What is the ten year vision for Steem blockchain?
What will the Steem blockchain look like in ten years from now?
I'm especially interested in incentive structures that will dictate what kind of content there will be. "You get what you pay for" applies very well to Steem. That kind of content will be produced, what the blockchain will pay for.
Steem developers and the community should always have a vision what Steem will look like in the future. It's important to separate Steem blockchain and Steemit.com (which is just a first user interface for the blockchain). What kind of usecases there are for Steem blockchain? How many of those usecases can be used in one blockchain with certain kind of incentive structure?
The best long term vision will be the one that will include several different kind of usecases at the same time. The more usecases we have, the more users we have, and the more beneficial Steem will be for the humankind.
Developers should design Steem blockchain to be suitable for the long term vision, and then make sure that Steemit.com works well with that vision. Again, it's important to separate Steem blockchain and Steemit.com. First priority should be to design the blockchain and especially the incentive structure according to the vision. After that Steemit.com can be adjusted to work as good as it can with that vision of the blockchain.
Right now Steemit.com and especially the trending-algorithm will dictate who will get the biggest payouts. But that's not going to last forever. Someday there will be so much content in Steem that nobody can read all of that. If all the best content from every category will be shown in "trending", it will interest only a handful of people, because most users don't care about every kind of content. They just want to read what's most important to them and ignore the rest.
If the payout algorithm is adjusted now, based on what's happening currently in Steemit.com, it's probably not going to be well suited for the future. The payout algorithm should always be adjusted according to the long term vision. When somebody is thinking how to make it work better or fairer, they should ask first "will this work also in ten years from now?"
Usecases
The incentive structure should be able to reward all kinds of applications and content types: short messages, blogs, books, poems, manuals, pictures and videos, news, marketplace. And of course we can't be sure what the future will bring, maybe Steem will create totally new form of art?
Maybe there won't be one incentive structure that is great for everybody using every possible application. But the main goal should be to build ecosystem where incentives are good for the largest possible group of different users and usecases.
Languages
Right now most of the content is written in English. But that's not going to last because people around the world will also want to use other languages too. Probably there is no need to adjust reward mechanism to be different for different languages. But it's important to keep in mind that the system will have other languages too, to make sure there won't be any artificial barriers to adoption.
Easy and fast way to make other languages possible is to start using ISO 639-3 codes. Posts should have language code as metainfo to tell to the user interface what language the post is written in.
It should be noted that once there are several subcommunities in Steem that use other languages than English, it will be more difficult to adjust reward mechanisms. Changes based only on English speakers using Steemit.com might be harmful for groups that are using other languages with different user interface. That's why it's important to keep in mind the long term vision and act according to that and abstain making decisions based on short term thinking for one certain usergroup.
Biggest challenge
I think that the most difficult decisions are those that dictate how new or old content is rewarded. Should we reward only relatively new and fresh content, like we are doing now? That will lower the rewards for books published in Steem. But is book-like timeless content really so bad that we should discourage it? Where do we draw the line?
Personally I'd like to see most rewards going to book-like content. Well thought and done long texts are usually the most valuable. Short messages, memes and links to news are nice, but people are doing them already without any compensation in traditional social media platforms. Internet is full of them, so I'm not sure is it really necessary to greatly reward people who produce that kind of content.
Sidechains as a solution?
I haven't really thought about this enough yet, but maybe there should be several different blockchains that will create bigger Steem ecosystem. Different blockchains would have different incentive structures to stimulate the creation of different kinds of content.
Three-blockchain-model could be something like this:
- Fresh content. Twitter-like short messages, memes, breaking news. If content is older than 24 hours, very few are interested in it anymore.
- Blog-like content. Essays, opinions, commentary, etc. Stays relevant from a few days to a few months.
- Book-like content. Long texts. Stays relevant for years.
There might be a solution that will reward fairly all types of content in one blockchain. But if there is not (or it will be too complicated), maybe the best solution is then to create sidechains?
Why long term plan is important
It's always good to have a plan, even if the future seems very uncertain. If you have a plan, you can know whether or not you are working towards a certain goal. If there is no goal, work you do might be more or less useless. You are just reacting to random stuff that doesn't really make the system any better. If you start to think that the plan is bad, you'll change it and start working towards the new goal instead of just abandoning the bad plan.
I'd like to see maybe once or twice a year post or video from devs about ten year plan and what they have been doing to achieve that. That would force them to think about this regularly and adjust their work and short term goals if they realise that they are not in the right path at the moment.
Any ideas?
Predicting the future is hard but interesting. I'd like to hear your ideas too. Steem blockchain is amazing innovation which will change the world. But how, exactly?
What kind of incentive structure would be the best for Steem blockchain? Is one incentive set enough or should we try to implement several different sets in one blockchain or launch other blockchains as sidechains?
What kind of communities Steem will attract? Forget who uses Steem now and try think who will use it in ten years from now.
How Steem can serve as many different communities as possible?
Personal biases might be strong in these kinds of predictions, so try not let them influence your thinking. Don't write how you would like to get paid for producing certain kind of content. The goal of Steem should be to be as beneficial as possible, to as many different groups as possible. Think about the possibilities for the whole world on a general level.
Ten years? Wow, you are thinking way far ahead. I'm more excited about the next 10 months!
Long term, I would like to see Steemit grow to what Reddit was at its peak. Quality content, intelligent conversations. Well categorised, well organised. A centralised community where people can come share their opinion and discuss them.
I don't wish to make any predictions as it's far too early.
I'm sure we'll see a crypto version of Twitter soon enough, but I feel Steemit should concentrate on what it's best at - blogging and conversation.
>Ten years? Wow, you are thinking way far ahead. I'm more excited about the next 10 months!
Well, Steem Power is vested for two years, so of course we need to think much more farer than that.
>Long term, I would like to see Steemit grow to what Reddit was at its peak.
If this happens, do you think some other communities would be able to use Steem blockchain at the same time for something completely different?
That's a very good question! I think so, yes. The Steem blockchain is completely open - and that's why we are seeing so many great apps coming up. It's probably not a stretch of the imagination to see it used for different applications. But I'm not an expert on the matter. Perhaps someone else can comment on it.
Honestly, I haven't looked at two years ahead. I have invested in Steem Power because I want to see the community succeed.
I think we will have some categories (topics) and tags that will work very well. But on the other hand, we have places that will be a complete disaster, much will depend on the interests of the people and their ability to "organize" this area of human knowledge. Something similar to what happens today in reddit. I consider important what you say about languages, Steemit will think very well this part.
It's just the beginning...if the beginning is so rapid...imagine the speed of it ahead...I am excited!
I see a great future ahead...
So far @Dan has been shown to be most strategic in the blockchain space. He has re-invented the blockchain via various iterations every time looking at the key challenges of what the previous version has and coming up with a solution. Examples:
So telling them to be more strategic i think is not very helpful. Its like telling the best runner to be faster.
What might be useful is to explain to the steem team what you think current challanges are and how you think they could be addressed. They have actually shown to be very open to feedback.
Yeah, I agree that @dan is one of the best blockchain designers. But even he needs help sometimes, or at least he can appreciate good ideas.
I think the dev team might have been too busy lately (the hack, userbase explosion, etc.) to think longer term visions. Especially changes for incentive structure need to be thought thoroughly so that the need to adjust them is minimized.
I'm not sure what the best solutions are. That's why I want to encourage people to tell their opinions and ideas.
"Don't write how you would like to get paid for producing certain kind of content." That's the most important thing. Create your content and don't think about the money. Hard work pays off itself
Really interesting thoughts. Especially regarding book-like content. To motivate artists, writers, researchers, etc. to share more really valuable content I think maybe there must be something like a useful library to dive into based on relevance. 10 years is a hell of a long time in this world, but I get your point about aiming towards something.