What happened to escrow transactions?
https://steemit.com/sip/@dan/escrow-sip-steem-improvement-proposal
Steem escrow transactions would facilitate:
- crypto-fiat exchange similar to that of localbitcoins.com
- trade of real world goods and services similar to that of OpenBazaar
- lending with Steem as collateral that could be powered up and delegated back to the borrower
SBD would provide a lot of convenience for pricing.
The exchange, trade and lending would all happen using only fiat and the Steem blockchain and thus bypass Bitcoin as a gateway cryptocurrency.
This should increase the number of active Steem users, which in turn should increase the value and price of Steem.
I may be wrong but if the Steem blockchain supports escrow transactions, why not add the feature to User Interfaces such as Steemit.com and see what happens.
This, in my opinion is where developers should focus all their effort now.
Don't get distracted by the rewards, they are just a trojan horse. The real goal is to bootstrap a currency and a new economy around it.
Yes, YES!
I want an easy-to-use Steem shopping cart plugin to add to my website! ;)
Thanks in advance to the clever developer who comes up with that baby!
😄😇😄
Thats what I want too!
You probably right, so where are the tools for the new economy? Wouldnt drive the bootstrappong of Steem with marketplaces enabled using Steem as a primary coin? Wouldnt bootstrapping not be supported when getting the existing businesses to use Steemit/Steem as another promotional channel? But, commercial businesses have requirements, and they need to be fulfilled before they even consider to extend their communication and marketing channels with Steem/Steemit. I do not see anything that drives this! Nothing at all! While I know business segments that can be very interested in coming to Steemit, I also know that features at the backend are required on which I do not have any control over, so I (and others) can not start investing in the frontend features required to onboard these commercial businesses. The risks are simply to high! While when creating and executing a plan to onboard commercial businesses in a solid way, with co-operation of the various parties that needs to be involved, can drive the acceptance of Steem as a coin tremendously! As mentioned in another comment to this post: I do see a tremendous lack of (commercial) product management, a tremendous lack of winning propositions, and a tremendous lack of getting much more out of what is already being build.
Steemporium . It's a start.
Its so easy for people to be not just distracted but consumed by the payouts.....
Steemit has so much potential. Lets get it together community!
I started to reply, then the reply got to be too long, then it turned into a proposal, and then I forgot about it. If you are interested, here it is:
https://steemit.com/steem/@mkdouglas/proposal-how-steem-escrow-transactions-would-facilitate-trade-currency-exchange-and-lending-using-only-fiat-currencies-and-the-steem-blockchain-so-as-to-bypass-bitcoin-as-a-gateway-cryptocurrency-increase-the-number-of-active-steem-users-and-increase-the-
The escrow feature is supported on the blockchain and works fine as far as I know (though no primary UI support; I believe there was a third party app announced once that did support it). It probably should have been added to the white paper if it is missing.
Driving features that are available in the backend, shall be done be introducing and launching relevant services. When STINC is trying to bootstrap a coin, and STINC owns the UI to the Steem blockchain used by 90%+ of the Steemians, it shall be STINC who shall lead to way to launch marketplace + inbuild escrow. That will drive the usage of it, and that will drive others to invest time and money in creating such services using the Steem blockchain. I really do not understand the way STINC is trying to bootstrap Steem. They invented the idea of a social network, but dont execute on it in ways they should do; Making Steem yet another of those 100s and soon 1.000s of crypto coins in the market; That is hell of competition! Personally I see a tremendous lack of (commercial) product management, a real lack of good propositions, a lack of building the wide bridges between the existing commercial worlds (businesses) and the cryptoworld (Steem in our case). Where is the money? At brands and businesses! How can they be moved into cryptospace? Make the inclusion of cyptospace and coins seamless to their current operations and technical implementation. What is required for that? Solid and well thought through features, interfaces, adapters very likely different form vertical to vertical AND active marketing and sales approach to those commercial business.
yeah, it works... https://steemit.com/@sigmajin/transfers i tried it out two months back, and even got it working with steem-js.
this is the gui... https://steemit.com/escrow/@xtar/update-on-escrow-gui-service-bulletin-board it was actually developed for golos i think, and just happens to work with steem.
In your opinion, why do you think there is no escrow UI implementation or support by Steemit, Busy.org, ChainBB, eSteem etc.?
Escrow could easily add use cases for the Steem blockchain:
https://steemit.com/steem/@mkdouglas/proposal-how-steem-escrow-transactions-would-facilitate-trade-currency-exchange-and-lending-using-only-fiat-currencies-and-the-steem-blockchain-so-as-to-bypass-bitcoin-as-a-gateway-cryptocurrency-increase-the-number-of-active-steem-users-and-increase-the-
I don't have a good answer. I guess lack of critical mass in terms of community size and some subset of that community being focused on building commerce apps.
Simple reason: opportunity cost.
From an economic standpoint, this can be simply summarized as “opportunity cost”, i.e. we do not pick the fruit from the top of the tree first. Everyone has an economic incentive to pick the lowest hanging fruit.
@smooth, just stating the obvious which you already know … my guess is everyone is too busy making money in other ways that have higher economies-of-scale or are easier. The “problem” for those in the crypto industry is they are making too much money without needing to produce the best software. Many of those who invested in crypto early such as yourself, no longer need to work as programmers. For most that happened by mid-2017, yet I remember even in 2015 your opportunity cost was already very high. Those who continue to do so must have some other form of motivation.
Luckily I was too ill (thus depleted of capital) to make a lot of money investing in the first wave of crypto, so I am still hungry. Plus I have multiple “other forms of motivation” as well. Gut tuberculosis was the best thing that has ever happened in my life!
Good answer
Thank you for this very well-stated and reasoned observation. Getting bitcoin out of the loop is critical to growth!
The @steemshop people should be all over this!
Right On, and Steem on, friend!
With Bitcoin out of the loop, Smart Media Tokens would be easier to access from fiat currencies.
I expanded on the use cases for escrow UI that I had earlier mentioned:
https://steemit.com/steem/@mkdouglas/proposal-how-steem-escrow-transactions-would-facilitate-trade-currency-exchange-and-lending-using-only-fiat-currencies-and-the-steem-blockchain-so-as-to-bypass-bitcoin-as-a-gateway-cryptocurrency-increase-the-number-of-active-steem-users-and-increase-the-
Hello again, @mkdouglas,
Thanks for letting me know about your recent article. I don't have time to read and think about it carefully at this moment, as I'm preparing for the San Diego Maker Faire...
Nevertheless, as this is such an important issue I have given you a 100% up vote and have Re-Steemed the article so that it will hopefully gain a wider audience.
I'll get back to you later after I've had a chance to read and think about it.
Thanks for offering to resteem. I am open to suggestions and criticism.
I also made sure to follow you.
Hello, friend,
I would have replied sooner but I've been "flat out" and not available here.
First, I actually did hit the Re-Steem button before leaving you that message, and thought that the Re-Steem had already occurred... I apologize that it did not. I don't know what happened? In any case, I have now Re-Steemed and verified that the article was Re-Steemed to my blog. I don't know what happened, but Steemit occasionally "hiccups" like that.
Still don't have time to read it, but maybe Monday?
Kind regards,
- @creatr