This is in response to a Steemit post by bbilgin.

Can Steemit Survive Burning $65 Million USD in Author and Curator Rewards Every Year?

7 comments

bbilgin
35
3 days agoSteemit3 min read

Yes, you've read that right. Steemit pays $65 Million USD in rewards to authors and curators every year.

The answer is surprisingly yes, but it could be improved. There's a reason I signed up with Steemit while I refused to sign up with sites just like it in the past. Namely PeopleString which had the same Proof of Brain concept as a full blown social media application using SocialEngine 3 as it's backbone and frontend for social media and custom mods for the social networking script for it's monetization. However, where PeopleString failed, Steemit comes out on top. Similarly sites like Vid.me failed while BitChute/SpkOut and d.tube can succeed, and that's largely due to offloading static resources to the IPFS decentralized network. I've already stated before that IPFS is volunteer run, even I run an IPFS node donating 100 gigs of space towards it and I'm considered a "Plankton" at the moment. It's a common misconception that IPFS nodes are run by Steemit staff themselves or by witnesses, this isn't entirely the case. Some staff and witnesses very likely run their own IPFS node, but there's millions of us that do it voluntarily at a net negative to ourselves. We don't get extra steem power and in fact, this morning, I was still slapped with the "bandwidth limit exceeded" garbage. Super frustrating to see a whale post so easily who contribute seemingly nothing but a bot rife with abuse during those times while I'm smacked with limitations, even though I personally have hardware and bandwidth in the pie. I'm legit serving up content very likely to Steemit, using my own bandwidth and get "Bandwidth exceeded", how fucked up is that? Sounds very fucked up for the average joe blow I'm sure, and it is actually a little frustrating, but I still deal with it because I know it's not just Steemit utilizing my IPFS node, there's hundreds and thousands of websites that are. They're all offloading tons of resources and in some cases whole websites (static websites) into IPFS nodes. But getting personally rewarded isn't the point. And that's actually the point. Steemit is capable of greatly reducing it's hosting and bandwidth needs from their centralized server at Amazon AWS and greatly reduce their costs by piggybacking off the IPFS network. And honestly we're just fine with that. Honestly wish Minds.com would also consider piggybacking on it, maybe I should tag Bill Ottman and let him know "Hey, we're running nodes, use us!" So at this point, Steemit can survive, though admittedly some changes do need to be made, and that's primarily the curation rewards. The best way to fix it? It's all about the bots. Steemit is meant to be "Proof of Brain", and the bots bypass "Proof of Brain" entirely. So the fix? Ban everyone using bots and forfeit their profits back into the system. Make examples out of all the bot owners by getting rid of them all outright. Make it a crippling fear to hook up a bot to Steemit. Yes, I'm talking about going Robot Hitler and implementing the final solution to answer the Robot Question.

Posted from my blog with SteemPress : http://cryptodeaf.cloudaccess.host/2018/02/re-can-steemit-survive-burning-65-million-usd-author-curator-rewards-every-year/