I've been around Steemit for about 4 months, and given my interest on analyzing things, I couldn't help but worry about the future of STEEM given the current situation.
The payout is controlled by the ones with high STEEM power. That's the basic feature of this platform, and it's very clear. Now, in order to get high STEEM power, you'll need to have invested a lot (either today or during the early days). In short, the whales have the bulk control of the payout.
Sadly, we all hear about "scandals" among whales of self-upvoting and finding other creative ways of centralizing the payout to themselves. Hence, what happens is whales tend to give the rewards among themselves.
I don't directly blame them because if you think of it, that's somehow natural. As normal rationale beings, we just want to get the best return from our investment. Unfortunately, this has a high tendency to backfire.
The intrinsic value of STEEM is based on the quality of community. Hence, you want talented individuals to stay. Unfortunately, we often hear them airing frustration over poor content discovery that eventually leaves then with small upvotes and small payout (despite the huge amount of effort they put in). But this not the main reason why they go.
Rather, it is when they realize that poorly written content (e.g. memes, short rants, low quality photos, etc.) tend to have larger payout than something they might have written/thought of for days. People tend to be discouraged by "comparison", and that's basic human behavior as well.
Supply of STEEM (via STEEM power distribution) and SBD increases every payout. Hence, the prices of the two cryptos have a natural tendency to go down. Hence, this should be matched by increase on the demand side, which we are hardly seeing as more people realize that it's already "hard to get in". If this continues, the value of our SBD and STEEM holdings declines over time. Who would want that?
The only way that we see increases would be when the increase in demand surpases that of the supply, but that's difficult given #1.
I don't have any specific proposal but there should be better spread of the rewards. This means that people who have control over payouts (i.e. dolphin and whales) should be more active in discovering contents and talents and give a portion to them. That way, we can retain talented content creators.
This is what @surpassinggooogle is trying to do, and if more dolphins and whales do the same, mass adoption will be more possible.
I know that the devs are working hard over this, and I just want to give acknowledgement to them. This is a good way to make "A." more possible.
Steemians need to fight the urge of focusing on self gains. Rather, we should have a larger lens of looking at the entire community.
If you have 100,000 SP with Steem at $2 (total of $200,000 in value), which do you think is a better scenario below?
Scenario 1
You engage in self-voting and accummulating rewards for yourself. This allowed you to earn 40,000 SP in the process for about a year. Unfortunately, due to this prevalent practice, Steem plummeted to $1.5.
In value, you'll have 140,000 SP x $1.5 which gives you a total of $210,000. This gives you a $10,000 gain.
Scenario 2
You exert effort in discovering quality content and give support to them. You also avoid self upvoting, and rather spread them thinly. This only earned you 1,000 SP from curation. However, due to this practice, you made the platform very inviting and enticing that Steem rose to $4.00 (stably).
In value, you'll have 105,000 SP x $4.0 which gives you a total of $420,000. This gives you a $220,000 gain.
Figures are just for illustration purpose, but hopefully that explains the point of looking at the bigger picture.
The platform is young, so we still can do something about it. We just need to know how to address issues and make the community more dynamic.
If you agree, feel free to resteem.
@anotsopopularkid. My discord ID is anotsopopularkid#6016. Hope to connect with you!