Allow me to start with one question...
Who is supposed to foot the bill?
This is precisely where we must come to an agreement as custodians of this blockchain, because as we have it today we've been too comfortable with steemit inc being the one to not only fix the problems, improve the blockchain, etc but also bear all the costs for doing so. The current business model seems to be, build something, get the delegation and win, but is that sustainable?
Now, I know some people would bring out the fact that they control a lot of stake, and thus owe us as much, and that this is just the way things are done in the name of pragmatism, but I think it's crucial for the sustainable growth we all want to see, to not rely , at least not exclusively, with steemit incs contribution for all dapps and onboarding. I don't think my words should be taken as aggressive or even negative, quite the opposite, I'm simply stating that just like in the world of free markets, having a competition of ideas and solutions to our scalability problems and business models, would certainly result in something positive for the health of the ecosystem, even it the discussions can be passionate at times, as I'm sure they will continue to be.
The second fact we have to face is that we are not likely to get heavy investments coming from the outside just yet, at least with the current state of things. Why? Simply because the speculative, volatile market is still too risky for any type of mainstream adoption, and the blockchains themselves are not quite ready. All this to say that to expect a Dapp, a project that sometimes is comprised with wealthy brains and rich ideas but not much more, to bring millions of dollars in investments, as to foot the bill that scaling to mainstream would surely tally, is not very realistic to say the least. In the world of traditional financial system this of course is never the case, due to the magical ability for banks to print money from thin air allowing startups to consume the value that they still are yet to produce.
So what can we do? is there anything there a reasonable workaround to this resource scarcity conundrum? I submit to you that yes there is, and some of the ideas that people have shared on #steemfest, somewhat inspired me to think of the one I intend to share today. Now, I'm sure others have thought of something similar, or even a more polished version of what I'm trying to present on this post, but here is my best attempt at the concept of user incubation.
User Incubators (Buffered Onboarding) - Premium Memberships and Freemium models
The appics team expressed not only their concerns for the ability of the steem blockchain to onboard the number of users they are projecting to bring, but also the costs of doing so. In other words, the steem power that they have, which is certainly a lot more than the average user on this blockchain is not nearly enough to create the accounts they project to be able to onboard with one of their campaigns.
I think it's important that we don't default into thinking that the solution is for them to buy more STEEM, or to just figure it out themselves, not only because that approach is somewhat hostile to investment, but also because this problem is a problem that they share with many other dapps currently being built on the steem blockchain. In other words, if the @appics team finds a solution, we all do.
The off chain buffer solution
I must admit I'm a bit biased against this particular approach, because it would kind of defeat the purpose of decentralization and provide little to no philosophical converts if I'm to be honest. Something I find necessary for the cryptocurrency movement to thrive, in my opinion of course.
If a Dapp was to have a centralized database for the free accounts where they would be posting, commenting, etc, while at the same time not being able to interact with the steem blockchain until they graduate so to speak, their onboardees are likely to give up really easily. They would be walled from interacting with established steemians and thus unlikely to cement themselves in the community. This second element of the steemian experience is probably what has kept most of us here, because it's certainly not the money we've been making.
This however, at least in theory, gives the dapp a queue for onboarding that could prioritize accounts that either have more positive activity or have met some requirements that are necessary to the dapps business model; the collection of phone numbers, emails, or what have you. My opinions on the privacy aspect of this aside, I think the positive aspects are clear enough, new users would be "onboarded" in minutes, not days, at least as far as they are concerned.
This system however would not necessarily generate any more resources for the dapp, regardless of UX/UI, marketing prowess, etc, the dapps team may have. So as much as it could allow some scaling, it might be more accurate to call this approach simulated scaling.
One thing could be added to the proposed solution, and it would be the ability for users who are in this initial onboarding stage to buy their premium account, and this detail could be a game changer for the particular dapp attempting to scale this way, providing revenue for it. That being said, the user experience has to be positive as humanly possible, as to evoke such decisions from it's users. Gamification comes to mind, but the implementation of course is another lengthy subject to discuss, and very case by case basis. (think of @steemmonsters and @appics for contrast)
The on chain buffer solution (resource generating)
To be completely honest, this second solution is mostly on chain, but it does require some minimal off chain information for it to fully work, at least as I'm imagining it at the moment. As always, I'm open to ideas on how we could implement this fully on chain, and I would invite anyone to discuss this in the comments.
Building upon the idea of incubating users, a possible solution would be to design an extra layer for onboarding that would be write on the blockchain under one or more incubator accounts, that in turn could service thousands of users(this is per account). The capacity for user interactions, quantity of comments, replies and posts, would be determined by the incubator's resources along with parameters set on the front end, and it's possible that different dapps would find themselves tweaking everything in a completely different way.
The process could work something like this:
- New user registers his/hers free account on the dapp's website (this should be super quick)
Selects a temporary user name, as only premium paid accounts can secure a username on the STEEM blockchain, sets a picture and other basic info the incubator might choose to ask for. Its important to point out that the hosting of this information would be on the dapp's server, hence the caveat I previously made. This step is also an opportunity to fine tune mechanisms to prevent abuse and spam. (Captcha comes to mind, but there are more options out there)
Please note that under this model, the dapp setting up the incubator would be technically in complete control of their incubating users. So both curators and admin/cleaners would probably be needed for this to coexist with the main steem ocean peacefully. All these parameters and requirements would probably be very different from dapp to dapp, and a successful system would benefit from not using a voluntary curation initiative, voluntary policing or anything alike, but creating and compensating teams to play these important roles. After all, the resources generated would come from a well oiled system, and not an open door for spam.
Incubating accounts would practically be able to transact within minutes of being created. However, to incentivize investment both of time and money, all incubating accounts would have no monetary functions. This is already an incentive for people to buy steem and create a premium account, but it also allows for an opportunity for new users with no FIAT investment to build up a healthy account through sweat equity.
I grant you my opinion on this is somewhat subjective, but if the process of graduating to a full account requires effort and it's built upon positive engagement with the community, while at the same time not too limiting as it is right now, then the user is more likely to stick around as he or she builds the account towards the point of graduation. It's as if we are building a game for the new users to partake of.
Now, in order for this to make sense curation is key, as I've mentioned before. So that the incubator account can generate the funds to create an premium account on the blockchain.
The very known 80/20 rule comes to mind here. As we have seen from the almost three years of the existence of this blockchain, user retention does not deviate from the norm, but by buffering and somewhat weeding out those who are likely to quit anyways, we are also making sure resources are not spent on users that fall into the 80 percent of the known principle.
The challenge then becomes how to keep track of the curation earned, and this element also has to be carefully thought of. A couple of solutions come to mind, but the one that seems to lack any logical holes, at least at the moment of me writing this, is to tether/tokenize the earnings in a similar that @steemmonsters keeps track of the cards different players own. This would mean that the tethered STEEM would exist as a custom json and it would actually have claim to a value(actual tokens) stored in the wallet of the incubating accounts.
A dapp could also opt for setting up a small revenue to be made from the sweat equity being put into the incubating accounts, but this of course would be completely up to the dapps business plan.
As you can imagine thresholds can be set as to even remove the need for delegations all together. In this way once an account exits the incubation system and "graduates" into a premium account, it could hold 10,15 SP on the wallet or something of the sort.
A quick digression before touching other points. One of the things we also must discuss is the actual costs of the operations on the blockchain. Of course I understand the need to curve spam, but it seems to me that a 15 SP account, should be able to interact at least double of what they are permitted at the moment. (obviously I'm open for discussions on this)
Other considerations
The incubating accounts would be displayed different on the commonly used front end interfaces, but it would take some education to explain it to all current /active steemians and nothing more.
The dapps however could code their front end as to not display any differences. I'm pretty confident that creating incentives to make users buy premium accounts are important, but the creation of something comparable to second class citizens is not the goal either.
I believe one of the crucial elements of the incubation period is to build into it an educational experience. This is to say, that people who graduate from this stage via sweat equity, would in theory at least have a basic understanding of security, the economy and desired social behaviors that the community is expecting.
Of course it's impossible for me or anyone for that matter to produce percentages for user retention with a system such as this, but I submit to you that in the very least there is little chance for this to affect it negatively. Again, a great user experience and interface plays an important role here, and even if we were to consider still a high number of users never exiting the incubation period, their abandonment of their crypto pursuit would not result in the misallocation of resources on to a dead account that is unlikely to ever come back. Still however, in the scenario that an account was to quit prior to earning their premium status, no resource would have been loss, and this seems like a win any way I splice it.
Conclusion
What this idea could potentially solve can be broken down to the following points: user retention, misallocation of resources, spam/scam control and our limited access to new investments.
Just because It's very important that we move away from the idea that dapps will get by default Steemit Inc's support, the necessity for a mechanism that will allow any future development to onboard users is probably number one in our list of priorities. In my opinion of course, if we all wait for SMTs to be the magical bullet to solve everything, we are literally postponing the inevitable bottleneck problem we urgently need to solve today.
I would like to thank @nathanmars for hosting this conversation, and for everyone who contributed with ideas that day. Hopefully this post has not been painfully long, and hopefully it sparks the community's imagination.
Since I wrote this on my flight back, and I'm still exhausted, please forgive this mortal if there are any mistakes. I'm sure I will find some and correct them before payout.
Much love to you all.
