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RE: Top 10 Cryptocurrency Questions and Answers!
The whales are actually the platforms biggest enemies, and they will inevitably lead Steem and Steemit to its death. The platform is essentially a pay to win platform, and nothing that it is pay to win ever lasts... unless of course it's run by the government.
Whales have a bad influence on steem?
This is a common misconception that many users have.
You must think of steem as a race between users. Whenever someone is refuelling (powering down) he loses position in the race. Steem is exactly the same.
Why are whales not bad?
Because whales have to stay powered up if they don’t want to lose position in the race, by doing so they contribute to increase the price of steem.
Whales who are powering down are not bad either because they are losing position in the race and will soon be eliminated from the race. They also contribute to increase steem supply on the market thus giving everyone a good opportunity to boost their engine.
Another misconception is that whales are draining the reward pool.
Again, people should stop thinking of the reward pool as a limited thing, the reward pool is potentially unlimited because the price of steem can increase indefinitely.
Whales by staying in the race and not refuelling ( powering down) essentially increase the size of the reward pool by increasing the price of steem thus allowing everyone to earn more.
Whales are either powering down and will be out of the race soon or powering up and increasing the size of the reward pool, so they are definetely not the enemies.
I suggest you check https://steemwhales.com/ to see where you are in the race :)
A few months ago I was a dolphin and now I am a whale because I never refuelled during the race. Many users who were ahead of me have however and are now behind. Everyone who are on steemit today basically have a head start on the race, so they will soon become whales too.
This makes a lot of sense. Thanks for posting that.
Abundant mindset @someonewhoisme.
thanks 4 sharing that.
(upvoted)
I do not think whales are the enemies. I think the problem is that when we post something, it disappears from the front page real fast, making it extremely hard to even get seen. So people start to rely on other methods to build up. However, I don't really know what would be a solution for the "disappear too fast from the frontpage" problem, though.
Soon we will have communities, like reddit so that would solve the problem you mentionned. It's in steem roadmap 2017.
STEEM could replace pretty much every type of social media out there......
@someonewhoisme thank you very much as a whale for upvoting so many of my posts because you have helped me continue giving everything I can to our community here!
Funny you mention the government, because I think Steemit has an "inequality problem," too, and the way to solve that would be acting more like a responsible and rational government.
That would mean not creating "feedback loops" for "rich people" to get even richer, but instead making it easier for the "little guy" to become "middle class" faster.
I believe this is how the Steemit platform should work, too. It should try to put as many people in the "middle class" of Steemit authors as possible, rather than just show-off with a handful of authors (no offense to Jerry here) that can earn more than a thousand of dollars per article, almost every time.
Yes, I do think that "draws-in" people to the platform, as they see the platform's potential. However, I also think this could be temporary (as in a matter of months to a year). If the platform grows 10x in number of accounts, but 99% of the users still make less than $50 a month writing an article every day, while top authors earn, presumably, over $10,000 per post by then, then this will end-up being a big turn-off for everyone, and they will start dumping the platform.
The platform would be way more successful if, maybe not every user, or even half of the users, but a good percentage of them can say that they can live off Steemit earnings. This doesn't necessarily need to happen right now, as the platform still has too few users. But when it's say 10x bigger, I do expect to see that happening.
Steemit could solve the inequality problem rather easily by using an algorithm for the payouts that gives diminishing returns for top authors. For instance, if a post has already made $200 from the first 100 votes, with an average of $2 per vote, then the next 100 votes should only give the author $100. The next 100 votes after that should only give her $50, and the next 100 votes $25. Something along those lines.
This is just a solution for capping the earnings of authors that consistently rank at the top due to their big initial followers on the platform, or perhaps by bringing their followers from Twitter or Facebook or YouTube to Steemit, which in a way gives them an "unfair" advantage compared to others who want to start from scratch let's say in the year 2019. Then spread that "unused money" in some way to authors of less popular posts.
There could also be some ways to solve the whale problem and/or loopholes used by vote rings and such. For instance, a "whale's" upvote should be worth more when given to a post that has under $100, but worth much less when given to a post that has over $500. The same diminishing returns idea from above, but applied to whales directly.
Obviously, these algorithms can be tweaked, and they don't have to work exactly as I said. But I do believe something along those lines is needed so that the newer authors are encouraged to stay with the platform and see that they can indeed have good earnings potential here by seeing it with their own posts, rather than just staring mesmerized at how some top authors (consistently the same ones) keep earning $1,000 per post.
As a new user, I see the same issue. There are posts created by the early adopters that have so many upvotes and with plenty of earnings even when the quality of posts is so poor.
I appreciate this concept - diminishing financial returns as the viewership increases through virality. Sounds like a good way to even the playing field and avoid fraud.
@jarexx: you have hit the problem absolutely correctly and your solutions in principal are excellent. That is the only way the platform can be saved from greedy and creepy people
I guess we as human beings are inherently flawed, and always tend to create these circles and loops. It is not a flaw in the system as such, but more a flaw in all of us. We have to be more responsible citizens.
I agree to it.. Let's wait and see what happens in few months.
I've been on this platform for a few weeks and it's obvious why the superstars are liking it, they're getting paid thousands for their content however, for the vast majority with content which is just as good, they barely get a look in.
I suspect I'm beginning to experience the user experience for most of the Steemians on here with an optimistic and hopeful beginning and then a slow realisation that maybe it's not that great with the whales pulling the strings, casting the bait and us minnows swimming around wide eyed, ever hopeful yet utterly powerless.
I'm currently 55/45 in favour of STEEMIT, I'm still hopeful it's going to fulfill its potential but I'm powering down just incase so I can ditch it, if in 3 months, I'm still of the same opinion.
Not to burst your bubble, but "pay to win" systems never ever work.
Take for example: World of Warcraft gold, Diablo 3 real money auction house, and almost every mobile game ever created, etcetera.
Eventually, all pay to win systems are totally manipulated by people with lots (whales) of money, hackers, cheaters, fakers, liars, or in China's case... people with a whole lot of free time on their hands.
The biggest reason why Reddit is so successful, albeit gamed a little itself, is because there isn't any real incentive to post, up-vote, or down-vote on there. People do because they want to educate, learn, agree or disagree. The fact that Karma points don't have any value at all is the platforms biggest advantage.
Great point. Steemit will never get to one billion authors making money. People will have to want to come hear to read and curate, since there isn't enough time in the day for "one billion great bloggers" to be successful authors on Steemit
STEEM On !!
Dave
Exactly, if this thing is ever to be successful, people have to come here for the content and content alone. The currency you make or may make via your creation or comment needs to be an afterthought... and appreciated treat if you would.
I love reddit.
For everyone with a lot of Steem Power I think it is our duty to both help each other and help those just getting started. I try to do both as best I can. With any system there is always a way to exploit it and Steemit at least makes it transparent. On Facebook, it is just the same except not obvious to the average user how it happens or in the user's face in the form of ads which are taken for granted. I much prefer Steemit's system over being shown ads on Facebook.
There's a thing called adblocker. Then you just follow whatever brands you like...
I feel that my time, money, contributions or whatever effort won't be showing here anytime soon.