Revisiting Earnings after Hard Fork(s)

As part of my professional training in Finance, I often look at reviewing how my efforts in any endeavor perform. I try to periodically review in order to ensure that adjustments are made in order to improve in the future an not fall into losing opportunities due to not being to up speed on the shifts that often occur in anything we do. I surely do not want to become Kodak which completely missed the shift in the world of photography and has almost become irrelevant. Instead, I would like to ride the wave of change in order to adapt and continually participate in it.

Steem is very unique in that it currently falls in the center of a number of evolving dynamics. Blockchain technology continues to evolve and grow as more benefits and applications are seen for its use case. Social media and networking continue to compete aggressively with traditional media to garner the attention of a continually growing user base. Both continue to have enormous room to grow as they are built to be borderless which makes it available to billions of users around the world. If there is anywhere I want to be, it is here.

However, Steem itself continues to evolve as it has been through a market cycle that many have been unable to recover from. However, its most valuable asset, the community, has continued to prove that it can evolve and adjust to the realities of being in a sector of early adoption and challenges. Although I have only been here for 3 painful Hard Forks, we are now at 22 in total which is a clear indication of development and progress. Each iteration comes with challenges and opportunities for the community to integrate in their daily activities.

Before

A key change for the latest Hard Fork(s) was how earnings would be earned. A clear concern for any stakeholder as it has materially shifted in many aspects the approach of many users so far. While I will not go into the details given my still only slight understanding of the changes, I can surely start to see the changes given my stake in the protocol. Earnings had started to decrease before the Hard Forks as not only was the Steem price declining but we were also seeing less engagement as the community had already started to experiment with a number of behaviors such as downvoting.

One of the aspects that kept me encourage from these shifts was the fact that we were still able to accumulate more Steem than in the past given where prices were. In fact, I think I have earned more Steem this quarter than all the other quarters previously combined. I am looking forward to my quarterly report to confirm but I felt that it was becoming easy to earn Steem given the reduction in engagement and prices. However, it feels that it has somewhat shifted since the Hard Fork(s).

After

As expected, earnings have generally declined given the fact that Author reward were reduced. Also, the curve instituted has clearly brought down the ability to earn by being upvoted on comments which are rarely upvoted by users other than the Author of the posts. This was a major shift for me as I have always been a believer in engaging actively to demonstrate my presence. This has not only helped me establish relationships but has also given me rewards in the past. This may be my biggest issue with the changes as I feel we need more incentive to engage, not less. I agree that content must be engaging in itself but without the ability to transparently reward it, it will quickly feel like other content creation sites which only pave the way for trolls.

The general decrease in Author rewards do not concern me as I think it is a great indication that the Proof of Brain concept is improving (still not perfect though). I would never expect my content to be on the trending page as I do not create it for that purpose. My thought is to provide thoughts and perspectives towards being a part of a larger community that engages. My reward is the learning and building of those relationships and the hope that it inspires others to do the same and add value to the community and ecosystem. Ultimately, it will lead to more value in our stakes.

Another positive to note is the increase in Curation rewards. This surely represents a great opportunity for all to improve on and also to be the key of our future content creation and the Proof of Brain concept. This could truly lead to more growth on the user side while incentivizing more engagement via curation rather than only using automated systems. This is an area where I will struggle as my time to curate manually is limited every day to a handful of occasions where I will surely miss the opportunity to optimize my stake. However, it is already bringing the rise in curation leagues all over the ecosystem which will be interesting to experience; not only for our earning opportunities but also for our ability to have some great content to consume and having it more visible given the efforts of the great curators that already exist in the community.

At the end of the day, I am not expecting to live off these earnings (yet) so the fact that these adjustments occur seem normal. Given the potential of what can be accomplished via growth and adoption is well worth the continued engagement in the community and ecosystem. While it may have further implications on my behavior here, it become more clear to me that there is really no place I rather be than Steem despite the challenges and doubts that remain. I hope that my efforts continue to be aligned with those that add value to the community and ecosystem for a future of benefits as a stakeholder and believer of it all!