I wanted to write about some thoughts I've been having lately about the way the Steem blockchain is evolving with the recent Hardfork. Before the hardfork the cost to use the Steem blockchain was having stake, you needed about 3 SP to use the platform properly, under that would still alove you to use it somewhat but you'd quickly run out of bandwidth costs. Now with the implementation of RC (aka mana) we will be able to use the network with just that, no need for stake at all.
What this solves is the need for abusers to cheat their way to free accounts just for the 0.1 steem and delegation they used to receive, the Steem can't be taken back, so you can see that someone who would manage to create 1000 accounts daily could theoretically earn 100 Steem by doing nothing but finding new ways to abuse account creation. Not only did this increase the queue of normal users waiting for their Steem account, but it also brought a cost to the whole currency (although on a minimalistic scale - but in some places in the word even earning 10 steem per day this way is very worth it). The only way they can abuse account creation now is by using the delegated SP they get to create upvoting rings, etc, but this should in theory be a lot easier to detect and undelegate before those abusers manage to make a lot of rewards from it. So not only is the incentive to cheat account creation gone and thereby allowing normal users to receive their accounts created through Steemit inc easier, we can now also create accounts ourselves at no Steem cost. This is going to be a huge plus for front-ends that are looking to get more and more independant, they will be able to create their own accounts for their users and some of these users may not even know they are using Steem to begin with in the near future.
So far so good, now we have a way to use the network with only bandwidth, no Steem. We still need delegations to increase our bandwidth though, and delegations cost. Not many are going to want to delegate 10k SP so that 700 accounts can use the network without running into low bandwidth, to fix that we are now going to be able to delegate RC. Yes, you will be able to only delegate bandwidth, and if you look at bigger accounts who at this time are not claiming discounted accounts, they have more bandwidth than they know what to do with. Sure this may create a market for bandwidth but it is definitely going to be at a lot lower cost than it would be to delegate stake, especially if the price starts going up sooner or later. Why is this a good thing, you might ask.
Looking at other cryptocurrencies their major issues have been cost of usage. Remember when Bitcoin transactions started costing up to $100 in late 2017 during the run up to $20k per BTC? Same thing on a smaller scale happened with Ethereum. Ethereum is planning on going proof of stake soon but to me it feels like they are still way behind the DPOS model. This is something I am thankful for to the Steemit inc team as they've been focusing most of their time on the back-end to make sure that Steem is scalable (for the witnesses) and costs as little as possible to use.
Transaction costs may not seem like a huge problem to you and you may think it's still a lot better than having to deal with banks and international transfers, to which you are completely right as well, but for people in the developing countries it means a lot more. Technology is rising quick and access to cheap smartphones is going to get easier and easier for people in developing countries. The reason I am talking about them is because they are a majority when it comes to the unbanked, these people will only need a smartphone and outlets that accept their crypto to be their own bank.
Which cryptocurrency do you think they will prefer to use when they are buying food for $1? One that may take 1-5% or a fixed fee or one that only costs "imaginary" bandwidth to use? :)
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