What's The Point Of Steemfest? - The Power Of The Projects
Why go to Steemfest? After all, it is just a bunch of people who already know about the Steemit platform, talking to themselves about how the thing that they are all aware of is amazing.
Right?
Wrong!
First of all, whilst Steemit.com may have provided an initial focal point, it is not the be all and end all of the Steem blockchain. It is so much more than that.
So for those of you who might be struggling to understand why Steemfest is not only an amazing event, but an entirely necessary one, let's take a look at what makes Steemfest so great!
Defining The Blockchain
In a recent Reddit poll, whereby readers were asked to identify alt coins by their logos alone, as you'd probably expect Ethereum was the most recognised. However when it came to Steem, the readers almost universally identified the Steem logo as Steemit.
Perhaps in the early days of Steem this was an acceptable and completely understandable mistake. However last year, Steemit Inc. decided to create a new logo for the Steemit.com website in order to differentiate between the website and the cryptocurrency.
At the time the move may have been seen as somewhat superfluous. Because after all, up until fairly recently Steem and Steemit were pretty inseparable.
Today when we look at the Steem blockchain, we can see so much more than just Steemit and its clones, which are essentially the same site but with a few tweaks added here and there.
Even though this was my first Steemfest, after talking to a lot of attendees, I got the distinct impression that this was the first one that focused more on the blockchain than the flagship application that is Steemit.
The reason why this is important, is firstly because it allows people to understand the potential of the blockchain. If we as Steemians understand exactly how the blockchain is being utilised, we can ourselves take advantage of that whilst also spreading the message to others.
Imagine for a second that a mysterious person hands you a small metal slab, about the size of a smartphone. As she hands it to you, she shows you that if you use your thumb to stroke its top edge while saying out loud the name of your favourite website, a hologram of that site appears floating on top of the device.
You are blown away, you can now watch dtube, Vimeo, Youtube and a whole host of other video streaming sites as a hologram.
Consider for a second that our mysterious stranger now walks away and leaves you with the device. What do you think would happen every time you demonstrated the device to someone else?
Exactly. You would simply repeat her demonstration, and surely everyone you showed it to would be equally impressed.
Now imagine that after having this device for a couple of years somebody comes along and shows you that as well as watching holograms on it. If you flip it over and run your hand on the underside you can play games on it.
They also show you that you can use it to program various devices around your home. You can even get it to run you a bath whilst on your way back from work!
In fact they show you that the device has got hundreds of other applications you can explore.
You suddenly realise that you haven't been explaining this device properly to your friends and family. However you weren't to blame, because you didn't know what the potential of this device was.
This is a fair analogy for the Steem blockchain. So far we have just been exposed to Steemit. However the potential for the Steem blockchain is so far further reaching than just a blogging platform, that it is almost criminal not to be aware of that potential.
The Power Projects Built On Steem
So we have the potential to be so much more, however what does that mean, and how does it manifest itself on the blockchain?
Steem Monsters
First of all let's take a look at a recent success story that has taken the Steem blockchain by storm, namely @steemmonsters, an @aggroed creation.
The Steem Monsters game has taken a popular medium, trading cards, and put them on the Steem blockchain.
So what? I hear you ask. Well, this is a breakthrough that had previously gone flying over my head, as it may have yours. But thanks to a taxi ride from Krakow airport, whereby @stevec's comprehensive breakdown of exactly what steemmonsters is, where it has come from, and where it's going, I now see it for the amazing application it is.
I remember discussing with my pal @bleepcoin some time ago, about how Steem needed a game to really catapult it into the stratosphere. This was for the simple reason that gaming is extremely popular. Plus it is a very nonrestrictive pastime, whether you're an eight year old girl in the Philippines, or an eighty year old man in Alaska, and everyone in between gaming can be for you.
This is borne out by the fact that according to Newzoo's Global Games Market Report, the gaming industry is currently worth $138 billion dollars, and is growing around 13.5% a year.
It doesn't take a genius to work out that even getting one percent, of one percent of that market will make you very rich indeed.
@steemmonsters utilises the Steem blockchain whereby players who are not at all interested in Steemit can compete for cash prizes, as well as trade, swap and sell their Steemmonsters cards.
PLUS!
We are already seeing the trading cards increase in value as they get more scarce, therefore they work as a value store, or in other words an investment. Which of course means they are an alternative way to store your crypto, which could well prove to be a much more stable way to invest in the long-term.
WOW!
On top of all that, whilst the game itself sits atop of the Steem blockchain, you don't necessarily have to make your purchases or your sales in Steem. This means that the whole project is super flexible, which will appeal to many who would prefer to pay with fiat or even a different crypto.
I see a future in which Steem Monsters becomes a huge game with global appeal, whereby most of its users are not even aware of Steemit.com.
dStors
My new Steemfest buddy @derangedvisions turned me onto the DStors project started by @kaliju. Their team have been working tirelessly to create a decentralised eCommerce site for the individual user.
At the moment if you have one or more things you want to sell online, your options are limited to sites such as gumtree.com eBay, or even Shopify.
Gumtree allows you to put your stuff on there for free, however you cannot change the design of your page, rather you can merely add text and pictures. Plus of course if you want your listing to be visible, then you have to pay gumtree advertising fees to make that happen.
Next you have eBay, however auctioning isn't for everyone, and the fact that eBay is a centralised commercial business, means that they have created an algorithm that favours sellers of large volumes. So your vintage pair of Air Jordans, might not even come up in the first ten pages when someone searches for basketball sneakers.
Lastly we have Shopify, they will allow you the freedom to design your store however you want. On top of that, you can use Google advertising to promote your store and get seen. However that can prove to be costly, and might not suit you if you just have one or two items to sell every now and then.
dStors is a decentralised platform built on the Steem blockchain which allows you to build up an online store whereby you can list your goods, only paying micro fees once your goods have sold.
The platform utilises the built in escrow feature of the Steem blockchain, thus allowing you to buy and sell goods without having to worry about being ripped off by bad actors on the platform.
So we can see that whilst the currency used on dStors is Steem and SBD, it is a completely separate application from Steemit.com, with an entirely different use case.
Steemwallet.app
As we've discussed, in the beginning there was only one way a non-tech new user could interact with the Steem blockchain, which was via Steemit.com. Now however, as we've discussed briefly above, you can see that there are more and more ways that a user can be on the blockchain.
Hence a new user might now want to go to the trouble of having a Steemit profile just so that they can send Steem from one place to another.
So bring forth the steemwallet.app brought to us by our very own trusted, and wonderful Steemian, the founder and chief organiser of Steemfest, @roelandp.
Roeland has created an incredibly robust and lightweight wallet application for your Android or Apple device, which will allow you to send and receive Steem and SBD without once having to logon to Steemit.com.
So a player who is interested in Steemmonsters, DStors or any of the other growing amount of Steem applications, can carry out their financial transactions without having to bother with Steemit.com.
Whilst it may seem to you at first, that this is a trivial addition to the Steem blockchain. It most definitely is not, in much the same way a user is not expected to have a Facebook account in order to use Whatsapp, or a Gmail account in order to use Google maps. So too must we provide ways for new users to interact with the Steem blockchain without having to open a Steemit account.
This is the future, and will help us realise @dantheman's dream of world domination for the Steem blockchain.
Conclusion
In this article we have looked briefly at just three projects that are up and running on the Steem blockchain. I shall cover some more in a future article, however I would hope that if you, like me, did not fully understand the potential of Steem, then you are now beginning to comprehend just how exciting this new ecosphere is going to be.
Be you a developer, or a layperson, you can now explore, test, and evangelise about all the new projects on the Steem blockchain.
What is more, you can now see the potential of this community that we are part of. Steemit was the first amazing app that brought us all together, now it is time for us to fully explore and share the potential of Steem.
STEEM ON AND PROSPER!
Resources:
Steem Monsters Official Website
Steem Monsters Official Discord Invite - also available on steemmonsters steemit blog
DID YOU KNOW ABOUT THESE OR ANY OTHER STEEM PROJECTS? ARE YOU AS EXCITED AS I AM TO SEE THE STEEM BLOCKCHAIN BEING UTILISED IN THIS WAY? WHAT OTHER POTENTIAL GAME CHANGER APPS CAN YOU IMAGINE COMING IN THE FUTURE? MOST OF ALL, DO YOU SEE THE POINT TO STEEMFEST NOW?
AS EVER, LET ME KNOW BELOW!
Title image: María Victoria Heredia Reyes on Unsplash
I am excited about dstors.
@surfyogi mentioned it today and I thought of all the possibilities it would achieve.
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Superb round up, the Steem Blockchain has such a broad range of potential and the front ends for blogging alone keep expanding with new and enhanced features. SteemMonsters is a great example of building a gaming system though the blockchain - and it has loads of potential for collecting cards, building them up through playing and of course also gaining rare cards that will grow in value.
@dstors has such a massive potential, I'm excited to create my own stores with it and also see how it spreads out and we see people around the world enabled to trade products easily.
#thealliance #witness
I'm most excited for dstors, I have quite a number of unused Steam game keys that I would want to sell... As well as a bunch of stuff from kids growing up and past use. This would be a great way to get rid of them and do it within the Steem ecosystem!
Also the light wallet is pretty interesting as well, after all these ideas leverage the fact that bit everyone can or wants to blog...
I think dstors might just turn into a monster! :-)
Cg
I was loving up on those D.ick guys. I was eating up that D-penetration concept. There proof of C.O.C.K. Protocol was going down on so many rabbit holes.
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Lolz, I'm so glad I met you @buttcoins 🤣😂🤣
Cg
Same here @cryptogee gotta love a nostalgic k-hole Jesus story!!
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Yea. It is wrong. You need to learn a lot and it will surely help you to learn more and more not even only about steemit but also learning from people also all around the whole world
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@cryptogee,
It sounds like you had a great time. Glad to hear it.
I wish I could share your enthusiasm. I don't.
I started to composes a comment and realized that to do the subject justice, it would have to be long and elaborate. And so, I'm going to create a post (or perhaps, a series of posts).
In a nutshell, though, STEEM has no focus. It's turned into a Dev Carnival with everyone running around creating this project or that WITHOUT first ensuring that it's central application, Steemit, is even functional.
And make no mistake, Steemit is not functional. Not even moderately so.
Keep in mind that all these other apps are being replicated, ad nauseum, by other developers for other blockchains.
STEEM Monsters ... lovely. Gaming is big. But so is the gaming industry. There are tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of other games plying for people's attention and money. What line of reasoning would suggest that STEEM Monsters will be a 'Killer App' ... rising up and above all the plethora of other games and go viral?
A Plan ... reflecting priorities. The mastering of one thing before moving onto another. Where is it?
STEEM is a rudderless ship whose masters cannot even agree to put an end to the blatant game-rigging, which they themselves have organized, that has paralyzed its flagship app, Steemit.
This does not bode well for the blockchain in general and all the ra ra in the world won't change the central dynamics, and the consequences that are sure to result.
Unless there is a dramatic reorganization of priorities, of which I am skeptical, I am doubtful that there will be a SteemFest 4.
Quill
Steemit.com is not the central application of the Steem blockchain, it is just a proof of concept of one use-case of what can be built on top of it. In fact, a decentralized ecosystem should not have a central application. Maybe the following post from one of the founders will shed some light on the point that I am making:
https://steemit.com/steem/@dantheman/how-anyone-can-build-custom-apps-on-steem-right-now
I don't deny that there are issues but I do not share your skepticism.
these apps definitely flew over my head...thanks for the post, I'm now on board!