Steemit - HF21 Explained/Fixing The Platform

Hey you, welcome back to the channel, and I hope you all are having a great weekend. Just returning this evening from a great weekend getaway, uh, had a great time, uh, but interesting enough, uh, I've always tried to do things I love and enjoy to do, things like cryptocurrency, getting involved with that. So getaways and vacations and taking a step back from this doesn't really have any kind of effect on me that feels like any kind of burden or strains or work or anything like that. So I'm always enjoying my time here in the cryptocurrency space. Uh, but I'm gonna talk about something very— I find very interesting and probably at the right time, and that is Steam going through hard fork 21, which has been much anticipated in hopes to finally fixing the Steam blockchain and its projects such as Steemit.com for good. And maybe this time around we may get it. It's been a struggle, but I think this comes at such a very important time, specifically when we have now social networks that are going to be implementing cryptocurrencies into it, like what we're going to get with Libra coin and Facebook. And so, you know, the timing is of the essence. And so this might be the move for Steemit to make, the big move, and that it doesn't get overshadowed by ideas like Facebook Coin, a variety of things. Hopefully Steemit will be a benefactor of what's happening with the Libra coin, and that the Steemit blockchain apps like Steemit are projects that make it very easy, or easier I should say, uh, for people to get involved in cryptocurrency, or the masses of people. So we once thought it would be a mass adoption vehicle, hasn't happened yet. And many of us, I think there was a lot of mechanics working against the Steem blockchain that has slowed it down tremendously. But as we look at the details of how 21. Maybe we're gonna find some very interesting things that might change that scenario for the Steem blockchain. So let's take a look at this. I'm gonna read this opening paragraph here that Hard Fork 21 yesterday was announced, the code was released so that public testing may commence. This release candidate includes the STEAM proposal system, also known as the STEAM DAO, along with a long-term funding solution and the Economic Improvement Proposal, or EIP. In this post, we want to go into more detail about the code we submitted relating to these two features. The changes are quite technical and we're sure people will have even more questions. We invite you to include those questions in the comments section below so that we can answer them in future posts. Already don't like the— that is more complicated and a lot more technical. I've always kind of frowned upon those things that we need to make this stuff as easy as possible for everybody. But let's get into the concept here. The Steam DAO was a— or DAO was a was a concept proposed by BlockTrades to allow Steam users to publicly propose work they are willing to do in exchange for pay. Steam users can then vote on these proposals in almost the same way they vote for witnesses. It uses stake-weighted votes, but voters can vote for as many proposals as they want. Quite interesting. Steam It Paid $50,000 to BlockTrace for the development of the Steam DAO. Uh, once approved and after enough time has transpired so as to demonstrate the security and stability of the, uh, system, about 1 to 2 weeks of operation, Steemit will provide initial one-time funding by converting $200,000 STEEM to SBD, which will allow the market to test this new feature. So let's kind of get into a little bit what's happening here. So Steemit paid Blocktrace to create this system that's going to be this decentralized way basically for them to target funding, right? So the community is able to now use the funding uh, to advance, uh, the, the network, right? Whether it be community development, creating, uh, applications and a variety of things like that, uh, and funding, uh, projects. Um, they break it down into two categories. The next one is called the economic improvement proposal. So the differences are, since the economic improvement proposal is more going to target, uh, the community itself, like, uh, whether it be on polls and contributions from the Steemit community. Um, one big issue was how the voting system works with Steemit, and so they've created this kind of more technical linear curve, um, and they go into detail about it, a convergent linear rewards curve. Um, let's just read here shortly a little bit how that works, because yeah, as they bring out here, this is going to be some complex technical things going on to target self-voting, right? To target bid voting in it. We believe that these three changes— that's the convergent linear rewards curve, a separate downvote mana pool, and increasing the curation rewards to equal the author rewards So we believe that these three changes, when packaged together, will shift the behavior of Steam Power holders in a positive way. Under these changes, self-voting and bid bot usage will become less profitable than curating good content. While on paper author rewards are reduced, uh, and curation rewards increase, we believe these changes will make it easier for good content to be discovered and rewarded simply because that type of positive curation behavior will become more profitable under the economic incentive proposal. I believe that's what it's called. So, or I'm sorry, the economic improvement proposal. So let's go back again and try to break down these, uh, these, these, uh, these proposals here, or what's going to be part of Article 21. Uh, So the first one was called the, uh, the STEAM proposal system. So this is the system that it makes it possible to fund projects over, uh, STEAM it from the community. They will, through this system that they paid Blockchains to do, they will be able to vote on the proposals that they want, uh, to be put into place. Very similar to what you get with witnesses when you elect the witness community to run the nodes for Steemit. We vote in a democratic process. So this is how the funding of projects is going to work. So it's kind of like crowdfunding from the community, and hopefully the ideas are related to Steemit, make the community better, right? And so I think that's going to be very, very awesome. And the next one was the economic Improvement, uh, uh, uh, the Economic Improvement Proposal, EIP. And that again is talking about these ways that they're gonna get, uh, gonna make it more, uh, incentive people to curate because you get more now with curating. 50% of the rewards go to the curator. So it's pushing for the incentive, incentivizing people to curate. Uh, and it's increasing the downvote mana pool to stop spam and a variety of things like that. And the bid bots, right, it's making that, uh, almost, um, non-profitable, right? So, um, all of these things are set up to make— to address some of the major issues that we had with Steemit. Uh, you know, as far as self-voting, that's going to be less profitable now, uh, because what people would do, they could just either self-vote for themselves and then self-vote or self-vote themselves polls. And if they had enough steam power, they could just do that and make enough money off that. They didn't really need participation from the community, uh. And then the next part was people who spam the network, abuse the network. How do you stop these people? And, uh, because downvoting costs so much who's going to pay for that. A lot of people would allow the abuse to go on because they couldn't pay for it. Whereas many have proposed get rid of downvoting altogether, uh, they're now suggesting have a fund pool or fund this pool where people could downvote you now. Uh, so we're gonna go over all those things a little bit. And it talks here about, uh, in the witness section, much like how we elect witnesses You know, that being said, with respect to Hard Fork 21, we found that the witness— the witnesses you have elected acted rationally and responsibly, working together to develop solutions to come to a consensus on changes to make Steemit, uh, a better place for everyone while setting the stage for smart media token. But interesting enough, up here says, therefore, if you feel that your witnesses are not representing your interests, then we urge you to exercise the rights granted to you by this decentralized platform to elect witnesses that you believe will represent your interest. Now let me stop right here. In the cryptocurrency space, we can say whatever we want about projects like, uh, Steemit, uh, altcoins that exist out there that many of people don't like, feel they're too decentralized, or just feel they're crappy coins altogether. But let me point to you all something that makes this part of what happens on the Steem blockchain even much more greater than Bitcoin could ever be. And I know that's surprising for some of you all to hear, but think about what it says in this paragraph. Therefore, if you feel that your witnesses are not representing your interests, then we urge you to exercise the rights granted to you by this decentralized platform to elect witnesses that you believe will represent your interests. Now you can say whatever you want. I cannot do that in Bitcoin, right? I know a lot of people love Bitcoin, but the reality of the situation is the direction that Bitcoin goes in, uh, I have no control over that, no say over that, and neither do you. We don't know if it's one giant whale who can manipulate Bitcoin or several dozen that manipulates the entire Bitcoin market, right? Um, now granted, the more, uh, distributed that Bitcoin becomes, uh, the, the more you have good distribution, the less problems you're going to have in a cryptocurrency, period. But to me, the true idea of decentralization rests in democracy. And many of us in the cryptocurrency space just don't seem to get that, um, that without democracy you're not being represented. What's the point of it? Doesn't matter if servers can be decentralized. What, what difference does it make if I can decentralize thousands of servers when they're all controlled and owned by the same people or the same mining pools or the same nation states? Right? And Bitcoin faces a very critical problem to that that I don't think we've, uh, delved into far enough. And it's led some to believe that this proof-of-work algorithm, although maybe one of the most reliable at this point in time, uh, many of us are going to keep seeking other ways and better ways or better methods, and that it still leaves quite a bit to be desired. Uh, it does not represent the interests of the users of these cryptocurrencies because the mining pools, as many researchers have found, are not decentralized, nor is the— are the, um, um, the developers, right, or the wealth. None of it, uh, is, is well enough centralized. The wealth is not well enough distributed to fit into any of those definitions. But let's talk about this because this is very important, and, and this is, this is a good move for Steam. This could make Steam one of the benefactors and the premier coins that I believe will come about after Facebook or the Libra coin launches, and it's going to have this effect on producing so many more cryptocurrency users, as many of us believe. Now, because of that, let's just use some common sense approaches to this or basic reasoning. If that happens, what is a more likely scenario? That these new cryptocurrency users will opt to use cryptocurrencies similar to the ones they use already, or would they try to learn a much more difficult cryptocurrency, uh, that, uh, is quite foreign to them and may require learning curves they don't have the time for. Now, a lot of people say they'll have this easy access now to move from Bitcoin, or rather from Libra coin, to like Bitcoin and the others. And that is true, but only in the custodial capacity. And yes, this will have a positive effect on Bitcoin in the short term, but maybe not in the long term, as I do believe as exchanges provided between Libra coin and Bitcoin that people will move from one coin to another. Absolutely. But what I don't believe is that it will necessarily be a lasting effect on them holding Bitcoin in their own wallets and a variety of things like that. And it will need to exist as custodial capacity at some degree. So I think initially in the short term there may be some benefits to Bitcoin, but ultimately it might become a great deal more beneficial to projects that are similar to the format and user interfaces of what you're going to get with probably like Facebook-like projects and Libra coin. But didn't mean to get off bat, just want to— or off track— just want to show some very important reasons why blockchains like this are so important, where you elect for the people who mine these blocks to represent you. Now, whereas I love all these ideas and I think they're terrific, uh, in the, in the, in the beginning, except maybe for one, um, there are some problems with this that I don't think this solves at all, that we really need to take a look at and, uh, come up with a different approach. We're trying to still, uh, in a way solve all these problems, at least in these initial stages, with technology, decentralization. And yes, that will work, but there are things that need to be done with a complex system like Steemit, uh, the social complexities of it as far as how do you get people to, uh, look at good posts, uh, reward good posts and these, these good contributions to the network. I don't see where this necessarily will solve that issue. Uh, and part of the problem is because a lot of them, these, the stakeholders of Unsteemit, right, uh, more likely, uh, I, I would venture to say many of them are quite busy people. Uh, we're still dealing with conclave-like communities over quality of posts, meaning that the, your, the friend, you're the friend of my friend's friend, or what have you, is my friend. And so within the confines of these conclaves— I'm sorry, within the confines of these conclaves, there will still exist this very, uh, uh, good old boy community, right? Uh, so how do you solve that? Well, My first approach to it would be to take out the nepotism and put back in place rating good quality posts in some type of system. So I think some of these projects that are being funded and our project BitcoinNYK.com that's already integrated into the Steem blockchain, we will definitely be seeking funding and to get on the way with some some good products, right? Or a good experience for the users that's going to keep them engaged. So we're gonna get into that a little bit, but first I wanna talk a little bit more about some of the problems that can come up with the downvoting mechanism. Okay. Now with the downvoting situation, one deterrent to keep Steamians from just abusing downvote abilities. Maybe I don't like you, maybe you did something to me, uh, outside of Steemit, you know, uh, maybe I spilled the drink on you and you hated me and you, you got back on Steemit and you decided to downvote me, right? All of those things, um, I don't think that funding a downvote pool, uh, I don't think any of that will stop abuse from the people who control those downvote abilities, right? So if there's going to be a pool of this money funding these people, and they're going to have this type of, uh, I guess you could call it full authority to go and downvote whatever post for whatever reason. And who will check the abuser of this that has this funding? I don't think that's a good idea at all. I think the best thing they could have did in this scenario, uh, for Horror 421 was get rid of downvoting altogether. Gather. Just cut it all the way out. I know a lot of people, they'd be concerned about spam because who's going to check the system, who's going to do this and who's going to do that, right? But all I'm saying is that that could be— could work out to be a negative thing, and that's something they're going to have to be quite careful with. Um, and so, uh, that's something they're going to have to look at. But everything else I think looks pretty great. Now it is an experiment, uh, and so they don't know exactly what's going to happen. Uh, and then there's also the idea of that a content creator is going to lose more of their money. Now they're only— it's going to be a 50/50 split, whereas before something like 70%. So the content creator is going to lose a little bit of dollars on this, uh, and hopefully, uh, it'll be better for them in the end. But, uh, yeah, there's going to need to be a way. Who's going to be incentivized to seek out this good content? Well, yeah, okay, you could say the curators, right? And there's more money being poured into curation to a great degree, but is it going to be enough to, uh, really make people curate your posts? Like, these curation rewards are still going to be very, very minuscule, and I don't think these curation rewards are going to be enough to really solve the problem. It might help it just a wee bit, but I don't think we're going to see a huge difference in this. The only great— the greatest thing about this Hard Fork 21 proposal I'm seeing so far is just the idea that they're gonna collect money to, in the beginning, fund projects that, uh, hopefully will, um, uh, be an improvement to the community. And I hope— I, I hope, guys, this is what I'm I gotta put out there right now. All of these gaming apps, I hope the idea is not to take this $200,000 steam and just fund more gaming apps, more gambling apps, because gambling apps and gaming apps is not what's going to keep new people, new content creators on this platform, right? It's just more spinning wheels and more waste of money, I think, in my personal opinion. So if it's more games and more puzzles, that is not working out. You know, Steam, the Steam blockchain has many of those things, you know, and that hasn't really solved the issue of just creating more things for people to do. We got to get to the core of what the problem is. And so I have a proposal I think that addresses that to the core. And I think until something like this is done and goals, uh, I don't really think that this is going to yield quite the results we want. It is a step in the right direction, but I don't think it's going to completely yield the results we want. But in any event, uh, let's move on to something I think that will do that, and it will be part of this proposal as soon as this system is available. So we're here at BitcoinNYK.com serving as a Steemit front-end site, and you see posts from Steemit, um, variety of posts. But it's something very unique about this Steemit front-end site BitcoinNYK.com, and not only is it quite unique, but it might just solve many of what I think have been the most major issues with the Steam, with Steemit.com on the Steam blockchain. Um, and so we're gonna go now and we're gonna show you what we think the solution to that is. So with the BitcoinMYK Steemit front-end site, when you make a post to Steemit, we automatically are able to basically generate your posts. And each post has, uh, with your account, a reputation score that is tracked on Steemit.com and the amount of Steemit followers that you have. And based on that, you get a BitcoinNYK token which trades on the Steam Engine marketplace and the Freedom Exchange and the Waves Exchange, right? And what can you do with that? Well, it is traded, uh, it's traded actually against Steam, uh, on, on these exchanges. And because of that, you're able to get these, get these cryptocurrencies, these SMT tokens if you will, uh, and convert them into, uh, Steam Dollars. Now Uh, this we believe is in the core of how we solve the Steemit problem. So when a little quick history lesson, when Steemit.com first came on the scene, uh, there was a big debate that went on between ToneVays about Steemit.com, uh, and posts that we create in blog posts. Not being worth the value that we were paying out to them, and thus kind of basically breaking down the entire structure of how Steemit.com could be successful in a way to kind of make it like this kind of pyramid inflationary catastrophe just wouldn't happen. Now, I think that it's, quite, uh, uh, that, or that many of us would agree that many of, much of the content we put out, it could be educational content, a variety of things, that when we put this content out to ourselves, that this could be quite valuable. And it might could be quite valuable to a lot of people, but we also have to bear in mind that some of, some of the content we put out may not be valuable at all. To people. And how do we gauge that? Well, it's not really something we can gauge ourselves. Value is predicated on a market and what the market says it is valuable as, right? Now, I think the problem that comes about with Steemit.com is it's very complex in the rewards pool. Who has the right to pull from the rewards pool as we all contribute to the rewards pool and give who what, right? And one way we deal with this issue is by, uh, creating this idea of, well, whoever puts the most in, they get to decide what's the most valuable. And that just doesn't psychologically go over well with people. And why is that? Because just think for a moment, what if every product we had in the world over the market, its value was determined by just people who had the most money in the world? right? Wouldn't that be a little bit crazy and ridiculous? And couldn't that produce inferior products in the future? Of course it could, because we know good ideas and valuable items come from people of all walks of life. And I think this is part of the problem with STEAMING. Now, the other problem is if you were to just distribute money around just blindly and loosely and say everybody deserves XYZ, then you could potentially have a lot less investment in STEAM, in the STEAM blockchain, right? And because of that, you could then face problems of a system that is less valuable with less money to circulate, and it probably wouldn't be the best experience for many people. So the way we see it and what we've come up with is the only way to really solve the problem is to balance Steam Power, or the money that's put into Steam by the community, against quality of content. And how do we determine this? Well, one problem is, in our opinion, we should take it away from centralized groups of people who determine it and make it fully more consistent and decentralized through a system. And how does the system work? Well, and the way we do it and award our tokens is based on reputation score and the amount of Steemit followers. Now, why these two categories? For one, for one thing, reputation score isn't just a score that's based on your performance on Steemit as far as what content and posts you create. It's actually, it's also based on your Steem Power in Steemit and the value in which you get into that, or the value of your posts is also factored and calculated on the steam power you have. So by this way, we don't punish any whales or people who contribute a lot of money to Steemit who we need to stay in the system. The problem isn't the whales. The problem is the distribution of the, of steam. We know that in most economic models that good distribution equals good economies and more money for everybody, whereas more dualistic economies where people with a lot of money have more and the people in the middle have poor to none and the poor people just have nothing, uh, those type systems aren't prosperous. They don't work in the long term for anybody, right? Um, and less money being circulating, like with the funding idea that's going on with this Hard Fork 21, that money can get into people's hands who could create more and more money, right? Um, these aren't just cryptocurrency issues. These are world economic problems in the same— under the same hat in a way. But let's take a look at this. So if the reputation score pretty much covers your Steam power and the contribution you make to Steam, meaning that members of the community, whether they were whales or whether they're just regular people, all together voted for you, and through their formula in this combination, it gave you a score. So how we do it is we believe you should— your post should reward so many tokens per post, or in other words, so many STEAM, so much STEAM per post, right? And we're not talking a whole lot, that depends on the economy and the market and the value of STEAM. But what we are speaking to is a consistent model, right, if that makes sense. Um, so each reputation score categories— or earn Turkish 25 to 34, 1 token. 35 to 45, 2 tokens. 46 to 55, 3 tokens per post, and on and on, right? And Steam followers shows us how engaged you are with the community. You know, people are following you more likely because they like your content. So it's like a, it's like a weight of the community democratically saying we approve of this person and his content, right? And by doing so, right, what it does is it allows for, uh, the people who put out quality stuff to automatically be rewarded and not just have this very uneven, non-consistent platform where people can work very hard on their material and notice that Uh, there are people who are getting, uh, you know, uh, 4 or 5 times more putting out inferior content, maybe based on the same topics that you've put out, right? And this creates a great amount of psychological blocks in people. And, you know, no matter how Steemit tries to work this out and put it together, that's not going to onboard people. And if it does get people in, it's not going to make them want stay. There's something that has to be addressed at the core. There's something we believe that we're doing, and people will like this system better. Uh, the project trades on, uh, as we mentioned, 3 exchanges against Steam, uh, and circulates back into Steam. It's integrated into Steam, so when you post, uh, it will cross-post to our site. Um, and, uh, we think those are the solutions that you need, and Great thing about it is functioning now. The project is functioning now and you can earn now and there's value in the cryptocurrencies now. But to really make this a new model for Steemit, a great way to go forward and solve all these problems so it can be competitive against projects like Libra coin and competitive against all the other clones that will emerge from EOS and many others, To be able to do that, we have to address those problems that are going to make people want to leave this platform. But we have to do it in a responsible way so that we're able to fund this, as we do not have an infinite amount of capital, and good intentions do not fund the Steem blockchain. You know, meaning that, you know, people who have very little to contribute to the platform monetarily who complain about the platform but don't invest in the platform. Without those investment dollars, Steam doesn't have any money, right? So solving the problem is not just making it so everybody gets money they deserve or not deserve. We have to address it in a responsible way. And using something like reputation score, I think brings into consideration all of those factors. The amount of Steam power you have, the quality of your post, the amount of followers you have that shows the community likes your material, uh, as opposed to just what kind of money and friends you have, uh, who have a certain amount of steam power. So just a more complete way of creating a more whole, uh, uh, uh, method to gauge our value to our community. And at the same time, in a way, appeasing everyone to, uh, and letting everybody know that this is a community project that at some level works for everybody. Because right now, the reality is the STEAM blockchain only works for people who have money, right, and have quality posts. And some people get lucky and slide through the cracks, uh, if they're part of a conclave or if they're part of a group that other people like. But that is not going to grow STEAM the Steemit.com to meet the millions of people they want to have to be a great blockchain— I'm sorry, social network. The reality is social networks need millions of people, not 1 million people, not 3 million people. They need 50 million people, 100 million people, you know, uh, to really be an effective social network. Otherwise, what's the point, right? If you're not going to be an effective social network, then you are at best a type of niche market or a guild, a writer's guild perhaps, but that is not a social network. So just something to think about. I love to hear you guys' opinions, and that's our explanation of this hard fork 21, and I hope everything works out well with this. I am excited about it. The BitcoinMYK.com project will be applying for funding. And, and, uh, so we'll be looking forward to you all, you know, voting our project up so they can help everybody and hopefully just help the cryptocurrency space as a whole. But that's all we want to say in this video. If you like content like this, don't forget like, subscribe, and until next time, take care.