Will We Remain Frogs in a Well?

– A Developer's Final Message on the Structural Issues of the Steemit Ecosystem

Steemit is certainly a unique Web3 platform with its own reward system.
But the more time I spend here, the more I ask myself:

“Are we truly growing as a blockchain ecosystem?
Or are we simply pretending to exist, trapped within our own system?”

As a Witness, I’ve developed various services on Steemit, brought in external users, and experimented with multiple systems.
But now, I’ve come to the conclusion that I can no longer ignore the structural and cultural problems of this ecosystem.

This post may feel uncomfortable to some,
but it’s a message that someone needs to deliver.

1. There’s No “Correct” Way to Use SP — Only Freedom

Recently, I was labeled “insulting” just for mentioning vote bots.
That reaction made me ask:

Is there a “right” way to use SP?

STEEM Power is a user’s asset, and how it’s used should be up to the individual.
Whether it’s earned through investment or participation, there is no single proper use.

If vote bots are truly a problem,
then users shouldn’t be shamed or condemned — they should be engaged, reasoned with, and persuaded.
Only then, and with community consensus, can we talk about proper structural limits or reforms.

Condemning individuals and dividing the community by labels
undermines diversity and goes against the foundational principles of freedom and decentralization in Web3.

2. Steemit is Hostile to Developers

What I’ve experienced firsthand as a Witness and developer:

  • No smart contracts
  • No built-in oracle system → must build everything from scratch
  • Lack of official documentation or resources
  • Virtually no dev community or tutorials
  • No support programs or infrastructure for onboarding outside developers

By contrast, ecosystems like Ethereum, BNB, or TON offer
better tools, faster deployment, stronger communities, and more opportunities — for the same amount of effort.

Yet Steemit still expects Witnesses to build everything themselves,
with minimal support and no scalable path forward,
repeating a cycle of low-quality, short-lived dApps.

3. We Launched the Same dApp on Two Blockchains

We launched the same dApp — first on the TON blockchain, and later on STEEM.

The results were starkly different.

On TON: tens of thousands of users joined, hundreds of thousands of transactions, constant feedback, and actual investors.
The community responded quickly, and momentum built naturally.

On STEEM: the response was silence.
Only after we were selected as a curator did we see a modest user spike —
but even that came with a troubling realization:

Many of those users weren’t there to use the service.
They were bounty hunters — exploiting the curator system.

They weren’t contributing or engaging with the game —
they were writing templated posts to “mine” STEEM rewards.

  • Repetitive, formulaic posts
  • Surface-level content with no meaningful user experience
  • Automated or insincere shilling just to trigger upvotes

Ultimately, their goal was to look supportive to farm rewards — not to help the ecosystem grow.

Sometimes, a single data point speaks louder than 100 sentences.
This was one of those times.

4. We Have Always Opposed Vote Bots — And Still Do

As a Witness, I’ve consistently voiced opposition to
self-voting, vote bots, and reward manipulation within Steemit.

This is not about attacking individuals —
it’s about recognizing and confronting the systemic issues they cause.

  • We do not support self-voting or automation-driven curation
  • We believe reputation should be based on usage, contribution, and feedback — not just appearance

We’re not here to complain —
we’ve tried to fix this, and we still hope for an ecosystem-level shift.

5. We Are Bringing External Users to STEEM — But is STEEM Ready?

Our team has actively attracted external users and investors to STEEM.
But now we must ask — is Steemit ready to receive them?

What we see is discouraging:

  • Older users criticize and gatekeep new ones
  • The culture prioritizes preserving internal order over welcoming outsiders
  • There’s more suspicion than conversation

Will we nurture these users and show them STEEM’s value?
Or will we push them out with division and hostility?

The community must decide.

6. Steemit Hasn’t Changed in Years

Everyone keeps saying “change is needed.”
But almost no one is actually making change happen.

The saying “Too many captains sink the ship” perfectly fits this ecosystem.

If I seem aggressive in this post, it’s for a reason:
I have no more patience left.
This is as close as I’ve come to giving up.

  • We’ve built tools, bots, games, and services on STEEM
  • But none of those efforts were properly recognized
  • The same work would’ve generated better results — more users, more income, more collaboration — on other blockchains

Cryptid Hunter and Cryptid TCG may very well be my final contributions to the STEEM ecosystem.

7. Steemit Rewards Performance Theater — Not Actual Results

The way Steemit rewards effort is fundamentally flawed.

Real success doesn’t matter.
Only the appearance of trying does.

  • Your dApp doesn’t need real players
  • Your project doesn’t need results
  • All that matters is whether it looks like you worked hard

I won’t just call it inefficient.
Steemit is a system where users compete to perform effort — to maintain rewards.

And that is the most dangerous flaw of all.

8. This is How Steemit Feels Today

Today, Steemit feels:

  • Resistant to change
  • Disconnected from the outside world
  • Obsessed with internal politics and emotional cycles

I no longer wish to spend my time as a Witness in this structure.

9. Why I’m Writing This – To Spark Real Change

Through this recent curator role and dApp launch,
I’ve come face-to-face with the deeper problems of Steemit.

At first, I blamed our own team.
Maybe we weren’t ready enough.

But now I see clearly —
this is a structural problem.

  • The curator system has flaws
  • The community is overly inward-looking
  • The Witness culture lacks accountability and honest feedback

This is why the basic growth cycle —
new user → onboarding → engagement → expansion — simply doesn’t happen here.

I’m not here to attack this system.
I’m here to help change it.

I’ve built and deployed dApps on other blockchains.
I’ve seen how different systems work, and I now have a better lens for comparison.

That’s why I want to stay —
to be a Witness who brings structural change to the STEEM blockchain.

Because if no one starts the change, it will never come.

Final Thoughts – What Really Needs to Change

  • Yes, we need killer dApps
  • Yes, we need better marketing

But before any of that...

We need a system worth staying in.
We need a community where those things will actually matter.

I don’t want to be remembered as a Witness who just voted.
I want to be the one who challenged the system — and tried to open a new path.

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Not sure what I have to contribute here, but this post feels like it deserves a response, so lets see where this goes. I agree with much of what you wrote, but of course, not everything. It's interesting to me how your conclusion made this point:

We need a system worth staying in.

Which is almost the exact point that I made in a post yesterday

What is the one single thing that anyone can do to make STEEM more valuable and lead us into that future? Maybe it's this. Do what I can at this very moment to make the Steem ecosystem into a place where people want to spend their time and attention.

I'm not into gaming, so I haven't tried Cryptid Hunter, but I hope it succeeds. I'm in favor of anything that cultivates genuine human attention.

It's obviously not possible to do a point by point response to your whole post, so I'll focus on two that resonated the most with me. First, I agree that the absence of reliable documentation is a big challenge for developers. This actually seems like it should be easy to address by freelancers through the SPS. Before the Hive split, people used to generate proposals to refresh the docs. It would be great to see that resume. This seems like an ideal task for SPS funding.

Second, marketing, I disagree that we need marketing right now. This is because I agree with your other point that the basic growth cycle is not functioning:

new user → onboarding → engagement → expansion

Until we are retaining a good chunk of the people who find their way here, I don't think marketing is a good use of time and funding. If we bring people here just to have them leave, that leads to reputational damage. And that leads back to the reason why (I believe) your delegation bot comment got the response that it did.

I won't try to speak for anyone else, but personally, I have always been a fan of automation here, as long as it is used to promote growth and value - and I don't even object to reasonable self-voting. However, the current generation of delegation bots doesn't promote growth and value. They're cannibalizing the ecosystem. So, my personal opinion is that we cannot have a healthy culture while that generation of voting service is controlling so much of the reward distribution. (It's the technology, not necessarily the people.)

I get that people use them, and you want to advise your clients about the existing services that they could make use of, but that also counterbalances almost everything else that you wrote up above. IMO, there is no way to "open a new path" without removing or replacing that generation of voting service. (which is why I have been working on a gen-5 service - not sure if you've seen my posts on this topic...) I have no problem sharing the ecosystem with automatons that pursue ecosystem growth, but I don't want to share it with automatons whose only apparent goal is to exfiltrate whatever value has so-far managed to survive.

In the end - on the delegation bot topic, I guess you're sort-of caught in the middle, since you have to serve your clients, but promoting services like that is diametrically opposed to the chain's fiduciary interest.

Anyway, thanks for the post; thanks for bringing Cryptid Hunter here, and thanks for the other projects you have launched. Hopefully conversations like this will uncover some new and healthier paths for the ecosystem.

First of all, thank you for your lengthy comment. I agree with much of what you said.
The STEEM blockchain and Steemit have become increasingly forgotten platforms in the current Web3 ecosystem.
Various efforts are needed to revive them, but it's unfortunate that the users who truly have the power to change things remain silent.
I haven't looked into Gen-5 bots in detail yet, but I sincerely hope they achieve good results.

저는 오랫동안 이 플랫폼에서 행복과 희망을 누려온 스티미언입니다. 특히 크립티드헌터 게임 덕분에, 약 7년간 이어온 저의 셀프보팅을 기꺼이 중단하게 되었습니다. 그 이유는 이 게임 커뮤니티에 보팅함으로써, 진심 어린 지지를 보내고 싶었기 때문입니다. 그만큼 이 프로젝트는 스팀잇 플랫폼에 새로운 가능성과 활력을 불어넣는 희망이라고 생각합니다.

“시스템에 도전하고, 새로운 길을 열고자 하는 사람이고 싶다”는 개발자님의 말에 깊이 공감하며, 그 여정을 진심으로 응원합니다.

감사합니다. :)
블록체인 생태계 속에서는 어뷰징, 봇과 같은 행위는 언제든지 출현할 수 있다고 봅니다. 따라서 기능적인 제한이 필요하다고 보고 있습니다. 보팅봇이나 여러 문제점들이 기능적인 제한을 통해 개선될길 희망합니다.

As a developer, I don't know what to do. But as you said these are necessary

Yes, we need killer dApps
Yes, we need better marketing

I fee like that Steem has no.hope among users as well as developers. We still have several top witnesses doing nothing but managing voting services. Developers like your team should be top so that at least some tries will happen. Currently itis a pity.

To create a truly successful project, planners, designers, and developers must all collaborate and invest time.
While a solo developer can certainly create a valuable service, it's not an easy task.

While I hope for changes to the STEEM blockchain, the majority of users don't seem to want them.

Hello @roadofrich! You are So Nice!


command: !thumbup is powered by witness @justyy and his contributions are: https://steemyy.com
More commands are coming!

대부분의 스팀파워가 임대 셀프보팅에 몰리면서 스팀의 SNS 기능이 사실상 쇠퇴하고 단순 채굴장처럼 되어 버린 것은 사실 꽤 오래된 문제 같습니다. 단기 수익에 너무 혹한 나머지 생태계 자체의 성장성을 스스로 파괴해 버린 것은 아닌가 싶기도 합니다. 제가 생각했던 대응방안은 @jsup 서비스를 이용해서 임대한 스팀파워로 다른 사람에게 보팅해 주고 큐레이션 보상을 받는 기능을 제공하여 셀프보팅 독점 문제를 해결하는 것이었으나, 유의미한 변화를 이끌어내기엔 역부족이었던 것 같습니다.

jsup 2.0 - 업보팅을 다시 위대하게

게임을 하지 않기 때문에 개발하신 서비스를 사용해 본 것은 아닙니다만, 프로젝트가 잘 되었으면 좋겠습니다. 고생 많으십니다!