#12 | Tronit, The Future of Steem & My Take on The Pros and Cons of Justin Sun
The announcement of Justin Sun buying Steemit, Inc. has been met with so many mixed feelings and confusion. It’s a big deal for anyone who’s paying attention to Steem.
There’s good and bad to this whole situation. So far, nothing bad has happened. We’ve seen Steemit, Inc. leave the hands of a founder who had grown uninterested in the project (Ned) and lacked vision, execution and resources to bring Steem(it) any further.
In my view, all the same risks exist. Ned could just as easily use Steemit and his STEEM stake to overtake the blockchain in the same way that people are worried that Justin might try to do.
The thing that kept Ned from doing that is the same thing that will keep Justin from doing it and it also happens to be the same reason why 51% attacking the BTC network doesn’t make any sense — the game is created in such a way that the financial incentives lie in propping up the blockchain and growing the network, not tearing it down.
If Justin stomps Steem into the ground, then he loses a major investment. It doesn’t make financial sense. If Justin, however, allows the Steemit team to continue their development on Communities and SMTs (not to be confused with MSTs), and then he puts his full marketing dollars and weight behind those launches and announces them to the world… think of what that could do for Steem. Think of all the major attention that our blockchain will get.
The floodgates could open once again.
There are pros and cons to every situation. There is a bright side, but you have to be willing to look at it. Keep your awareness about the downside and understand the risks of having Justin in a position of power, but also keep your awareness about the upside and understand the benefits of having Justin in a position of power.
In this episode of the Steemleo Show, I give a bit of a rant as I recap the long day we had yesterday between the AMA followed by the witness chat and then give my thoughts on the future of Steem as we know it.
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- https://steemleo.com/hive-136578/@midlet/steem-tron-thoughts-the-best-we-could-have-hoped-for
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Posted via Steemleo
I totally agree with you. Why would he invest into something to tear it apart. When buying steem he wanted the traffic and the users. In my opinion he will do everything possible to keep us happy. The big value of steemit is the community...
Absolutely. The only value I see in buying STEEM and acquiring the Steemit.com app is to bridge his way toward the Steem community, not alienate it.
Posted via Steemleo
Good detail has been put into this. As any investor and businessman would ,we want to have our investments grow and provide profit. First thing that really needs to be fixed is the on boarding problem . I got a friend join steem and he was so confused with 1 the "free" account creation time and 2 the amount of keys Steem has (While key-chain does the job it certainly has to be set up manually). Fixing the problem would make less people give up right at the door. It can already be hard enough to get them to that "door" in the first place.
Posted via Steemleo
Yeah, I think we are missing a lot of the details and planning that have happened behind the scenes as this was all thrust upon the community.
Ned was the devil we knew and Justin is the devil we don't.
For all we know, Justin could bring tons of capital, development and marketing awareness to the Steem blockchain that we have sorely lacked. It is now in his best interest -- in having 75 million STEEM -- to make the blockchain more valuable through his Steemit.com platform.
Posted via Steemleo
Well said, my friend that I invited had been so surprised that there are so many Steemit.com users and has not heard of the platform before. His major concern afterwards has been the repetitive content.
But what concerns these changes I would say one way or the other we can gain from them.
Posted via Steemleo
thing that they f-up was that tweet and blog "we are tron you will be assimilated". now was that a lost in translation, or did they thought that people on steem will be happy about that, or was it just for tron users, we will see.
I think a lot of the communication issues are derived from 2 primary sources:
I think 2. has to do with the deal being pushed forward for certain reasons. Perhaps the voice launch or perhaps some other factor. The deal seems rushed and I think a lot of the specific details are still being worked on internally by Justin Sun. I mean, he didn't even talk to Eli Powell and the Steemit, Inc. employees.
This will all blow over after a week or two when the dust settles.
Posted via Steemleo
it is weird, it does feel rushed but it also looks like it was done on the 14. for a reason.
some things that they wrote are impossible (like that deleted article about coin swap with a time limit, it is not possible due to staked Steem), but then it is weird to think that they don't know what they bought.
we will see in few weeks.
Also people don't think about Language barrier, but i do feel it when i try to speak english, even i have no problem understanding it.
My sentiments exactly... this is a great opportunity and win win for everyone involved. Sun does not have a history of buying things to destroy them. And Ned just helped us (all) by opening the door to a ton of new users.
Good times ahead!
Posted using Partiko iOS
I agree, this could be a great opportunity for everyone on Steem.
There's certainly some risk that we could be moved over to Tron in a hostile way, but I don't see that as the likely outcome. It's not in the best interest of Steemians and because of that, it's not in the best interest of Justin Sun.
Posted via Steemleo
I think his shilling skills are really good for steem. That one guy, somehow has managed such a strong appeal on social media and has kept tron relevant even when it shouldn't have been. I think the partnership may be great if steem blockchain is left as is and development and marketing finds some dollars.
P.S. but then I think of everyone's reaction to the news. Part of it is that it is impossible to take Sun seriously. So will steem be taken seriously if Sun markets it. I am a little hopeful but not really sure.
It is a definitive dichotomy -- on one hand, Steem has always lacked marketing and now Justin Sun is the largest stakeholder and he is known for being good at marketing.
On the other hand, Steem is a community that values independence and freedom from Steemit, Inc. If Justin doesn't understand that key component of what it means to be a Steemian, then he will lose favor with the people on this blockchain. Losing favor with us means his investment in our blockchain (70 million STEEM) and the top application on it (Steemit) is essentially worthless.
Posted via Steemleo
I think that when you see it as a business you realise that self interest is the main purpose for these moves and I think thats what makes me more bullish. This guy wants to get a maximum return on his investment and for someone to put his money behind a project.
Justin didn't have a social media platform in his portfolio so why would he want to kill it. He can reach more users, more investors and more profit by having both blokchains.
There are things steem does better and things tron does better by offering both you can attract dapp projects from the likes of EOS and ETH making the tron foundation the leading place for dapps to build here.
If anything he gets the lead out of the asses of the steemit inc team and get the shit done and needed to unlock the potential in STEEM.
Posted via Steemleo
i hope he does just that.. puts more behind the team
Have you considered that his intention is to try to strong arm users into moving to Tronit? Make they feel they have no recourse and the screws will start to be removed.
This isn't farfetched imo. It's strategically sound. He may also think the investment is trivial as a mechanism to remove a potential competitor in a space he seems to have his eyes on.
Think it's a coincidence this is happening in line w the Voice EOS launch. It's not. Think he will still end up coming out on top. His cult will grow. Many of us will take an L.
Life will go on. The spirit of Steem can live on however. (At least the good parts)
These are just my personal opinions / speculations.
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This is the very thing I fear.
Such a move is strategically sound in the corporate world, which I'm afraid much of the blockchain space is like with very large stakes concentrated into the hands of the likes of Justin Sun and Dan Larrimer. There are some large PoW chains where power is actually relatively decentralized, though.
Unfortunately, most people in the cryptocurrency space carry with them the scarcity mindset. They follow leaders and do not care about decentralization. What results is more of the same as usual with fraudsters using the name of a type of distributed ledger over-redundant, too inefficient and basically completely useless for any other purpose than facilitating trustless peer-to-peer economies and governance.I find the idea of competition in the crypto space to be absolutely stupid.
Take Dan Larrimer. He is technically very competent and understands business. Take Justin Sun. He's not a techie at all but a genius at marketing and building up hype. Both have the qualities with which to do well in business.
But neither is an actual visionary. They may talk the talk but neither has walked the walk so far. Blockchains without decentralization are nothing but a scam.
Steem was moving towards real decentralization with Ned at the helm of Steemit, Inc. Not intentionally, though, as Steemit, Inc's problems partially caused by Ned's incompetence caused Steemit, Inc to have to auto-sell at a rate that diminished its stake at a rapid pace, removing very large number of tokens out of Steemit, Inc's hands and putting them into the hands of the community members every month. Only a couple of years more would've made Steem a truly decentralized DPoS chain. The low price of Steem and Steemit, Inc auto-selling vast quantities of STEEM were a blessing in disguise. If we are forced migrate to Tronit, there is no telling what the stake distribution will be.
If Sun tries to strong arm us into moving to Tronit, he will have made me into a full-on Bitcoin maximalist instantly.
I created my Steem account exactly three years ago today. I'm afraid I've wasted three years here. I could've been building a blog somewhere else.
I know from experience that I have the ability to gain a fair number of followers on various forums. What brought me to Steem was the supreme ease of monetizing that.
Maybe on some other DPoS chain with a much better initial stake distribution.
Do you think a leaderless consensus mechanism is feasible? Could such an algorithm be Byzantine fault tolerant?
I've been pondering this and, if so, would like to try my best to gather the right minds and resources to build that vision.
I'm not a software engineer. Just a system engineer so there are gaps in my skill set so would certainly need help. I've been sharing a little bit about this vision on the @steemflagrewards Discord if you wanna check it out.
Main goals:
And much more..Think we will be doing a whiteboard session / livestream soon if interested.
Bitcoin was the first solution to the problem of Byzantine generals.
If you mean DPoS governance, then I think it is completely possible to do it. In a DPoS system even oligarchy is preferable to dictatorship.
Sounds very interesting. I hope you make a post about the livestream session in good time before it.
PoW may work for the transaction chain but may need something different for the social layer.
PoW is not invulnerable, either. The more decentralized the consensus mechanism (stake in DPoS or PoS or hashing power in PoW), the more secure the chain.
When it comes to blockchain governance or community governance, it's best if leaders emerge on a case-by-case basis having clearly defined and limited powers (not witness voting) delegated to them. @ocdb is a great example of how that works. It has been run by trusted and trustworthy individuals. But trust is not even as critical as it is in politics because any Steem Power delegated to them can be taken away at a moment's notice.
I'm very averse to people having authority over others other than in clearly defined situational roles with enforced consequences for abuse. Deep down, humans are stupid hairless apes ultimately controlled by animal drives. Most of us have internalized a conventional every day morality from the culture we've grown up in. That, too, is ultimately prevented from being broken down by the justice system - or in the blockchain world - hard coded blockchain consensus and governance rules. If either type of fundamental order should break down, the morally weakest would start cheating first, resulting in a cascade where everything would eventually break down.
From what I've heard he spent 10 million on the entire thing. Even if we doubled that amount, he still spent 10 million less than what Block One spent on the voice.com domain alone. For his money, he gets a well-trafficked site with an existing user base. Given the timing of the announcement to coincide with the Voice announcement, it's surprising how many people think his top priority would be the STEEM token as an investment. In a way I think people are conflating their own value of a dollar, and the STEEM token itself, to how Justin Sun actually values them. The investment is rather small compared to other financial activities he has partaken in. The overwhelmingly large token stake could be the very mechanism used to force the issue of Tronifying the Steemit website, and forcing the decision onto the average STEEM holder to either accept the inevitable dilution and go to the Tron chain, or take your chances on a community fork.
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Absolutely agreed. People getting way too emotional about this. That's always indicative of a "blood in the streets" moment IMHO.
Posted via Steemleo
I don't think anyone feels the blockchain is going to be attacked and destroyed by someone who just invested who knows how many millions of dollars into it.
I think the concern is that it will slowly be changed into something people don't like. Tron's vision is not Steem's vision.
Let's give TRONsun the benefit of the doubt, and allow for time to see what the new owners do with our money, our blockchain, our social media platform, our posts and art.
How much time is the question.
the best of both worlds would be nice. I’m just hoping he doesn’t appeal to people’s worst instincts and attempt to market to people I’m away that encourages a lot of problems we already fixed. He will surely market “well” in the sense that it brings over users but who are those users and what kind of attitude do they come here with?
If he spends time getting to know the community and devs and listens to input, this can only be good news. We just have to wait and see if he does
Posted via Steemleo
Dear @khaleelkazi
I decided to be optimistic.
I think everything you say is very reasonable, but I will rescue your sentence.:
No person in this world invests to lose.
I don't think it's Justin's case he has to know the great value of our platform and also knows how solid it can be even more with his help.
I repeat what I said at the beginning.
Have a gread day, Piotr