The Joystream Client
I heard about Joystream from the Cryptoverse Podcast and immediately downloaded and started it up. There are a bunch of free movie files for downloading and they download at a crawl, 50kB/s, unless you pay some BCH to speed things up.
Browsing the client you find links to the online communities and your wallet, which immediately shows you a button to claim your first payment. At first this is a wow moment as you think you have an immediate return but, truth to tell, this is intended to be 25 cents to pay to speed up the free download movies... This is not well communicated so you leave the client running thinking this could be HUGE.
I've been running the Joystream client since just after the launch and watching and waiting... How much have I earned? Just that 25 cents. So what is going wrong here?
The Future
I think the idea of Joystream is great, and the potential is massive however, the client is so early in development people are not even realising the 25 cents worth of BCH is intended to get the network pumping and give you a feel for paying for downloads. I didn't realise this, I'd already downloaded all the free videos by the time I researched enough to know.
Surfing around Reddit I asked the Joystream team about what I was missing and asked a few questions:
- How do I know what torrents to upload?
- Who needs something I might have?
- Am I missing the glue to stick this idea together or are they missing it?
The answer is Joystream are testing the client and I would deem it Alpha or pre-Alpha. They are working on an update, that rolled out recently, to help users understand what they are up to. I'm yet to see how this update goes experiment-wise as it should lead to more of the free BCH being used in the network.
Joystream were very responsive and agreed that yes they are missing a lot of glue! They intend ironing out the kinks in the client and getting the communication with users right and then they will focus on building the useful bits. The bits that will make us all money :) This was refreshing to see as I love a bit of honesty.
Hot Tip
Once you have downloaded something go over to where the file is in the Finished tab and choose to off it as an Upload. Until you do this there is no chance to earn anything, not that you are likely to yet!
A great idea but a little early in its evolution! I hope it becomes something real as the setup is quite slick.