So far so kinda good in the Steemit world, but as those of us who are starting to get addicted to the platform realize, the increased traffic and popularity of the site will bring its own set of issues. Steemit is a startup and it is run by real people using real hardware, resources, and software. Add exponential growth in users, data, and economic value and that’s when things can start breaking down.
Scalability
The first big question is whether Steemit can scale to keep pace with its exponential growth? What level of traffic and content creation and data storage can the infrastructure handle? Just this morning I was having issues loading the site and basic functionality, like filtering tags hasn’t been working.
Security
Since Steemit runs on servers and has a bunch of users and network admins who are mere human beings, it’s reasonable to think the system is vulnerable to hackers. That’s scary because this isn’t Reddit, and we now have accumulating real economic value stored in accounts across the network.
Network security for hosting the site and keeping it live involves a whole bunch of behind-the-scenes activities we’ll likely never really be privy to, but since we’re all stakeholders of varying degree in this fun experiment, it’d be nice to know that there’s serious thought and effort involved in keeping things running safely.
Individual accounts are always as vulnerable as the users themselves, and sometimes we’re just straight-up outwitted by conniving hackers who infiltrate our systems. Steemit involves real money, though, so hacking an account here could mean serious money stolen; for better or worse, we don’t have recourse to calling our banks and crying to get refunded, nor do we have handy FDIC bailouts, so the full onus of securing our accounts is on us. That said, those really running things at Steemit should quickly get 2FA security features in place to help us layer up.
Other Points of Failure
Can courts and governments shut us down? Steemit is a startup that’s clearly crowdsourcing equity investment. This is an awesome idea economically because it’s creating a dedicated community with real interests in seeing it grow as enhanced stakeholders; a warm fuzzy feeling we don’t get from other social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, or Reddit. But does anyone really understand the legal issues we’re up against?
First of all, what’s our legal jurisdiction? Is Steemit a registered business, are we on the hook for legal compliance where our servers are located? How will the world view our little, but growing, hive? The user community is already spread around the world, and since anyone with some Bitcoin, Bitshares, or Ether can buy in as investors (including shareholders), there’s no way of actually pinning down who owns what in the long run. However, there are a handful of founders and early investors supporting this project, so, clearly, these people can be targeted and their resources made vulnerable.
Finally, this experiment is all about decentralization and openness, censorship is something we censor. What implications does that have for copyright or trademark violations? What happens when one of our users posts material that someone else, or some company, decides violates their IP? It is guaranteed that it is merely just a matter of time before some court orders Steemit to remove content. Then what? Even worse, what happens when some douchebag jihadist posts a marketing pitch for ISIS and the FBI orders it taken down?
Servers and people are always vulnerable and until projects like Maidsafe or other meshnets are operational, we need to plan ahead to make sure we avoid future catastrophe. It would be a disaster if the community exploded along with STEEM’s market cap and we had a single court decision to shut us down wipe out a billion dollars in value.