Promo-Steem: Infrastructure & Projects Highlights 2018

A view on the 2018 highlights of promo-steem / @Steem-Ambassador from both an infrastructure and a project perspective:

BACKGROUND

The campaign to use the promo-steem tag on Steemit was at a peak in Q4 of 2017 – it was encouraged by many across the world but taking a lead from the UK were Stephen Kendal, Dylan Leighton and Matt Starkey who are all big-time advocates of the Steem Blockchain. Matt Starkey presented the promo-steem project at Steemfest 2 and to spread the idea that it was in the interests of all Steem users to promote the Steem Blockchain in order to see the price of STEEM increase. These three pioneers worked together in a voluntary capacity to promote the use of the promo-steem tag to bring together in one place, for the first time, articles which demonstrated activity in promoting Steem:

At the very beginning of 2018 hundreds of posts were hitting the #promo-steem tag each month. The authors on the tag required some community guidelines and it was important that only high-quality posts would rise to the surface. The Steem-Ambassador and promo-steem project leaders designed and developed three important pieces of infrastructure to organise this community in 2018:

1. The Website
2. The Creation of an Ambassador Guild - Curation Oracles
3. The Development of C.A.M.P.U.S - a clever method of distribution of capital

WEBSITE

It is now ten months ago since @starkerz and @anarcotech built the https://promo-steem.com/ website – this was built with a tremendous amount of diligence and thought. I would encourage people to view the website, it is an invaluable source of information and offers still much potential for development. This is undoubtedly a highlight of the promo-steem infrastructure in 2018. Just as a note the website includes:

• White Paper
• Community Guidelines
• Information about the Ambassador Guild
• Ambassador Guidelines
• Information about C.A.M.P.U.S. - the first ever multi-proof-of-brain guild of oracles
• Valuable Resources including:
  o Newby Guides
  o Pre-packed powerpoint presetnations
  o Links to Onboarding Tools and Apps

CREATION OF THE STEEM AMBASSADOR GUILD

As part of the governance of the project it was important that posts on the tag were being reviewed for quality and so Matt and Dylan designed a process for active promoters and advocates of the Steem Blockchain to apply to become Steem Ambassadors in February 2018. Applications flooded in and now the guild has a membership of 67 Community Approved Steem-Ambassadors.

Ambassadors will only upvote high quality posts on the #promo-steem tag. Over time the project will develop methods and processes for this pool of Ambassadors to grow over time and will develop a process for inactive Ambassadors to leave.

One of the core jobs for the voluntaryist guild is to curate high quality posts on #promo-steem every week. The Ambassadors act like oracles to ensure a fair, less corruptible method of distributing power from the central account @steem-ambassador.

CREATION OF C.A.M.P.U.S

Once a blog or article receives an upvote from THREE Steem-Ambassadors who have all deemed it as high quality the data is fed automatically into C.A.M.P.U.S (Community Approved Multi Proof of Brain Upvoting System) built by @anarcotech : described here.

Approximately every 24 Hours C.A.M.P.U.S checks the queue of posts which have been upvoted by a minimum of three Steem Ambassadors and tagged as #promo-steem and shares the days voting power across these posts.

A full 100% upvote from the @Steem-Ambassador account is currently worth approximately $2. This value can be attributed to some of the many delegators including @roelandp @lukestokes.mhth @starkerz @ura-soul @eturnerx @anarcotech @cryptocurator @steem-dublin @wolfje @felander. These are just the delegators of 250+ SP. There are other kind delegators who have presented <250SP to this mission.

The creation of CAMPUS is clever and brings about a method of decentralised distribution. The quota for the minimum number of Ambassador votes can be tailored to suit the volumes of posts hitting this tag.

BACK OFFICE

This machine would not operate this well if it wasn’t supported by a team of active Steemians who work under the bonnet on reviewing ambassador applications and authoring posts from @steem-ambassador. The Back Office is an important part of the infrastructure for the project.

PROMO-STEEM PROJECTS IN 2018

Promo-Steem has either been integral to, or an incubator of, ideas for a number of projects which are aimed at increasing the awareness of the Steem Blockchain. I just wanted to mention a shortlist of four today:

1. London Crypto Currency Show

A massive undertaken to voluntarily showcase Steem at the London Crypto Currency Show in London took place in April. It was an impressive show of force with circa 50 Steemians, including four witnesses, and six major projects attending the event. Steemians travelled from 10 Countries to be at the show which showcased the work of @steem-ambassador @appics, @utopian-io, @stach @esteem and @steempress

Looking purely at the people and the projects that attended and the accounts they controlled at the time; they had an aggregated following of nearly 200k and nearly 5.5 million SP. That was a powerful room of people, and although I have not looked, given the calibre of the people and the projects that attended the show I would not be surprised if they now have over 8 million combined SP.

I suppose more important than all of that – the show was a huge success in raising the awareness of Steem to several thousand crypto enthusiasts.

2. Rise of the Oracle-D

@anarcotech (Founder and CTO) and @starkerz (Founder and CEO) have gone on to start a new project @oracle-d which is proving very successful at bringing in new investment into the Steem ecosystem. With a fundamental mission for increasing the price of STEEM and promoting the use and application of the Steem Blockchain.

Even at this very beginning of their project they are creating hundreds of small opportunities for quality content creators to be rewarded by their oracles for work on Oracle-d client tasks. This project is seriously adding value to the blockchain every day. It is a sophisticated business model and worthy of reading up on: http://oracle-d.com/.

Source: @Oracle-d

These guys are on world tour of Blockchain Summits across United States, Indonesia and Greece. They are showcasing the Steem Blockchain and at the same time they have just on boarded onto Steem the first Premier League Footballer (Andre Gray) – who now has a Blockchain Based Football Coaching Academy built on the Steem technology: https://steemit.com/@agfacademy

3. Dreams of the Ocean

Source: @dreamsoftheocean

@surfermarly joined as an Ambassador in July and it wasn’t long afterwards that Marly was all over the local radio, in the press and out in the community with a successful promotion around the humanitarian / charitable application of the Steem Blockchain. Marly’s charitable giving venture @dreamsoftheocean paid for 14 swim lessons to 14 children in August. This was a joint project with the red cross and the news made waves eventually meaning that Steem was being promoted on local radio and in the local inflight magazine of the local flight operator.

4. Borneo Blockchain Summit

Source: @bitrocker2020

There were several other great promo-steem related projects administered by other @steem-ambassadors around the world. One of which I would like to see more mentioned is the Borneo Blockchain Summit. Two of the fastest moving and passionate Steem-Ambassadors @bitrocker2020 and @danieldoughty were involved in a huge team effort to bring the first Blockchain Event ever to Borneo. I won’t steal their thunder – I would like to see their highlights of 2018 on promoting the Steem Blockchain.

What a very interesting year so far….and what interesting times to come….