I'm not going to dig up the conversation because like most things here it would be a waste of my time but I referenced how much CoinMarketCap was charging for banner ads and you referenced the traffic to that site vs Steemit and acted like it wasn't a legitimate comparison and said something to the effect of "let's not get ahead of ourselves."
I also referenced some of the people like @nonlinearone who were very competent who left STEEM long ago which would have been the smart choice for most of us. You acted like all those people weren't engaging and basically acted like people who threaten to quit don't get rewarded etc....
At the end of the day STEEM is in trouble. I would much rather sit on DOGE and Digibyte and Electroneum. At least with those they will just sit and waste my time thinking about what could have been or devalue my time.
Unfortunately it is pretty clear that Steemit INC isn't competent.
There are about 50 or 60 people draining the fuck out of this place and for everyone else it has been a game of Don't Get Dumped on which we lost.
For the amount you have earned from being a Witness you haven't earned your keep. @berniesanders called it out a long time ago and sometimes the truth hurts. You generate a report once in awhile and that is about it. I can't blame you though. The passive income stacks up and you are able to work on EOS related stuff. Why do more work when you keep getting rewarded for your current behavior?
There are thousands of us who could have "witnessed" STEEM stacking up in our wallets. Plenty of us are technical enough to at least do that but anyone with half a brain knows the distribution was ruined from day one and the witness voting situation has always been a sham. I was hopeful that the community could overcome those issues but to be honest with you I was a fool for thinking that.
The best thing that could happen is to get a group of legit community members to pool their resources and launch an EXODUS project from this blockchain. Unless several of them could get in the top 20 witness positions or were already there the funding wouldn't be enough to build a new iteration of a platform like this on EOS with a fair distribution and a "fairdrop" to everyone holding at least 500 SP. Fixing things like the fact that there is no Witness vote decay and actually focus on additional revenue streams besides just speculation of a poorly distributed crypto with an inflation rate that is too high for the amount of improvements the main access portal (Steemit.com) has rolled out in the last couple of years clearly didn't cut it.
If the movement could gain enough STEEM and successfully launch then the possibility of funding from EOS VC would be more realistic as well.
But that is probably just a stupid idea. I probably don't know anything about EOS and @ned will pull through for us and our investment here. Actually I'm just a complainer like @ats-david and @berniesanders . STEEM is doing fine
@lukestokes has never done anything but contribute to the fanboy culture of the top 20.
Hahhah
I will say that @lukestokes did call into question what was going on during the winter of 2016 / 2017 when we were getting the silent treatment from Steemit Inc.
But at some point I feel he lost touch with what 99.98% of people were seeing when they looked at what was going on here.
How many witness actually do code reviews? Reliably producing blocks and securing the network is the primary job of a witness after all. But hey, if I'm the bad guy, and I've lost touch, don't vote for me.
Look man you are a smart guy and you positioned yourself well. A lot of people out there are ghost figures and so actually you are front and center and willing to be on camera and the reputation builds and you stay pretty neutral on most topics so for the most part people aren't going to get pissed off. You have the family man / Ivy League graduate going for you. Then the gutsy move to PR....etc. You will be fine.
Where I think you have lost touch is that you won't really look past the fact that you are having this stream of coins flowing into your wallets and actually admit how broken this system is from the witness voting to having no additional revenue sources supporting the price of STEEM to the borderline fraudulent empty promises made my Steemit Inc.
Sometimes those who keep their mouths shut earn the most money in this world. Usually people who call out the bullshit don't get the positions or retain positions.
People who just call out bullshit are whiners. Sorry, but if you want tough talk, there it is. Propose solutions, don't just complain. Better yet, build them. Be willing to admit there may be no easy solution. The problems you describe in your other comment could be said for 90%+ of all crypto projects. If you want to be a BTC maximalist and focus on currency, then go for it.
In my opinion, many people had the wrong impression of Steem / Steemit from the beginning. The "make a living by blogging" line is scammy and if people bought that, then they probably also loved Bitconnect. I spoke out about that "going full time on STEEM" mentality every time I saw it.
I've been trying to help people set proper expectations for years but most people have an entitlement attitude. I think the problem is the thinking. Building better systems is important, but it starts with how people view things.
Your comments mention Steem often as being such a failure, but the blockchain itself has been working well. The resource credit system is pretty amazing. I think RocksDB will also be hugely valuable to the space. To me, it sounds like you're complaining about making money mining crypto through blogging without recognizing the value of the blockchain itself. It's an uncensorable blockchain technology that anyone can participate it. That's hugely important and a first in the space. It's still working as it did from day one, if not better. I don't care how much certain miners make in POW as long as they secure the chain. I don't see why it's so different in DPoS.
See there is the issue again. We are all whiners when we proposed additional sources of revenue like advertisements. I have proposed an internal and external ad revenue system. I have proposed how the Trending page could be fixed on Steemit.com which would mitigate the issues the Bit Bot situation is causing.
I have proposed having a rotational mechanism so that Witnesses aren't a permanent fixture in the top 20 along with other things that would allow others to have a shot at it.
There are issues with other blockchains including EOS but there is no investment more painful than STEEM because of the additional time and equity erosion this system causes in comparison to systems that are just mainly speculation / currency plays.
There is no reason that STEEM should have participated in the bear market to this degree if the issues would have been addressed instead of the witnesses who were allowed to exist in the top 20 just going along with the BS because they were getting paid well.
Now things have gone from bad to worse and we are all still whiners?
You are telling me to build solutions to the problems. Well that isn't really what you did so let's just break it down. Building a solution to an issue on STEEM is pretty risky and in a lot of ways is a questionable funding method in my mind. If someone creates some other portal to view the blockchain then to really fund it they need to either take a portion of the content creators rewards or get a huge delegation from Steemit Inc and gain more funding through curation rewards etc. It doesn't address some of the root level issues of the sham witness voting, extremely poor initial distribution which is still a problem, Steemit.com 's trending page which has always been an issue and since it is one dimensional it has pretty much led to the bid bot situation taking over and further leading to reward value having nothing to do with content that was actually engaging or interesting to people.
So at that point it has to be a totally other platform. Either a clone of STEEM or something built on EOS. Well what is the issue? Talent and money. It would take $10 or $20 million to do it properly if video capabilities are added and that is on the low side.
Steemit Inc essentially had hundreds of millions and couldn't produce results beyond what was already here when Dan left.
I pitched EOS VC on a platform that would address STEEMs issues but with the current market conditions they are slowing down some of their spending and it is a big bite to chew. Ultimately I don't think that is going to go anywhere for the time being.
I'm a pretty good jack of all trades kind of guy for IT related stuff but it is too much for one person to complete on their own and it still goes back to the money.
To answer your question about the perception of how profitable miners are in POW vs DPoS. The thing is with POW everyone can take a crack at it. I know if there is a newer chain that I can spin up some VPS' on a free cloud trial and start crunching away. I know I can be profitable with that even if it is just a little bit. I know that if my power situation is low enough I can profitably mine something. For STEEM there is no chance. Look at all the work @partiko has done and they are in 57th position on the witness voting. Probably unprofitable at these price levels. Are they ever going to be top 20? Probably not because the witness voting is a sham
When all hope is lost then there is a big problem. With the Witness situation all hope has been lost and with the content creation aspect on this chain all hope has primarily been lost. That is why there is actually more engagement over on WhaleShares and WEKU. At this given time there is still hope floating around even though WEKU has 1 centrally controlled Witness node and no exchanges and is on a sub domain and a list of other issues. People still have hope that it could be something.
Hope has been lost here
so true
So I referenced facts about the comparison made and you took that to mean I thought you were an idiot?
I don't think you're an idiot. We clear now?
People rage quit Steem for all kinds of reasons. It's possible they have different reasons for being here in the first place. I've always been excited about Steem because it's a real blockchain project providing real value to real people. That's rare and something I was looking for when I first bought some bitcoin in 2013. And by value, I don't just mean cryptocurrency, I mean a decentralized blogging platform that can't be censored.
That may be the case, and it's up to voters to decide. Since day 1, I've been here explaining technical things in simple terms and have helped educate many on how some of this blockchain cryptocurrency stuff works. I have always been grateful for the votes I've received, and I've delegated most of that Steem Power out to what I think are useful projects, as you can see on https://solicitingpower.com/ I haven't been cashing out much at all, even during the year long bear market. I may start, and I have no problems with that.
Seems a bit like you're venting with frustration about Steem, Steemit, inc and more. That's fine, that's just not the approach I personally take. Sure, I vent now and again also, but I try to do it with practical suggestions. I'm glad Steemit, inc did at least take my advice and start communicating more effectively over this past year. I'm glad to see core blockchain development did move forward with appbase and now hopefully RocksDB as well. I imagine other DPoS chainbase blockchains will follow in Steem's footsteps on this.
That said, I don't get Ned at all nor am I happy about the way Steemit, inc has done things, made empty promises about SMTs, and more. I agree, STEEM may be in trouble. It may also be going through a much needed phase to decentralize away from Steemit, inc. Time will tell.
But I get it, and I hear you. You need bad guys to point to, and I'm your list. Okay.
You aren't a bad guy @lukestokes I just think you have lost touch with how the majority of people feel about this blockchain. There are many reasons why the attrition has been so high.
I have been mining crypto since 2013 and one of the reasons I was attracted to certain projects was the ability to mine them. I was mining Quark before it went parabolic. I mined 1000 Monero in 2014 and into 2015. There are other people like me who are more attracted to blockchains they can participate in. With STEEM by the time I found out about it there was a POW block every 20 blocks or so but someone already had a GPU miner on it and had all those rabbit accounts. Great for them. Also the Witness situation was a clear sham from day 1 and continues to be so to this day. I just wonder how many people looked at it and decided it was a waste of time....etc.
No content creator even with the "very best" content can actually make a living on a supposed content platform with a market cap of $81 Million . Does anyone see an issue with that?
In a lot of ways people have become embarrassed even to talk about STEEM. Even the few content creators that got somewhat decent rewards turned their back on it as soon as things changed. Those of us who stupidly stuck around can't really participate in the system besides making a few bucks here posting but that will be erroded away as STEEM slips down the list on CoinMarketCap. We are way better off bag holding cryptos that have 1 purpose. Currency.
The worse things get here and the blatant issues were never addressed the more I feel like that this blockchain has been just as damaging if not more so than Bitconnect.
I hate to say it but it is true. It is like a carrot hanging out there and a lot of us chased their carrot of gaining more influence but in reality there were only 50 or 60 people who could really gain anything substantial.
Without vote decay and no rotational method to allow others to become Witnesses it is well ......... a sham
It was my mistake for continuing to see potential in this system and be hopeful that things could improve.