After reading a few of the replies to my "😨 Are You Scared Of UPVU Yet?" article, I knew that a follow-up was needed. I have thought about little else since writing it and I'm writing this in the hope that my brain will leave me alone once I hit the "Post" button. We'll see.
My initial thinking was an article along the lines of "🤯 UPVU Is Good For STEEM" with the thought that it was clickbait at its best. As I type this, I haven't decided upon a suitable clickbait title but I'm sure that something will come to me.
UPDATE: It didn't.
New Learnings
Following various discussions recently, there are 2 things I've learnt:
- Steem.DAO poses little risk: I've been reliably informed that the $2.5m SBD which is dormant in the @steem.dao account is only accessible to the owner of the accounts keys. I have no idea who this is and don't need to know. If a proposal was voted to the top of the list, surpassing the "Return Proposal", there's a limit to how many SBD can be withdrawn which will allow time for somebody to react. The Steem.DAO is still a mysterious being to me so even with this additional knowledge, I'm certainly not an expert (and even what I've written here is probably wrong).
- UPVU's Witness Proxy has good intentions: Following my post, I discovered this post by one of UPVU's developers explaining their rationale behind allocating UPVU to do your witness voting. Whilst I disagree with the idea that you receive higher votes for setting UPVU as a proxy, I agree with the sentiment of voting for witnesses that keep STEEM on the platform.
I wanted to keep this bit brief to focus on the next sections.
The Need to Please Investors
As many of the comments pointed out and if you spend some time looking around the Korean community, the fact is that UPVU ties up a lot of STEEM and keeps it on the platform, giving some stability to its price. This is UPVU's biggest benefit to STEEM (hence my clickbait title idea). As I've mentioned repeatedly, UPVU's returns can't be rivalled and investors benefit hugely which explains why UPVU's growth is so significant.
Following on from my previous article, I thought some Venn diagrams would be cool which I'd like to share with you. It's a comparison between Steemit when UPVU launched and how Steemit looks now (in my opinion).
At Launch
Prior to UPVU and when UPVU first launched, Steemit was full of active bloggers who were also investors. The Investors were largely inactive, earning a passive income whilst the bloggers were active. They were essentially one and the same with few solely interested in blogging and some only interested in a return on their investment.
Now
Since the HIVE fork, the relative number of bloggers has reduced and the Steemit userbase has shifted towards Investors. The Investors are more interested in maximising their return on investment and need to blog to do so. (I thought about adding "scammers" but decided not to, I'll leave the size and positioning of this ellipse to your imagination.)
A Comparison
| - | At Launch | Now |
|---|---|---|
| Opinion | Active Bloggers, Inactive Investors | Active Bloggers, Active Investors |
| Consequence | Investors Didn't Need To Blog to Maximise Returns | Investors Earn More By Blogging |
| Opinion | High Quality Content (reflected by the high ranking (SEO) of numerous articles posted 4 years ago) | Lower Quality Content (reflected by a lack of high ranking (SEO) articles) |
| Consequence | Attracted More High Quality Authors | Attracts More Trash |
| Consequence | Great For Bloggers and Investors | Bad For Investors (and probably Bloggers) |
| Fact | Little To No Competition | Significant Competition (e.g. HIVE, Blurt) |
I've probably articulated it badly in the table above but essentially, the ratio of Investors to Bloggers being in its current state is simply bad for everybody.
In a Witness Proxy post, UPVU's developer says (translated):
We plan to disband @upvu.proxy at any time when STEEM normalizes to some extent .
Personally, I hope that Steam will become active soon and @upvu.proxy will be disbanded.
I don't know how these things can happen without a rebalancing of the Investor / Blogger ratio. This can only happen if:
a) we attract more quality bloggers (with competition from HIVE and Blurt, this is more difficult than it has ever been) or;
b) we reduce the number of investors.
In my opinion, (a) won't happen due to the current lack of quality, (b) won't happen because nobody wants to "turn away money".
Which I believe means that the current trend will continue - more money being delegated to UPVU which leads me on to UPVU's developer's response.
UPVU Response
First off, a lot of credit must go to UPVU for taking note of the concerns outlined and thinking about improvements. Korean to English translations are notoriously shit so please read the post yourself and this is my overly-simplified summary:
- 10% voting power reserved for upvoting community (non-UPVU) articles (perhaps an automated steemcurator service).
- Accumulated upvotes removing the need for daily posts.
- Ability for UPVU users to distribute their own votes.
This addresses many of the concerns without deterring existing investors - my thoughts can be seen in reply to the post and I recommend that you follow this user if you have an interest in this.
I have many thoughts which I will find difficult to articulate. The overarching one is very much that this solution makes UPVU attractive to a wider audience - users who want to improve their rewards and retain the ability to vote themselves. Making UPVU even more appealing and accelerating the shift of power to UPVU even quicker.
Despite thinking about this almost exclusively for many days, I still find myself coming to the same conclusion that I did in my original article - Steemit is becoming UPVU. With the additional improvements, I see more reasons for users to delegate their power to UPVU to the extreme scenario where everybody delegates their power and the remaining "purely bloggers" and New Users are competing for the 10%.
There is of course Steemit Inc. that I haven't mentioned who would obviously have a significant say in Steemit's future direction.
Based upon these improvements to UPVU, what does the future of Steemit look like to you?
I've thought long and hard about every sentence in this article and I really need to stop thinking about it. My plan now is to quietly get on with my work in the knowledge that UPVU's developers are listening and want what's best for STEEM / Steemit's future.