With the first half of 2019 nearly behind us, I'd say it's time for us to take a look into the near future for Steem.
Steem Engine - SCOT & Nitrous
Recently, the team behind steem-engine launched their newest projects:
SCOT, which enables anyone to create their own steem-engine based SMT (aka Steem clone). Technically it's not a clone, but on the outside, it works very similarly.
Nitrous - a service that allows everyone to create their own hosted community website, like Steemit - no real technical knowledge needed.
Which essentially means: even without the real SMTs around, it's now possible to create your own little Steem & Steemit network.
What about SMTs?
Real SMTs are still crucial, as they will have the same security benefits Steem has. (SCOT tokens are less secure than Steem, no DPoS yet)
Nevertheless, SCOT is important, as it gives everyone a glimpse into what Steem will/could look like very soon: a platform (Steem) which is enabling many, many more platforms (SMTs) to exists.
What does this mean for Steem?
But what does this mean for Steem, when there are suddenly hundreds of tokens that are doing exactly the same thing Steem is doing (maybe better)? Besides bringing value to the underlying infrastructure (Steem), they are also making a few things redundant.
Is the currency distribution of Steem still required or even desirable, if an SMT could do the same thing, in addition to being much easier customizable? (curation-%, author-%, inflation, etc.)
Inflation / Currency Distribution | 👍 or 👎
One of the biggest turn-offs for people wanting to invest in Steem is the high inflation rate (currently ~8% APR, narrowing to 1% APR over the next 16 years), meaning the rate in which new tokens are being created/distributed.
For example: If there are 1000 tokens in existence and you own 100 of them, you essentially own 10%. However, if every year 1000 more tokens are added (via inflation), that is not being distributed to you percentage-wise, then in a year, you'd have lost 50% of your value.
Usually, this inflation is being redirected to stakeholders, those owning the tokens. In the case of Steem though, more than 50% of the inflation is going to people who not necessarily have a stake in Steem (authors) via voting. Stakeholders do get a small part of the inflation; 15%, but which is still not a lot.
However, it does shine a light on the problem of inflation. Would you rather have the majority of your stake in a currency like STEEM, which is losing a guaranteed amount of ~7.5% in 2020? Or, would you rather own BTC, which will have less than 2% inflation in 2020.
What if ...
So, what if we'd remove the inflation nearly completely?
We can't remove everything, as this blockchain is running via DPoS, which essentially means that witnesses are being paid to run the software to keep the blockchain secure. (and security is N°1 priority!)
I would also argue that stakeholders should have an incentive to keep Steem powered up (we could talk about removing the 13 weeks downtime, or making it more dynamic => higher downtime => more APR), meaning the interest for stakeholders is for our best interest as well.
But besides that, we could scrape away ~75% of the total inflation. Essentially, bringing the inflation rate down to under 2%. Which would be a phenomenal fundament for people to build their own tokens on.
But why?
Steem had the number one purpose after its launch of distributing the currency. And while this job wasn't done perfectly, the currency has been distributed pretty well. However, after nearly 4 years, we've reached a point where sub-tokens of Steem can be distributed as well, probably even better.
Will this mean that voting (& bid-bots) will be gone as we know it? Probably yes. But that's a good thing because it means that Steem is changing and improving.
In my opinion, Steem has to be a strong & solid fundament for people wanting to build their own tokens/communities/businesses on - and you need a some-what stable currency for that; one without much inflation.
Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.
Wolf
Do you believe that my work is valuable for Steem? Then please vote for me as witness.
Not sure how I missed this post, but it looks like we are thinking along similar lines.
https://steemit.com/steem/@jrcornel/steem-what-if-we-turned-off-the-inflation
I think this is a really good idea and where we need to go if we want to make steem sustainable. It claims it wants to be a social media base layer where everything else is built upon it, well it's time to actually make it one then.
This idea would have my support and a lot of the people I talk to as well.
If we could get that inflation number to 1%, even better. ;)
I think this is a presumption that is not valid and is far from being proven. The fact that Steem is not well known could have a lot more to do with the lack of investment than the inflation rate.
You are trying to draw conclusions about what markets do which is impossible. They are their own animal. And it is very dangerous for one to initiate fundamental changes in the ecosystem based upon market action.
Once again, you are saying the barometer people are using in buying these tokens is the inflation rate. It might be in a few instances but most buyers do not know what the inflation rate is. Do you think most Ethereum buyers realize the inflation rate there is potentially unlimited? Yet it is a top 5 token.
In you scenario, if one thought BTC was going to 100X and STEEM 500X, which do you think would be preferred? Do you think the inflation rate would even matter in that instance?
Steem has been the TOP 3 ranked cryptocurrency at one point. Clearly, Steem should be very well known by now. And I would even argue that most people heard about it. (at least those that were around in that timeframe)
I didn't say that inflation rate is everything that matters, but it's clearly one thing investors look at if a specific coin has investment potential. I could give you the example of BNB, which has a deflationary model. Let me quote:
To achieve scarcity, Binance uses 20% of its quarterly profits to buy back and destroy (“burn”) BNB tokens up until 100 million BNB tokens have been burned. This deflationary supply mechanism naturally increases the value of the token. Source
What kind of question is that? The chance of STEEM going to 1 cent is far higher than BTC going to 250$. So even if I would think STEEM could go higher, the risk is far bigger to invest in STEEM than in BTC.
That is not an inflation problem but a marketing one. That has nothing to do with the inflation rate.
You want to point to that as one of the causes, I think it means little. Perhaps the slow sign up time, Whales acting like children, and a distribution that man consider unfair has more to do with it.
Risk is something that certainly investors look at. In fact, it is a more crucial level than the inflation rate.
Of course this is all off topic:
Answer me two thingL
A) Do you think that an inflation rate of 2% would have STEEM in the top 10?
B) Why are you concerned with it?
Feel free to concern yourself with marketing Steem. This post is about the future of Steem, once SMTs are around.
And it seems you're not getting the point of this post. Reducing the inflation rate to 2% won't be the cause for Steem to get into a better ranking, but actually, the combination of everything combined; SMTs & reduced inflation. And having a base currency, which is handing out tokens, instead of focusing and supporting the sub-tokens (SMTs), isn't effective. There is actually no need to have inflation to non-stakeholders (besides witnesses) on STEEM, once SMTs are there.
If you don't think that, give me reasons & evidence why not.
I agree with @taskmaster4450 and I personally think the original post offers bad ideas but I will not dig too deep into it since I am spending most of my time on other things.
@taskmaster4450 has done a good job at pointing out the flaws and blinds spots in your arguments @therealwolf.
When I told a serious investor about Steem he barely knew about it and asked his cousin who invested heavily in crypto and ETH about Steem who replied that Steem was bad based on it's inflation rate of 100% 😂 (this coming from a big investor).
You might want to check your sources in regards to the market's perception of Steem @therealwolf.
You have not given any evidence that inflation is not needed. So, how do SMTs fund each dapp? Do a simulation of cause and effect and feedback.
Yup, inflation isnt our problem, its just a klack of marketing and onboarding thats all. inflation based rewards is what makes steem fun ... people were buying at $8 and peopel WILl keep buying we just have to have steems users themselves get rewarded to promo
Can’t wait to eliminate them bit-bots to make STEEM great
Also In my opinion, Steem has to be a strong & solid fundament for people wanting to build their own tokens/communities/businesses on - and you need a some-what stable currency for that; one without much inflation
Inflation of token mass is completely OK as long as steem userbase grows higher
My first instinct is telling me we should keep the inflation for the reasons of RC distribution.
The SCOT or SMT token won't be doing what STEEM is doing. STEEM dictates how much Rc's you can use on the network and neither SMT or SCOT tokens can provide that.
I think it's wise to keep that distribution going even though people might not know they are earning a little bit of STEEM on top of their SMT or SCOT token.
RC pools can help new users operate on Steem without having RC's but I think through earning STEEM in the background on top of their SMT or SCOT token they will we able to become independent of these pools and that is very beneficial for the user as well as the pool.
Example:
Let's say you are a new user and get 1000RC's from the pool and start posting and doing your thing. Once you reached a 1000RC's on your own account you are cut off from the pool and on your own. Now the pool can use the RC's to help someone else.
I'll think about it more but this is my first thought. I have to go to a party now. I'll check later tonight.
I think I understand the point you're trying to make. My opinion on that is the following:
RCs are a reason for people to buy STEEM, which is good! Author inflation isn't necessary, nor desirable for people to gain enough resource credits. Inflation will always result in selling pressure, but we need the opposite - buying pressure. Now, if you want people to gain more RCs over time, then increasing the inflation for stakeholders is the way to go, because it incentivizes people to buy Steem and hold Steem.
I'm still trying to get my head around what benefit having tokens on STEEM provides, especially the current iteration of 'SMT workaround' tokens. So far I have no interest in what these tokens represent, and I certainly wouldn't trade my STEEM for them. If I could earn them organically and trade them for STEEM I would though. But that also means someone is giving me STEEM for this token. I can't relate to that at all if my goal is to retain and power up STEEM. Perhaps later I'll have an a-ha moment if I find a DApp I can't live without. But so far I'm not seeing it.
Check out Actifit and weedcash
Thanks. Already tried Actifit, and not a fan at all. The concept is okay, but the execution is lacking on the app itself IMO, and the curation is a bit aggressive for my taste. Will check out Weedcash though.
Weedcash is a SCOT I believe they're called. Any cannabis related content posted there gets paid in WEED plus it pays in SBD/SP
That's cool. Basically a steem clone that rewards in WEED. That's not really my subject area, but hopefully there are others that crop up in future.
There will be. I pretty sure the @ssg community will make one soon.
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I think this is an amazing idea. I'm not really technical and don't have a full understanding of how these things work but I do trust your knowledge as I have followed and read your posts for years. I think what you are saying and the conviction you say it with make a lot of sense.
Sorry, but everyone has to have staked STEEM in order to be rewarded: authors, commenters, upvoters (curators) and even passive investors. Nobody can be rewarded in those four categories without having a stake. The active stakeholders, known as vested, are in the first three categories; the "interest" goes to everyone, be they vested stakes or not.
Funnily, witnesses do not have to be vested but they are paid in SP which automatically is vested.
However, you are right in the overall analysis that inflation is very high. However, because so much STEEM is not vested the real interest rate on an upvote is some 21% APR - a lot more than the approx 8.5% coin-creation rate.
Lowering the coin-creation rate will not change the differentially higher upvote interest-rate unless there is also a substantial increase in activity. And that activity must be rshares-generating activity, not just transfers and JSON activity.
That is the problem I see. That all these new tokens may (possibly) increase demand for the underlying STEEM but the admins of such tokens need to think hard about how to use the Steem blockchain to give value to those tokens especially if the activity on their websites or dapps do not register as rshares-generating activity.
The solution: dapp owners need to think hard how to give their tokens STEEM value.
{edited for clarity!}
OK, re-read it, perhaps you need to add a short sentence differentiating between stakeholders and vested stakeholders. Those that are vested but inactive are essentially the same as passive stakeholders.
With respect, I don't think you understood the point I was making with this post. Removing inflation for authors & curators, will remove anything upvote related. With SMTs, there is no real need for Steem to have inflation; besides rewarding stakeholders & witnesses.
Essentially, Steem could become the fuel and base currency for SMTs.
I agree with the last sentence, but how can STEEM "fuel" SMTs if the gas station is empty?
What do you mean with the gas station is empty?
Fairly simple analogy: where will new tokens get their value in your new model? When there are no gas stations will admins have to negotiate with the hoarders? Sounds like a bank loan.
Too early. Scot is not good enough, we need the real SMTs.
I find it absolutely interesting to see these important changes in the functioning of the Steem ecosystem: I find that it greatly expands one's awareness in life and in the real world... isn't it?
A huge hug
@amico
If I understand your point correctly, okay, it sounds really convincing and refreshing.... But in reality, the communities that have been built on Steem so far might suffer the risk of discontinuity, which would be a risky move for Steem since one of our strength is community.
Or I misunderstood?
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Steemit Inc could create their own SMT, in which current communities could continue to exist. Probably even better than today, due to the coming feature of "communities" to Steemit.com. And those who want can create their own SMT, in addition with an optional condenser clone or another interface alternative.
My idea of how disabling rewards in STEEM would work if it is to be done at all would be to create a STEEMIT SMT (or it could be called something else if Steemit doesn't like the idea) and air drop it to everyone who owns STEEM on a 1-to-1 basis. So, initially, the existing rewards would continue to be voted and paid just as they are now, except using the STEEMIT token instead of the STEEM token. Going forward people can decide which token they want to own (or both).
I think it is a complicated discussion. On one hand you want to make sure investors benefit the maximum, on the other hand, this blockchain is based on the social factor and most apps are too. So, without users which are going to consume the apps and games even though they invest relatively little into the actual STEEM POWER it is impossible to sustain the eco system and investors are going to lose interest too. Most people who are here today would be gone tomorrow if STEEM would stop giving them rewards which are actually worth something. And, making sure an SMT has an actual value, especially for smaller communities is going to be extremely difficult.
I think cutting the author rewards without having a sustainable model would be the death of STEEM.
On the long term more sustainable ways have to be found, using the advertisement rewards to sustain SMTs, backing SMTs with real use cases (payments for apps etc).
But, I think on the short and mid term this is not a discussion worth having. After SMTs arrive and after we saw the first SMTs which were able to sustain their own prices we should have this discussion.
Else, this will just lead to people leaving and not anyone coming.
As other people pointed out, there is so much more to people investing into a cryptocurrency than just the inflation it has and I believe the #1 thing we should be worried about is having real world use cases where people buy STEEM to spend it in the STEEM ecosystem (apps, games, etc) and the apps themselves invest part of this STEEM for RC.
I don't think anyone really knows for sure what investors value and what would cause investors to "lose interest too". However, we can say with reasonable confidence that what we are doing now isn't working very well on that score.
I'm not even saying I'm all in favor of the OP's idea, my reply was more about how I think it could be done most reasonably if we were to decide to do it, rather than whether it should be done.
My view is that as the cryptocurrency marketplace has matured and competition increased, investors have become more aware of inflation and more discriminating. There is stronger competition out there that has low inflation or no inflation and what you could get away with in 2016 or earlier doesn't really fly any more. I can't prove it certainly, nor do I claim to, but that is my view. Yes, those other factors (adoption, use cases, etc.) all matter too, but all of the competition are pursuing those as well. They're not a differentiator.
sounds like a good idea. that way, we'll be able to separate the values of STEEM into community/blogging and the underlying blockchain.
Problem identified and discussed is half solved!
There’s solution for everything under the sun, especially those made by humans.
Steem is promising, let’s direct it the best path. Thanks @therealwolf for those ideas that could help Steem Ecosystem.
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The problem is not the inflation, and it will go down anyways. If you want a better steem price, then we should get people to invest.
Correct, we need people to invest. But this requires incentives. Having a currency which has a ~8% inflation - not really appealing in comparison to ~2% BTC.
Low inflation is btc’s speciality. What steem needs is not to compete with that. We have ways for investor to earn steem passively and beat inflation. But you know this already, you created smarsteem. I think that to get them, we need some great dapps. Steemit has to look and be better, as well as dtube. Steemmonsters is great.
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Most STEEM inflation does not come from author rewards, but from Steem Dollars being converted to STEEM in a bear market.
No. This is just extra sugar on the cake.
Ok, maybe this is a good idea @therealwolf, but not until we have SMTs and SMT projects that have been able to mature and can take over from basic Steem, if we do this before we just start the whole thing over from scratch without even having anything to replace it with, that would be even worse than high inflation, much worse.
How would this change affect author's and curator's rewards? If authors and curators would get more, then I see it as a good thing but if all of us would receive less, in my mind it's not good.
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No more author/curation rewards on Steem. Would be handled by an SMT.
But what would a certain SMT be worth? At least now Steem is worth 0.34 USD. And SMT's would probably need to build up their value from scratch as we can already see with tokens on Steem Engine. More discussion needed. This is too important for entire ecosystem.
Steem is worth what people are willing to pay for it. This will be the same for every SMT which is following.
If Steem would no longer come to authors from rewards pool, 2 contests I run would need to have their token for prizes on Steem Engine, I think. Would you agree?
I think you might be overestimating how much people care about this as @taskmaster4450 was alluding to. I don't think the inflation of Steem is a big deterrent for investors and more importantly...USERS
Which brings me to my main point. I don't think we should be trying to tinker with the economics to attract investors. We should be looking at the applications built on Steem and working towards making them fully featured products that people want to use and CAN use without taking an online class first.
Steemit/Busy/Steempeak/Esteem/Steeve/etc are blogging platforms with a cryptocurrency reward system integrated. How can we make those the best at that, so that we can increase users and traffic --> Which will THEN be the metric which will get investors interested.
I don't think anyone on the outside of this system cares much about this at all. But I'm just speculating too so who knows. The lowest hanging fruit is, make these apps easy to use, fully featured things that are solving problems and creating value for regular people. That IMO is what will attract investors.
I'm not overestimating. I'm actually fairly certain.
No. Remodeling the economic system is exactly what we need to do. If you're not willing to do that, I'm not sure you should take part in this discussion. Just because 5 guys 3-4 years ago designed the system as it is today (with a few changes over the years), shouldn't be a reason to keep the status quo. Clearly, just accepting things as they are didn't work out.
Correct, because you're a user first. This discussion is about making Steem more investor-friendly and reducing the strain of inflation, once we've got SMTs going. This isn't about doing it now, but once the infrastructure is there.
Then I'm assuming you have some data or analytics to back this up? Otherwise how could you claim certainty?
But it's an assumption that this is the reason it's not working out. I get that from your perspective, you think it's x thing, but if you talk to 10 different Steemians you'll get 10 different opinions on why they think things "haven't worked out". Again, if you have some solid data to back this up vs anecdotes or just your own opinion, that would be really good to throw into the conversation.
Because when I take the cap of an investor, who primarily cares about his own ROI, then everything inflationary is primarily bad (of course exceptions exists). Instead, having an economic model, like BNB - where tokens are burned (up to 50% of the total supply); means that I'm more likely to make money, over the long-haul. And BNB seems to have been taken off quite well, didn't it? Of course it had more factors (as in binance being the; or at least one of the; biggest exchange(s).
10 different Steemians can have 10 different opinions but doesn't mean that every opinion is valuable. Keep that in mind.
If you're so keen about data, then you should realize by now, that based on the historical data, the current incentives for people to hold Steem aren't good enough.
This is why not having a vision is painful.
I like this idea as a consideration as it least it makes sense in the SMT vision world. As Steem would be an infrastructure token. Of course it would need to be implemented after SMTs were up and running and giving Devs and business owners a bit of time to add value.
However, why would we need to change curation rewards and add a flag pool if we went this route?
Why would serious business owners and devs come and build on a blockchain that can't even decide what it is, what we do and how to approach it?
By the way, at least this suggestion makes perfect sense based on where I think we are trying to get with SMTs. I think it may be too soon. However, I really like the reasoning behind it.
Steem - We love to play with our own stuff. It makes us feel like problem solvers.
Yes, it would need some time, but keep in mind this post is merely to start a productive conversation. Because, as you said yourself, a vision is important.
Those would be added into SMTs, where each SMT could decide how high author/curation-rewards should be and if a downvote-pool should be included. (so the downvote-pool would have to be coded anyway) E.g. Steemit Inc could decide to use their own SMT for Steemit.com.
Because every serious business owner and dev should know that things change over time. New features are being introduced and old/deprecated ones removed. And Steem has clearly changed quite a lot over time - at least once SMTs are there.
Also, everybody can launch their own project, but steering it through tough times, that's where the real value is shown and where trust is built.
I agree with several things you said, the flag pool and curation rewards belong on an SMT not Steem.
Yes, things change over time, but why customize STEEM to work better for curation rewards and fighting abuse if the ultimate goal is to use it as a base token?
Things change over time, but messing with inflation and curation rewards has the potential to impact business models, profits, etc. That's a pretty big risk to take on a blockchain that doesn't seem to know if it wants to be a base currency to trade SMTs on or rework the incentives to be a content discovery platform.
Both discussions are important (changing the economic model & the base-currency vision). The idea of reducing inflation drastically is actually not new, because we gotta ask ourselves: Is the currency distribution working - and if not, is it necessary? Or is it more evil than it does good.
Now, the good thing is, once SMTs are there, we can test out different economic models. There could be a curation-SMT, where curation is at 100% and no author rewards. And maybe an SMT, which works 50/50 or 25/75, as it is right now.
All true, and worthwhile experiments, but where do the SMTs get the rewards so that they can change the reward distribution when, in your model, there will be no author/curator rewards?
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Today the only way to print SBD is author rewards. I'm afraid that the idea get rid of rewards might imply get rid of SBD too.
I think reducing inflation is merely a bandaid for a bigger problem, Steem should be growing fast enough and appreciating in value sufficiently to absorb the inflation, the problem is growth and market reach has stagnated. The DAO might be able to get development happening in the right places, hopefully and I would even say that inflation sources could provide a sustainable model for it so I wouldn’t be in favour of reducing inflation at this point, also I don’t believe SMT development has started and even if it has it will be a year or more before release and at which point I would recommend running SMT’s live for a further year before making any major economic changes. So the discussion of inflation reduction is perhaps 1-2 years too early.
I didn't realize SCOT was temporary.. I gotta go check out what a "real SMT" is now.. !tip
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@therealwolf Hello,
I have seen that someone removed me from discord server of smartsteem. Can you help me to get the access to discord server?
If i don't get the access then how i tell you about any unusual thing. Without informing me anyone has removed the server access of mine.
I have seen then about some months ago you also blocked me for personal message. That i can understand.
But this is not good. Waiting for your positive reply... or tell me other source for communication about smartmarket / smartsteem.
Apology, misclick:
https://discord.gg/2RqSVK
Thanks for your prompt response. :)
I don't know how i missed it. This is very good suggestion. No large pocket investor would invest in a project where returns are distributed to non-stakeholders.
Steem curse is its large inflation rate. That gives enough space to looters to loot from investors.
After holding for more than 2 years - investors have lost more than 80%. They have run out of patience now.