Hi Everyone,

In my opinion, the Steem Engine tribes are the most exciting addition to the Steem Ecosystem this year. This is quite a claim considering all that is happening on the Steem blockchain. A few months ago I wrote about Palnet in my post, Palnet – A big step in the right direction. Palnet is the first Steem Engine tribe and it closely resembles Steemit. After Palnet went live, a wave of new tribes were created. Palnet serves as a general content tribe, whereas most of the other tribes have their own specialisation. The easiest way to access most tribes is through SteemPeak. The SteemPeak user interface enables users to access tribe content, see picture below.

I believe almost 20 tribes can be accessed directly through SteemPeak. There are several other tribes currently being developed. It will soon be possible to access these tribes through SteemPeak as well. Thus SteemPeak, will become almost like a hub or gateway for tribes.

SteemPeak does not directly take you to the tribes’ webpage but instead takes you to a page where you can view your tribes’ posts in your feed as well as new posts and posts trending in the tribes native token. SteemPeak displays the payout in the tribes token and if you hover over the pending payout, it will show the pending payout in Steem Token Units (STU) as well as any other token the post might be earning.

Why I believe Steem Engine Tribes are a game changer

Content discovery has been one of the biggest problems with Steem. There are several reasons for this problem. Such reasons I can think of are as follows:

Lack of good promotion services
Lack of curation
Ineffective use of tags
Difficult to navigate user interfaces

Lack of good promotion services

This might seem like a strange reason considering Steem has so many promotion services such as bid bot and resteem services. These services have been proven to be mostly ineffective. I discuss the reasons for this ineffectiveness in my post, Promoting Content (Part 1) - Promoting content on Steem and video ‘Promoting Content (Part 1) - Promoting content on Steem (Video Version)’. To summarise. Buying votes provides additional exposure to just a few posts on the trending page, most users do not consider resteem services credible and Steemit’s promotion page provides almost no exposure. For posts that are heavily promoted, most users are reluctant to upvote them because they will receive a lower percentage of the curation rewards and many users are also reluctant to upvote a post that has already taken so much Steem from the rewards pool.

The tribes contribute to reducing this problem by offering an alternative form of promotion. Users can pay to have their post displayed on the tribes’ promotion page, which is a similar concept to Steemit promotion. However, the promoted posts are also included on the trending and hot pages. The top promoted post appears at the top of the tribes trending page, the post with the second highest paid promotion appears six places lower down and the third highest another six further down. I believe this is how paid promotion works for most tribes.

Lack of curation

Prior to Hardfork 21/22. Many of the largest stakeholders did not actively contribute to curating content. They either selfvoted, voted in small groups or sold votes. All three actions contributed very little to content discovery. Hardfork 21/22 introduced the 50/50 split between content creators and curators and the downvote mana pool. Prior to Hardfork 21/22, most tribes included higher curation rewards and lower cost downvoting. Tribes were almost giving the proposed hardfork changes a test run before implementation. So far, Hardfork 21/22 appears to be helping content discovery as curating is significantly more profitable.

Ineffective use of tags

(See tags circled in red. This type of tag usage is not that uncommon.)

Content creators are free to use whatever tags they like. This has resulted in the use of many different tags as well as the use of inappropriate tags. For example, content relating to economics could be spread over several different tags. Sometimes good content is under tags I did even think of looking under. Tags that are very popular often has content that is completely unrelated to that tag, as users are trying to get more exposure. For these reasons, tags were an ineffective method of finding desired content.

The tribes have made use of the tags to display content on their respective webpages. Therefore, tags have far greater meaning as they enable users to reach a broader audience. For example, if I want my content to appear on StemGeeks, I use the ‘stem’ tag. I could also use the ‘science’, ‘technology’, engineering’, and ‘math’ tags. If I want my content to appear on PhotoStreem, I use the ‘photography’ tag. If people use the wrong tags, these tags are often downvoted by tribe team member accounts. These accounts typically hold a large portion of their tribes’ tokens but very little Steem. This helps keep the content relevant without removing Steem rewards from the content creators.

Difficult to navigate user interfaces

Steem has many DApps, tribes and tools but it doesn’t have a user interface that provides easy access to everything Steem. SteemPeak has made the biggest leap by establishing a user interface, which provides easy access to tribe content as presented on the tribe websites. However, SteemPeak is not a portal for everything Steem. SteemPlus enables access to many related websites and enables user to buy Steem Monster cards.

As great as tribes have been at addressing the other areas I have highlighted, tribes do not directly address the problem of lack of easy access to all aspects of Steem. The creation of tribes has given interfaces such as Steempeak, the motivation to improve their interface. Tribes also have less content than Steemit, which makes it easier to navigate any particular tribe.

I believe the problem of user interface needs to be solved by the creation of a user interface that is designed to connect the entire Steem Ecosystem. I discussed a possible approach to this in my post, The Trending Page AKA the Front Page of Steemit. I posted that back in July 2018. I believe the need for improved user interfaces is far greater than it was back then considering how big the Steem Ecosystem has grown. So far, the SteemPeak team has done a great job at addressing this need but more work is still needed.

Other important advantages of Tribes

Besides greatly improving content discovery, the tribes have several other advantages.

Posting on tribes is an alternative form of income for both content creators and curators. Any additional income makes Steem more attractive for both content creators and investors. The rewards might be small as the tokens are priced very low at the moment but this could change in the coming months if tribes become popular and attract more investors.

The tribes’ tokens can be customised to the specific needs of each tribe. These aspects include content creator and curator split of rewards, consumption of mana per vote, downvote mana pools, payout period, supply of tokens, maximum supply of tokens, inflation, airdrops, reward curves, and many more. Tribes can also customise their own website trending and hot pages. They can determine which tags can be used to post on their websites. It might even be possible for tribes to create their own reputation system.

Tribes also offers Steem greater exposure and could become a valuable tool for onboarding new users. Some users might not be attracted to the generic content frontends such as Steemit, SteemPeak, or Busy. For example, a person might only be interested in reading about video and computer games. A gaming post could easily get lost on a website such as Steemit. Tribes such as SteemAce will provide greater exposure to these types of posts and will likely attract more users to Steem. Some of these users will enjoy themselves so much that they might consider investing in Steem.

My favourite Tribe

My favourite tribe is StemGeeks. This is because I like technical and educational content. I also believe StemGeeks is a great home for much of my economics content even though economics is not strictly speaking a STEM subject. However, many would argue that most economics research involves both science and mathematics. StemGeeks is not just for strict academic content. The tribe is also receptive to amateur content. For example, building a remote control car from an old boat battery and rubber boats.

The tribe is very well managed. The StemGeeks team monitors content, regularly burns STEM (tribe token) to reduce inflation, and is now a ‘Brave’ Certified Publisher. The Brave web browser is similar to Google but has many advantages. The post, ‘STEMGeeks is a Brave Certified Publisher’, provides an explanation of the advantages of ‘Brave’.

My only criticism of STEMGeeks is the lack of content. The tribe needs more content creators. I have powered up over 7,000 STEM. I am just itching to upvote more content rather than leaving my upvote mana pool close to full. There are many other people that love STEM related content. A good Stem post is likely to receive a high payout in STEM. My STEM content consistently brings in high payouts. Look at my previous five posts.

My investments in Steem Engine tokens

I have invested in several Steem Engine tokens as well as received a few airdrops. I have staked several of the tokens and I am holding a few of them liquid for now. I haven’t converted any of the tokens back into Steem yet. I am very optimistic regarding the future of the tribes as well as the tokens.

Considering the low prices of the tokens, I am either buying more tokens or holding onto my existing tokens. The tokens that I am paying most attention to our PAL, STEM, LEO, and SPORTS. I am focused on STEM for reasons described in this post, PAL for reasons described in my previous post, LEO because of cryptocurrency related content, and SPORTS as a way of supporting Actifit content.

Smart Media Tokens (SMT) and communities

This section of the post is just my speculation regarding possible relationships between SMTs and communities, and Steem Engine Tokens and tribes. There is a possibility I may get this completely wrong.

Some people might be reluctant to invest in Steem Engine tokens when Steemit Inc. will be releasing SMTs in the upcoming months. Some people may also be unwilling to support tribes when communities are currently being developed. I am not sure how the new SMTs and communities will compare with the existing Steem Engine tokens and tribes; they could completely coexist, be partially replaced or be totally replaced.

Even if SMTs and communities replace Steem Engine tokens and tribes, I would expect existing tribes to transition to communities rather than be abandoned. I would expect in this case that the new communities would airdrop their new SMT to holders of their Steem Engine token. A scenario of coexistence is also possible. Communities might involve users selecting directly which community to post to while maintaining the use of tags to post to tribes. Therefore, communities could have a more specialised function.

Big changes to Steem in 2019

In 2019, Steem has undergone so many changes. The number of DApps continue to increase. The number and quality of Steem related tools and features continue to increase. There is a new downvote mana pool. Curation rewards have doubled. There is a new rewards curve. There is a new project proposal system. There are several new curation services. Steemit and some of the DApps have introduced advertising. There have been upgrades in technology and huge reductions in costs. Steem Alliance was created to pool Steem community resources. There was the birth of New Steem, which encapsulates many of the above changes plus a movement towards a more cohesive community attitude and behaviour. The list goes on.

There is a lot to be excited about if you plan to be on Steem for the long haul. Steem Engine tribes is my personal choice for most exciting and possibly most significant inclusion to the Steem Ecosystem. The New Steem revolution is currently the biggest news sweeping across the Steem Ecosystem. It is still too early to judge the significance of the impact of New Steem but so far it has created a huge shock to the system. I believe it is off to a very good start. In my next post, I will discuss my personal response to New Steem as well as express a few of my opinions regarding what I have observed so far.

If you want to read any of my other posts, you can click on the links below. These links will lead you to posts containing my collection of works. These posts will be updated frequently.

New Economics Udemy Course

I have launched my first Udemy course ‘Economics is for Everyone’. The course focuses on how economics affects everyday people, the decisions they make and how they interact with the world around them. The course contains 24 video lectures (about 4 hours of viewing), 64 multiple-choice questions (3 at the end of most lectures), 32 downloadable resources (presentation slides, additional notes and links to relevant Steem posts), and 2 scenario questions. The course is currently free-of-charge. Click the link above to access the course.