I have been reading quite a few articles right here in steemit drilling down statistics that paint one story - the growth of crypto & the growth of steem value in particular. I hate to be the party popper, but thought I might as well put my thoughts down in writing before the movement goes down the drain.
Escaping Imaginary Traps
When I first entered steemit it felt crazy that people advocated curating another person’s post! ‘Cause that literally meant increasing another person’s revenue - which is EXACTLY opposite of what the FIAT world has been preaching to us for the thousands of years!
In here, the idea is you can grow only by the growth of another steemian. Every single action you do in steemit is the pocket-money going into your piggy bank.
This is for anybody on steemit who is thinking of playing over-cautious games: Don’t feel deceived by traps when there are really none.
The USP of Steemit
We are led to believe that steemit exists for everyone to make an earning. While that is a good value-ad, steemit has a feature set which makes it eligible for a title that no other cryptocurrency can compete for - Gateway to Blockchain!
Seriously - think about it for a minute.
Steemit should be the entry point for anyone bothering to invest their time and money into cryptocurrencies.
Not Bitcoin or Ethereum, it is steem which makes it easiest for a layman to understand the way blockchains work and make sense. It is the easiest crypto to mine & stake! And at the moment it is still most affordable of the lot!
A Thing About Voting Power
That’s a nice picture that summarises how you earn with your voting power. But it has also driven many folks into thinking never to vote below certain VP (like say 80%).
While arguably an useful tip for a minnow, it would be a very bad practice for whales. Purely because of the amount of hashing power they end up withholding. I think the advise should also include the point that, with increasing reputation the lower limit of VP should also increase linearly!
The Flawed Gene
To earn on steemit, all you had to do was design an algorithm that would punch random keys, setup some bots to give and take up-votes and insert random comments. The platform still will work the way it should and boast of making money for those on it. In an ideal world, if every steem user was a bot, they would each produce equal amounts of content (until the taxation steps in), up-vote each other until their stake-weights level out.
When the human element got involved there was a certain structure that began to develop in this randomness. With each new member added there was a strand mutating in steem’s DNA. Selectivity started being bred which in a way is anathema to steemit’s soul. Yet this strand goes more overpowering with each new member.
Knowing your Role
I am sure that you have a standard & taste for quality of content; we all do. But more than anything else we are here to choose one job - create or curate! Post good content (with your followers in mind) & if you decided to follow someone, just go over to their blog from time to time and give them a boost.
I am sure many of you felt a moment of happiness or gratitude when some random bloke just came over and clicked the up-vote button. It was a truly a wow moment when you saw that there was a value attached to our thoughts put into words - I am not being metaphoric; this is real money! And to go check your wallet and see the boom in your $$…
STOP right there! This is exactly the moment you need to put your greedy little thoughts down the drain. Ditch all those learnings that the world has taught you about staking your cash pile. For the time you are here keep to your job & the rewards will pile up on their own.
So Where is this Post Going?
When we stepped inside it was not the usual welcome party, was it? I mean the day we decided to checkout steemit!
There was no wallet app to download; no crazy command line prompts; no mining rig; there wasn’t even a bitcointalk forum to speak of. This platform was all of the above rolled into one! Simplistic, yet fully functional.
All we needed to do was mine by creating or curating. The Voting Power and vesting power were only meant to level the playing ground to some extent and then spice up the rules of the game; possibly also to make the life of bots a lot more difficult.
Yet with all this proposition already ingrained in our subconscious mind, we fail to deliver where and when it matters the most. Even if steem is holding the frame, the creator has made the picture, for some reason we fail to hit the nail on the head!
We refuse to see the power of comments; we are blind to the fact that commenting is the easiest way to disperse our hashing power (so to speak). I have been insisting the below point on many posts recently:
By commenting we not only raise our own chance of earning an up-vote on any post (even a self-up-vote) we also open the possibility of earning a return comment or better yet, new follower(s).
Might I also add, that you loose absolutely nothing by a comment; not even your VP. On the contrary you stand to earn comment rewards! So if a post catches your eye even for a second put a comment and move on, in case you cannot up-vote; keep that door open!
On any traditional blogging site the post may be the creator’s property, but here on steemit we as curators have the golden opportunity to earn a share in that property just for dropping by and saying a hi - how cool is that?!
Final Thoughts
If the trend of too much selectivity combined with preservation of VP or lack of commenting continues then this platform is going to the ground. There is no two ways about it. Steemit is not a traditional blogging platform. Don’t treat it so & play the game as it is meant to be!
Fun fact: If everyone stops voting and creating for even one day, steemit’s market value will come crashing down!
With more new people joining there is very slim chances for this ever happening. However, newbies joining after a boom could have a tough time if the above vicious circle continues to build.
If the payout received is not reflective of the effort put in, it won’t encourage them to say positive things about steemit and externally influence more people to join in. As recent stats indicate, this is clearly the boom time & steemit can use an evenly spread out payment, more than ever!
The day you see more whales than minnows is possibly when it is safe to say that steemit’s mathematical probability of losing value is nil. If you looked up the tree above you, you should be smart enough to note that there are whales whose path you have not crossed yet.
So don’t end up just creating gangs and groups that vote each other up. That will not be lasting and neither will it do justice to the efforts you put in. Who knows? Your blog might be appealing to more bigger fish out there. Feed them and watch the miracle happen!
Every up-vote you refused because you were conserving on that VP or simply because the blog is not popular (yet) is like missing on investing in a stock and later lamenting it. To make steem story successful, act on your whims and be decisive.
Image credits:
Pestrevenge
Imgsafe
Steemit Whitepaper
The Tech Journal
Internet
Steemit
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This is an excellent post. I have been tempted to save my voting power in the past, but now I do not bother.
Your idea of commenting instead is good. While the theory of upvoting as the mood strikes me seems to work, it does mean that I am currently sitting on about 50% vp
I am happy that you took the message correctly. I would say rather let it decline to an extent where it no longer makes sense to generate $ for the author and let it recover for a day. You should be back at 100%
For those who want to stay more organized, another advise I can think of is list down the articles you decided to vote for already; then start voting in ascending order of post popularity i.e. least popular first. While this might seem to make your earnings appear less, you are potentially up-voting a minnow post with a LOT of SP.
This will mean more income for the minnow who will come back with more content soon. It will also potentially be beneficial to you if the post becomes a hit & you were the earliest voter. So go with instincts a LOT!
This is a very interesting read @nrajesh . You have a absolutely nailed it. As you rightly said If we like something we must comment and vote on it even if the blog is not popular. Having reservations on spending our voting power is only going to prevent us in growing on this incredible platform!
Thank you so much for understanding this post & taking it in the right sense
Congratulations @nrajesh!
Your post was mentioned in my hit parade in the following category:
Dude this is a killer post from a relative newbie (like myself). You've clearly been reading around a lot and I for one respect a guy who does his research! I hope this post attracts the attention from the bigger players who will have some valuable comments to add. Following and about to resteem 👌🏽
Thank you very much @abh12345. Already your follower :D
:) i am existing follower too
This post getting the recognition it deserves, well done dude!
Thank you (& others as well), for the resteems. This is a first for me. Definitely feels good!
Very informative, thank you! I've only been here a week and I have a better understanding of this process now. :)
One week, but looking strong. Good going @isaria.
Thank you!
Boy, do I have a lot to learn. I just like writing. I have no idea what steem and voting and commenting - the word blockchain is foreign to me. :-)
Welcome to the club then. Still learning...
The really nice thing about this platform is that you don't "have" to know! You can just do what you do and everything falls into place.
It looks that way to me too. Since I already write - all the time - it seemed simple to just post here and let things happen as they do.
I haven't done anything in the way of attempting to build a following . I upvote things I like and let whatever else happens, happen.
A great post and an interesting read! I believe that Steem is a growing community and with a little more time we will see the true colours and hopefully these are as bright as now :)
Thank you very much @gingenetwork. Good to see folks are commenting on this post. 2 comments in 2 minutes of me posting is definitely an all time high for me 😛
It's great to see interesting topics and other peoples views! If you'd like check out my page might find something you like :)
Thanks. That I already did!
Great post !
Thanks @ivanivanov88
"In an ideal world, if every steem user was a bot"
....sadly we are not all bots :-p
You are right about steemit being a gateway to block chain, it certainly was for me.
Still kind of new here. Thanks for this information.
This post has been ranked within the top 50 most undervalued posts in the first half of Jun 10. We estimate that this post is undervalued by $22.79 as compared to a scenario in which every voter had an equal say.
See the full rankings and details in The Daily Tribune: Jun 10 - Part I. You can also read about some of our methodology, data analysis and technical details in our initial post.
If you are the author and would prefer not to receive these comments, simply reply "Stop" to this comment.
Great Post, but I have to say, I almost didn't read it because your title came off, to me, as pessimistic.
Perhaps, "How to Avoid Running Steemit Into the Ground" would better convey your message?
upvoted (at 77% VP) following and resteemed.
Thank you. I did not intend it to be interpreted this way; just acted on instinct & titled it so - probably my frame of mind at that time. Honestly!
I did not mean to be critical, I think what you said was very important.
I just wanted to give you another perspective on the title.
Interesting. We need to realize that we are all responsible for the succes of Steem(it). The price of Steem and the value of our accounts is growing thanks to all the new people who join us. These people create content that is worth looking at, but if they don't get rewarded, nobody will ever see it and we will only see the content of the people who have the most whale followers. That would be a loss for all of us and will eventually lead to less and less new people joining the platform.
Well said @bart2305. I think need for the hour is to get community views in hot/ trending section. For example I care two hoots about how crack is getting made, yet I am forced to see such posts in those sections. Instead if I could customize a topic of my interest like say steemit, photography or fiction steemit would make a lot more sense to me.
Agreed. I believe more people here would like to see that happening.
interesting stuff :)
Glad you liked it!
I was thinking the same thoughts. That's why I've been powering up constantly. I want the steem power to be able to give rewards to folks when I upvote. And I have maybe 40 votes every day to share the love, so I go looking for great content and comment and vote. Great idea to put it out there as a formal post. Maybe everyone can see, withholding upvotes doesn't help you as an individual, and may deprive you of followers. So, in keeping with my philosophy of sharing is caring. Upvoted and followed. Keep on telling folks how to make steemit better.
J.
Thank you. Powering up is a good way. As mentioned even easier way is to simply comment.
Laughing. Thanks for the comment. I will comment on your comment by commenting that I enjoy the comments.
And of course, I get to upvote and spread a little sunshine. I have spoke to @sykochica (she's awesome) and she has thousands of dollars worth of steem which gives her say.. 14 cents per full power upvote. Something to think about I guess.
A very helpful post for the newbies (myself included). Resteemed and followed. :)
Thank you for the comment!
Nice read,interesting
Thanks!
Very well written! Indeed, since I've joined, I do not see too much interactions on the posts. I personally have more than 2000 commenta in 2 months and as you mentioned I received several rewards for them and gained plenty of followers. The members should interact more. I'm not really concerned about my voting power. Indeed, it's important, but valuable content should be priced. Resteemed
Thanks for the note @alinabarbu. 2000+ is really hard work (even if it was over 2 months), shows your sincerity towards your followers. I am sure you will see more growth than creators at this rate!
I believe the validity of Steemit has been proven. It won't die. However, conflicts and problems will always emerge as it grows. I have witnessed a LOT of ups and downs since I've been here. From the time Steem dropped below ten cents, to when Dan Larimer resigned. Many people stated that Steemit was dying. But I would say we are certainly just coming alive, having survived dark days.
No questioning the validity of steemit @countryinspired. If I were doing that I won't be doing from within steemit 😉 However the ups we see will not be long lasting if we fail to see the new issues developing with more users joining in.
We need to do a bit of redesign/ rethink strategies and our take away (monetary or content wise) will be even better than what it is today. I don't want this post to become another 'steemit is dying' post. Hope I don't get misinterpreted because of the post title!
I have seen plenty of "Steemit Is Dying" posts. I wonder what those authors think now as Steem creeps up to $3.
Probably they are cooking another "steemit is dying" category of post 😛
Haha, great one indeed, i mostly like to drop quality comments as well, not just a random stream of texts. Communicatio and interaction is key in a community.
Thanks David
You've said it all @nrajesh However, do you know its actually annoying when you upvote others and comment but you don't get any.
@jotmax. Thanks for the comment. In similar boat myself.
I usually ensure to read at least the first post of my commenters and leave a comment back (like I did for you just now 😉). I also try giving a follow back and unfollow only if I get frequent annoying posts from them
😊 You are welcome @nrajesh. Thanks for the comment and the follow. I followed you too. 🙌
Very interesting article @nrajes
Did you read "The Selfish Gene"
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Selfish_Gene) by Richard Dawkins? I hope what you describe here will become an "Evolutionarily stable strategy" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionarily_stable_strategy)
Thanks for those links. Not heard those, but they do seem like good content to read. This post was just thoughts that I penned based out of my learnings here.
Interesting! I am new here and has still to learn what all this is about. Your explanation has added a piece to the puzzle. thanx.
Good to know my post helped
Excellent post @nrajesh.
Upvoted and followed
Well done. Bravo!
Thank you
This is me thanking you for a well thought out post. I will admit to having that greed bug in my ear, but the more I'm on here, the more I'm believing in it and finding myself wanting to make this platform better for everyone, ESPECIALLY, when I see posts like this that helps bridge that learning curve on what's happening behind the scenes on steemit. Hats off!
Thank you for what seems to be a heartfelt thanks!
The more I learn about Steemit and its strengths the more I appreciate its complexity and ultimate goal. This is a wonderfully thorough piece that helps to clarify some of the sustainability elements I've questioned. The only worry I have for blockchain and all crypto currency based off them is quantum computing. I've seen huge leaps in my 33 years on earth, do you think what is infallible today will remain so through the long term?
I'd say let us just enjoy the time we spend in learning and not delve too much in the future.
PS: No system is too big to never fall or fail. But we can make it to a graceful end & end it right. Hope my post is taken in the right spirit
I've always worked with this mindset. Like on Facebook if I see great content I'll like it doesn't matter if you are the small guy. If you are making an effort u will get my like. People play games. I see it all the time on FB. Cliques.
However here on steemit its a totally strange dynamic. Everybody is so positive, but there is also cash involve so it puts a spin on it. I'm really new only 4 days in. I barely have a grasp of the steemit inner workings. A few times today I have run out of power to vote on some posts, yet sometimes it will still let me vote. I've read things about voting power. Is that related to how much Steem power you have, like a limit. I get why this is in place but I also get why steemers would want to save there upvotes for influencers and such. It tricky here. I'm overwhelmed and struggling a bit. It can be a little daunting here. There is so much, too much to learn so the only thing to do is relax and take in a little each day I guess.
I'm not a very good writer. I'm hoping Steemit helps me become better. It's really forcing me to write a lot pushing me out of my comfort zone as I would normally avoided writing anything in the past and just post my artwork on my social platforms. Steemit has really gave me the incentive to write more and it's a good thing. Hope I made some sense here folk, haha.
I know what I am going to post as a response might sound like self publicity, but the best post I know on basics of steemit is the one I understand the most & I understand the best when I put it in my own words.
Kindly give this post a read. Maybe some of your queries will get answered! Wish you good luck on steemit.com
https://steemit.com/steemit/@nrajesh/attention-content-makers-nitty-gritties-of-steemit
I will read
I try to upvote the posts of people I follow, but I also make it a habit to periodically check out the "New" section for posts from authors I may not have met before. If I like it, I'll upvote it, and often comment on it. When I upvote, I do so with full power every time; I don't divvy it up into percentages. If it deserves my upvote, it deserves all of my VP in that upvote. That's how I approach things here, and it sounds like you're pretty similar.
I think you might mean 100% of your current voting power available to you at a given time (which actually decays by 5% every time). I don't get that slider yet as I am a minnow.
When I do I'll most likely stick to similar principles like you. Thanks for your comment.
Yes, I always use 100% of my available SP. I feel like that's the only fair way to do it.
thanks for sharing, it was interesting to read, especially for newbes, and thanks for visiting my steemit page :) it was
You're welcome!
@nrajesh I like your thinking. I truly believe Steemit can become astronomically successful if we help others achieve success around us. Spread the Love.
Thank you for the response. I am glad you liked my thinking!
Its an interesting read. But You can comment as much as You want, in the end its the whales who decide which posts get promoted and which not.
@arian1 - the whales can do only a little at a time. The platform is dynamic enough & is designed to not be fully dominated by them. If you read the whitepaper you will also learn that even a minnow's vote will have more power over that of a whale in certain circumstances.
Do NOT give up on this easily. Moving from reputation score of 30 to 50 will take a lot of effort from your side.
Read this link that I wrote a while ago explaining steemit basics to understand why I say so:https://steemit.com/steemit/@nrajesh/attention-content-makers-nitty-gritties-of-steemitFound something even better for you to dispel your doubts!
https://steemit.com/steemit/@arcange/what-is-steemit-reputation-and-how-does-it-work
It will take some time to build up your base here. So long as you keep up your content value you will gain followers. As long as you curate appropriately, you will gain respect!
Thank You for Your reply and useful links. I don't completely agree but I appreciate Your effort!
A very informative post on commenting and voting power, lots learned there and glad to realize we can all influence this community when we really put the time and effort into it. Goad to hear Steemit is experiencing a boom time. Thanks for sharing @nrajesh
Glad to help!
Nicely said! Good on you!
Thanks Brian
Hey, thank you for this post.
I'm new to steemit and all the different levels and concepts, your post broke some of it down, made things clear: upvote and comment on everything you like, spread the love, disregard whether they're "whales" or not. Am I understanding this correctly? Gon follow you and resteem.
Yeah; that is the message. Go with your instincts and comment as per your whims
Thank you! As a new user here, things have seemed very overwhelming, not knowing where to start. I appreciate the breakdown and approachability of this post and feel validated in what my hopes were for this platform!
Very insightful!
Thank you