Steem Is Dead. Long Live Steem.

Steem and Steemit Inc. have a leadership problem.

Made by Dan Larimer (@dan) and Ned Scott (@ned) in 2016, Steem was a revolutionary wonder. I was introduced to it by an author I was into at the time, Neil Strauss (and if I had jumped on the bandwagon when he told me to, I'd probably be pretty rich right now) and once I finally gave it a try I knew at once that it was the future.

But breakdowns in communication happened between the two founders and @dan left. The community (read: me) felt betrayed, but with Ned behind the helm we were still on course, right?

And then SMT's. God did I and others get strung along by the nose because of SMT's for literally years. Only recently, when @ned was force to announce that Steemit Inc. had been forced to fire 70% of their employees, did we get a real sense of the levels of incompetence going on behind the scenes.

When @dan heard about it he seemed pretty unsurprised, commenting on Twitter that since his departure the company had not managed to complete any major milestone on the roadmap he'd laid out for it. It would be easy to say the crypto crash was merely bad timing as they made the mad dash to SMT's, and that had things gone only a little differently we wouldn't be sitting here. However, companies are supposed to be ready to weather the storm, especially crypto companies.

Even Ned acknowledged that they were spread too thin. Now much of what we were promised seems likely to never happen. But those things were critical for Steem gaining wide acceptance. It seems like a fair bet that some competitor (or a lot of them) will be in the cards long before Steem breaks into anything resembling mainstream acceptance.

It's likely that Steem is in a death spiral.

I'd power down, but the amount I'd receive is so little at this point I don't even deem it to be worth it. The only way out of this that I see is if the community is given control.

...which brings me to my next point. Ned is a little tyrant. I know, I know. If you're a defender of his (which seems fairly likely if you're still on the platform and reading this) this is going to piss you off and rub you the wrong way. I too used to vehemently defend Ned.

For me the turning point is this post by @jesta. It goes through all of the drama of the past couple months, laying it out in a way I think is incredibly fair (maybe too fair).

Ned thought the community was going to fork to a new chain (where he had no power - his funds would be 'forked out' essentially) because it was mentioned (no one actually seconded the idea or took it seriously). He powered down his account to hide his funds and reduce transparency and accused those involved of 'theft'. How is it theft if it belongs to the community? Good question. It doesn't. This was part of what @dan and @ned were fighting over. @ned has been waiting with this card up his sleeve for a long time.

Steem is not truly decentralized. It's controlled by one entity, Steemit Inc, which is in turn controlled by one person, Ned Scott. That's about as far away from decentralized as you can get. The witnesses are beginning to realize that they have absolutely no actual power, and this is scaring away some of the finest people in the community, including @jesta (who shortly after the debacle lost his spot as a top 20 witness... it was before he posted his article, but still after he had made his feelings clear. Curious.)

And so it was, with horror, that I realized that the guy behind the wheel, the captain of this ship, doesn't understand what crypto is about or how it works. The whole value of a project like Steem (or any other crypto project) is in its decentralization. And with pulling the 'I'm the boss and I own Steem' card he's basically admitted that there is none. If he'd at least pretended and given into some of the demands/requests made by witnesses, developers, and top people in the community (such as @jesta) then perhaps I and others could have still missed this essential fact.

Naw.

And yeah, I've seen the new initiatives. I asked around about them, and most of the people who were making the complaints think it's mostly for show. Since Steemit Inc. has delivered on zero major improvements (i.e., this is going to change everything and bring the flood of people in) I'm not sure I believe them, either.

But we'll see. I mean, at this point what have I or anyone on the platform got to lose?

I do, however, see another path forward. It might not be so bad if Steemit Inc. went ahead and went bankrupt. That doesn't necessarily mean power would actually go to the community and the developers, but it might (or at least force a sale).

I just know that something major needs to change, and the initiatives don't seem like it.

In the meanwhile, I'm keeping my eyes on EOS. Dan did promise to make Steem competitor once EOS was up and at 'em. Although with the way that guys hops around, it might be a minute.

This might be my last post. And for those of you who think I'm wrong and that the future is shining and bright for Steem: I hope to God you're right.