I've had much time to think about Steem, and the key to its success is immutability. The rest is variable and honestly hard to control. This is a strange conclusion for its simplicity, but it is one very important reason I use it. Only very good ideas cannot be copied. They can be re-said, but originality happens but once, and it can be proved to a patent office.
Another important piece often desired by users is realness. I could tell you a hundred stories that are not mine. Despite this, one can sometimes come to sense personality and authenticity.
Identity is hard to prove when anonymity is important or desired. On the internet and on an open blockchain, it is difficult to know anything about a person or to understand their various online presence-s.
How do we protect from sybil attacks and voting augmentation when identity is fuzzy? A simple hands-on solution is to use third-party verifiers of identity. Maybe this should be an optional procedure to improve believability on Steem.
Another key to Steem's success is balance. A variety of people help insure authenticity and fairness. Deception decreases when many viewpoints and healthy thinking is present. I find personal balance by spending time in nature or immersing myself in something beautiful or useful. History and biographies open my mind.
How do we make Steem economically fair? I don't know, but we must not give up as long as there is immutability of content. The experiment of Steem still is dormant and a better world can still rise from the ashes of all previous failure. It is a somewhat virtual world but not without moment or significance.
Is it not our hope to create a mostly fair system that attracts many users? This may mean different things to different people, but even a capitalistic free-market society can become better or worse, depending on its constituents and their actions.
Actually making Steem fair may require creating another chain with SD being transferable. This may be true since immutability of coinage is also important, and right now influence corresponds to invested-money squared. Perhaps this math is as it should be, but I cannot say this.
As long as money equals popularity, however, I see a possible attack. If money represents popularity, quality or a right-to-attention, then spending money indirectly on oneself leads to getting back spent money and becoming popular. But this is old news. I believe our programmers know of and are addressing these issues.
These are the key issues facing Steem. Immutability of content is of highest importance and a pillar of Steem's architecture. This is obvious to the blockchain community. Achieving realness of human content and good balance is also important to social media sites.
