We all have been an integral part of Steem Blockchain. Trying to put our scarce time and attention to create wonderful and informative blogs. I have been active on steemit for like 44 days and could never think of leaving this platform. But there's one question which keeps on ringing in my ear and that is "Was Steem only created for Bloggers and content contributors ?"
Let's try to get into the whitepaper's Abstract once:
Steem is a blockchain database that supports community building and social interaction with cryptocurrency rewards. Steem combines concepts from social media with lessons learned from building cryptocurrencies and their communities. An important key to inspiring participation in any community, currency or free market economy is a fair accounting system that consistently reflects each person's contribution. Steem is the first cryptocurrency that attempts to accurately and transparently reward an unbounded number of individuals who make subjective contributions to its community.
Roadmap by DAN Larimer
Post reference here
The post talks about three phases-
Phase 1- Introduction of stable currency.
Having a pegged/stable currency opens a lot more opportunities for steem blockchain.
- It is rewarding content contributors.
- Rewards attract more people on the block-chain.
- Bootstrapping a crypto economics.
We have a user base of 0.7 million (0.25 million more than the population of Iceland) radically accepting SBD. So it opens a lot more opportunities than any other blockchain in the market.
Phase 2- Introduction of Marketplace
With more people and money comes the marketplaces. There are projects based on marketplaces like Steemgigs, thesteemitshop.com and steemgiftcards.com but it is still in a very nascent stage. Steem is all focused on rewarding for content. In future, we may see people willing to accept Steem Dollars as payment for services and trades.
We are talking about decentralized marketplaces
So we may have something like D-zon (Amazon for steem), D-ware(marketplace for software), D-vector(marketplace for vectors) and so on in future.
Phase 3- Side Chain and what not
After having own marketplaces and vast user base to support different projects, steem could venture into side chains, smart contracts and tokens.
We could have-
- Side chains
- Dapps Built
- ICOs
After launching of SMT tokens in the blockchain, we could see many content related organisation entering the blockchain atmosphere just because of SMT tokens.
In future, there could be many new projects, gaming applications, software and content editing related platform introduced on Steem.
Things seldom go as planned
Diversion Ahead
1. SBD Peg
SBD was introduced to the blockchain keeping in mind the vision and future of this blockchain. To run a successful economy we need to have a stable currency, in which people have complete trust.
I know increased prices are attracting a lot more people but in the pursuit of collecting stones, we are missing the real diamonds! which brings me to the second point.
2. People abusing platform
The high SBD prices are attracting a lot more users, which are not producing organic content useful for the blockchain. We have hundreds or thousands of people trying to spam the blockchain every day. So it may get bad reputation to steem and true content creators could start looking for similar platforms with better rules and features.
With different projects like Anon-steem and steemcreate in place, a user without caring about his reputation could continue putting plagiarised content on the blockchain.
3. Upvote bots
I see a lot of people, "big whales" delegating to upvote bots, instead of steem project trying to establish themselves.
We are creating a no-win situation, individuals delegating to upvote bots instead of projects.
And further people are using it to push the plagiarised content up the ladder buying upvotes.
Just have a look here
Plagiarised content getting upvotes amounting to $11.02%
and try to compare it with this, a blog by author getting upvote valued $1, even after working a lot on creating original content. It's so unfair for content contributors. We may start losing people like her if things are taken not care of.
Most of us are using upvote bot just because we don't want to lose to those people, who are spamming using bots.
We have started failing the mission already by introducing upvote bot into steem blockchain.
those who contribute their scarce time and attention toward producing and curating content for others are just as valuable as those who contribute their scarce cash. This is the sweat equity principle and is a concept that prior cryptocurrencies have often had trouble providing to more than a few dozen individuals
Third, I think steem should not be promoted as earn fast scheme. We say many people promoting steem on youtube the similar way.
The best thing for the growth of Steem will be its content. I found out of steem searching for the difference between EOS and ADA and lend up on some great article by @trejor on the first page of Google itself.
Similarly introducing platforms like Quora, Wikihow on steem could give as wider reach than simply promoting it as get rich quick scheme, and attracting spammers from all around the world.
Projects trying to work for making steem a better place
Steemcleaners
Steemcleaners needs to be pushed further if we want steem to have a better future.They are working round the clock to catch the spammers, abusers, and plagiarizers every day.
A lot of things depend on steemcleaners as well. If we wanna grow and reach moon, we need to have some discipline and the rebels needs to be out of the system.
The more people concentrate on creating useful content, the better chances we have of steemit showing up on the google searches. So steemcleaners are virtually playing a big role in promoting steem as well.
Have you ever tried searches question on google, it shows answers from Quora or Wiki How in top searches. So true content promotes steemit itself.
D-tube
Video platforms have a lot better reach than any other platform in the market. We have youtube which is paying content contributors 45% from ad-revenue.
And then we have D-tube, which is paying for content using proof of brain, and I think in future it may pay from ad-revenues as well. Maybe 90%, who knows!
(Seriously, I don't know it could work that way or not but maybe after SMTs)
I can't say much about DMania, Dlive, Zappl or Busy haven't used them.
Utopian-io
A great project on steem, rewarding the open source contributors, be the developer, graphic designers, or thinker any kind of contribution. With the growing open source projects, a lot of people are attracted towards building open source project and Utopian-io is trying to reward their efforts. They have moderators for different contribution, who verify the contribution and reward them accordingly.
Project Curie, OCD, Adsactly and many other
They are hunting down the people who are creating some great content for the steem blockchain. So they are virtually helping gaining steem some organic signups and supporting the users still on Steem.
D-book.read
Okay this isn't even a thing, but it could be a big platform on steem. Incentivizing authors for their books published. Maybe someone should try building that up. Just one problem though, the timeline fixed to 7 days.
Okay I shouldn't have brought this up here, will write a post about it, but still what you all think about it? :D
Conclusion
We have a very large community, and I think maybe the first crypto-currency project acceptable and trusted my mainstream audience and have a real use.
Keeping in mind the true vision of Steem and acting accordingly could take us far. The problems like upvote bots and unpegged SBD may divert us from the true vision and we may lose the sight in process of gaining money.
Moreover, the projects like steemcleaners, cheetah, ocd, adsactly and project curie are doing a great job supporting the content creators. We should act fast in changing the things or all our efforts could go in vain in future. It will be easier for people to learn from the mistake of Steem and establishing a new blockchain working effectively on the similar vision and we could lose everything then.
References-
Steem Whitepaper
[DAN's Post](https://steemit.com/steem/@dan/steemit-s-evil-plan-for-cryptocurrency-world-domination