Let's talk about Steem

Prologue

If you are a content creator participating on Steem, you are well aware of the challenges the blockchain and its dApps are facing.

The idea that content would be the main drive behind the platforms built on Steem was both genius and very difficult to achieve. However, in many ways, it's an ingenious way of creating the network effect that any crypto project would require to succeed in the long term by distributing the currency as fairly as possible.

Now, Steem is succeeding at distributing the currency to as many people as possible in a way that no-other blockchain-project has done before or is currently doing. But the goal of rewarding creators for their content isn't possible with the current state of Steem.

However, in the very near future, changes will come to Steem that could very well attract and retain millions of users to Steem.

With that said - let's get into the details. And starting off with one of the most important ones: voting based on account instead of stake.

1 Account = 1 Vote

You might have already seen the video with Hive account@ned and Hive account@theoretical in which they explain coming possible changes to Steem which are part of :

1 Account = 1 Vote
Oracles
SMTs

If you haven't watched the video, I strongly recommend to do it, in order to better understand this post:

Alright, and to understand why account voting is such a big deal - ~~let me take a selfie~~ let me first explain what's wrong with the current system.

The current system is flawed

.. at least for content creators.

Steem is supposed to be THE alternative to other social media, which rewards its participators with cryptocurrencies.

One thing Hive account@ned very often says is that Steem uses the proof of brain algorithm, which makes sure that content quality is crowdsourced and revenue is determined based on the intelligence of the crowd.

At least that's the plan in-theory..

The reality, however, looks quite different.

Problem: Stakeweighted Voting

The reality is that Steem very much resembles the real world, in the sense that not everyone's opinion is worth the same.

Example: Hive account@ned is the CEO of Steemit Inc and has millions of Steempower, but this fact shouldn't give his opinion hundred-thousand times more weight in terms of the subjective rating of content in comparison to the average user.

Imagine what would have happened if Warren Buffet, who is openly opposed to Bitcoin - would be on Steem and were to downvote every post related to cryptocurrencies and upvote every post that would slender the legibility of them.

Important: Now, don't get me wrong. I'm 100% in favour of stake-voting for decisions regarding the blockchain-level (Witness Approvals etc.) as the amount of stake in Steem goes hand in hand with the desire to make decisions that will let Steem grow and flourish.

But in regards to content voting - stake voting is a huge barrier, which is also driving away big creators who came to Steem from other platforms.

Big Content Creators: hello and bye

There are quite a lot of people who believe that the success of Steem relies on marketing and bringing more influencers to Steem.

But my personal opinion to that is as follows:

Don't do that .. yet.

Successful content creators from other platforms already came to Steem ... and left.

Example: Furious Pete (Hive account@furiouspete123)

Furious Pete is a huge youtube who came to Steem (and dtube) about 6 months ago.

Looking at the image above, Furious Pete got a huge following of 4.7 Million Subscribers and an average of 200k+ viewers per video.

Now, compare that to the data of his Steem (dtube account)

Not that bad in terms of Steem, but the amount of traffic, comments and legitimate upvotes he gets - is laughable in comparison to youtube.

Analyse Results

And his activity on Steem completely reflects that.

His latest video on dtube is actually just a re-upload of a 2 years old video on youtube.

And honestly: I can completely understand his reasoning - I would probably do the same thing if I were him.

Why would anybody, who is generating 200k views per video alone, invest any time into producing content for a platform, that is maybe generating around 100 views - roughly about 0.0005%.

Now, he is generating some revenue out of his activity on Steem, but this is not enough to justify the effort for custom videos which will not generate any views.

The Solution

Getting back to the main topic of this post: 1 Account = 1 Vote

I truly believe that this change, in addition with oracles, custom rewards-pools and SMTs, which will govern the uniqueness of account - will attract big content creators and most importantly: many, many users.

And on top of that, the new changes for account creation (which will make accounts nearly free) and the new bandwith credits will ensure that user growth isn't bottlenecked by account creations and bandwith limitations.

Every user - regardless of Steempower - should have a vote which has the same value as anybody else. And whoever tries to game this system (e.g. by using multiple accounts), should be punished by the oracles and/or incentivised to rather use one account.

But what about Stakeholders?

With that said: I also believe that stakeholders should be rewarded for their staked Steem (in form of Steempower).

One great post, which describes a possible solution, is: A simple, radical change to Steem that could fix most of our problems from Hive account@tcpolymath.

The summary of this post is as follows

Rewarding stakeholders of Steem with a Proof of Stake algorithm
Seperating the revenue for holding Steempower from the revenue generated out of content creation & curation.

I personally think that this change could go very well hand-in-hand with 1 Account = 1 Vote and I would be in favour of changes in that direction.