I have always liked the phrase guilty until proven innocent. In life that is dangerous, unless I am the one judging, obviously. I do think that it has some merit online and specifically in social media that has now merged with the greatest cause for evil man could devise. Money.
Popularity is one of those silly things that we love to see get their ass kicked in movies, yet reward it daily in real life. I am guilty of liking something because it seems popular in my circle only to not look outside my little bubble and stick with my ignorant bliss. I would like to think that I am also a very good bitch and moaner so that makes it kind of balance out since I can praise something and still point out that it wears too much goddamn make-up.
Steem is wondering about a new rewards curve and Spectrumecons has done a great job to explain that a bit more. I doubt you will find something more unbiased (nice word), heck it does not even leave that bitter aftertaste of propaganda (Heil). I am not aware of any other chains making major changes to how rewards work on the steem based platforms apart from self-voting comments on Whaleshares will give you only a 3rd of the value. Makes sense right.
The reward curve though for me is a means to control may be a bit harsh, how about guide? Guide user behaviour on a mass scale. We all know people are pathetic and deserve to die more times than not - ok harsh - but a good little life tip regardless. Be safe fuckers.
I like that, I like a simple mechanism that is judge and jury in a sense. I like giving someone enough rope to hang themselves but not enough to hang a buddy. I might go into some of my vote behaviours maybe...
Ok, definitely.
I am not on much, neither on Steem or Whaleshares and this does come and go like that cool vid TrumpMan shared about an underwater volcano attempting to make an island.
When I say I am not on much it means I can't always be arsed to scroll through new, hence I do like to follow quite a few people this means I can quickly down my feed make mental note of whom I have voted (I hate the phrase rewarded or whatever). I am casting a vote whether I think their content is worth something. A lot of this is even just based on you know what I have not voted this way for a bit.
I open a post and scan it, I already have a % in mind. Many things give value different to others and on Whaleshares I am fortunate enough or cursed by having enough stake that even a smaller % is more worth than some posts have received. On Steem, it is 100% because the UI just loves to remind you that your vote is not worth shit. I like seeing the amount increase or at least know I tried.
So my vote pattern can be said to be very much circle jerky. Tug-o-war, and Timmy wins this round. We will resume the game after John has rinsed his face.
Does that matter though? My circle is about 30 people big by my estimate with a rough estimate of 20% going on the fringe and I follow.. let me check 400 people. Mmmm horrible numbers. So I will compare that to the amount of people I give anything on a daily basis in real life and I look like a fucking philanthropist.
Maybe the other 330 people need to post more #pennedbullshit ;) Some bullshit I won't vote unless written in blood, I will always vote that. Did I lose it?
Yeah, I think I lost it, ok so back to rewards curve thingies. I am posting this from Whaleshares to Steem so it might seem odd but I do see them the same from a content perspective although the mentalities and current actions even future scope are worlds apart. They are the same thing for me since they have the same potential.
That is why I do like this Sharebit thingamabob yet I am on the fence with Steem Engine since the one embraces all the graphene chains and Steem-Engine feels like they are waiting for Steem to fail.
It does not matter right, that is just my personal judgement in a place where what is popular calls the shots. But is it truly popular? Is it the best?
Whether it's 10 or 10,000 people, changing the behavior, beliefs or norms of an entire group is hard, but new research suggests that in order to do so, we actually only need to convince 25% to start a persuasive domino effect.
The 25% rule - Coglode
At the core I like to think that I vote, follow and question certain things with that in mind. I don't vote many posts above a certain value and if I do it is based on past impression. I don't jump in when risk is involved just because everyone else does. Obviously, if the risk is negligible what is the worse that can happen? I should probably pretend to believe in God also. Fuuuuuck! I digress.
Focus. Right here, right now. Init.
In the current state of things Steem Engine and Sharebits are both great projects for steem based chains or graphene if you wish to be fancy for one thing... I realized I never read about Scot... well I did not really read into it since it is a generic featured post which means big votes and I will just move the fuck along thank you.
Thus my life is in ruins, my existence is purely to prove the certainty of death. As what I wanted to get to was exactly that. Well what I wanted to get to is Scot
At a glance it is Steem hosting as a service, they handle the chain, token and config. I guess you would have to go read all the posts and bla bla for all those things from Steem Engine, Sharebits, and Scot and yes I am bundling them because they are aspects of the same thing. More Steem Engine and Scot but Sharebits has amazing marketing use. I am not concerned with the "Community" aspect but micro-tasks translates to cheap labour and hype so that is what the world strives on.
Boom back to reward curve...
I promise...
I am a pathological liar.
Independence, that is what they are all kind of pushing for I feel and that is correct. The only thing Steemit is doing by mucking about is making people realise but what if we do not need this or that. these projects are effectively all reproducible and I would like to see more competition since if there is not you will just get locked in the same way that Apple fucks their users.
What you do is you build your own system, with Steem Engine I realized that the tokens are not tied to the value of Steem in the sense I think. This again is true for Whaleshares being "forced" to trade against BTS thereby we might think it is reliant on the value of BTS. Honestly, I am not sure what tethers what but if Whaleshares could trade at more than BTS and some of the tokens on Steem Engine can trade higher than Steem then my question is. What the fuck do I even know about any of this, everywhere I look it is just shenanigans and it seems to work.
I am deep enough in I am just going to gun it now.
Told you, pathological liar.
So why not start our own systems and determine our own rewards? Steem Engine has shown that there can be duality via the tokens so you can get steem rewards and you can get those token rewards. Just dandy. I really just want to mention Sharebits again but it has no bearing anymore, my mind is mulling over this sidechain token business.
Offhand I would say token is the raw form, it is just a thing that represents something, so when Steem Engine says they are a sidechain it just means they have a chain that stores value exchange in an easy to access fashion. Like normalizing a database. Like putting away the dishes the Steem chain does not need to be concerned with whether the dishes need drying, and the help needs paying. It just washes and puts the dishes down.
Don't worry I am clearly confusing myself but what must be done, must be done because I want to do it until I don't want to then I will just save it for tomorrow.
Coffee break...
Ok, so I wandered into cross-chain or more specifically maybe multi-platform single chain? This is where Steem and Whaleshares mostly diverge and I like the focus of Whaleshares on integrating with other chains combine this with being able to extend Whaleshares or Steem into a broad network then you have something quite insidious.
So Steem2wls automates cross-posting from Steem to Whaleshare, I don't know whether you can reverse that but that is neither here nor there. It is at the most simple just a tool to automate earning stake on both platforms with the least amount of effort. *See voting behaviour above :).
Why I mention them is because they charge, so the bot will ignore certain posts after say your limit of 1 has been reached. Effectively what they are saying is that your lazy ass better pay the fuck up and we will put our link on your content. This is such a generic business approach that I am now not sure why I even mention it.
The interesting bit for me is that this can be replaced with a single button on a site which merely asks auth for one or the other , it reads the one chain and in the case of Steem vs Whaleshares has next to nothing else to do other than prepare the content in a new signed transaction and broadcast it.
So why I mention that I think is to indicate some things do not require reliance on any one system, why we rely on systems though is the underlying infrastructure. In the case of steem2wls you are just too fucking lazy to do it yourself. Same with an app like Buffer which will post to Instagram, Twitter and Facebook at the same time. Ie.: that could be the next thing in their pricing table if you wished to add value and also if an audience was the focus.
So from simple tools to more complex ones, they all need the underlying infrastructure. That is one of the reasons I really like Sharebits not because of the gifting thing, I can't be arsed with that but then again it is an effective way to run a bot with say a set price or barter system like give me a 10% vote I will give you a 100% vote which is a nice little stake exchange I do imagine the more greedy will want a much smaller gap though.
What is a good gap, what is it I am actually aiming for when I post content specifically...
What is impressive about Sharebits is the infrastructure, I don't think there is something that comes close to it. It is a developers wet dream having access to all those apis , for example the fact that they are able to interface with Bitshares means they are running a cli wallet which is just a fucking hassle in general. It may be geared towards getting people to perform actions on Whaleshares and that is their prerogative but it is still a system with huge potential. A cross chain content hub. Specifically and this will be based on the evidence which all Steem chains provide in abundance. A way to purchase votes just with many many more bartering methods.
Yeah, yeah I oversimplify but you get the gist.
That system and the Steem Engine system even share2wls pay for servers. Ok maybe not share2wls since a micro cloud-compute instance can run that. Dang, what is it with me and them today. Share2wls is just such a great example of something I feel you have the choice to charge. Honestly, their pricing is fair so do check it out.
Also, I call it share2wls which is wrong it is steem2wls but you can see the logical next step right?
So infrastructure for these things cost a lot, for example it does not make sense to run a Steem witness unless you do not care about the cash and by that reasoning you may as well run a bloody rpc node, same goes for Whaleshares which although still growing and is small meaning you can do it because you wish the network to be stronger in the long run, but whatever Steem is facing now via scaling Whaleshares will face also.
In all the cases you have individuals running these systems at a cost to themselves some have found a way to monetize and others do because they can. These are only a few people from the masses building things, only a fraction of the possibilities being touched on. With every new tool from Smartsteem to Sharebits there is a major shift in thinking.
What is it I am actually aiming for when I post content specifically...
The content is central to a lot of this. What is valuable? What is the purpose of creating it? Effectively Whaleshares has this more defined than Steem and probably Scorum has it the most defined. The rest. I don't know the rest, they are mainly pure money grabs.
I guess the rewards curve is a valid thing to consider but also just something the fucks should have done when they even considered trusting people to do good with their stake. Noob mistake in my opinion.
Scorum would be the best example maybe even Smoke those are topical interfaces but also tokens, this is what SMT will be I think and this is what Steem Engine and Scot seemingly intend, making tags into sites that are part of a network that can exchange value between each other how it affects the underlying token I have no clue and if Steem Engine takes their token and removes the Steem peg then what?
Yes, yes yes... I think I remembered where I was heading.
I got distracted by thinking about how all those projects work and bla bla bla , screw the rewards curve because it is just another brain fart. What do we have right now? Well we have a few chains all with the potential to be extended, why extend? I think because that boosts the thing based on it and obviously, a major part of the infrastructure is already in place not to mention the main reason anyone would use your site and that is to earn.
How is any of this related? I think it is related because what Steem Engine is doing can be applied to Whaleshares and Sharebits can very easily directly add support for Steem, again just the two chains I care to use. This extensibility seems like it could be an unwanted and dangerous thing for Whaleshares vs Steem that welcomes it, obviously so long as the tokens are still based on Steem.
Sharebits and all Whaleshares projects stay true to the "Sharing" idea or reward for action in that they are not pushing for content outside of the Whaleshares domain but instead for the same content to be published on the domain or interaction to occur on the domain exactly like you would think about a tweet going viral. I think this leaves projects like Scribbleguild which is similar to TheWritersBlock on steem in that they are author focused feeling a bit out of place and extending the platform then retreating to their own nook where they can page through only what they like.
That will make Whaleshares the domain become Whaleshares the chain. Which if I think about it now is what Steemit had, it was always Steem the domain known as Steemit and now it is Steemit the site on the Steem chain to butcher the example.
I guess what I am saying and I really just want to finish typing. I guess it is a case of if you wish to not deal with things you can't really affect much such as the reward curves, bot usage, shitposts the options and methods are there. The users you onboard will use your interface, project, tool or app. It may be a small % but that is why you want the chain to suit your needs because you don't care much for the larger %.
Build your project and use the Chain you feel is more inline with your goals, use that boost and if you do well then by default you are boosting the system as a whole but mostly you have the control and you can implement what you need. Heck maybe the main chain likes what you implemented and they adopt that. Without competition these things will just make stupid mistakes the first time and every time.
On one hand I can look at Steem Engine and think yeah they just want to take what they can from Steem on the other it is providing people with a separation of concerns. The potential system is just that big that it can and it is how it will grow not by having a mammoth Facebook competitor but by having these insidious tendrils in every orifice. Something like Sharebits is there so "real" content or maybe less judgy "your brand" can find an audience, the world just loves incentives and there are fortunately many more people unlike me out there. This is obviously not so great for me but if you are looking for a consumer then that is brilliant.
Right now you literally have two strong chains utilizing different mechanics, the one is internalizing and increasing density. The other is preparing for supernova. Whether either will implode no one knows.
So yeah it is all fucking confusing and if you are here or there and in between and you feel you are a content creator in that fuckface youtube sense of the word or the snobbish author way of thinking then I think you will be sorely disappointed. Not to say you won't find the few that do care about your content just to say that you will expect the system to give a shit about your existence by default.
It really just depends what you post for, if it is for a quick buck then sure go ahead. If you have a project then I think you need to consider integration instead....
Ok now I am done, I must have somewhere said something that seemingly makes some sense. I can't even fucking proofread this now my eyes are so tired. See this is why thoughts should stay inside this outside shit is tiring. Bad boy! Inside, look how you ran through the mud and I just bloody washed you.