The Voice Of Love

Today, Valentine’s Day, is the day Block One will be opening the beta of Voice to a selected few, picked from applicants based in the United States.

I’ve been following developments related to Voice since it’s announcement, and even considered stacking up some EOS because, truth be told, it looked quite good and destined for success based on the initial information put out by Larimer and co.

As time went on I became less bullish about EOS and Voice because of all the incidents related to the platform - both Voice itself, and EOS. There have been strange governance issues, as well as some blah blah about Voice launching on a private chain - which wasn’t what was expected previously.

From the user point of view, two issues have dampened enthusiasm; rewards and KYC. Probably because of Steemit, we were under the impression that it would work like Steem were you create content, get curated and rewarded, and then trade your money for spendable cash money to buy fancy things. Nope. That’s not how it’s going to work apparently - at least not initially.

The second issue is more concerning for me; KYC. Now I’ve seen some arguments on Twitter that it’s not actually KYC that Block One is doing, but rather a way of verifying identity. Haha haha. Ok then.

To be honest, it doesn’t actually affect people like me. I’m public and I show my face on here. I also create content under the same username as I do everywhere else. People know who I am in real life. I wouldn’t actually mind doing the KYC if I really believed in Voice to that extent.

Most enthusiasts of the blockchain and cryptocurrency are not like me though, which is the whole point. By design, may users of platforms like Steem are anonymous, at least to an extent. People that have controversial beliefs and express them here don’t necessarily want you to know who they are in real life. There are people who are anti-government and anti-establishment and don’t want to pay tax for example. And so on, and so forth.

I’m old enough to remember the very early days of Facebook. I was one of the first 10,000 people on there - when it was by invite only and for university students only. I was invited by my friend who was in Cambridge while I was at Imperial. You had to be in an elite school too. None of these East London College riff-raffs please. 🙄👨🏾‍🎓

Me, posh and elite.

It was supposed to be a private system - like your college Intranet address book. People used their real names, real phone numbers and home addresses. Everyone felt this strange false sense of safety using the platform. It was so cool back then - very clean and fast, unlike the cluttered, virus ridden MySpace platform before it. No ads, no spam, no phishing messages, nothing.

The rest of what happened at FaceBook is history.

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Actually, I think Voice is going t be good for Steem. If there ever is a way to get on there without doing KYC, I will check it out and even create content over there. I doubt this will be the case though. I think what will happen is that the awareness created by the advertising dollars spent by Block One will also raise awareness for other tokenised, blockchain based platforms. The chief of such platforms, of course, is Steem.

Disgruntled users of Voice will flock to Steem where ”at least I can take my money out”. At this point, the price of Steem would be surging on towards a dollar, so rewards will be approaching viable again. Especially for those living out in Venezuela, Thailand and Nigeria who would still be waiting for their chance to actually use Voice.

Users will figure out that ”wait, so Dan Larimer invented Steem? So, why re-invent the wheel?”.

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Peace and Love ✌🏿
Adé

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