Horizontal Scaling of Steem
Steem is a "0 to 1" invention, but how can we scale Steem to a Billion users?
We can imagine all kinds of niche communities that would benefit from having a Steem-like system. Value would flow back into the respective communities, instead of being captured by centralized companies like Facebook.
Traditionally BitShares has faltered with scaling horizontally, being unable to attract new users. If ones ideas and products are to be copied and used by others, the ideas and products have to be virtually free, reducing friction and increasing adoption. Adoption even without scraping costs brings value to the original product in the form of attention, users, developers, tools - general network-effect.
Going further than making something free is to encourage others to copy your ideas and product by making it as easy as possible to use these ideas and set up similar products in other contexts. If we are driven by fear that our ideas and products will be exploited without gaining us any return, we may well lose everything by possessiveness.
On the other hand, we can't be completely naive, the best solution is if we can engineer new solutions that benefits everyone without compromising on any of the essentials that make virility possible.
So, who has the best idea for Horizontal Scalability? Bytemaster, CTO of Steem, has suggested Steem can seed a thousand different niche communities. How can we reach that goal without compromise?
For those who don't know Zero to One is a book by Peter Thiel. A good read.
Is Steem a tree that sprouts branches to support vastly different communities or does each community demand its own root system (i.e. blockchain).
What can a tree support that a branch cannot.
Self determination. A branch depends upon the root system of the tree, but a tree develops its own roots.
The share drop approach is like cutting off a branch and planting it so it can grow its own root system.
You cannot change the DNA of a community without massive reallocation of voting power and that is only possible with sharedrop theory.
Metaphor from the continental philosopher Deleuze, the Rhizome:
If one niche is double the size of another, it will accumulate 4x the revenue. Over time the smaller niches will find another place and the biggest ones will dominate the platform. I think this is sort of a problem for horizontal scalability. I think.
One potential solution is the "share drop" theory, whereby a new community would give vesting members of Steem a small stake in their new community. The license terms could be enforced by Steemit, Inc.
As an aside .. Steemit, Inc makes no promises .. no share drops ..