Project Information
- Company name: Memewars, inc is the official corporation name but we will be going through the process to change the company name to Memehub and structure to LLC at some point in the near future
- Place of Incorporation: Blacksburg, Va
- Token name (if applicable): We are building and evolving the prototype of a token with the steem community.
- Token Type (ERC20, Steem-Engine, etc.): This decision will be made when the time comes to hardcode the prototype.
Market
We are solving the problem of Steem lacking appeal to memers with regards to meme-ing on steem. Which due to the power and ubiquity of memes in modern internet culture, this is a huge ordeal to us and for the platform in competing with larger centralized social media platforms. Millions and millions of avg internet users will conglomerate in places for memes such as r/dankmemes on reddit, as one single example amongst tens of thousands of other places and platforms.
We look to establish the natural environment of memers on our platform then through meritocracy distribute upvotes and other rewards to these memers on Steem. There are far too many nuances, too much concept interconnectivity, and too much needed understanding of internet meme culture for us to lay out our system design, why we chose it, and all the awesome memeatic details in 300 words. I request that those who are evaluating this application watch our interview on 3speak and watch our upcoming videos where I discuss the system design, now and projected into the future. We also encourage questions so that we can clarify anything to the community and Steemit, INC.
One major problem we help mitigate for the platform is Onboarding. Our site is accessible to the avg internet user; to claim their earned value for the merit of dank memeing, they will need to have a steem acct; after earning a certain amount of points (LULz) on our platform (and statistical analysis to determine the probability of whether they are a bad actor), Memehub will offer instant acct creation.
People consume memes all the time on other platforms and do not receive anything for their added value to the meme community on that platform. Let's give these memers a meritocracy where they earn steem instead of fb likes or reddit karma!
Core Team Details
The Memehub team is a one man army as of current.
My name is Jeremy Meek. I founded, funded, and oversee Memehub.
The Founding: I have a long history of as memer. I started when a classmate showed me the website quickmeme in 2008 when socially awkward penguin was a dominant template, and before memes exploded into the general sphere of the internet.
I mainly hail from reddit and 4chan meme communities. I have been in crypto since 2015 and remember Steemit's launch. Though at that time, Steem was more oriented towards long format text posts and there was no place for memes. Later, I heard about Dmania so I jumped on Steem ready to receive merit, backed by real value in the form of Steem, for my dank memes but as an avid memer was super disappointed in the platform. Then I heard about meme contests on steem and join in but this was beyond upsetting as an avid memer as they were not up to par for the level of meme-ing to which I was accustomed. Finally, I heard about memestagram on steem but this was the nail in the coffin. At this point I fully realized that Memehub was so sorely needed to revivify memes on Steem; to create an ecosystem tailored to the memer; where the true value of a meme can be determined by the community under the meme culture that it manifests.
The Funding: I had bought and mined crypto in the latter days of 2015-2016. I sold my crypto except one bitcoin to hire a development team to code the MVP for memehub and to power up steem for rewards. I plan to use my last bitcoin when the ratio of btc:steem bottoms out to create two more rewards accts to incorporate into our system. Therefore, I am all in on this project. It is in it's infancy but I will father it up to the point of becoming completely autonomous and decentralized.
More about Me: I grew up on a large beef farm in the middle of nowhere then went to Virginia Tech and recieved my first bachelors in mathematics. I am currently in school for a second, but for computer science this time. I started on the Web Dev track but recently switched to the Data Science track.
I do not have a linkedin acct yet as I have always been self-employed post graduation. I did teach math at Virginia Tech's Math Emporium for a year, but then started my own private tutoring practice, next moved into crypto and financial instrument trading, afterwards starting memehub and second bachelors.
I am not some large company made of a congolmerate of experts from various fields. I am just an avid memer that made enough money in crypto to enable his engineering mind to plant the seed of a great meme project for the Steem community. This project is the meme-fruit tree and I need the community's help in growing it into maturity to produce nutritious memes that keep everyone laughing.
Minimum Viable Product
The production of the MVP of Memehub can be witenessed at www.memehub.lol.
MVP V1: Steem only - I consider this to contain a crude point system on the platform with typical meme oriented social media aspects, in conjunction with automated steem rewards from the Memehub acct based on merit via community voting. App deployment, bugs worked out, and everything running live and stable.
We have not completed all these tasks but are in progress of doing so. The apps are in the process of deployment. Bugs are being worked on daily. I am manually giving out upvotes for meme-ing currently while the steem code is in development.
During this time we are only promoting our platform to Steemians.
MVP V2: General Crypto users - Here we refine the points system in many ways; example, to give more or less weight to particular interactions on Memehub. Add user moderation system to filter what publishes to the platform. Cash in my last bitcoin to create two new steem accts for rewards.
My current thought here are to have three reward accts with different functions. One for general rewards to exchange points on the platform for steem upvote, ie what is already in place for MVP V1. Another, more designed for contests; this is where top meme posters will auto recieve upvotes for placing in the top. Also, this is where rewards for receiving the "OC" tag (more on this "OC" tag concept and design in my upcoming videos). Mods will recieve rewards from this acct. Winners of various types and configurations of meme and memehub related contests (like our current emojicon contest) will recieve their rewards from this acct. The last one will be a curation acct, where memehub users that also post (not just curate/comment) to Steem can apply to be on the fanbase as to curate the Memehub community and new Steemians produced through it.
At some point during V2, we will begin promoting to the general populus of crypto users.
Meme-agedon: Once everything is polished. We will launch a promotion operation aimed at all major social media platforms to take their memers, then use Memehub convert them to steemians as to reward them for their meme-ing merit and open them up to the entire steem ecosystem.
Business Strategy
Fiat Revenue Strategy: Since our userbase is not constrained to Steemians only, along with the popularity of memes, an ad-based revenue stream becomes not only more feasible but actually profitable; while not imposing the expensive of taking a percentage of rewards from users, as so many other platforms currently do.
We have other thoughts on how to monetize in the future as the platform grows. Given the rising usage of meme marketing, we can implement an ad system where memehub will sell impressions for a meme that promotes the marketing desire of a company or brand. We will also sell ad space or make other kinds of deals with other steem projects to bring the new steemians we produce to their projects on steem (assuming we approve of the project). We will of course accept steem as payment for any services.
Meme merchandise. The problem I saw in doing research on this is that when a new meme tread emerges that the trend is dead by the time merchandise for it specifically can be brought to market. This is also a result of the expansion and rise in velocity of meme propagation and creation. We plan to solve this problem via collages. Example, a t-shirt with a collage of all the major meme trends of a particular time frame. More on this once the userbase is sufficient.
Fiat Revenue Projections in $/user every month: TBD
How will this increase the amount of STEEM being powered up?
This provides a good source of new steemians for other projects. Also, it provides additional appeal of steem for new projects as via being source for onboarding. Thus increasing the over all demand for steem.
What financial incentives are you willing to provide to Steemit, Inc.?
I believe this is a question to be worked out throughout Memehubs development.
How will you become financially sustainable once the delegation is removed?
We have thought about becoming a witeness once our userbase has grown, etc. We would put all the block rewards for that into SP for the Memehub rewards accts.
All post payouts to the Memehub reward acct will go to more SP for rewards, etc.
Any Fiat profits not needed for development with be used to acquire more SP for rewards.
KPI Progress Measurement
KPI1 Description: Typical metrics used on ad based social media platforms.
KPI1 Target:
MVP V1: 100-1000 Steemian users.
MVP V2: 1000-10,000 Steemian and Crypto Users.
MVP V3: 10k+ general users.
The Future: Millions of users!
Note: I need data on our system in action and then I will use statistics to build models for making targets with all these measures.
KPI2 Description: Steemian Conversion Rate. How many of our users that started off without a steem acct ended up getting one via Memehub or other ways and connecting it to Memehub.
KPI2 Target: If I had to set a target without data then a 10% conversion rate would be pleasing based on ctr for ads. Meme ads tend to produce around a 10%+ ctr when done properly on facebook in my experience. Though avg internet users will want a steem acct to get the rewards of their meme-ing merit, so there is a strong incentive structure to becoming a steemian.
KPI3 Description: Steem Community Health, Happiness, and Support. Is Memehub boosting the health of the steem blockchain as the design is intended? How happy is the Steem community with the Memehub? Are Steemians supporting our project?
KPI3 Target: All this can be gauged by Steemian's engagements with memehub steem posts, measured pre-memehub Steem acct usage of the platform percentage, and other various methods to quantify measures related to this target.
Token Offering
None of these questions apply currently. Our points system is a token/cryptocurrency prototype in production and evolution. I do not want to assume I know how it should be hardcoded as a token/crypto a priori.
Once the points system and websitesite/app everything is mature, then we will make the push to decentralization, hardcoding the prototype into a token/cryptocurrency, and full autonomy of the Memehub system. This allows this stage of production/deployment to already have a solid userbase, plently of data on the system, and a stable, working, satisfying prototype of the token/crypto. This should avert a ton of the unforeseen complications when hardcoding a token/crypto before seeing it in the wild. It is not easy to change a system post crypto hardcoding it. All these points I just made should boost the evaluation of a token/crypto by Memehub when that time comes.
Delegation Request
We agree that our business will continue to leverage the Steem blockchain as long as we are receiving a delegation and 1 year following the removal of the delegation. During this time we also agree to promote the Steem blockchain as a valuable technological protocol that delivers unique value. We are willing to sign a legally binding contract with Steemit, Inc. to this effect.