I pumped around 5000 Steem into Palnet when it came out. This was worth around $2000 at the time. Now that same amount of Steem is worth $650 and my Pal coins, if I could sell them all at 0.05, would be worth 1250 Steem. Theoretically I've turned $2000 into $163. Ouch!
And of course, there is no liquidity so it is literally impossible for me to sell. When the price is low all whales get liquid-locked into the market.
To be fair, I was really certain about the summer bull run. I really thought that all coins were going to make significant gains, not just Bitcoin and a handful of top market cap projects.
Luckily I received SteemLeo coins for free during the airdrop, so that softens the blow quite a bit. I own 1/50th of all staked coins. Now I'm left wondering: will Steemleo become the superior SteemEngine community?
The main thing to look at here is the distribution. Already Palnet has 10x more total coins than Steemleo, and the difference is just going to get wider and wider because Palnet mods are being airdropped a lot of coins every month.
Even though Palnet has 10 times the coins and therefore 10 times the inflation rate, my Steemleo upvote produces more raw coins than my Palnet upvote. This is due to all the moderators tapping into the reward pool quite liberally. Lot's of coins are being distributed and a lot of downward pressure is being placed on the market.
When it really comes down to it, we have to look at the differences. Steemleo clearly has a superior distribution compared to Palnet, because it has no moderators on a monthly payroll and the Steemleo airdrop was an intelligent extension of the Palnet airdrop. Steemleo specifically targeted HODLERS and I think that foundation is really going to show up in the price moving forward.
We also have to look at the differences between these projects and Steem. What can Steemleo/Palnet do that Steem can't do? At this point I'd say the answer is nothing except for creating a community with a completely different distribution of coins. This gives the people at the top of these projects much more incentive to bring value to their respective communities. Essentially, the "killer app" of SteemEngine is to create new whales who have a very big financial incentive to increase the value of their underlying asset.
The interesting thing here is that if any of these new whales create value in their SteemEngine community, the chance that Steem (and perhaps even other SteemEngine coins) gain value is also highly likely.
Steemleo also has a niche: investment. If we gather up a solid enough community that is consolidating all the best investment advice/information that's a very big win for the community. If people know they can make money from the information we are distributing it will bolster the network in a big way.
On the other hand, Palnet has paid moderators and more development power behind them. If the moderators and developers can justify their wage they should bring more value to the network than they extract. At the same time, it would be difficult for SteemEngine devs to bring value to Palnet while not bringing that same value to all the other projects. Many of the fundamental gains will translate to extra options for every project.
Is Steemleo better than Palnet? It's really impossible to say. They are both currently extremely risky digital currencies that exist on a single centralized node. Luckily it becomes a little more decentralized when we realize that all the information comes directly from the Steem blockchain.
This is a huge advantage for SteemEngine for many reasons, the biggest of which is that SteemP is provably 100% backed by Steem because everything is on chain. PAL already has a leg up on centralized products like Tether whose behind-the-scenes shenanigans are completely obscured by their shady shadow-banking practices.
When it really comes down to it, the true value of DPOS is governance. Neither Steemleo or Palnet offers any kind of governance advantage for being a holder. The real value of these projects will be adding these kinds of governance powers to stake holders and other smart-contracts going forward.
