Introduction
Most of us, who is in cryptocurrency (blockchain technology) for a while, know about TheDAO project and its story.
The DAO had an objective to provide a new decentralized business model for organizing and crowdfunding projects. It was instantiated on the Ethereum blockchain, and had no board of directors. The DAO was crowdfunded via a token sale in May 2016. It set the record for the largest crowdfunding campaign in history. In this post, I will put my general thoughts on that.
How Steem and TheDAO is similar...
What got most blockchain enthusiast excited about TheDAO (DAO - Decentralized Autonomous Organization) is that it was attempting to utilize wisdom of crowd to fund projects, was very hugely hyped and marketed. Even though some was skeptical about TheDAO project, I am sure they still invested in it.
Note that, Steem was already announced at that time and was being actively developed, but many like myself missed it. In my case, it is because, 2016 was one heck of a year for crypto projects and year of ICO (rise and fall). From the end of 2015 and first half of 2016, we have seen dozen projects doing ICO (initial coin offering) and it was that easy to scam people with making just graphics and using buzz words and post it on bitcointalk forum. In annoyance of ICOs and scam projects I have made habit of checking projects less frequent from 2016 hence missed Steem 😑.
Right after I found out about Steem and learned social (and many more features) aspect of the project, I got hooked on technology and future potential. Fast forward, here we are today with more than 120,000 users, active engagement and growing community.
Steem is already successful because it is already utilizing wisdom of crowd and crowdfunding at least 1000 projects/posts daily.
Steem not only doing that, it is taking that further by having all functionalities in-one blockchain. Steem is Augur, TheDAO, AKASHA, etc. Every Ethereum Dapps can just easily be implemented on Steem and it is that easy as well. You don't have to think about solving gas problem, or wait when network gets stable, network without spam attacks, etc. etc. Current state of Ethereum somewhat halting many projects that rely on network stability and scalability. Steem is constantly evolving because it has real userbase and community/crowd wisdom/collective intelligence to do so. Technology behind Steem (Graphene and Chainbase) which allow us to interact with blockchain near real-time (3 secs) is one of many features that makes it stand out from all other projects/platforms.
Mainstream adoption
Most crypto projects, not only struggle to keep interest (of investors and its users) on their projects to continue development but they also struggle to get mass adoption. Here is why...
Are you familiar with well known Gartner Hype Cycle?!
Gartner Hype Cycles provide a graphic representation of the maturity and adoption of technologies and applications, and how they are potentially relevant to solving real business problems and exploiting new opportunities.
Trough of Disillusionment is the part where projects struggle and disappear or never recover.
I also believe that we have multiple cycles of this in each new projects or technology. And if you map them into bigger cycle one can argue that they never reach Peak of Inflated Expectations. Because, lack of development and community involvement, collective intelligence on it...
What will be the case with Steem then?
I think, future of Steem is bright, so far wisdom of crowd taking project right directions, at least we will find out 😊 and that same collective intelligence gets evolved over time with more people joining in. You might argue crowd don't have much to say where the Platform is moving, well, you are wrong. When crowd has any stake and deeply involved in daily decision making, then their collective intelligence can help to further advancement of the Platform.
These projects, one of the fascinating and amazing experiments of our life time.
In conclusion, Steem on and enjoy the evolution!
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Great thanks! 😉
Resteemed
PRAT, BROWN NOSE
Very good analogy
thanks @mallorcaman!
You too - leave the arse off your list
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I think there might be a solution for every problem. Some DAOs are trying to solve on type of problem and they do it better than others. I am fortunate enough to be an alpha tester for AKASHA and I have to tell you it's impressive for an alpha. AKASHA solves a different problem than Steemit. I don't know about Synereo or others.
But even with these new players on the field, Steemit will thrive.
The problem that Steemit solves is rather complex. It's actually a group of problems and that group is blending between social media, social organization, decentralized economies and cryptocurrency. The way Steemit positioned itself will make it rather difficult to be replaced soon. It has a foot in all of these places, so to speak.
I'm very optimistic as well.
Very curious, how does Akasha differ from steemit? Are users also rewarded?
At the moment I can't say much about this, it's still under development. Hopefully, I will have more info in a day or two.
Thank you for your comment! Honestly, I haven't tested AKASHA myself and can't say much. But shared my general feeling about most ethereum projects being halted. Where can I join AKASHA for test/alpha run?
You are right, Steem is very complex and trying to solve a lot of problems at once that's why it is bit complex to explain Steem(it) to someone easily. But I am sure it will get simpler and easier over time.
You can join the alpha on their website, there is an email subscription field. Once they give you access on the Slack you will get the links for the alpha versions. It's a different way of seeing things than Steemit.
Like I said, there shouldn't be only one DAO, there's enough room for everybody :)
The Steem blockchain has such a huge potential I cannot explain.
This is a technological revolution, what is still unnoticed, and we are lucky to be involved.
People tend to forget that Steem is not equal Steemit. While Steemit started as a social media site, which could be an enormous market to own; for the Steem blockchain, that is only a slice from the cake.
The only thing we need is never stop, or even slow improving! 'Cause that moment will be the start of failing, and we could have to mention a new name as the best blockchain.
You are better than this ... rewarding pap with your reply. Drop the self-serving arse
It's not for rewards or rewarding. It's for encouraging developers, like @good-karma.
so ... what did you learn from a hack financial post?
I know what I learn from yours and I respond truthfully
I am just fed up with having my posts pulled off the system in their purple patch of earning and then watching whales copy and paste fake news and then vilify me for doing my own research and exposing their incorrectness in a very conciliatory manner. Their arrogance is enormous and their disrespect at an equally self-agrandising level as to require a slap - no disrespect to you if you really think this post has any value - I could tell you a lot more than this imposter
You are right about mixed knowledge of Steem and Steemit...improvements and time is the key! Thanks for the comment! 😉
Hopefully it will be be as bright or brighter than you suggest. Only time will tell. I have made many suggestions as to how to improve Steemit and bring more people on board.
Indeed...I always read your suggestions and thinking ways to include features/functionalities in future updates of eSteem...Feedback from community is #1 factor for product to get better and better! Thanks for the comment!
No problem. I have high hopes but I'm also a realist and a big player like facebook jumping in with payouts could also kill off sites like this. That's why I feel there is urgency to get people on board A.S.A.P. Hopefully this will take some of my suggestions seriously.
I remember you posting about Facebook might be thinking about tipping model. Do you think that would give content creators like yourself advantage? I know Facebook has a userbase and you as an artist have more chance to get your content visibility...eager to see what they come up with, we all can learn from such experiments...I believe we had some discussions before about having tipping button on each post just like Promote button so people can directly tip for author, but it is UI side of coding which can be implemented quite easily.
I think it would be great. I would surely use it. But I don't know if it would take off unless the people tipping also got paid like on Steemit. People are so conditioned to just "like" things I don't think they would tip if it came out of their pocket. I see the same thing on here. I get lots of votes but when I asked for help to crowdfund something on here it fell far shoot.
Yes, right! Community Crowdfunding part is still short I agree, but as platform grows, more users and more distribution.. I think it will be much wider audience for crowdfunding as well. We will see ;)
BROWN NOSE
Hardly I have hopes for it I'm putting a lot off time and energy into this site and I contribute ideas and if you don't like too bad. Keep your opinions to yourself. I'm not interested in your opinion and I was not speaking to you. You're Muted now.
You are falling into the trap - be REAL
you gave me a similar response like this, I wonder if you are really that emotional or perhaps you're faking it, maybe some form of mental manipulation, crypto folks are too smart for that, a bad attitude digs a hole for yourself on steemit. The way you talk about Facebook, you sound like a grumpy old man.
Trying to bury truth is for gossippers. It does not belong on steemit.
Anyone else who replies to this post should wipe the brown off their nose - a rep of 70 is the reason why you are replying to a vote about money on Boxing Day - if the scribe had a rep below 60 you would be ignoring it
Get REAL people
When you're right you're right! :)
thanks for the comment Ben! ;)
the arse is wrong
He's being enthusiastic about the capabilities is Steem and favourably comparing that potential to the DAO....which garnered a lot of hype and investment without delivering. I really don't understand why you are popping off at everyone on this post. If you have an issue, don't take it out on good-karma, just state simply what's on your mind and perhaps we can try to address it.
Nice idea, nobody does a damned thing. Nothing against you, @benjojo , you seem pretty cool but anyone who rorts the system and thinks that their value is thousand of times more than someone else's is in my cross hairs
Good post good-karma! :)
Thanks for comment... ;) How have you been brother?!
Good! Business going strong. And you? Ready for the next cryptohype? :D
Thanks doing alright, coding as usual 😉
Good Post!!!!!!!!!!!
I was one of those who fell victim to the hype of The DAO. I way over invested in it with > 50% of my ETH assets at the time. Thankfully I got all of it back through aggressive range trading even before the hard fork that recovered stolen funds, but oh what a mess. I learned a valuable lesson from that: never invest more than 5% of my portfolio into an ICO (that's the most I'm willing to lose if a project crashes & burns).
I have to respectfully disagree with you about Steemit being capable of all that Ethereum can do. The Steem blockchain certainly can crowdfund, in a sense, with post payouts. And I suppose that could also be looked at as an application of wisdom of the crowds. But I would argue that the sample size of people who vote on any given post is still too small to be statistically meaningful, and luck plays a large part in it.
Ethereum is more general purpose than Steem. It is essentially a Turing complete programming language built into a blockchain, and the mining process executes those programs. This allows enormous potential that the current early dapps have only scratched the surface of. Steem applications, on the other hand, do not actually execute on the blockchain itself but rather exist as separate apps that often manipulate and format data from the blockchain in various ways to make it more easily analyzable by humans.
I'm not knocking Steemit in any way, just saying it's an apples to oranges kind of comparison so be careful doing that. I actually think Steemit is much more suitable for social media than Ethereum because the Steem blockchain was designed from the beginning with that purpose in mind. Ethereum on the other hand was designed to be a general purpose blockchain-based distributed computer.
Yes you are right, I am aware of Ethereum's capabilities and I have even taken time to write smart contracts myself. Steem don't all functionalities just yet, but as far as I can see/hope that there will be smart contracts and many other features. This was merely comparison of Steem with the DAO. And I feel you on the DAO, that project messed up Ethereum big time. I was/am still believe in Ethereum, it will have its place and ride will be tough though with all recent issues. Any development on projects like Ethereum and Steem will bring blockchain to mainstream... I have to note that, comparison is friendly one and just my thoughts... Appreciate taking time to comment, brother! 😉
Gotcha, if you limit the scope of the comparison that way then yes, there is definitely some conceptual overlap and it's a good way to highlight the versatility of Steemit. I just wanted to make sure that people who don't know otherwise don't start thinking that's the full extent of what Ethereum can do.
I think smart contracts, in some form or other, are the future of blockchain tech. The race is on to see which smart contracts platform achieves market dominance, and Ethereum with its first mover advantage seems to be leading the pack for now. As you say, it's been going through some growing pains, but the recent troubles ultimately have made the network stronger & more resilient. It's good that those weaknesses were exposed and fixed.
It would be awesome if smart contracts could be incorporated into Steem somehow. Do you know of any concrete plans for this, or is it just what you are personally hoping to see?
There have been multiple posts about scripting language WREN which developers thinking to be a good choice for smart contracts, I think @dantheman made posts about potential implementations. Once it is out, Steem can be compared with Ethereum in terms of smart contracts as well...
Thanks for the info. I've never heard of WREN before, will do some digging on it.
Well, agreed! Recently, I have started to understand things better and I see your prediction fro steem as realistic. I have some side questions that will help me clarify things a bit better. When they say mining with your mind on steem what does it mean. Is more steem mined or produced by our posts? I really don't understand several things yet. A number of steem is produced each day, by the miners? Those that dedicate their hardware to miners? Are we miners too, we who just write up posts? And how? When the number of miners improve in the future, what exactly happen, is earning reduced as the steem produced daily is now shared to many more people or is more steem produced to cater to the new number? And how does that work, do more people invest hardware into mining as there is a new number of people who are blogging. Who are the miners on steemit. Is there a place to find them and understand their activity? I what exactly happens when many more users adopt, does the price of steem increase or decrease? Why is there concern on the price of steem? What difference is there, if it goes up or down? Is it that if it goes high people can like power down and like convert their steem to dollars and what happens if people go that path, will the price of steem go down again? Is it a good thing for steemit owners like @ned etc that the price of steem goes up or is it a good thing for steemians or is it what could attract new users to steemit? What exactly doesn't mean where it says steem power dictates you influence on your rewards? How do I get to understand the difference between when I had 50 steem power and 500? I don't know how to or if I can tell the difference in my case when it comes to rewards. Is there place online or like a steem tool that helps us understand these things? I feel understanding these tiny details, will help encourage us as we can understand our progress better. When it says steem produced is shared to everyone based on their steem power, does it mean, if you have 10k steem power for instance, you can earn without posting or curating? I have several other questions but clearing out this basic questions by means of answers, will already help us noobs to get an understanding of the more tech things. I have clearer understanding of steemit since I got on here and knowing the small things helped me decipher the bigger things on my own. Answers to these questions will also put more light on the goodies busy.org would bring!
Thank you for your comment! Wow, that's a lot of good questions :)! I would point you to the https://www.steemithelp.net/ where you find answers to most of these questions. Let me know if something is unclear, I will try to answer as best as I can if you cannot find answer... I am sure you will have good time reading through steemithelp posts.
Excellent vision, congratulations! I think that until we don't have smart contracts capabilities here, the "autonomous" part of the organization would be seen as "apart" more than "automatic".
I've seeing content, wich Steemit is focused, with new organizations ideas and proposals, like contracts, that still appear to need human supervisors and directors. I'm not sure if it will generate DAOs but I feel happy it's happening :-)
good~
What did you get rewarded mother - for a comment like that? Is that you name Kimdaeheuk? No - GET REAL
What are you talking about?
Do you know the true meaning of the dao?
talk english
classic whale post - should be pulled like mine was - 40 views 264 votes about money on Boxing Day - why didn't you write about Tomato Ketchup - would have been more sincere - or Brandy Butter
And by the way what the fuck is the DAO - gety rid of your piss-weak jargon and talk like a human being
Say you are sorry about George Michael would be a better thing to say than DAO
What is that ?
Dreadful Aunt's Olefactory
Didgeridoos are Outlandish?
Dickheads Accept Ordinariness
Developing Acute Oversight
I don't follow what you mean by classic whale post? Well, if you like tomato ketchup feel free to write about it. I don't like ketchup and I like Steem and I do develop daily on Steem so that's what I write about.
get REAL - this is classic usurping - write about something completely useless and get votes because the intravoting system is alive and well - you are in my cross hairs
Clearly didn't read the post and if not interested, feel free to ignore it! And please keep your thought to yourself if you don't like post title or content. People post what they like and want to write about.
LIAR - would you like some proof - I have it in spades and I am going to vilify you and all you self-serving wankers until you stop fucking people over and lying to them - good morning
If you do not know, then you should read my posts rather than getting them pulled
Anyone else who replies to this post should wipe the brown off their nose - a rep of 70 is the reason why you are replying to a vote about money on Boxing Day - if the scribe had a rep below 60 you would be ignoring it
Get REAL people
Take a chill pill, bra!
Nobody likes a whiner and we can only pretend to care about your nancy ass for only so long.
no whining - just an honest assessment - rather than call anyone 'bra', give me an explanation!
I just don't get what you're after, @ebryans
It's not like you're going to divert people from their voting preferences by parroting the same ambiguous message 15 times within the same post. All that you're accomplishing here, by acting the way that you are, is getting more people to make a note of avoiding you (and your content) in the future.
That's my honest assessment.
You may well be right ... I may be crazy - Billy Joel
I am the arse who sees things for what they are and exposes the Truth.
I have no personal vendetta, I just see how a great idea has poor protocols and is being exploited by people who have been entrusted with the pollination of this platform.
120,000 have signed up - about 4,000 active names, many of which are duplicates - 67 names hold 80% - ok - take out steemit - about 180 - is this the model upon which this was built? Guilds are over 50% whales/dolphins - was that the idea?
My disposition requires integrity ... to my loss ... to your gain!
Namaste
I understand your position and I'm not blind to the issues that you pointed out.
If you don't mind me positing a bit of my own philosophy into this discussion, I'm convinced that every monetary system MUST work out to this heavily skewed distribution, in favor of those responsible for bringing it to society, because of the simple fact that it's designed by humans and it's our nature to rig/manipulate conditions, when and where we can do it with relatively little risk involved, in order to secure the most peace of mind for ourselves and those whom we care about.
It all comes back to the Darwinian model of evolution - survival of the fittest. We seek out efficient methods to secure as many resources as we can, ideally without bringing ourselves too much negative attention, as a means to put ourselves and our genetic line into the best position to thrive. It can be difficult to notice this happening in real-time, at the individual and community level, because society is so complex and it creates so many risk factors to consider that it tends to cause people to hesitate and become indecisive, regarding their inner drive to "take the world and make it [his/her] own". That being said, some people find the courage to risk life and limb at the chance to "enter the club" of the elite, which are generally ancestors of a bloodline that managed to set up a system that would secure a replenishing supply of resources for several generations.
To me, Steemit is an example of a small group of people whom decided that the potential rewards of setting up a rigged system were worth the potential risks (possible law/ regulatory issues with the government/ IRS, and let's not forget about all of the crazy lawsuits that happen in the great US of A, to name a few). 100 times out of 100, individuals in this type of position will set up their system(s) to favor themselves, in some way - at the very least, to give themselves a leg up on the competition. As I've alluded to, this is only human nature. I, for one, will not judge them harshly for it, because, I see it, to get down to the most basic level, as a collection of trillions of cells pushing to achieve the "next level" of security and thriving conditions for their next division and future divisions. They're driven by an impulse that we all share, at a most core level, only some happen to be more predisposed to suppress it and/or condemn acting on it.
The way I see it: you're fighting a battle against a collective human psyche that's had little to no evolution since the inception of humanity and stands little chance of making any noteworthy headway in the millenniums to come. Indeed, you're exposing a nasty truth, but you aren't really changing anything by bringing light to it. Rather, you're confirming something that we've long known about ourselves, which most of us readily admit to ourselves - we're greedy/ selfish/ manipulative creatures.
In other words, it's a futile pursuit...
...in my opinion, of course.
Wow! What a wonderful and well composed riposte - it is not often that I hear such acumen.
I agree to a very great extent until it gets to the point where the reality is realised and the action is taken. Steemit and steem are symbiotic - 100%. Neither are the blockchain - that is entirely indpendant. If this steemit is to prevail, there has to be a distribution of ownership which is seen to be beneficial to the steemit community. At present I hope you would see that there has been very little genuine demonstrable benefit.
The selling down of SP is a fear which the whole steem community is afraid of.
I strongly suspect that there are background buyers of steem to support the price.
In the meantime the data is hardly compelling: 120,000 subscribers and about 4,000 active accounts in about 6 months.
Over 80% of the value is held by the top 67 names.
How is this great idea going to achieve sustainable value?
The value will be achieved through a burgeoning of the subscriber base to a level which a Capital Markets perspective will deem 'real'.
At present nobody could deem this 'real' because there are too many fake accounts and the system relies upon votes for posts which are barely read.
I am one of the few who actually reads - though I do have an auto voting account. (Just demonstrating my adherence to integrity).
If steem, as a cryptocurrency disappeared tomorrow, the world would not even blink, let alone shed a tear.
So, what are the parameters? The parameter which is most acutely pressing is time. Over the next few months there will be further reward for content social media platforms and their functionality will show steemit up for what it is - poor.
The functionality of steemit is not just poor, it is antediluvian!
Would you join it were there no rewards?
Not a cat's chance in hell! No messaging, no voip, no storing of posts - it is possibly the worst functionality of all sites in the world, disregarding rewards!
So, how is it going to succeed?
If it is going to succeed it has to succeed fast - 'busy' - almost a cousin or step-brother to steemit is coming soon, 'yours' is too - I bet there are many more quietly watching.
If the power elite believe that the retention of SP is to their advantage, they will qualify for one of the most outstanding Darwin Awards ever - RIP!
I fight this fight because I have come across writers whom I admire. I read the posts, unlike the vast majority.
They will find a new outlet.
Steem, upon its current course, is more than mortally wounded by its system of command. A great idea; bad protocol; simply diabolical expression of control by a bunch of absolute prats.
Namaste.