Letters to Jack Dorsey - Six degrees of separation

Hello Jack,

Do you like social experiments? You may have heard of Six degrees of separation, an idea that we live in a small world and people are six or fewer connections away from each other. My letters to you are simply an experiment to test this notion, hoping one day they will reach you while they are not sent directly to you by me. At the same time, I would like to share my thoughts and opinions on various topics that you may find interesting. I hope one day one of my letters will reach you and would be able to response. Until then, I will keep documenting them on Steem, where they will remain forever. I admire your passion for an open and decentralized internet, and you are in a great position to lead the way in pursuit of a better future for all.

Yesterday I lied when I said I wouldn't want to make a pitch to you about Steem. I would love to tell you more about Steem. Once you get to know it, I think you would like it too. Steem itself is an experiment that offers a decentralized, censorship-resistant social network economy. When you learn about it, curious technical minds like yourself may want to read the whitepaper first. If you end up reading the whitepaper, know this that many things have changed since its original launch. I would suggest reading the bluepaper first.

Unlike bitcoin Steem blockchain does not Proof of Work algorithm. Instead, it is based on Delegated Proof of Stake, which allows fast and feeless transactions and can be scaled to accommodate billions of users. Over its history of 3-4 years, Steem has proven to be a secure blockchain, where nobody has lost any funds due to the security breach at the blockchain level. Steem blockchain had experienced short halts that lasted a few hours and Steem developers were quick to respond to get it back up running. It is important to emphasize those halts were a positive thing to have, as they were a security feature, rather than a flaw. It is better for the chain to stop, rather than letting unintended or even malicious transactions to go through.

I really like how in bitcoin, nodes can join or leave the network as they please. I think is a good feature for the network to have. Instead of miners, we have witnesses on Steem who are the block producers. While just running the software is enough to join the network as a block producer, witnesses are ranked based on the stake votes they receive. High witness rank allows witnesses to earn more for producing blocks. Top 20 witnesses are the ones who produce blocks regularly, hence earnings are regular too.

Delegated proof of stake adds a social and political layer to the mix. Witnesses may need to campaign to show they are worthy of stakeholders' votes, that they add value to the blockchain, that they keep blockchain secure, they have required technical skills, etc. Social networking may give some advantage over others. I am not sure if it a problem or a positive feature. I do see a problem with inactive stakeholders not being able to react with vote changes quick enough though. Sometimes you see witnesses disable their nodes, yet still have some stakeholders voting for them. Disabled witnesses are dropped out of consensus witness ranks quick though. I am sure there is room for improvement here. Overall, it works just fine.

Let me tell you about the social aspects of Steem. We have an awesome global community from all walks of life. We have artists, musicians, vloggers, photographers, scientists, students, developers, business people from all around the world. Steem is bringing the promise of the bitcoin to average people without a hurdle of learning all technicalities of blockchain technologies. Users can create human-friendly username wallets, not just random series of alphanumeric addresses. Then users can easily transact with each other: fast, simple and easy. Did I mention there are no transfer fees for sending or receiving funds? Recently, I was transferring ER-20 based tokens. I should say, I am very disappointed with the speed and the fees. Steem definitely beats etherium when it comes to transferring funds. It only takes a few seconds for funds to be transferred globally. Once, again there are zero fees.

There are some exciting developments going on with Steem. Soon we will have Smart Media Tokens and Communities features released, many independent developers and teams build amazing dApps, etc. I will tell you more about them next time.

Tweet/Steem On,

GG

Read the previous letter:

1. Letter to Jack Dorsey - Decentralized