TLDR: It sucks. (See what I did there?)
OK, not really, but I could neither resist the wordplay, nor be too impressed after reading (most) of the whitepaper...which I mostly did because I'm sure those of you that want to hear about weren't about to ask.
And yes, I am withholding all content moral/ethical/personal judgments when making this assessment. I merely don't find the core idea all that viable...that is, paying people to consume (free) content that they were already over-consuming at no cost.
For those unaware, the Vice token is a project based on a fork of the Steem block-chain that aims to pay users for viewing pornographic material, similar (but, uh, not really) to how users are "paid" for engaging with content on Steem (in this context, curation is the closest analogy.)
Distribution will be partially handled by an air-drop to all Steem holders "at block 18,500,000," which makes this a project of particular interest for all Steem hodlers, regardless of their puritanical leanings (or lack thereof.)
Even in theory, this is a tough proposition. I would consider proper realization of the "vision" for this project as near-herculean in difficulty. Attempting to pay users for porn viewing is only going to drive the value of your metric (clicks, videos viewed, etc.) down to the rate of the lowest Chinese or Malaysian click-farms. When I got priced out of the "online game gold sales" market, that was about 11 cents/hour for Chinese farming labor, and this was a decade ago, before automation really took over.
If Vice pays out any decent amount for use, it will be abused. If it doesn't, who exactly will pay cold, hard cash to buy tokens whose main value proposition is to get themselves paid for engaging in "vice"? Of course, perhaps the project's future will unexpectedly ride on the percentage of sex addicts who are also Steem whales =)
One might also presume, based on the following passage, that privacy when engaging in, ahem, one's online activities will not exactly be a core feature:
"The foundation of ViceToken.com is built on a “fork” of the code that powers the opensource Steem blockchain, which generates and distributes Steem tokens as users consume internet content..."
" simultaneously recording proof of such interactions on an immutable ledger."
However, there is one thing you certainly can't fault the team for - their bullishness on Steem. They seem rather assured of Steem's viability well into the future, as you can see in their token distribution info:
Unfortunately, they are not burning the excess tokens, instead choosing to retain them; better luck next time, investors.
"All unsold tokens at end of the crowdsale will be retained by Vice Industry Token Inc.."
It would certainly be good for all Steem users (and, uh, regular porn viewers) if this project turned out to be a resounding success.
We also have a Radio Station! (click me)
...and a 5000+ active user Discord Chat Server! (click me)
Sources: https://vicetoken.com/static/Vice_Industry_Token_Whitepaper.pdf
Copyright: Vice
Good, hard-headed analysis^
That's the weak point for VICE the cryptocurrency. Who would buy it, and why? The record of Golos, the earlier fork that catered to Russians, doesn't give cause for much hope.
True, it could be bought to get "Vice Power" to redirect user rewards. VICE and "Vice Dollars" could be used as a tipping coin.
But to be honest, I don't see VICE getting more traction than Golos unless the devs break with Steemit tradition and put paid adverts for porn on their network site. Then, they can boost the value of both by making both VICE and VD^^ good-in-trade to pay for the adverts. (Perhaps with resstrictions, to allow the parent company to make fiat money directly from the adverts.)
The above is the only way I can see for VICE to take off as a cryptocurrency.
^ (Yes, I did see what I did there.)
^^ (Yes, there too.)
"The record of Golos, the earlier fork that catered to Russians, doesn't give cause for much hope."
An interesting example to take note of.
"True, it could be bought to get "Vice Power" to redirect user rewards. VICE and "Vice Dollars" could be used as a tipping coin."
One would have thought that increasing privacy, rather than decreasing it, would have been preferred for such an application to reach a large market in the current cultural context.
"unless the devs break with Steemit tradition and put paid adverts for porn on their network site."
I see no reason why they wouldn't, if it can be shown to be more profitable.
"^^ (Yes, there too.)"
Clever, but you cheated! VBD is a much harder pun.
We definitely need 56Kbs buffering to make a come back
It’s very simple.
If the porn quality is good, people will use it. Obviously it’s always better to getting paid for doing something you would do either way...
The internet porn traffic is huge, so there is certainly a market for it.
The key thing is how would porn producers benefit for using Vice platform? I suppose they would receive tokens as well?
Either way, crypto has arrive in the porn business, that means there will be an even bigger abundance of porn content so expect big changes. Everytime crypto arrives in something, massive and important changes start to happen.
"Obviously it’s always better to getting paid for doing something you would do either way..."
See, it was under this assumption that I first entered Steemit, but the reality is that people have a minimum-value threshold, which is subjective to the person, for what they are willing to do to get micropayments. This is why rebates are so profitable for companies - many people will not fill out and mail a form for $20 or more dollars.
They also won't swap their social-media site to make 8 cents on their shit-posts about cats, nor will they reveal their (presumed) anonymity from behind their computers and their "erotic activity schedule" for a few pennies a day. That won't even get them over the "ugh, I have to register" threshold.
I'm eager to see what happens, either way.
Almost 80% of Steemians do not vote!
I'd say that's conservative.
Not everyone is interested in politics....that's NOT why they are here.
regarding the porn....and HF20...I hear it has 'communities'...inside of which there will be different rules..
perhaps no one could enter certain communities with a 'key' to decrypt everything inside...which , being encrypted, would be unintelligable to anyone outside?
"perhaps no one could enter certain communities with a 'key' to decrypt everything inside...which , being encrypted, would be unintelligable to anyone outside?"
This sounds as practical a way as any to implement the promised features. I have no idea how it is being done. I'm not sure this is ready for HF20 though, which I think mostly contains improvements to user onboarding and some minor changes to curation for self-voting, etc. I don't think communities were ready? Could be wrong, didn't research.
I dunno either.
it'd be kinda nice if Steemit would pay a little more attention to keeping us updated?
ya think?
Probably because 80% of Steemians are NOT Steem Whales, and very quickly find out that their vote is worth 1 CENT or less in voting power.
I think lexiconical is talking about witness votes.
Hah, yes, I am. I think @everittdmickey is aware of that, though, and he means Steemit politics. He's right either way.
It's the very reason I'm probably going to remove that from my signature. I'm not sure I want to keep up with the drama well enough to manage witness voting as actively as I have been previously.
interesting...
Thanks for the info. I don't believe I made the cutoff for the air drop though. Will be interesting to see how this project develops.
I think it will be a game changer... for the porn industry... it’s going to take off... however, like you said we will just have to see how it develops...
Though I like free crypto, I avoid signing up for the air drops that are adult themed. An adult themed air drop based upon holding steem? Yuck. But I am not going to divest steem nor ethereum because some idiot sends me virtual tokens i want nothing to do with. I do wish there was an opt out.
One of the more humorous thing about this concept as you bring up, is that everything on the blockchain is pretty much traceable by the public. one of the more alarming prospects is that their business partners may not be all adult content based, and they are awarded tokens simply because of ads on some website-even a news website. And so a transaction would be recorded as if one were a consumer of adult content, when that is not the case. Although I am not sure getting paid to view is the business model.
The business model may be something that mirrors steemit itself...except where a perverse community uses the upvote and curation process to reward and steer the direction to the type of perverse content they want....or at least what the whales want. And since it is backed by crypto, it's not like people will be declining charges. There are some advantages to using crypto in industries where there is otherwise a high rate of alleged or real credit card fraud such as the adult industry.
Morally I want nothing to do with it, but from a business point of view I am not sure it is entirely bad. I suspect in some countries it could lead to the execution of some viewers. Depending on the whales, it could lead to content that is ultimately steered in the direction of being clearly illegal by the Miller [v california] or Ferber [v new york] tests or other high risk or illegal conduct. More reasons to need to have an opt out.
" But I am not going to divest steem nor ethereum because some idiot sends me virtual tokens i want nothing to do with. "
You don't need to. You can simply sell the tokens you don't want at an exchange. Think of it like a dividend payment for being a Steem holder - a fringe benefit.
If you job gave you a bonus of $10,000 in Playboy stock...you'd sell it, not refuse it, right? Selling the project on the open market lowers the price and reduces its market cap...it expresses dissatisfaction and slightly "harms" all other holders.
Whether this is good enough on any particular moral battlefield for you, well, YMMV. The other option is self-immolation.
Note: Not disagreeing with anything you said, just musing out "loud".
I would decline the payment of playboy stock if able. But there is no declining what goes into your crypto mailing address. Since holding/ignoring/burning it tends to increase the market value by reducing the amount in circulation/market, you are correct that the best thing to do, if it is worth the hassel, is selling it and hurt the holders and probably anonymously donate the proceeds to some cause. I am in no rush to convert crypto into fiat, but it looks like they are in no rush to distribute them either.
80% no vote? Holy cow.
censor does not help
Okay now this is a funny one. Not trying to judge or anything though, but I think the idea behind the coin doesn't appear so viable in my opinion. And this has nothing to do with the kind of industry it deals with, but the idea of rewarding people for consuming content they already consume of their own accord. I don't see how they add to the system nor make it more valuable.
However, I think I might be talking myopic because I haven't really read the whitepaper. I'm sure the creators of this such coin would have reasoned in this direction before going ahead to still implement it.
After all, Steem is one such revolution- paying people for their content which was already free somewhere else
"However, I think I might be talking myopic because I haven't really read the whitepaper."
I mostly agree with you, and have read the majority of the white paper. It's not a highly-technical paper at all. They mostly just sell you on the idea (I'm not sold on monetary viability), then tell you about distribution. I do like their distribution model, since anything not pure-ICO is interesting and potentially distributes more widely.
Jerry Banfield talked a bit about this crypto recently when he had a 1 hour video (yes, I watched the whole thing to see if he stopped to get a drink of water or lost his voice. He did neither:) but I learned quite bit) It was an example of using the new SMT that is starting to roll out. You mentioned that they are actually doing a hard fork of the steem blockchain. Do you have any insight into how SMT would actually work with this new blockchain "business"? I read the SMT white paper and my eyes glazed over with all the discussion of code.
Yes, I heard him mention it as well.
Since they are hardforking the chain, they can simply issue a pre-mined allocation that mirrors the publicly visible stake on the Steem chain. I guess it wouldn't really be an SMT at all, as a separate token from Steem - much like Pivx is a fork of Dash.
IMHO they just should have used Steem and set up their own environment, kind of like @bescouted did with bescouted.com for photography. No need to build a new economy, just enabling a niche to grow. Nobody is going to buy "photography coins" (Kodak, are you listening?! 😂) and nobody in their right mind will buy "porn coins". There is no incentive for either the consumer or producer.
There are a few erotica/ porn producers on Steem, but their income pales in comparison to account that just recycle Tumblr GIFs😒
So yeah, agree, Vice tokens are stupid.
"MHO they just should have used Steem and set up their own environment"
Agreed. This would appear to be the whole reason the STINC team has focused so much on SMTs.
I used to work in the uh, industry and you would be surprised what people will pay for. Everyone should work in an adult bookstore at least once, where the bad guys are good, and the good guys are bad. My oh my, the stories I could tell. But what happens in Vegas...
Odd, all of the "best/worst" stories I've ever heard from the adult industry involve the bookstores. Something about those places, I guess...
@themadgoat has a series on working in an adult bookstore, if memory serves. Hope he's around still.
You know what it is? It's that Cheers bartender thing. I'm an honest man and a good listener. I think, once people know you're honest and discreet, they learn to trust you enough to tell you things. They would tell me stuff they wouldn't even tell their own wives as I was known for giving good advice.
I've often felt, a wise man listens more than he speaks.
answered my question, thanks
They are giving themselves a wide window, to make sure they don't miss it. Wise. I would expect it earlier if nothing goes wrong with the project.
Umm... What is your question? Did you forget to ask it?
"when do we get our airdrop?"
I suscribed to their newsletter some months ago! Not a big fan of porn, I always preferred the real stuff, but I wouldn't mind looking! Cheers Bro!
"I always preferred the real stuff"
There's a story here somewhere.
I feel like these guys are way underprepared for the work involved. I heard @broncnutz rant about their presale and I already felt like it was a shitshow, so I'm not getting my hopes up. Honestly I feel like whatever they're trying to accomplish could be accomplished by any one of the devs that has created a third party app for steemit already, unless steemit has rules against porn, but we have NSFW already...
I've heard there is already the spankchain coin in the works as well so there is immediate competition. THe steem blockchain is a strong place to build though, immediate access to a large population.
"the spankchain"
I'd feel pretty good if my only competition in any industry was titled this.
I didn't know that much about Vice untill now, but I strongly dissagree with its concept and I think it is total BS and has no foundation...
Steem is encouraging people to interract, add value to the community and found relationships. Vice is doing what? Giving more stimulis to the addiction already created by the porn industry? We all know porn addictions lead to a vicious cycle and drops down productivity by a lot.
I don't believe in VICE concept at all and I strongly think it won't last that much, considering how porn industry actually works.
I hear you. I had to specifically avoid even touching on the cultural issues when addressing the whitepaper, as they seemed to be both potentially overshadowing and difficult to report on in an objective matter.
Thanks for posting your viewpoint.
2021, what the flip 🤣
My guess is they are simply leaving themselves a lot of latitude to work with, just in case.
Hello all @dporn here. I believe their airdrop doesn't happen till 2021?
edit: I see it now highlighted.
They are retaining discretion on that variable.
Informative post...
Nice post
Good content
Keep it up
Nice post
Please vote me,
This post has received gratitude of 11.04 % from @appreciator thanks to: @lexiconical.
Wow that looks just awful lol that would be like investment 101 way to high risk for my money
Thanks for information, good job brother@lexiconical
Wow... that's weird haha :D
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buena post
Is it true, we can get money for only watching porn movies?
It's gonna be three years before we get our airdrop?
I have subscribed to this project
RULE #1 of the internet. Never pay for porn.
People using online sex services want anonymity.
No pun intended, but block chain technology will turn them right off!
( I have been in adult industry 15 years or so. I don't see it working...)
Nice.
@lexiconical, Want to ask for his advice, let his steemit account grow like you.
"over-consuming" does sounds like a judgement.
That does seem like a mistake.
Good, if brief, summary.
good info sharing @lexiconical
Thanks for the share and insight. Going to read the Whitepaper.
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