One of the finest and most famous poems of all times is the " The Road not taken" by Robert Frost.
"I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference."
- Robert Frost
And in life we often take roads that were not taken or less taken. I have often found myself at crossroads and I had to take decisions that were not the usual course for someone in my shoes.
Blurt has always been taking roads that were never travelled. If we go back to the time when Blurt was founded you will notice that the founders decided to remove downvotes and the stable coin.
I remember joining Blurt way back in the end of August 2020 and I was surprised to see that things are different here on Blurt.
I'll just list out things that Blurt did that no one else even thinks are possible.
Blurt took the road not taken by removing the downvote button
Yes! If you go and tell any Steemit or Hive users that there's a chain that doesn't have a downvote button they will be surprised and they'll probably tell you that such a chain would not survive for long.
Well, a lot of my friends who use Steemit and Hive told me that Blurt will not survive and now we recently celebrated Blurt's second anniversary!
Two years done and many more to come!
Blurt took the road less traveled by adding Transaction Fees
Graphene chains don't have transaction fees and many believed that users will not like transaction fees.
Look at us now... We have transaction fees and we have almost 98% less spam than other Graphene chains.
Bye bye Stable Coin
One thing that I am thankful is that the founders decided to remove the Stable coin. In the last few months we have seen how difficult it is to maintain a stable coin.
COAL list
I don't want to brag about the COAL list but it has been one of the best tools for reducing farming, spam, identity theft.
We still have to make it stronger and find more accounts that are trying to game the system.
It is hardwork but we are constantly checking as many posts as possible.
Steem vs Hive vs Blurt
If you go and ask anyone from Steem or Hive about how they combat spam, identity theft, farming, plagiarism and other problems they will give you only one answer.
Let's ask Steem and Hive users a few questions:
1. How do you reduce spam?
Their answer: Downvote
2. How do you deal with plagiarism?
Their answer: Downvote
3. How do you handle identity theft?
Their answer: Downvote
4. How do you deal with any kind of abuse?
Their answer will still be: Downvote.
5. How do you decentralise witness voting?
Their Answer: Errr... More downvote?
Let's Ask these questions to Blurt
1. How does Blurt reduce spam?
Our Answer: We implemented fees so each post or comment costs money and no one will make hundreds of comments.
2. How does Blurt deal with plagiarism?
Our Answer: We created the COAL list and any user who steals someone else's work then we put them in the list and they will never recieve any rewards.
3. How do you handle identity theft on Blurt?
Our Answer: We add the username to the COAL list and they will never be able to profit from stealing someone's identity.
4. How do you deal with any kind of abuse?
Our Answer: Remove the downvote button so that people will not downvote you for having a different point of view.
5. How do you decentralise witness voting?
Our Answer: We did a hardfork and change the way users vote witnesses. Make it fair and reduce the vote value with each vote.
Conclusion
So, these are someone of my thoughts and I do believe that there's no perfect way to handle things but we all work hard and try to bring innovative solutions.
Blurt is just getting started and we have already achieved so much in terms of development. I'm sure we will see more development in the next few months.
SBD was never designed as a stablecoin - yet the myth continues - and attacks against the myth continue.
I remember the early Steem days no body talked about SBD being pegged to the USD. It was Steem's own dollar.
I wasn't on Steem in 2016, so cannot talk about the very early days. I think what put SBD into sharp focus was the first time that the debt-ratio limit was reached, which I think was in early 2018, caused by the drop in prices from their then ATH.
I still blame the whitepaper for its lack of clarity - it gives SBD TWO jobs, and it cannot do both jobs at the same time. hence users have been sold a lie, then are confused when SBD printing rate drops. It is there to stabilise STEEM and halt it from a precipitous fall - something BLURT could really need!
yep! That is a deep problem with misunderstanding the mathematical economics.
I like that all the chains are experimenting with different approaches.
This is true. I barely notice any comment spam on Blurt. At least the automated kind that seems to pop up every now and then on the other chains. However, I often wonder what happens when I run out of Blurt. Right now I don't think about it and pretty much ignore all the fees. However, I'll probably comment less when my liquid blurt supply gets low.
Where do the fees go BTW?
The fees are burnt.