The Big Dozen - my 12 indicator projects for the State of Steem in 2019 (part 1)
Through hosting the State of Steem Forums and through editing the SoS Daily News digests I get pretty engrossed into what is happening on Steem.
The last three months has been a period of significant change on the Steem platform.
Major new projects are bursting to the surface. The governance of the platform is in a positive state of change.
2019 is going to be a big year for Steem.
To measure if this big year will become a great year, I am watching closely 12 indicator projects that for me will determine the State of Steem.
Here are projects 1 to 6. The remaining half dozen will follow in part 2...
1. Hivemind
This was one of the first major development milestones from Steemit Inc this year.
Hivemind was released in beta for in mid January and is already providing significant memory reductions for full API nodes. It is understood that there may still be some more optimisations to be done to further reduce memory requirements.
2. RocksDB
RocksDB and MIRA are the next stage in Steemit Inc's developments to reduce the memory requirements for running node servers. The implementation of Rocks DB and MIRA is particularly for witness node servers.
Steemit Inc's lead blockchain developer Michael Vandeberg @vandeberg stated in an interview on MSP Waves last week that the work is now entering its final testing phase. They are targeting memory requirement reductions down to 4 - 8 GB for witness nodes.
3. Smart Media Tokens
The proposal for Smart Media Tokens (SMTs) was first put forward by Steemit Inc over a year ago.
Other developments, and more recently the major staff reductions, have caused major delays for SMTs.
Although significant work has already been done pre staff reductions it is understood that SMTs, even in a somewhat cut-down first iteration, are still a few months away. Steemit Inc are due to release a revised timeline for their SMTs soon.
In the meantime community developers have gone ahead with building their own token variants.
Developer @harpagon along with Steem Monsters founders @yabapmatt and @aggroed have just in the last couple of days released Steem Engine, a smart contracts side-chain platform that provides for the creation of custom tokens.
Other developers including @fulltimegeek, @shredz and @dlux-io (@disregardfiat &@markegiles) have also been working on token related projects.
4. Communities
Communities are considered to be one of the vital components in strengthening the social network offering of Steem.
The initial concepts for steem communities were put forward by Steemit Inc around a year ago.
Although Hivemind, which will power the Communities feature, has now been released, it is understood from recent interviews with Steemit Inc Executive Chair Ned Scott and Managing Director Elizabeth Powell that Communities on Steem are still some months away. It is hoped that Steemit Inc will be able to make available a timescale for Communities soon.
To fill the gap community developers have again stepped in.
Developer @shredz has recently announced that he has completed a MVP of a Communities feature on his Stratos DApp.
5. The Steem Alliance & The Steem Foundation
With the downsizing of Steemit Inc towards the end of 2018 it became clear that the Community would need to step forward and pick up the slack in a number of areas.
On a decentralised platform like Steem with no management or decision making processes in place it rapidly became clear that some new governance structure was needed.
Prompted in part by the critical intervention of the proposed Hardfork 21 Steemit Inc CEO at the time, Ned Scott revived an earlier idea to establish some form of Steem research foundation.
To start the process towards the selection and establishment of such a Steem Foundation, the Steem Alliance was set up and a Working Group elected.
That Working Group is now beginning the task of receiving proposals from the community for how a foundation could be structured. The proposals will then go out to some form of community voting.
6. Steem Worker Proposal System
Alongside the establishment of the Steem Alliance, a proposal has been forward by Dan Notestein from @blocktrades for a Worker Proposal System for Steem to distribute funding for projects on the blockchain.
Although the proposal still needs some refinements it has received generally positive feedback from the community.
Ned Scott is a strong supporter of the proposal and discussed it at length with Dan Notestein in an interview last week on MSP Waves.
The exact timescale for the establishment of the Worker Proposal System is not yet known, but it is thought that it will be within the next few months.
These are the first six of my key indicator projects for the State of Steem.
I will reveal the other half dozen in part 2 of this post.
In the meantime, what are the projects you are most closely watching to determine how Steem will fare this year...?
[ penguin image from unsplash.com ]
I came to this post after just seeing the first paragraph of your second post. After 1.5 years of being in steem continually I know absolutely nothing about any of these topics. I clicked the "communities" link hoping to see a list of them but there isn't one on the link. I think I am in some communities here, but maybe not.
I think this is one of the key issues for steem. There is a segment of the population who know and care about all the back end info, and then others who just want to post their blogs and get interaction and rewards. I'm in the second camp obviously.
For example, I first heard of smt's in the summer of 2017 when I think they may have been announced. I wasted a few hours reading about them and got nowhere in increased knowledge. I still don't know what they and and they are still not here. How much time should I spend on them - none.
Going to your next post to see if I know anything about the next six topics.
It seems I pay a little attention to what's happening also :)
I love your list. I was going through it and started asking 'where will this be in a year?'. Which we all know is like doggy years in this business.
Anyway, after looking deep into my crystal ball I'm going to publicly comment here, on the blockchain where everybody can come back and say neener neener. Glad you don't get paid for your prophecy. :)
1: Hivemind. Though it's a BIG deal right now, in a year it will be mostly forgotten as a step on the way to RocksDB.
2: RocksDB will have a huge impact on Steem and the way blocks are validated. In a year most won't recognize it but the process gives up the ability to scale massively.
3: I think SMTs are a done deal. Steemit Inc might not even get to the market with their version, one of the (right now) earlier versions will be the big dog.
4: I think communities is THE big coming deal. And I'm not convinced that SteemitInc is going to get this one going before it ignites spontaneously like a wildfire.
5: Steem Alliance and Foundation. I expect them to still be in business in a year despite the things brought to the market. There are issues and items we haven't even thought of that will need attention.
6: Worker Compensation Pool. Done. In a year it will be hard to remember the time when it wasn't there. Pretty exciting stuff there.
Now you have my predictions. I REALLY like your list and the thought you've put into it. Thank you!
Thanks BigTom for the response. Looking positive for the first six.
Now I have put up the second post for numbers 7 - 12. What do you reckon on these...?
Editor of the The State of Steem SoS Daily News.
Promoter of The State of Steem SoS Weekly Forums.
Editor of the weekly listing of steem radio shows, podcasts & social broadcasts.
Founder of the A Dollar A Day charitable giving project.
Great summary of the reason to be positive about the future of the ecosystem. Now that the community is more involved I think that the roadmap can be completed although I suspect it will take more time than expected as the diversity of our community will lead to robust discussions on how to attend certain hot topics.
Posted using Partiko iOS
2019 will be an interesting, and hopefully, great year for Steem.
There will come a day when all this stuff is out and working and all the new people will take it for granted. We'll all sound like old farts saying "Back in my day, you had to use Discord! Communities were just a far away dream" I'm looking forward to it.
I already do the "Back in my day" routine often enough... 😃
I’m pretty damn excited to see what this year brings. I suspect that we’ll see some pretty amazing changes and exciting new developments. :)
Posted using Partiko iOS
I have a feeling that https://engrave.website can deliver something good for those wishing to reach out with their websites.
Also Wise, the delegated upvote protocol, could prove handy for curation solutions.
Both from @wise-team
I haven't spent any significant time looking at Engrave yet.
It is a pity their opening gambit is ... "Create blog and start earning money in three simple steps"
Pitching on the money earning side of steem can inevitably lead to disappointment.
I'll pass it back to them
Thank you for your feedback.
We had an internal discussion about it and we came to the conclusion that it's necessary to stop exposing dollars on Steem based applications. Especially those targeted to hobbyists and bloggers. It's hard to become successful (which is, of course, obvious for everyone who tried to become recognizable on any other social media platform) on Steem and earn a satisfactory amount of dollars with current token price. But native Steem mechanisms can be easily utilized to give people possibilities to do things that are not possible anywhere else. Transfers without fees, beneficiaries, userbase and SMTs (in the future) could be used to activate readers in many ways. And bloggers should get additional features that are not available right now on generic Steem frontends. Dollars should be the last reason why bloggers decide to start using Steem.
And we're working on a brand new dashboard that we believe will change those things. Our slogan and pitch will change significantly and we will try to reach bloggers outside of Steem network.
Definitely agree with that. I think their true asset is that they are a free blogging site for Steemians. As long as you have a domain name you can completely personalize your own site and pay no monthly fees. Its especially useful for hobby bloggers and businesses needing blogs for any reason.
However, they do have ambitious goals for empowering content production teams. This could lead to the platform being very profitable for the content creators such as ezines and stuff like that.
I see them as having the potential to be the Steem version of Medium. I honestly think they might be the very best project in existence with Steem, and very much an under appreciated project.
Amazing post @pennsif. Thank you for sharing all these information 😁
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