Strongly disagree, both from a perception and usability point of view. Trying to lock in new users to an investment when they haven't asked for it (and quite possibly don't want it) shouts scam and Ponzi scheme, and makes it far slower and more complicated for new users to do a first cash out to convince themselves that this system is actually real. With 7 day payouts and then another 7 day delay for first power down this means 14 days (plus exchange delays) for a new users to see their first cent, and that's assuming their early contributions are even rewarded at all. Plus it requires them to learn more about vesting and unvesting.
Social media users and bloggers are not investors and don't want to be (at least not initially; once they grow familiar they may decide they do). They should be paid rewards in easy and accessible liquid tokens, not "shares of stock".
This is not the way to improve the STEEM price. Making the token (and more broadly, system, team, development effort, communications, vision, transparency) more attractive to investors (who want to be investors) is the way.
I'm going to have to agree with @smooth on this one, This is not doing much for acquisition of new users and retention. We have to remember, a lot still have to learn the "crypto" market too, not just Steemit's market and ecosystem.
make change possible , let people earn , not on the basis of trust me , it's good for you to make my platform great. but on the basis of this will spark a real change. YOU matter not your Power , Power grows as you do :) , that way you will have real community and leaders. I'm getting too philosophical for my own good.Yes an Yes and Yes(@bitcoinparadise , @smooth) , @danteman I get the fact you want to see people grow the platform , but many will come for their daily bread and will live of the stories of whales.
Starting a new venture is hard , business is hard too, don't kick people into it , posting is a venture and Steemit has a business element to it, trust me if the people weren't here , no retention would ever come, the crabs that leave the bucket are free to leave because they are on top, the ones below don't have a choice.
Here it works in the reverse fashion, ones that leave are the most fed up , be it because of personal choices or platform issues. And the brave ones that stay at the base , supporting their community , get only to see the frying pan last.
Don't put people in buckets and be careful with the liquid steem , many are hungry and many will get addicted.
Payout tokens are the most complex part of the system. While I see the need for all 3 tokens, being paid out in all three is very confusing. I would love to have the option to be paid in STEEM only as opposed to STEEM and SBD. I'm OK with the 50% power up as my own choice but I think powering up should probably be completely voluntary... If you want blogging platforms like Medium to adopt STEEM as a revenue system, well their users aren't going to understand why their $5 payout is locked away and can't be taken out in parts larger than 1/13. I think curation should still be SP only since you need to have SP to curate, so curators will already understand the purpose of SP. Perhaps comments could be paid in STEEM only while OP authors would have the option to be paid in SBD.
I'm beginning to wonder if we should keep SBD or not if we are to integrate with other platforms like Medium. If their userbase is not on steemit and they get SBD then when will they learn the speculative value of STEEM?
SBD for authors and STEEM for commenters would be easier to understand than 3 tokens for everyone.
But honestly if you want people to hold steem long term you need to create incentives for doing that. Right now curation isn't a good enough incentive because the vast majority of users feel that their vote is pretty powerless. At one point when the steem price was around 30c my account was worth around $2k yet my vote wasn't worth 1c on a new post. For somebody self employed who doesn't make 2k in a month (before expenses) I can't imagine how I can afford to compete by powering up. A person of my income is probably (possibly idk) the average user too so the masses are just not all the investing type.
I don't know if you have future power up incentives up your sleeve but I hope you will revisit the idea of reducing the voting soft limit or come up with some kind of solution for bot voting because that's the main reason I see my vote as powerless even at $2'000.
If you want blogging platforms like Medium to adopt STEEM as a revenue system, well their users aren't going to understand why their $5 payout is locked away and can't be taken out in parts larger than 1/13.
People seem to learn this but if it's a barrier to adoption it can be solved in the UI by displaying half of a post's total reward payout, minus projected curation rewards.
It would be the same. After my first whale upvote I called a friend to tell her I just won $300 on the post. She said brilliant what are you gonna spend it on and I said well I can only spend half of it and immediately lost her.
Now given that first reaction I took a different approach when telling another few friends. I said I won $250 that I can spend and a stake in the platform worth $250. That's when my friend who is a developer and should really be on steemit because he's currently out of work to work on his portfolio told me to be careful - that part about being made a stake holder made him think scam - which I still think is ridiculous but it's not unusual for people to think this way.
I never thought I would hear you say to remove SBD! :) What if it were marketed this way... all rewards paid in STEEM. Then you have a choice: Gain more influence by powering up to SP, or cash out/earn interest by getting SBD. This would seem to give the user a choice they can grok.
I'm not saying remove SBD. I still strongly believe in the value of it as a smart contract and as an introduction to cryptocurrency. But I would like the OPTION to be paid in STEEM rather than SBD since I don't really hold SBD for very long anyway.
I think that could work. But I would prefer if they added incentives for lower power ups. They don't even have to be monetary incentives. People go crazy about HATS on Team Fortress 2 and there are all sorts of games people will pay just for gimmicky things.
Many users take pride in their SP and wouldn't want to have to power it down. This also erodes the original concept and selling point of stakeholder participants, where people are more likely to treat half of their posting rewards as their reputation, their sweat equity into Steem by way of Steemit.
People will be forced on a powering down-track, potentially selling the other half of their posting rewards at the same time. Val mentioned that restraining steemit.com users from taking posts in liquid tokens would reduce downward pressure on the STEEM market but I think it would do the opposite. This has too much potential to make Steem Power become even less distributed.
I think @smooth's comment here and his comment on github are on the money:
Also, putting this in the UI means that people using non-standard tools/bots/auto-reposting services, etc. will have an extra option that ordinary web UI users don't. That seems like a recipe for further dissatisfaction and resentment. If this is a good idea it should probably go in the blockchain and apply to everyone.
I believe existing and potential Steemit users will not appreciate it at all.
Strongly disagree, both from a perception and usability point of view. Trying to lock in new users to an investment when they haven't asked for it (and quite possibly don't want it) shouts scam and Ponzi scheme, and makes it far slower and more complicated for new users to do a first cash out to convince themselves that this system is actually real. With 7 day payouts and then another 7 day delay for first power down this means 14 days (plus exchange delays) for a new users to see their first cent, and that's assuming their early contributions are even rewarded at all. Plus it requires them to learn more about vesting and unvesting.
Social media users and bloggers are not investors and don't want to be (at least not initially; once they grow familiar they may decide they do). They should be paid rewards in easy and accessible liquid tokens, not "shares of stock".
This is not the way to improve the STEEM price. Making the token (and more broadly, system, team, development effort, communications, vision, transparency) more attractive to investors (who want to be investors) is the way.
I'm going to have to agree with @smooth on this one, This is not doing much for acquisition of new users and retention. We have to remember, a lot still have to learn the "crypto" market too, not just Steemit's market and ecosystem.
make change possible , let people earn , not on the basis of trust me , it's good for you to make my platform great. but on the basis of this will spark a real change. YOU matter not your Power , Power grows as you do :) , that way you will have real community and leaders. I'm getting too philosophical for my own good.Yes an Yes and Yes(@bitcoinparadise , @smooth) , @danteman I get the fact you want to see people grow the platform , but many will come for their daily bread and will live of the stories of whales.
Starting a new venture is hard , business is hard too, don't kick people into it , posting is a venture and Steemit has a business element to it, trust me if the people weren't here , no retention would ever come, the crabs that leave the bucket are free to leave because they are on top, the ones below don't have a choice.
Here it works in the reverse fashion, ones that leave are the most fed up , be it because of personal choices or platform issues. And the brave ones that stay at the base , supporting their community , get only to see the frying pan last.
Don't put people in buckets and be careful with the liquid steem , many are hungry and many will get addicted.
Payout tokens are the most complex part of the system. While I see the need for all 3 tokens, being paid out in all three is very confusing. I would love to have the option to be paid in STEEM only as opposed to STEEM and SBD. I'm OK with the 50% power up as my own choice but I think powering up should probably be completely voluntary... If you want blogging platforms like Medium to adopt STEEM as a revenue system, well their users aren't going to understand why their $5 payout is locked away and can't be taken out in parts larger than 1/13. I think curation should still be SP only since you need to have SP to curate, so curators will already understand the purpose of SP. Perhaps comments could be paid in STEEM only while OP authors would have the option to be paid in SBD.
I'm beginning to wonder if we should keep SBD or not if we are to integrate with other platforms like Medium. If their userbase is not on steemit and they get SBD then when will they learn the speculative value of STEEM?
SBD for authors and STEEM for commenters would be easier to understand than 3 tokens for everyone.
But honestly if you want people to hold steem long term you need to create incentives for doing that. Right now curation isn't a good enough incentive because the vast majority of users feel that their vote is pretty powerless. At one point when the steem price was around 30c my account was worth around $2k yet my vote wasn't worth 1c on a new post. For somebody self employed who doesn't make 2k in a month (before expenses) I can't imagine how I can afford to compete by powering up. A person of my income is probably (possibly idk) the average user too so the masses are just not all the investing type.
I don't know if you have future power up incentives up your sleeve but I hope you will revisit the idea of reducing the voting soft limit or come up with some kind of solution for bot voting because that's the main reason I see my vote as powerless even at $2'000.
People seem to learn this but if it's a barrier to adoption it can be solved in the UI by displaying half of a post's total reward payout, minus projected curation rewards.
It would be the same. After my first whale upvote I called a friend to tell her I just won $300 on the post. She said brilliant what are you gonna spend it on and I said well I can only spend half of it and immediately lost her.
Now given that first reaction I took a different approach when telling another few friends. I said I won $250 that I can spend and a stake in the platform worth $250. That's when my friend who is a developer and should really be on steemit because he's currently out of work to work on his portfolio told me to be careful - that part about being made a stake holder made him think scam - which I still think is ridiculous but it's not unusual for people to think this way.
I never thought I would hear you say to remove SBD! :) What if it were marketed this way... all rewards paid in STEEM. Then you have a choice: Gain more influence by powering up to SP, or cash out/earn interest by getting SBD. This would seem to give the user a choice they can grok.
I'm not saying remove SBD. I still strongly believe in the value of it as a smart contract and as an introduction to cryptocurrency. But I would like the OPTION to be paid in STEEM rather than SBD since I don't really hold SBD for very long anyway.
I think that could work. But I would prefer if they added incentives for lower power ups. They don't even have to be monetary incentives. People go crazy about HATS on Team Fortress 2 and there are all sorts of games people will pay just for gimmicky things.
I strongly disagree as well, as I expressed in the Github issue that was made yesterday titled reduce post payout options to only two: 1) decline payout 2) SP only payout (default).
Many users take pride in their SP and wouldn't want to have to power it down. This also erodes the original concept and selling point of stakeholder participants, where people are more likely to treat half of their posting rewards as their reputation, their sweat equity into Steem by way of Steemit.
People will be forced on a powering down-track, potentially selling the other half of their posting rewards at the same time. Val mentioned that restraining steemit.com users from taking posts in liquid tokens would reduce downward pressure on the STEEM market but I think it would do the opposite. This has too much potential to make Steem Power become even less distributed.
I think @smooth's comment here and his comment on github are on the money:
I believe existing and potential Steemit users will not appreciate it at all.
If that were the case every newbie would have to learn more in order to use the platform rather than less.