Whatever Happened to Steem-Engine Tokens as Part of Communities?

For those of us who have been part of the Steem ecosystem for a while, there was a time — a couple of years ago — when ”Communities” started to become a thing, and it also became possible for those communities to launch their own ”tribal tokens,” as it were.

A number of communities also had their own customized front end sites with unique domains, separate from steemit.com, to sort and aggregate their interest-specific content.

Desert near Joshua Tree, CA — winter

Granted, the communities feature became somewhat ”diluted” when the chains split in early 2020, but Steem-Engine still exists… but it doesn’t seem like any of the communities — old OR new — have taken even a remote interest in continuing to build on these second layer ”side chains” with their own identities. Mostly, I just don't see anything new, and the old communities appear to have completely lost their value and activity.

So What?

Now, you might wonder why I am even bringing this up, and why it could be important, or at least relevant.

Consider how most people use the web. Let’s use Facebook as a simple example.

Ocean view, Big Sure, CA

Very few people anymore are just ”ON Facebook,” in the general sense of the word. We’re usually there to be part of groups/pages that are interest specific, whether it’s a business, an artist, a musician, a hobby or interest.

This becomes relevant when you consider the process of attracting new users. Users — meaning people, in general — tend to be far more loyal to their passions, interests and hobbies than they are to general venues.

That also means it is easier to persuade a friend to become part of ”a gardening community on site-x” (because that’s relevant to their interests) than just to become part of ”site-x” in a general sense.

Desert landscape near Palm Springs, CA

So what about the tokens? Why would they matter?

In many ways, these community based tokens are a little easier to explain than the more complex infrastructure of Steem and Steem Dollars and how those two interact. For the novice, you can also start ”trading” them without the need for creating an external exchange account and going through the whole KYC (“Know Your Customer”) registration process.

In a sense, the community token system is a bit like a ”sandbox” where you can practice and get familiarized with the whole cryptocurrency concept in a relatively uncomplicated and low risk environment, before you start playing around with the real thing.

My point here is just that they could be a really useful tool in creating new users, because they are (a) focused and interest-specific and (b) relatively simple, compared to cryptos in general.

Thanks for reading, and have a wonderful weekend!

How about YOU? Were you here when there were active communities with their own tokens? Did you get involved in any of them? Do you think they could be useful? Give me a shout back... Because — after all — SOCIAL content is about interacting, right? Leave a comment — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!

(All text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is ORIGINAL CONTENT, created expressly for this platform — NOT A CROSSPOST!!!)
Created at 20210226 13:35 PST
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