I spent one hour with Bagz Zapedzki dissecting steem today. If you are interested in tokenomics, it’s an interesting case study. Here’s what I learned:
Users earn steem every time they post AND every time they vote. A good post might earn you $5. The most viral post on the platform $500
You need to convert your Steem into “Steem power” in order to vote. Steem power is exactly like Steem except that it can’t be easily sold (you can downgrade to regular liquid Steem, but over 13 weeks). This provides income, lock in and lowers velocity
You can purchase sponsored listings with steem, and that steem is burned, but you get some back as your listing generates $$ itself
There are maybe 10k people voting, 2k people posters and 200k people reading. This is worth 400 million today
All this could have been done in a centralized way, but Dan larimer chose to do it on the blockchain. The one small advantage is that multiple apps exist on this blockchain. Busy and steemit are two
Conclusions:
A. Incentives work. Even with low earnings per post these 2k posters are committed. Working from home is great, and this falls into “quasi work” category.
B. Dan Larimer is really clever. He has gamified this in a non obvious way. Good news for EOS
C. A small number of dedicated users —> high market cap
D. I can only imagine what would happen if this is broadened to actual work with equal gamification.
