A lot has changed in the course of a week since @ned's announcement about laying off 70% of the Steemit, Inc team.
It is very uplifting to see different members of the community stepping up. This should give everyone confidence going forward about this blockchain. The people who are on here are top notch.
During Ned's livestream last week, he spelled out what his vision is and how Steemit strayed from that. Basically, the idea of handling development while also doing social media is too much. It becomes too broad to operate successfully.
Since that time, Steemit has looked at cutting other costs including how the data interacts with nodes. The conclusion is that switching to RocksDB is the best option both in the short and long term. This will help reduce costs while keeping them down.
There was a post put out about the progress along with some other updates.
https://busy.org/@ned/steemit-inc-blockchain-roadmap-and-cost-reductions
One interesting proposal that arose came from @blocktrades. The team there proposed the idea of handling the conversion to RocksDB for the Steemit team, thus allowing them to focus upon the development of SMTs. This is something that I felt was needed, getting others involved in the blockchain coding to help decentralize things.
It was presented to Ned who wanted it passed on to the community.
Here is the post that they put up about the proposal. Please give this a read and comment.
https://busy.org/@blocktrades/blocktrades-rocksdb-proposal-to-steemit
There is one thing missing from this entire equation: Steemit.com.
On the livestream last week, Ned made it clear that he is not going to be focusing upon the social media end of things. That means that Steemit.com is not going to get any updates and the Destiny project is shelved.
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There was a time when Steemit.com served a purpose. As the flagship application, this was the one that allowed the blogging platform to come into being. That time has passed. We now see a variety of other applications that not only serve the same function, but do it better with more features. Two that are garnering users are Busy.org and @steempeak. Both of these are better interfaces with a lot more features. In short, they provide a much better user experience.
Essentially, Steemit.com is competition for these applications. To survive, they charge a percentage of the payout for development. That is only fair and a good business model. Steemit.com does not meaning one gets all of the rewards. The challenge with this is, as we saw, at some point money is required.
Many proposed, including myself, of doing things to Steemit.com like charging a percentage or placing ads as a means to raise money. This is a failed idea since Steemit Inc is not going to be in the social media game. They need to figure out a business model that provides revenue without Steemit.com. It is time to put that to bed.
Thus, since Steemit.com is not going to be supported in the future, it is time for the community to move on. I suggest everyone reading this to give the two applications I mentioned a try. While the change can be a bit daunting at first because of a different layout, I think people will find a better experience on these applications.
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For mobile users, which admittedly I am not, there is @partiko and @esteem. Esteem does offer an interesting option since they are already running their own full node meaning they are decentralizing the ecosystem a bit more than everyone else.
The future lies on Steemit Inc working on the blockchain, hopefully with the input/assistance of other community members, while the applications provide the social media aspect of things. Our growth going forward will be due to the features of these applications and the creativity of the development teams.
I thank Steemit Inc for all they did including having Steemit.com. Without that interface, this blockchain would have died long ago. Nevertheless, in the course of progress, it is time to move on. There are much better options along with more important reasons.
Basically, I feel the community needs to focus upon moving away from Steemit Inc as much as it can. Certainly there is a major role for that organization to play yet we now realize how exposed we are when we give it too much power. Mass migration to other interfaces will assist in the transformation that is taking place.
Many non-technical people have asked how they can help out since the news broke last week. Here is a simple way to do it: support other interfaces.
They are the future of social media on the Steem blockchain.
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