Hi, @jayplayco here,
After HF21/22 we can see that the wind is changing and different kind of movements started like honest voting or newsteem. As an effect of that, we can see changes in the behavior of users around Steem.
- Bot services stopping their business and closing or starting to curate manually.
- Self(inner-circle) voting accounts are stopping and starting to curate or leave Steem.
- The community is building around the common understanding of whale and influencer accounts a new culture.
I am mostly active in the Korean community on Steem and have observed that the international Steem community and Korean Steem community are active on the same playground (Steem) but developed a totally different perception about the economy of Steem. The good point is that both communities are interested in the success of Steem and working up front and behind the scene to reach that goal. Bad happens, when both communities collide on the same playground without any communication (or lack of communication)
1. Understanding #KR
After looking into several language-based communities, I would like to summarize the specifics for the KR community as followed.
- Small userbase compared to the whole active user base of Steem. Max. 5-10%
- Highly invested users in the Steem economy.
- More economic driven community.
To get a whole feeling why the Korean market, that is influenced by the KR community, can’t be totally ignored, is when you see the market volume that is actually buying Steem on the market.
I have been following the movement over a year, and the market volume for Steem is about 50% made in Korea. You can see that the Steem price drops as soon as the volume from the Korean exchanges drops below 30% and see it rises when it goes over 60%. The main quantity is moving at Upbit, Bittrex BTC market is also connected to Upbit. Probit is mainly Korean. Gathering the volume together you get a volume of about 60% driven from Korea for the 19th of September 2019 where we can see a price increase of Steem of about 9.25%. This % is not counting the Korean buyers who are trading Steem at Binance, as that data is not available.
2. Current “Honest Voting” movement
The Honest voting movement is coming from the thinking that the Steem community needs to be cleaned from votes that are not rewarded based on votings that appreciate the content itself. The movement is currently successfully removing the bot business on the blockchain and also large self(inner-circle)-voting accounts. I personally don’t agree with the way how it is done, as I would prefer at least to try to communicate with each other, but the goal to get a better environment for curation is honorable.
A few users from the KR community have been targeted during the movement and there had been quite some irritation why this kind of action happened, as it came unprepared for them.
3. Personal thoughts
The environment for curation on the Steem blockchain is getting better and with a movement like “honest voting”, I think we will have a new culture established for the future. As mentioned, I don’t agree with the way how it is done, as it resulted also into losing members and investors moving their projects away from Steem. As a community, we should not forget that the competition we have to fight against is not in the community but outside our blockchain.
Steem is actually the only Blockchain project where communication happens “on” the blockchain and where I see the biggest advantage to any other BC’s IS the community. But that includes all members on it, and we should at least try to communicate internally, before declaring ourself as an enemy, as at the end it has the same goal to get value on the Steem blockchain.
4. Articles to view to get an overview
- @theycallmedan: Proof Of Brain, Let’s Talk About It
- @exyle: Vlog 443: With SMT’s/Communities and RC pools in place. What will become the role of the STEEM token?
- @steem.marketing: Hardforks, Communities, SMTs: Interview w/@justinw and @vandeberg
- @ocd : OCDB goes manual - Detailed
- @glory7: Do you think Palnet “holds no value” and disagree with minnowsupport bot?
- @acidyo:Every vote counts