In a recent previous post, I pointed out how the money flows within Steem, and why it is unsustainable and will keep investors out. I won't go into it too deeply just a brief summary:

1. Steem has a flat supply curve. From year one to year two, the amount of Steem will double. Then following that, it will increase by 50%, and then 25%, and so on, in terms of total supply. This is going to mean in year 1 (now) the supply will double, and thus at minimum the price must drop by half. And on it goes, though each subsequent time the percentage increase also halves.

2. All the Steem paid to writers and witnesses, comes from the investment in the platform, as well as from this inflationary linear supply. Ultimately everyone pays for it, equally, by percentage, but by absolute numbers, the Whales pay the most. This is not going to attract whales. The problem will be lesser over time, maybe in 10 years almost nobody would notice. **But** this is a critical time and this is when action can have the most long term effect.

## My proposed solution: Advertising

Advertisements could be like regular posts, except that you have to pay to put them up. Each advertisement thus has a particular sum associated with it, and every time a Witness RPC endpoint delivers one, some amount of Steem from the current balance for the ad is sent to /dev/null, or whichever special account is designated as the burner - nobody knows the secret key because one was not generated. When Steem goes here, that's the end of that Steem. It is out of the supply forever.

As well as a per-impression price, which can be managed and verified by Witnesses, there can be a click-through price as well. This might be something like 2-10x as much as the impression fee. The more successful an ad is at getting clicks, the more it burns, and the sooner the poster of it will have to pay to renew it.

Clicks would jump to a larger ad post copy, and when this post is retrieved, it can be counted and this count is added to the blockchain and propagated through the network, so that the burn rate is tracked, and the correct amounts of Steem are burned.

The ads would appear at the top and every 5-10 posts in feeds delivered. They would appear at the top of posts, at the bottom, and probably every 5-10 comments it will be inserted.

Because click-throughs are tracked and publicly visible, in a separate tab of a user who is advertising it is possible to analyse the blockchain ad content posts, and determine the most successful advertisments, and these could be shown in analytics pages, or even an application could manage them, both creation, display, and impressions and click counts, and the amount of steem that is burned.

## What effect would this have on the Steem-economy?

Firstly, it can be indicated in small print at the bottom of each ad preview, how much Steem was burned by displaying it in a feed or on a post, and that clicking it will burn another amount more. These basically would be special posts, maybe highlighted with a pale grey background, and instead of votes it shows impressions, click counts, and by clicking on these numbers you can see how much Steem each item has burned.

It would for sure encourage people to click on them, which is precisely what an advertising platform tries to do. There could be separate types of positions also, with a separate pool, one for feeds, another for posts, and the option to pay a premium to be more often included on posts that are viewed already more than others.

Obviously this also will mean it is possible to determine who is viewing what, so therefore there would also have to be a way for a user to refuse advertising, either 'this ad' or 'from this user' categories. The ads would also be able to have expiry dates, and if they don't burn all their allotted funds in this time, the user gets the change back.

This would reduce the amount of Steem in circulation, as well as enabling users to gain attention by instead of seeking votes, burning Steem instead. Since the more Steem that is burned, the better for everyone, especially whales, who by raw numbers would gain the most as the supply is diminished and the existing demand thus accentuated.

There could even be a separate feed just for showing ads, classified by tags, and it would work like a classified advertisment. There could be a further set of criteria added to ads, such as for physical locations, buy/sell/trade ads, and so on. 

*Ultimately this is one of the directions I saw this platform moving towards, in my Agora network post.* I did not expect to think of it as a way to help regulate the value of Steem. It could stimulate advertising use by lowering the price as users use it less, or raising the price as users use it more - or maybe that should be vice versa. It may seem counterintuitive, in the reverse form, but the economic activity is also reverse normal as well... This could achieve a flat burn-curve, that neutralises the flat supply curve. The idea would be to aim to burn as much Steem as is created, over time.

I did however consider that network relaying through an onion routing/light node cache system could probably produce a rate of Steem issuance that would directly correlate to the amount of use of the blockchain network. More traffic = more Steem = more burning Steem

The reverse price movement system I described above, would basically allot a burn rate per day, and divide that by the number of advertisments. Users would be incentivised to advertise more, because more impressions and clicks means better value for them. They would compete for the special positions that get the highest numbers of impressions, because these positions would have greater impressions they would burn their allotment of Steem faster (and cost more thereby).

It could be fully customisable, as I mentioned, being able to refuse to see again a particular ad, or ads from a particular user, as well as a user designating certain tags, locations, and the like, that they would like to see more often.

## And to tease where this could lead to eventually:

The full ad pages could have linked inventory systems, and a user could post items to be linked on there, and a user could then easily pay for the product, the inventory count would be decremented, and an escrow would come into force using dual signature (offer signed by seller, order signed by buyer, and released with the second signature). Data on the reliability of a user account could build up a secondary reputation score which shows how good they are at delivering what they promise. 

Through the use of encryption, there could be memberships for these order and fulfilment systems as well, that go to the user account operating a particular inventory list. These listings would be private, and they could be used by users by anonymously creating new accounts. This would be the point at which the onion routing system I have discussed before can come into play, and enable completely private marketplaces, without the vulnerability of a single location of operation. 

Well, it is intended to be censorship-resistant, why should that not extend if there was a market, to the types of products being sold. If untoward things started to be sold in these places, there could be a system of bounties to reward those who front the membership fees for such mucky vendors, and report them and have their account blacklisted on the blockchain. 

But this would be tricky, of course, because who judges? Well, this is why I would then remind the reader of a post I made a while back, suggesting that for internal Steem business, there could be a council of judges, who, like witnesses, get paid some extra amount for doing their work, and get voted or unvoted dynamically, meaning they would have to perform to maintain their position. These people could become the arbiters of such decisions, and the opinion about what is ok and what is not would be also codified (this is a whole 'nother post idea right there). 

### Postscript

I am continuing my bicycle journey, as much as possible with the weather, and when I get ideas, I know that I can generate 4 articles before I have too much for my next time online. 

I had considered to post a very negative post about the inflation problem of Steem, but lots of time by myself, staying warm and dry in the hours of darkness, lets my mind roam and think of all kinds of things, some of which turn out to be good ideas to post about.

I am currently scrounging for food, as I still have not seen that unfulfilled card loading go through on my Wirex card as yet, and I know from previous occasions, sometimes up to 48 hours passes before resolution is produced. So I am going to keep dreaming up post ideas, and in the case of this and the one immediately prior to it, this is a clear case of, first, identify a problem, then get upset about it, and then come up with a solution. 

In the process I often am reminded of other, parallel concepts that tie into it, it's almost like I am one of those blind guys who think the elephant is different, but I keep feeling out the edges in the darkness, and things that already seemed complete concepts to me, grow into something even more complete.

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<sub>*We can't stop here! This is Whale country!*</sub>

<sub>Loki was born in Australia, now is wandering Europe again after 9 months in Sofia, Bulgaria. IT generalist, physics theorist, futurist and cyber-agorist. Loki's life mission is to establish a secure, distributed layer atop the internet, and enable space migration, preferably while living in a beautiful mountain house somewhere with a good woman, and lots of farm animals and gardens, where he can also go hunting and camping.</sub>

<sub>*I'm a thoughtocaster, a conundrummer in a band called Life Puzzler. I've flipped more lids than a monkey in a soup kitchen, of the **mind**.* - Xavier, Renegade Angel</sub>

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