We've all heard of smart-contracts. A smart-contract acts as a trusted middleman. It will force the deal or cancel it altogether. Smart-contracts are one of the best things about cryptocurrency right now. Smart-contracts in turn create smart money; money that does exactly what we want it to do in exactly the right situation. The level of trust we can put into a smart-contract is much higher than we can afford to risk on anything else. It's much easier to trust open source code than it is to trust random people on the Internet.
But what about dumb-contracts? A dumb-contract is simply the honor system. One person says they will do something, and another trusts that they will do the thing. It's not exactly ideal, but sometimes it's just simpler to do it this way. If the stakes are low then there isn't much to lose.
Proof-Of-Brain is the ultimate example of a dumb-contract. It operates on the honor system. There is no algorithm that can determine content value because content value is subjective and different for everyone. This subjectivity and accompanied greed creates a lot of problems for our little blockchain, but I believe we are at the forefront of great things.
When I first came to Steem I was amazed that we now live in a time where anyone can put information on a blockchain for free. Not only do we have access to a secure monetary system controlled by no single organization, but we can also run programs directly off of the blockchain. The more I learn about JavaScript and the Steem API the more amazed I become.
Did you know that every post (Discussion) on Steem has an attribute called 'json_metadata'? Any programmer can put JavaScript objects here. A JavaScript object can hold other JavaScript objects. It can also hold numbers, strings, and lists (arrays). We could be nesting entire programs directly onto the blockchain. Text is cheap.
Steem Can Evolve.
We can become the, "Honor System Blockchain." Proof-Of-Brain already depends on it, therefore we can create many other dapps that depend on honor as well. More importantly, we can begin to incentivize honor so that Steemians have more of a reason to play nice and upvote the best content.
Dumb-contracts are much simpler than smart contracts. It can take a year or two before a Podunk ERC-20 token is even operational, let alone any good. Steem can be the prototyping blockchain, where dumb-contract scripts are created first to see if a project has merit. If it does, THEN you can spend the time to make it smart (if possible).
What this platform needs most, more than anything else in the world (including SMTs) is an honor-based reputation system. We need our dapps to connect to this system so we, as a community, can determine who is honorable and who is a leech. I am working on this project right now. It's what I think about as I toil away at my pointless job that should already be automated by robots.
With a solid reputation system, everything on this platform will change. Whales will want high reputation and they will have to give upvotes to quality content in order to get it. We can blacklist all the bots and upvote-buyers in a decentralized manner. We can create our own trending tabs based on the decentralized subjective reputation systems that we create. I am working on this as well. This is the Wild-West. Anyone is allowed to do whatever they want, but from this chaos always comes order. We just aren't there quite yet.