Congrats for this post, some of the books you mentioned are also very close to me.
I may be late the the party, but I still want to ask you something; why do you think the DAO (or ethereum?) collapsed? Because the hard fork after the hack? Or are there any other reasons? I'm really interested to hear the thoughts to someone that was so close to the platform, as I still consider ethereum as a go-to platform for a community based software.
For what it matters, I see a lot of concepts form the DAO integrated into Steem (the SBD is not really a currency, but a smart contract, just like the ones you can code in Solidity).
I don't even have a week here in the platform, but I already started a 30 days writing challenge. That's my why to test things out. I want to create enough data so that I can correctly extract meaning from it.
At the moment, Steemit seems a bit fragmented and there might be a lack of vision (or there might be a vision, but it doesn't get through). Also, the Steem price got almost at the level it was before the July explosion. Any price movement will be a good indicator of the direction of the platform (up = trust from investor, down = half-scam, speculation for early adopters who cashed in and ran).
Thank you - which are the books, by the way?
The DAO was a project led by another eth community, built on the Ethereum network. It collapsed because of a hack (or more like exploit) that drained the crowdsourced ether-based funds into a specific account, and the hardfork had to be done to save a large sum of ethers, about 115 mil USD in the ecosystem.
Personally, I think Ethereum is still on its way to being a world computer, as advertised. And many platforms / cryptos will be running on it. Steemit seems to be the more low-barrier kind of deal that the DAO was trying to be. The DAO had too much formalisation and in a way, kind of centralised with its protocols (good for accountability though).
I kinda like the barebones structure of Steemit, actually. Maybe the point is to really have a free-market, and decentralisation may also really mean a lack of vision. But I'm sure a few will converge in time :)
Here are some of my rather abstract articles about Ethereum and Steem / Steemit -
I've also attempted to bridge my music event company with Steem / Steemit, but on a more loose, less accountable basis as a "contractor" if compared to what the DAO previously set out to do -
Foundation Series and The Stranger (big fan of Albert Camus). A few other have been referenced in my network and are on my list (Taleb's, for instance). I will certainly look back over your articles, you made me curious.
One of the directions I want to entertain is to use the blockchain (ethereum was the big candidate, but steem is coming from behind by leaps and bounds) to model the micro-economical activities in an autonomous, but elastic, community. I co-founded and currently manage a hub (coworking and events venue) in Bucharest for more than 2 years and I know very well the processes and the needs of the members. There is a real economy going on in these communities but is loosely modeled (if modeled at all) and as a result nobody is benefiting from it. I did quite a lot of research and I even played with an instance of ethereum on a private blockchain. The smart contract creation is a bit difficult, though, at the moment. At least for me.
I was running a series of workshops before Steemit, and stalled the idea of a co-working, co-living blockchain enrichment hub like what you are currently running. I secured some funds but just put it on hold first as I'm currently quite involved with the activities in here.
One of the biggest problems while planning out the hub (I was imagining it to be a place where anyone can just hop in, stay for awhile, and work on any projects running in the facility.. and enjoy the place.. on an island) was to figure out a core product / service in which the facility could sustain itself, while renting out space for others. But i guess you'd have more understanding of the playing field since you've been running such a thing. Personally, I think there may be a use case for Steemit. What I'm researching atm is to use a combination of apps of the aggregator economy (airbnb, uber, etc) or the upcoming apps of sharing economy (arcade city, slock.it, etc) to reduce any costs of building something new. Like in the case of Regus International, they do build and rent out spaces for startups and the likes. Well, for me it's still up in the air with nothing concrete. One reason why choosing an island like Penang or Bali, is that the hub may also be a contractor that tries to blockchain the entire space. And the facilities (entertainment, transportation, internet, etc) built around these places are pretty decent too.
At first, I thought maybe www.colony.io may be necessary for cross-contribution checks.. but after experiencing Steemit, I thought maybe such a thing isn't so necessary. I like the low-barrier kind of deal going on here, and there's a self-policing thing going on here to keep reputations in check.
Yeah Ethereum is difficult (at least for me), failed my course with b9labs, and now resitting. It's still a bit of a hassle, but perhaps necessary. Btw, Steemit has plans to develop their own smart contracts as well. But certainly not Turing-complete, I think? Not much details atm though.
At the moment, the hub I'm running is almost cash-flow positive, but there's still a lot more to do. After being 15 years involved in digital businesses I needed the feeling of building something in the real world as well. In the last 2 years I gathered a tremendous amount of information about the processes. The business model, as I see it right now, is a hybrid between renting the space and the online layer on top of it (the space can hold events, those are filmed and then made available for the online community as well). It's basically extending the real life membership to the online layer. The first part of bootstrapping the whole thing is very difficult (the chicken and egg problem) because you have to produce a lot of evergreen content to be consumed on the online layer. And another interesting direction is franchising the whole thing. I'm still working at it.
Yup could do very well too if one has an established online layer, especially a digital platform where just about everything is measurable.. Will be looking forward to your findings if you're planning to publish them here :)