Thanks for a great post @paulag, and I have also read some of the comments, and what strikes me is that this discussion is very focused on Steem specifically, of course HF21 is a Steem specific change, but also some comments are only seeing the tribes as an offset to compensate for lower earnings in Steem.

Allow me to elaborate but I don't think that is the whole picture, now tribes are of course very early in their development and it will take some time to see which ones will be a success, but give it a bit more time and the tribes will be where most new and small Steemians will have the majority of their earnings and rewards.

And in my opinion this development will be accelerated with HF21, since new and small Steemians are not getting much reward in Steem, they will only power up to the point where they don't have to worry about RC, and just leave it at that, Steem will then just be the token that takes care of running the blockchain and as the trading pair in Steem-engine.

This of course also means that having a big stake in Steem is less relevant, because that does not automatically mean that you also have a big stake in the tribes, and the small Steem stakeholders will mainly just care about stake in the tribes, which they are also more likely to earn really big in to the point that they can become way bigger in the tribes than the whales in Steem are, thereby the stake that those Steem whales have is not relevant to their earnings in the tribes, even with free downvotes since those downvotes might not have more than a marginal effect on their earnings from the tribes.

And as to myself, I am a minnow in Steem, and I have been playing around a bit with some tribes, but last week CTPtalk launched, and this is a tribe which I really beleive in and am very interested in, to the point I have bought quite a bit of their tokens by selling Steem, and I plan on continue that route, I am already a minnow there and in less than two weeks from now I plan on being a dolphin in that tribe.

My stake in Steem will of course also continue to grow from the rewards in Steempower, but I have no plans of powering up any Steem going forward, and I will not participate in any SPUD, I will invest most of my liquid earnings in the tribes, since that is where I see myself having a big chance to earn from the very start of them.

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