In this post, I want to think a little bit ahead of time what @SteemMakers could do with the addition of SMT's to the Steem blockchain. SteemMakers is a community that wants to reward DIY and Maker related content and help those Authors.
As the development of SMT's isn't finished, we only have the whitepaper to base our knowledge on, but this post should provide a vision for SteemMakers. It might also be interesting for other special interest communities on the Steem blockchain and those that want to understand what SMT's might add to the ecosystem of Steem.
I want to split the post into three parts:
- The limits of Steem and why it isn't perfect for SteemMaker content.
- What directions SteemMaker should go with the addition of Smart Media Token.
- How could these targets be achieved with the SteemMakerCoin?
The limits of Steem and why it isn't perfect for SteemMaker.
Steem blockchain has for good reasons limited the payout to a seven days period. But this limitation favors "Fastfood" content. You will be more successful with content that is created fast and loses its value after a few days instead of working hard on something that is valuable for a long period.
The type of content that SteemMakers wants to curate instead requires serious time outside of the Internet. A Maker spends a lot of time with trial and error until he finds a good solution to a problem. Writing about it later in a post is most of the time the smaller part. On the other side, a blog post solving a problem can teach a reader a valuable long-term lesson in contrast to the usual lifecycle of news type content. Tutorials, Guides, etc. that help others to master a topic can be valuable months after they have been written. They often require also more time to get discovered because they focus on a smaller audience in their respective field of expertise.
The primary objective for an SMT for SteemMakers should be to incentivize longer valuable content instead of shorter news type content.
What directions SteemMaker should go with the addition of Smart Media Token.
Besides the primary objective of rewarding specific maker related content better then Steem, there are other targets that could be accomplished with it.
User Growth
User growth is essential for every community and probably will come with an excellent economic design of the token automatically. But I think it is vital that it should focus on organic and healthy growth, not the get rich quick style of growth. It's crucial to have the possibility for the community to learn what's best for the community slowly and steadily.
Community Interactions
Right now, one of the things Steem seems to lack is to incentivize interactions that go beyond voting. Lengthy discussions threads and exchange of knowledge should be incentivized by this token to improve the community experience and to not end up as a group of people that only want to milk the rewards.
Community Funding
In every community, there are costs involved. And the target of the token design should be that the community is self-sustainable and cover automatically for things like the web hosting. Here it is crucial to think about how it does scale automatically with the size of the community.
Community Governance
I would prefer to utilize the token also to organize some governance structures around SteemMakers. Building a decentralized, self-governed, non-profit community should be the aim here. As much as I like supporting the SteemMakers Community right now, I would prefer to find a setup where the community does not depend too much on a handful of active contributors. Like a child; it will depend on parents to learn to walk at the beginning, but later on, it can discover and develop in the world on its own going behind the imagination of its parents.
Its not about ICOs and Crypto but monetization for Makers
I would not go for a fundraising approach. First of all, in its current stage to be attractive for a serious investor, SteemMakers would need to professionalize a lot more and develope into a profit-oriented organization instead of a volunteer-based non-profit community.
Many of the current contributors are in here first and for most to have fun and help other makers to get recognized. I'm not here to find a new job. I might be wrong, but I had the feeling this applies to most other members as well.
Last but not least there are also a lot of legal issues involved with an ICO. Avoiding this topic altogether would perfectly fit with the current state of the community.
I would not aim for the next prominent cryptocurrency. The SteemMakerCoins primary purpose should be to help Makers to monetize their hard work and to increase knowledge exchange and innovation in the different areas. Instead of Bitcoin and Ether, it should not aim to replace any existing currency.
Attract maker related business as sponsors
The business around DIY and Makers is immense. Many companies sell products to this target group, and they would be happy to find ways to market their products when we could build up a critical mass. This actually could be the main value SteemMakers brings to attract outside money to flow into the token economy.
E.g., SteemMaker could auction sponsoring places on the website and sponsors have to pay with the SteemMakerCoin. Another reason would be to have similar functions like Steem with delegation etc. that help stakeholder to decide where new coins get distributed too.
For the community to be thriving, it has to take care to become an attractive environment for this sponsoring and advertising money. This can be accomplished by moderating what type of content gets accepted.
How could these targets be achieved with the SteemMakerCoin?
That's the tricky part. To get closer to an answer, I started with the question what could be done differently to Steem to accomplish the different SteemMaker targets.
Incentivize longer valuable content
Steem has no technical limit on the number of posts that could get rewarded. The blockchain uses bandwidth to put in place some limitations, but with a higher stake, you can get around it quickly.
Having more strict bandwidth limitations that only allow on average x post per y days and that can be saved per account up to a limit of z would help here. Example: one post per seven days that stacks up to a maximum of four posts within a month if you don't use them.
My theory is that an author would think more about what kind of content attracts more votes with the limited capacity he is given and therefore, provides higher value posts compared to lower value posts.
In exchange for limiting the use of the bandwidth, you could raise the timeframe where the author can collect votes. Instead of limiting it to seven days, it might be possible to have a timeframe of 6 to 12 months where you could still earn from votes you get.
Having a longer passive income from your posts would again encourage the author to get more high-value content that provides value for a more extended period.
Challenge would be to find the right values here that allow long-term success and stability for the community.
What could be serious negative effects for limiting the user bandwidth?
Wouldn't it be too easy to get around the bandwidth limitation by creating multiple accounts?
Any other ideas how to incentivize high-value content?
Integration with Steem
Although Steem is not the perfect coin for maker content, it can act as a support for starting the SteemMakerCoin. And it does still help with monetizing the content. As described in the Whitepaper, I would utilize the Multi Token Support that is planned, so curators and authors can profit from two parallel sources of income.
While the SteemMakerCoin will start in its infancy, Steem acts as its older brother that gives him the freedom to develop on its own. Even if the SteemMakerCoin would fail to take off, everyone would still have the profits from the Steem Coin. Having your eggs in more than one basket is some insurance for all participants.
It would also allow a reader who is not owning SteemMakerCoins to reward the posts still if he has some SteemPower.
Community Governance with the SteemMakerCoin
Right now, the SteemMakers community is small. Considering that the community requires a governance model is probably more than one step ahead of the time.
But when you think about the token, it can't be avoided altogether. Whereas Steem is an additional income, the maker token should govern the community with a similar proof of stake model as Steem does.
Like on the Steem blockchain it should give every stakeholder the possibility to get involved with the decision about mid and long-term targets. If needed, I could also imagine some governance model that involves witnesses like in Steem to take care for day to day tasks on the SteemMakers community at a later stage.
The additional income from Steem for community services like curation and a % from the regularly created SteemMakerCoin should go into the governance infrastructure for the maker coin.
I would also go one step further then the Steem blockchain goes. I think we should have a governance model that is a little bit like in dash and other cryptos where you can present proposals to improve the community and request a budget and all stakeholders can vote for them and assign the budget when it is accepted.
Managing Distributed Autonomous Organisations (DAO) or in our case, a Distributed Autonomous Community (DAC), will be a somewhat new field and finding efficient ways that can compete with centralized power remains a challenge.
The governance model should also cover the topic of moderation. SteemMakers should carefully define the moderation model that rewards moderators and ensures the quality of the content. Not all posts have and should be accepted on the platform, and therefore a governance model for the moderation can be useful at some point in time.
Economic model
The economic model is quite similar to Steem, but it has to work on a much smaller scale.
- New tokens get generated automatically and assigned based on stake weighted voting.
- Rewards should be split between curators and authors.
- Inflation should be reduced over time to increase scarcity and therefore increase value.
To work on a smaller scale, the SteemMakers community needs to provide a high-value environment for maker-related businesses to advertise on the platform or sponsor particular makers.
Advertising could be a community income that is auctioned in the form of SteemMakerCoins that get burned when the advertisement is delivered and increases demand for such coins in the interested industries.
Personal Sponsorships could work as an additional income for a particular Maker, that can also auction his sponsorship for a specific amount of maker coins to interested businesses. In this case, most of it should go to the particular maker, but a small % could get burned to reduce the available amount of tokens slowly.
There could also be several community services (e.g., post promotion like on Steem) aimed at makers that would require maker coin payments and after delivery, these coins get burned as well.
After all, this model is similar to that of Steem in many ways.
- It produces and correspondingly assigns new coins.
- It creates a stake based governance model that makes it attractive for community members to hold the token.
- It provides a quality environment for advertising and sponsorships to counter the inflation.
If the value of the money-sink and the money-locks are more significant then the inflation created by the production of new coins, we will increase the value of the coin. If it stays stable, the exchange rate will be stable. Of course, if the community fails to deliver the value, the exchange rate of the coin will go down.
Summary
I did write this post for two reasons.
- I wanted to sort my thoughts, writing them down is a good way of getting a structure into them.
- I also hope to ignite a discussion in the SteemMakers community if this is a vision we should aim for.
I know that many are doubtful about SMT's and their usefulness. After all, who the fuck needs thousands of cryptocurrencies in his life? I don't! But I can see the use of SMT's as utility tokens that provide value to special interest groups. Instead of selling your advertisement space for fiat money you use this to increase the value of your utility token, that in exchange rewards the community members that provided the content and environment for this businesses because they can sell the token to them.
It will not be the next Bitcoin with a growth of 1000% in a few months.
If correctly balanced it can be a healthy economic cycle for a utility token.
The post got longer then I expected, I hope you find the time to read it and give me feedback.
I could not provide a solution on how to incentivize communication and exchange of knowledge yet. Maybe you have an idea?
Kind regards
Dr. Make
P.S. The Whitepaper contains a long chapter of an automated market maker. It didn't grasp this concept. I would appreciate if someone can describe this in simple terms or point me to a resource that can.