming a problem?
I think a type of free market would evolve around the different percentages, but I don't think it would go to that far of an extreme throughout the entire community. Some bots may focus on higher % ratios and that's fine, but I imagine real people are going to reward content they appreciate regardless of the ratio.
Curation focused users would be encouraged to vote on high % curation reward posts (that they believe will be successful), but those posts would likely only be in situations where the author cared more about visibility than rewards.
After thinking about this for the last couple months - I'm leaning towards not just letting the basic user set this ratio while posting. Someone could of course make a utility to set the ratio to whatever they want - but the platforms themselves should be the ones determining these percents to simplify the process, and that's what most users will end up using.
Steemit.com for example could present it as an option while writing a post:
This could be a slider or whatever, potentially not even revealing the % ratio (to reduce cognitive load). Maybe they don't even give the user an option, but they change steemit.com so that comments are at 0/100% and posts at 50/50%, because that's what's best for steemit. I'm not sure what the exact numbers would be, just brainstorming.
Overall I don't think we'd end up in a situation where all posts required 80-90% curation rewards to get visibility. The way the websites are built would follow the market, and since most people use these websites, there's a bit of a safety net.
Also - once content has been silo'd (either through communities or chainBB forums) - the overall visibility from monetary gains is a lot less important.
I think it would be better to have a slider like SP voting slider from 1% to 100%.
The wider the spectrum the better imo. Someone who wants to keep say 95% of the rewards for himself should be able to do so as well.
The market for curation will become a lot more interesting with a wide spectrum. ( 1 to 100)
I think it'd be up to the frontend (whether steemit, busy, chainbb, etc) to decide if they want to give the users a choice. There's definitely benefit for some users - but it'd probably confuse others.
A good first step is even making it possible :D
Your idea in combination with mine... would be an interesting solution.
I don't think that would happen, universally, but I also think there are cases where 80-90% curation makes perfect sense as a way to encourage risky voting on less-known or less-mainstream content.
Really excellent posts (high potential earnings) would get votes even with a low percentage. If you can vote on a post with 10% curation rewards but likely to reach $100 or a post with 100% curation that probably won't exceed $2, which do you choose?
I think we'd see different types of content and different authors offering different percentages, in a sort of curation-market way (more obscure content and authors would have to offer more, but at least they have the option to offer more and get noticed).
I do see some issues with UI but only pro curators and bots need pay attention to most of it anyway (like most of the low-level curation rules). Both can build their own tools or a market can develop for better tools than the baseline (steemit.com) platform (as is the case now for features like beneficiaries).
Thank you very much for this mindset. I hope your clout resonates with the development team to enact some of this logic.
I agree. But it could also turn around the other side, Tim... Giving more curation could also attract bots and false curation.
So in my view, the system has to have some kind of credibility (reputation) before you can jump on such high differentials. For example, low reputation should star at High Author percentage and accounts should be more affected by bandwidth when posting (and less when commenting). Then the more you go up in reputation, the more you can set the bar to allow only curators to receive rewards.
I agree with this. Bots will find a way to find all the posts with higher curation rewards and start upvoting them. I think these guys are overthinking it. The curation rewards are fine the way it is but I'm open to hear other ideas about this.
Exactlyyyy!!
It will be more inclined towards curators in terms of revenue generation.
But yes!!. The platform should provide author with more options to decide.
That's right... so, why not incentive everyone to behave and provide good input and value to the platform, right? By allowing only good reputation to strive, we give public opinion the power to decide. And that's what counts on steemit!
You'd have to stop Steem Power being buyable though (otherwise Steem becomes a buy your way to becoming rich issue)...
I disagree with your statement, I think it would do the opposite. Vote buying is the result of a decrease in curation rewards. ( when steem forked from 50/50 to 75/25.) At this point it became more profitable to sell your vote to a bot than curate.
So increasing curation rewards should not attract bots? Will not the sell vote to bots apply here?
Can you clarify your view. I still can't see how you are seeing it.
Thanks
New users will be able to promote their posts by giving higher curation rewards and whales like myself would earn good curation rewards by voting most posts, there will be no need for services like randowhale,etc...these services are just taking advantage of a weakeness in steem.
OK. Point taken.
Only one more question...
Are we then saying that we agree with money being the monopolization factor? Being that... the more you invest in STEEM the more you will win?
I can only agree to the above if, both high reputation and weight can play together a somehow equivalent play. Meaning that there should be another valuable attribute that balances the fact someone could put 1 Million on STEEM, make lots of random curations and then come out without any consequence. For me, this is not acceptable. Money should not be the only way to decide the future of the platform.
My view. And thanks for yours.
Steemit will replace facebook
Yeah, I think this sort of thing will induce a 'race to the bottom', where no author really wins. I like the idea of them being adjustable within reasonably small bounds (say 50/50 -> 75/25), though. But I'm not a believer in the 'free market', as we have too many irrational psychological foibles that sabotage us (both individually and as a group dynamic).
The free market works fine in a society where everyone makes decisions rationally. Unfortunately, people are irrational beings
I agree.
Well said
Even if people were to only upvote content with 80-90% curation I still think it wouldn't be a problem because it will make curation so profitable that many people will invest in SP thus increasing the price of steem (authors payout )
Also according to this rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule_(Internet_culture) only 1% of internet users actively create content while the other 99% consume it, so to me it makes perfect sense that authors gets 10% and curators(consumers) 90%.
Interesting view.
It seems to lean in favor of consumers to the detriment of creators. There's a reason content creators earn good money, it's hard work. Hitting an upvote button is not especially for a bot.
While the rule you mentioned is true, giving 90% to the consumers will disincentivize content creators.
Why would they do all that work when all they have to do is read and upvote?
Curators need steem power to earn rewards whereas authors can keep earning while cashing out every dime they earn.
Giving 90% to consumers is important to bring the system closer to a natural state. On steemit there is almost no readers and people are earning hundreds of dollars per posts, I mean are authors on steemit interested only about the money or do they care about the size of their audience?
A system like this is not sustainable, we need to incentivize people to buy steem power , its because people power up that authors earn anything at all.
This does make a lot of sense actually.
Good economics in this case in point.
I spend a lot of time writing lengthy blog posts, and though I attract some upvotes from dolphins and small whales from time to time, it's not nearly as much as I'd like (because it's not incentivized for them to do so)
In most cases, it's more rewarding for me to re-invest my payouts into bid bots
But I find this ridiculous... I put in a lot of work (half a day's work per post minimum), and it's content people do enjoy reading when they get around to it, but at the same time, I would much rather have a genuine audience of readers, say an audience ten fold, and earn 90% less on post-payouts.
Because that would eliminate the incentive for me to pay for my upvotes, and my content would reach a larger audience, which is exactly what I want.
I think my content is currently rewarded fairly for what it's worth, given that I've only just started. However, the economic environment in which I am contributing my content, is not conducive to me growing my audience.
So your point hits home very hard.
I would gladly lower my author rewards to 20% if it meant I'd have a 500% increase in my visibility (through upvotes and resteems)
Does that make sense? It certainly does to me
Umm Not Sure . This may work for Posts which are written or photographs taken by people on their phones and DSLRs .
But what if Steemit platforms actually end up growing to the point where it competes with youtube and people who make professional videos by investing money come on board. Content like documentaries , Short Films etc are Expensive to produce.
Would the growth be so massive with the above mentioned model that 10-20% reward will compensate the costs ? I am not sure .....And in case the costs don't add up steemit will become the dumping ground of global content while Quality content moves to other more profitable platforms ....
This was my first thought upon seeing the idea as well. I'm afraid that this would lead to more problems that we already experience (people reciprocating votes with the intent of profit, bots, poor content, etc.). Being able to control the ratio would be cool though. Not exactly sure what the best call is here
Other than free account creation, these are some solid ideas. I’ll have to think on the free accounts and bandwidth, but it just doesn’t sound like it would work out well, given the lure of “easy money” around here.
To be continued...
As the reward pool will never be large enough to make fb level amount of users happy, steemit is not destined to have that many users.
At some point users will need to pay some price to get in, imo.
This would both cut spammers and encourage only serious content creators imo.
I pretty much agree with that. Most users will likely never achieve any significant level of "popularity" or even have any of their posts go "viral." That's just the nature of social media. And unless an interface is created where users aren't primarily interested in rewards and are instead using it because it's genuinely a fun interface to interact, hoping for and comparing rewards will always be the main attraction and activity.
I actually prefer the idea of something that isn't necessarily "mass-adopted" over trying to onboard as many people as possible at no cost or minimal cost. When making money is involved and when it's advertised as being possible with minimal effort, you'll end up with a lot of people trying to milk the system with minimal effort...as we have actually witnessed ourselves. It spawns endless attempts at spamming, scamming, and the creation of mostly "low-quality" content just to make some quick cash.
There's nothing necessarily wrong with having a niche market or niche content. If that's what needs to happen to keep the system credible/workable, then that's perfectly OK. But if that's the goal, then the proper protocols need to be adopted. If that's not the goal...well, then...I'm not sure that there's any way to make both the money-earning aspect and the quality aspect workable without some serious reconsideration given to the entire system that has been created in the first place.
There seems to be a lot of conflicting expectations and protocols. Do we want mass adoption and everything that comes with it, or do we want exclusivity and a more managed/quality user experience? I don't think the blockchain protocols can properly facilitate both.
Right, my content is unlikely to be popular, too much cognitive dissonance, but if you want a well rounded content bundle you can't have it without what I bring to the conversation, imo.
The only way I see me getting any votes at all is through networking on the platform.
If this is to be the case, then new users shouldn't be encouraged through random upvotes, but rather the users we already have need to be given a chance to be known.
For instance, folks with less than 100 posts haven't really put in the effort, if you ask me.
I support folks whose content I do not agree with, but I do agree with their being allowed to say it.
Nsfw, specifically.
I have no love for it, but if that is their thing, I won't downvote it either.
Poo humor, too.
I completely agree with that. I've been saying this for a long, long time. The problem that I see a lot of on this platform is the same problem that I see with "failed" bloggers elsewhere - they either don't create interesting content or they don't bother with or know how to network. That's all social media is. If you can't or are unwilling to do those two things, then there shouldn't be much expectation of "making money online."
The random and/or widespread upvotes for new users and "minnows," just for the sake of "giving them something," isn't exactly the best approach for growing value from a content and user/viewer interest perspective. I've never understood the idea of trying to support all new users rather than trying to support users who produce good/popular content or even just users that you like.
Social media is about finding good information for you or entertaining content for you. Vote on the things that you enjoy and want to see more of, not what you think will "help minnows get more power" or "help spread the rewards around." That's the wrong approach on multiple levels, in my opinion.
But what do I know?
Lol, thanks for being here, David.
I don't know much, either, just an old, retired, hobo.
Agreed, that's a hard one. Free accounts would require some radical changes to go along side it, I don't think it would just work if we simply allowed it. A potential solution could be some sort of free/temporary account (where everything's "temporary" and not permanent on-chain somehow). The user could use this account to only post (100% SP) with it to "earn" themselves an account. Only once they've "earned" the account would their history actually be recorded on-chain and unlocked of all features.
It's a tall order, and I'm sure there's better solutions, but we need something different than what we have now.
@jesta, now a temporary account that was mentioned only puts us at a disadvantage in the sense that "forcefully" making an author accept only full power up, what if the person requires fund as per an emergency? The truth is that the living conditions of people differ and there are those who know how data consuming steemit site is, especially to those in certain countries. How does compulsory full power up help such a person when the 50/50 option will be beneficial?
That is like creating a matrix system where you have to get to a certain level to get certain rewards. P.S. what is the assurance that spammers are new members? A new person cannot operate such complex reward farms as effortlessly like that, they are mostly pre-existing members who we'll never suspect that are the masterminds, so at the end of the day, people who are already aware of of service like anon steem won't be deterred by the temporary new accounts. Rather, new members who genuinely want to blog and earn will suffer more.
It would be 100% SP because each account requires a minimum amount of SP to be created. If they're a new "temporary" account - they wouldn't be able to depend on those funds for an emergency. It's a limitation people would have to live with.
And it absolutely is a system where you have to achieve a certain level to get rewards. The bar is low though - the cost of creating an account. They could always pay to have an account created and bypass this entire system.
"Temporary", until it expires and then you create another free account (or 100 of them) and keep on spamming. I don't think this is workable at all.
I understand where you are coming from in terms of wanting free accounts (i.e. most other web sites) but I really think this is a situation where the nature of a public blockchain and limited resources is an irreducible difference from most other web sites and makes it unworkable. Someone has to pay for the resources, whether with an actual fee or some sort of stake-limiting.
I meant that the posts themselves would be temporary as well, which means if they created 100 accounts and spammed, when all 100 accounts expired, all those spam posts would go away with the accounts.
There's a lot of hurdles to make that happen though - which is why I said it'd be a radical change.
You can't just delete the whole history from the blockchain. There was some discussion about an idea to have offchain "free" accounts (sort of like a "Guest account"), which would be a way to do something like this, but as you say there are a lot of hurdles to it, including that it represents a big change from the current "everything on the blockchain and the front end is just a UI view of that" architecture.
I feel like we're getting in the weeds here on implementation details, but that's fun sometimes :)
I understand you can't delete things from the blockchain and I never said you'd have to. I imagine that these temporary posts/accounts would exist in a mempool like state (to borrow a term from bitcoin) - where they exist as pending transactions. This mempool would persist and propagate between witnesses just like blocks do using the p2p network. There would be a maximum lifespan of these transactions and a set of criteria that the account must meet before any of the transactions are actually included in a block.
None of this remotely exists AFAIK within Steem - so it would be a huge undertaking.
On the other hand, you're right - this whole system could exist off-chain and be integrated invisibly within the frontends.
The only problem there is now that system is responsible for paying for the account to be created upon completion of the steps. It'd be way easier than building it on-chain, that's for sure.
Yup, weeds. The on-chain/off-chain distinction is the main thing. Whether it is a mempool-like thing or a separate database or something else is definitely weeds.
As far as the system being responsible for paying, I could imagine some sort of setup where if these pseudo-posts from pseudo-accounts get votes and earn, then the rewards could accumulate in a pool or holding account or something which could then pay for accounts/bandwidth.
But the problem is still that many users are not going to earn significant rewards, ever. I'm just not sure the 'earn your way to pay your way' model of providing bandwidth is viable at all. Some users are going to be content producers and some (probably most, by a lot) are going to be content consumers. The latter need their bandwidth paid for from some external source, somehow.
See...that sounds like a reasonable option. Kind of adds to the “gamification” aspect as well. Not sure how it could be implemented though. Could it be done via a side- or sub-chain? As each user then reaches the required targets, the information would be extracted and essentially added to Steem in their own version of a user “genesis” block that contains all of their previous data.
As a new user, they probably wouldn’t have a ton of content, so I imagine the block numbers and sizes would be relatively small. And, of course, if your other suggestion can be resolved (content storage), it wouldn’t matter too much anyway.
LOL.
Steemit and Steemit RED!
Nice idea, I'm fresh to blockchain but played enough shity RPG's and media outlet's over time to see idea this work, (as a model in general, I'm new to Steem so can't comment on it really) kind of like where in a game you are restricted to level 5(intro/#steemitlyf so can read everything but have restricted input) then graduate to Steemit.
From my basic software understanding with cryptoing, blockneting and interneting I can't see why this concept would not work as a general platform level in the near future IMHO.
nice comment
(Almost) free account creation is a must.
Please consider this use case scenario:
I have a mature, well prospered forum / site with 100k users. I want SMTs. I want my users to get accounts on steem. Given current min reg fee 0.2 STEEM that's around $20,000 (if you can afford $3,000,000 in SP delegation, freezing those funds for 30days + 13weeks) or just $600,000 for account creation without delegation.
Freemium would be the key. As long as we would be able to keep bandwidth limits at the level preventing million of 0SP accounts from spamming the network.
A suggestion on the free account creation thing, maybe there should be kind of a replenishable quota of free accounts an already existing "parent" account could create. Going beyond the quota would then cost that parent account.
You can do that now with delegation.
Yes.. Your right
THANK YOU FOR THIS. It's funny, I was wondering when Steem would stop holding itself back by allowing potential users to wait weeks in order to be accepted/verified. What a turn off. Only took me about two weeks to be accepted (eye roll).....So glad these issues will be resolved. Hoping for some great steps forward in 2018! Cheers, mate!
Yess!!..
I strongly believe that the Sign up process taking too much time is actually losing a lot of users and also from its platform-scaling point of view in terms of users count.
If it really wants to compete with Facebook, Twitter, etc. Steemit do need to make users feel that they are on a equally competent platform with awesome front-end UI.
This is that one thing lacking in existing #Blockchain-based Dapps.
Please prioritize this.
I HAVE WAITED MONTHS to see this problem fixed and it is still a problem....
And the value of STEEM will not go up until its fixed.
@jesta I agree with you on the need of easness to the signup process. I recently wrote a post about the need of an invite a friend button, and my idea on the backend of it is related to make it easier and faster, as well as showing the users the advantages of steemit, and how great the platform is to learn too. I also wrote a post on the creation of a Mentions tab function. That will also help steemians communicate faster, and increase the speed of task completion. @gold84
I am happy with all my heart that there is like you in this great site
Who are doing development work and a road map to develop this great site
thank you all
Thank @jesta
Thank @timcliff
My greetings to all of you in this future map
Thanks for all and my greetings to you
@walidsalah
Well you got 33$ on this comment in 14 hours. claps
great information and easy to understand
Mmmmmmm who is this @jesta, lemme check him out. Full of knowledge.
Look forward to emulating your steps.
You are very correct
informative comment...
I’ve created a word cloud for the comments section of this post that I hope you will find of value and will want to share. While the creation of the actual word cloud is relatively easy and straightforward, the creation of a relevant word list that will produce a meaningful word cloud is quite another matter, as I’m sure you know, and takes considerable time and effort. Unfortunately, as of now, the post has only had 41 views. It needs a little love. Perhaps a resteem might be of help, if you think it is worthwhile, and, of course, it would be much appreciated too. TIA
https://steemit.com/steemit/@cryptographic/word-cloud-for-steemit-roadmap-2018-community-input
Could you give some examples of what possibilities this would open up?
apart from all this which is really cool but dont you think the world as to rock steemit, hacking our way into existing social media, and bring more users to steemit, have been on facebook over the years with thousand of likes and shares not even a penny i recieved, nobody hears about steemit and he/she is not HOT!(bigshaq), i believe steemit should work on publicity too, to promote the platform and reach more users, attatching some amount of steem to social sharing conditioned with algorithm like that of rewards could be looked into,
Thanks for all the great ideas put forth.
as far as content storage, an archive option similar to Instagram would be amazing... to quickly archive a post in order for it to be publicly hidden yet permanent. User may toggle posts to be visible or not and that could be done through a side chain if i'm not mistaken no ? I know some people live life with no regrets and all but boy do i regret one of my posts... like dam... very unprofessional post and i cant do anything about it.. no options other than living with an impulsive post made out of curiosity. In my opinion an archive would be key in rethinking content storage, or even allowing users to delete posts they no longer want to have
Why you stop. Nice writting