"What is Steem?" - My Interpretation
What is Steem? From a technical standpoint, Steem is a decentralized content platform with built-in social interaction elements. From a figurative perspective, I think Steem is the gateway to the decentralized world.
Before I go any further, this post is not an attempt to explain the intricacies of the Steem blockchain. While Steem is relatively easy to use as compared to most other blockchains, there are still many details that one has to learn in order to fully appreciate it. I will say Steem is easy to learn but difficult to master. If you want to learn more about Steem, Steem Onboarding offers quite a comprehensive guide on how to get started.
Steem from a Technical Standpoint
Steem is a blockchain and it is one designed to host information in the form of text-based data. It has built-in social interaction features allowing users to discover and curate content. Using STEEM as the currency within the ecosystem, users are rewarded for content creation and curation. Since there is tangible value in creating and curating content, users are incentivized to make such social interactions. This creates a self-sustaining economy.
Platform for dApps
Many people view Steem and Steemit.com as one, but the truth is Steem is much more than a social blogging platform. The Steem platform allows custom JSON data format to be stored on the blockchain. JSON being a highly flexible data format opens up doors to application developers to build their apps using Steem as an immutable data store.
A few months back I made this diagram above to illustrate my point on the differences between traditional applications and applications built on Steem. Traditional applications are fully centralized, from the web interface to the back-end data store. On the other hand, Steem apps are semi-decentralized. While the web server is fully controlled by the application developers, the Steem blockchain, functioning as the data store, is decentralized. This is a huge deal for 2 reasons.
First, users have immutable proof of ownership to the content they created and the data attributed to them. Using Steem Monsters (aka Spliterlands) as an example, monster cards, that I own, truly belong to me. There is immutable proof of ownership and I have full access to these cards. This is a very important feature of using blockchain as a data store. Unlike any other centralized applications or games, the content or item you "owned" is never truly yours.
Second, the idea of a decentralized open data store is fascinating. Multiple apps can share the same data store and can technically use each other's data format to create different outcomes. This leads to infinite possibilities. Using Steem Monsters again as an example, since the data is published onto the Steem blockchain in a JSON format, another application can read those information and create a different game on its own. In this day and age of data explosion, I think the idea of a shared data store is a blessing to developers and users. Developers have ready data to work with and users do not need to create such data over again.
One might argue that immutability and being a shared data store aren't unique to Steem blockchain. However, Steem does have an edge over the other blockchains as it is designed to handle large amount of data from ground up. Most other blockchains aren't meant to store data.
In addition, all users on Steem have a "soul". We create contents and interact with each other. This is something unique to Steem. Most of the time users of blockchains are just an address having a random string of text. But on Steem, that's not the case. The built-in social feature creates a network effect which makes dApps more fun and interesting.
To put it simply, Steem blockchain already has a bunch of users who are very used to dApps. This pool of users serves as a strong user base for dApps on Steem, making it an ideal choice for developers.
Say NO to False Sense of Privacy
We are all familiar with social networks like Facebook. We all know there are privacy settings that we can change to hide or show our information as we wish. But why are there still so many scandals related to users' privacy? That is because it is a false sense of privacy. Your information, once uploaded to Facebook, will always be with them. Even if you delete your account, there is no guarantee that your data deleted. Such is the risk we have to bear when using a centralized platform.
Don't get me wrong, I am not saying that Steem is able to provide full privacy. Although I envision Steem will eventually build a privacy layer, it is not there yet. Thus, the information you upload to Steem now is unfortunately still public. However, we are not presented with a false sense of privacy. A false impression that you are in control. A misguided belief that you can share and unshare your data anytime. Steem do not pretend to have privacy features, and that is made known to you upfront. Hence, the onus is on you to share things that you can share publicly.
Steem from a Figurative Perspective
If I were to define the vision and mission statements for Steem, they will be as follows,
Vision
To be the gateway to the decentralized world
Mission
To provide a easy and friendly platform for developers to build on so that more people can be introduced to the decentralized world
Allow me to explain...
The Vision
I am no stranger to blockchain and cryptocurrencies. Steem excites me because of its ease of use. It is the only blockchain platform that seems to blend into the surrounding. It is the only blockchain platform that doesn't have any glaring difference compared to traditional platforms. It is the only blockchain platform that allows seamless transition from a centralized world to a decentralized one. That is why I think Steem should capitalize on these facts and continue to move towards this vision of becoming the gateway to the decentralized world.
The Mission
Mission statements are always there to support the vision. To provide a high-level approach on how to achieve the vision. Many Steemians like to focus on bringing more users to Steem through Steemit.com. That is a flawed mindset. Many of us think this way because we still think Steem blockchain and Steemit.com are synonymous. That is far from the truth as I have explained earlier. Instead of hoping Steemit Inc will bring in more users through Steemit.com, we should be focusing on the developers.
The developers will be the one building dApps on the Steem blockchain. These dApps can abstract the fact that they are built on top of a blockchain. Users do not need to know that they are interacting with a blockchain. Users just want to do whatever they want to do on the dApp. These developers will then acquire users through their own means. They will run their own marketing campaign and ultimately, they will be bringing users and activities to the Steem blockchain. As compared to having Steemit Inc run a solo marketing campaign, I think it is quite clear which is the better way.
Conclusion
I am writing this in response to @llfarms's article calling for ideas on what should be the vision for Steem. The timing was perfect as I was planning to write something like this as a permanent signature for all my future posts (at least those posted via Steempeak). The reason for the signature is to create more awareness to the Steem blockchain. My articles are mostly targeting the general public and not just Steemians. So if somehow a non-Steemian get to see my posts, I will like them to be linked to proper sources so that they can find out more about this amazing platform. Thanks for reading and do share your vision for Steem with me as well.
This is the most rational and valuable article and vision i ve ever seen about steem and steemit. Very good point of view. Very good explanation.
👏👏👏👏👏
In developers we trust
I believe in your kind of people really add value to some ground out of using it or expecting something from it.
I hope no one will be upset from this comment
Thanks for reading! I think developers are really what we need right now. Getting more users don't really help as most of them will find Steem difficult to understand. We really need apps on Steem that abstract all these details and make it easy for users to onboard. I think the likes of Steem Monsters and Partiko are on the right path
%100 Agree with you for now
Absolutely agree with your comment @bidesign
We need more participants in Steem (here in Singapore).
Maybe even create a developer pool for some dapp projects
What idea do u have in mind? U can talk to me in Discord if u want to keep it private :)
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For a start. Build some infrastructural services (or microservices) - perhaps based on nodeJS. That can help with managing ,extracting data from the blockchain. Plot graphs and what not
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What kind of data? SteemSQL might already be capable of achieving what you want
good info for the beginners thanks for sharing
Thanks for reading!
Solid explanation @culgin
I'm glad that more and more people understand the difference between Steem and steemit :)
I was always wondering why did they decide to store information as text. Surely it isn't the fastest way and all that data definetly comsume large amount of space. Is it the best solution possible?
I understand that flexibility is huge advantage.
Good point.
I would say, that it's guaranteed that those data will not be removed and will surely be stored.
You nailed it!
Most likely there will never be any privacy on Steem blockchain but at least we're not being lied about it, and we do not have any illusions.
Great read buddy. Post a bit to old to upvote :( till the next time.
Yours,
Piotr
Pardon my noob questions here :)
Taking away the social media and steemit (upvotes and rewards pools and stuffs) aspect out of Steem, how does the blockchain compare to the hundreds of others out there? What makes Steem better (or inferior) to the rest?
Are the 2 examples you gave unique to Steem blockchain or do they exists in other blockchains as well?
Using the Steemmonsters case study, imo, they can easily build it on other chain like Tron, for example. So again, why Steem?
Good question. The immutability is not an unique feature. Taking Tron as an example, it is certainly possible to develop something like Steem Monsters on it. But Steem does have a few advantages over Tron.
First, Tron uses solidity which is not a language as well known as what Steem have (JS and Python). Next, Tron is a smart contract platform and it is usually costly to store large amount of data on Turing complete platforms because they are meant to store smart contracts and not data. This is based on my understanding of Ethereum, since Tron ** ahem ** copied Ethereum whitepaper to a large extent, I guess it's the same for them. Finally, there is a "face" to every Steem user. This is something unique to Steem. On other blockchain, users are just a public address, a random string of characters. There is no "soul" as users on those blockchain typically are just making fund transfers. There are no content generated by them. By having this social aspect to Steem, it makes it a better platform to develop dApps. This is just my 2 cents.
In summary, it is certainly possible to use other blockchains as data stores. However they are usually not as fit-for-purpose as Steem. Steem is designed from ground up to take in large amount of data while others are typically not. I do see the possibility of using Turing complete platforms as the logic processing engine and Steem as the data store. Doing so will lead to better decentralization.
You gave me some points to add on to my post. Haha..
Excellent answers!
Read thru the comments on llfarms post and many people still associate Steem -> Steemit -> Social media network. I think Steem is and can be much more than just a social media blockchain. Your post is spot on!
Yes, I agree. STEEM is so much more than just Steemit. And almost NOBODY realizes this.
Yea. More people need to know the difference between Steem and Steemit
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