I hate to say it, but Yes, I think you should be worried. I have read many articles on steemit arguing that the price fall is only temporary. I am sorry, I disagree.
The price of steem did not fall suddenly, but rather gradually. This is a sign of a fundamental problem. So, if we really love Steem and Steemit, we should acknowledge the problem and solve it. Denying the problem won't work. I know it is bitter, but we have to do it.
Why Low Steem Price is BAD?
1- Lower Rewards
Because it affects the payouts value. The rewards we are getting from writing and curating articles are paid in steem. So, when the price of steem is low, the rewards, are low too.
2- Lower Upvote Value
The same previous reasoning applies to the effect of the upvote. Of course, your upvote has the same % value, but its $ value is less.
3- Attracting New Users is More Difficult
It is not a secret that the rewards are the most attractive aspect of SteemIt. It is the main incentive for new content creators to join Steemit. Therefore, when the rewards are low, the system is not so attractive anymore. This is especially true for people who have many followers on other platforms.
So, Why Did it Go Low?
This is the important question that we should find the right answers for. I will offer my view and I hope that you would help me too.
1- Too Much Good Content is Buried
I have noticed this problem since my first days here. I have even written about it. Steem is supposed to be mined by producing good content. Unfortunately, the current system ignores most of the good content.
When good content gets ignored, the author gets disappointed, and most probably leave steem, committing STEEMICIDE (Steem Suicide).
Why Does That Happen?
@thecryptofiend has written a good article about this. He argues that the curation system is the reason for this. I agree, but I think it is a reason, not the reason.
Another possible reason is weak distribution. The right content does not reach those people who are interested in it. The system lacks artificial intelligence. If you liked (and upvoted) an article, the system does not suggest similar content. Actually, it is even difficult to find a post that you have upvoted earlier!!!
Another reason is the weak search. I can not believe that we are still using the google search. Quoting @timcliff, we need "Advanced Search (number of votes, posted time, author reputation, etc.)"
Another reason is that you can not follow a category (Community). This option was one major reason for Reddit success. Fortunately, We are promised that this feature will be presented in HF20.
2- The UI and UX of Steemit is Average
I believe that we could do MUCH better here. Developing great UI/UX does not require experienced blockchain developers. Even worse, @etherdesign offered a great new skin for Steemit. The suggested designs are really great. This is a sample:
Everyone loved the idea that his post has earned $8600 in rewards! Yes, $8600 💰!
Unfortunately, it was not adopted. 😠😲
some other problems with the UI/UX that have been mentioned by steemins are:
- Too little customization is possible.
- The notification system is so weak.
- No chat and no private messages.
- No Following tools. You don't know who has followed you. You can not sort your followers, ...etc.
- The Editor is so weak and has so many problems.
- Tool little statistics.
- No support for languages other than English. The problem is worse with RTL languages like Arabic, Persian, and Hebrew.
3- The Development is Too Slow and Not Transparent Enough
This is so clear. I don't know the reason for that. You would expect a project with a market cap of about $230,000,000 to evolve much faster. Why is that happening ?!
I don't know!
Maybe Steemit Inc. got happy with the success it achieved and lost the motivation for more hard work.
Maybe, we think that offering possible rewards is enough.
Maybe, this is a result of @dantheman leaving steemit. Maybe he took some of the good developers with him to EOS. A notable comment by @dana-edwards:
The problem is Dan Larimer had the vision, was the technical brilliance and main problem solver. Without him who is in charge? Ned? But Ned cannot provide the technical leadership needed to make Steem competitive with Dash, Ethereum, Rchain, Synereo, or any of the other major projects. I think this could be the decline for Steem and I'm regretfully forced to power down at a time when I wouldn't want to. So much opportunity exists for Steem right now and it might be gone.
Maybe there is not enough budget allocated to attract new talent.
@timcliff has assembled a wish list of important improvements about a year ago. They are not bugs or little improvements. Many are essentials. I have mentioned some of them in this article. Unfortunately, after one year, we can see that most of them have NOT been implemented yet. I am sure many more suggestions have been added since one year.
Another problem with in the dev-team is transparency. It is not clear (at least for the regular steemian like me) how many developers are there? Who are they? What are their priority? etc.
Moreover, The interaction of @ned, @dan and the rest of the founding team with the community is too little. I am sure that most steemians would love to have more interaction.
4- The Platform is So Difficult for New Users
Steem is so different from the usual social media. If you are not familiar with Steem and blockchain, it would take you a long time before you are able to understand the system. It is too complicated and in many cases, it is not intuitive. To make it more difficult, hard forks keep coming with new changes every now and then.
In addition, there is no official help, wizard, wiki, or tutorial. Of course, some steemians have offered some voluntary solutions like Steemit Help and Steemit Etiquette Guide by @thecryptofiend and Steem Center by @someguy123. They do help, but they are not enough. Moreover, they are not easily available for the new user.
5- Buying Steem is Difficult
A special problem is that buying Steem and SBD is not easy. Steem is supposed to be a social network for everyone, and everyone can not buy Steem through cryptocurrency exchanges. We need a very easy way to buy steem directly from the SteemIt.com.
How do you expect the price of Steem to go up when buying it is so difficult and intimidating for most people.
6- The Financial Incentive To Buy Steem is Weak
I am not talking about speculation. I am talking about real financial income because that is what drives speculators to buy.
From a financial point of view, there is not a good reason why you should buy steem. Of course, there is a social incentive: the more steem power you have, the more social power you get on the platform.
But what about the financial aspect? Is it a good business? How can you benefit from buying steem financially? The only way I can see is self-voting. Too much self-voting is not healthy for the system as we can all agree. Yet, it is still the best way to profit from your investment. Hence, it is not surprising that all of the top 100 authors are self-voting.
I think we need a better incentive here.
7- Not Enough Marketing
The number of new steemians added daily is becoming lower (Some days we have only 303 new users) while it should be increasing exponentially. If you have been browsing steemit lately, you would have noticed that there are so many subjects with too little posts and interaction. Too few people are using Steemit.
Please, do not say Steemit is new and still in Beta!
It is not. Successful social media platforms usually attract users so fast. Within 15 days of its release, Kik Messenger reached one million user registrations. Now, it has more than 200 million registered users. We only have about 320K users after more than a year. We are NOT doing it right.
Maybe the difficulty of registration is a reason. The many problems mentioned earlier is another. Improving the system with the rewards incentive will attract many new users.
Weak marketing is another big reason. I have to offer special thanks to some active witnesses who are volunteering to fill this gap like @jerrybanfield and @timcliff.
Those are the reasons I found for the falling price of steem. Please, tell me what you think.
Comment Don't Spam
If you like my post, please upvote, follow, and resteem. If you write a good comment, most probably I will upvote you and check your account. Please: do not spam. Spammers are not welcome in Steemit and will be flagged.