Background
Steem is a great platform but still is experiencing user-base problem as well as reward leaks with anonymity. An ideal solution is fixing all in decentralized ways but it has been failing since the beginning of Steem, such as whale's reward domination, collusive reward voting, vote bidding, etc. Given these problems, many 'real' users were disappointed and left Steem, and therefore the problems are exacerbated.
Proof-of-Brain is the core value of Steem. So it is very important to attract real human with brain (until AI has human level intelligence, like in SF movies). A strong and simple way is giving all human users a little reward, the so-called basic income without any conditions but liveness. Basic income has been experimented in few countries (e.g. South Africa, Swizerland) and presents meaningful positive impacts.
However, verifying human in decentralized way is hard to achieve at this moment. While decentralized solution is undergoing renovation, centralized solutions can help Steem to grow.
Goal of the Project
This project aims to promote influx of new users by providing instant and free sign-up and distributing basic income.
Our short-term (6 months) goal is to increase 15,000 active human users. In the longer-term, we plan to attract a million users and transform the model to more decentralized ways.
Details of Plan
Users can earn basic income in a simple way - verifying human identity. At the phase 1, this project is only based on Korea because the country has strong and reliable mobile ID verification. Existing users are also able to add their identity to the service. Once verified, there are benefits below:
- New users can signup instantly
- Each verified user is upvoted weekly with the same weight if they post
- There will be new filtration and reputation system based on human identity
Is there any disadvantage if not verified? No. We think anonymity and freedom of speech is still important. This verification and basic income system is just another layer of Steem. Also, we don't use personal information for any other purposes but verifying the uniquenss of identity.
Finance
For signups, I will donate 21,000 STEEM (7,000 users). @steemhunt also helps with 6,000 AC(account creation) budget and @tasteem does with 3,900 AC.
For upvote, I will delegate 250,000~400,000 SP and now contacting Korean big stakeholders to participate.
Curation rewards are reinvested for signup and some events as well as operation costs that we try to minimize.
Future Plan
I hope this experimental project will succeed and other countries can benchmark. If you know strong, reliable, cheap, and quick ways to verify identity, please contact me then we can further collaborate.
And please upvote for witness @clayop, @steemhunt, @snackplus, @tasteem who are contributing this project.
Thank you!