RE: What I Really Think of Steem - Truth Talk

hehe, glad I could make you laugh.. I was trying to bring some humor to this random ass post.

Beautifully flawed beast is a lovely way to describe it actually.. I like that. And yes more users is the solution to many things.. but it still is one big bucket of everyone trying to figure out where the hell they are. I do have big hopes for the upcoming changes though.

Here's a interesting question for ya:
How do you feel about getting rid of the rewards pool entirely, and instead relaying on user-given tips ( similar to how the site cent.co does it )?

This is something that has been brought up a lot and quite frankly I used to hate the idea.. but the more I think about it the less value I see in the rewards pool.

I am just conflicted though as I think having creators being able to own and monetize their work is important.. just I don't think that every damn post necessarily needs to be monetized on the platform.

But how can we build a place where both exist? A fun place to hang out and share.. and then a place where content worth something is rewarded? Tipping is of course a simple thing that could be added in to help with that part too I guess.

Communities with their own SMT's could solve this.. and I think that is the idea.. for them to take the main stage and STEEM sink back to just being a utility coin, one needed to interact on the chain itself.. but I have a hard time visualizing how that goes exactly.

Currently rewards are the only draw we have, if we remove them.. we better replace them with some damn cool to attract and keep people here is what I will say.

I haven't checked out cent.co.. will do so and finish my opinion haha

But how can we build a place where both exist?

Just an idea, very rough & maybe not perfect:

New users, under rep 40 or so, are enabled to earn rewards from the pool
Users with rep higher than 40 but less than 60 can earn from the pool, but it is disabled on posts by default (and you'll need to manually check to accept pool earnings)
Users with rep over 60 are banned from the pool, and must rely on tips from their readers
As for comments, maybe they're all enabled for the rewards pool (to help encourage engagement), but their capped at only being able to earn $5 or something like that

This plan, again, is not perfect, but I can see it being an interesting take on the current situation. It allows newcomers time & resources to build up a fanbase, it gives a buffer to people to warn them they're about to lose pool-access & should start thinking about how they are going to remain sustainable in the near future, and it gives whales less influence on the dwindling shared rewards pool, instead shifting their focus on long-term sustainable business models (are you going to include ads in your blogs? start up a dapp business venture? maybe include some sort of STEEM-based paywall for certain content?)

I don't mean to sound egotistically, but I seriously think that this discussion is incredibly worth having. Steem is broken, we shouldn't just sit & whine, we should continue pushing in new changes & hardforks until something "clicks". We're still early enough in the Steem timeline where the method of "throwing shit at the wall & seeing what sticks" is a legit valid option we should be doing.