I write this after a very long day and I want to put upfront a full disclaimer: I'm writing this mainly to clarify my own thoughts, not to give some definitive opinion.
So, after 2 days, it looks like RC (Resource Credits) are a very restrictive filter for people wanting to use the platform. Before that, we had bandwidth, which, as opaque as it was, allowed for a much higher degree of interaction. And that degree came with a huge amount of unneeded interaction. Also called spam.
But beyond this spam, something else was allowed by the previous throttling mechanism, something visible only at the business level: by abusing the platform, people were also abusing the token. It was so easy to post here, so easy to make some quick money.
If a platform is such an easy thing to play around with, posting meaningless things and getting pennies, then the token behind it must be worthless.
RC may steer that - at the cost of blocking out a large portion of the bottom food chain, I agree - to a much more interesting direction (please understand that I'm not talking about the mistakes in launching HF 20, which are still there and must be accepted as mistakes, but about the actual goal of this hardfork, which seems to become more and more obvious).
RC is making the platform harder to use by people who are not yet invested. So the token behind the platform becomes harder to obtain (or more expensive).
In other words, it creates scarcity.
And scarcity created demand.
Now, if you want to really use this platform, and this blockchain, and this community, then you will have to own more SP. This is demand. Yes, it creates an entry barrier, because not everybody will afford to buy (or otherwise obtain) some SP, but will also act as a natural quality filter.
How many of the minnows are writing quality posts? How many of them are actually curating? How many of them are really engaging in conversations?
And how many of them are here for some quick bucks? Money for nothing and the chicks for free?
These are hard questions and some of them may seem harsh, but I think we have to ask them and find an honest answer.
I've seen many writing platforms starting and failing gloriously. I remember tsu (how many of you still remember that Facebook clone?) and how it collapsed after 3-4 years. I never met anyone interesting in tsu. Pretty much everybody there was talking to himself, waiting for some rewards.
Add to this context the rise of Steemit clones (WeKu and alike) which are doing nothing but copying the blockchain and the launch model, hence creating confusion and piggy backing on the efforts of the Steem community.
I don't know if this layer of difficulty was really intended or it's just a coincidence, but it surely gives me something to ponder about.
Do we want Steemit to be the next tsu? Or do we want it to be a better Medium? With quality content and quality curators.
And things get even more interesting if we start thinking about the dapps built on top of it. Now people creating dapps can play with this RC (read: start using their SP in order to attract and maintain a user base) and actually control, in a way, who is joining their platform. I know that now, while the system is still balancing towards the famous 'equilibrium' many dapps are suspended because they can't even vote. But the RC may allow that in the future, once the voting power is restored.
I would appreciate any of your thoughts here, as, I already said, I'm after quite a long day (and a long week, with all this bumpy hardfork) so let's just brainstorm.
I'm a serial entrepreneur, blogger and ultrarunner. You can find me mainly on my blog at Dragos Roua where I write about productivity, business, relationships and running. Here on Steemit you may stay updated by following me @dragosroua.
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