Steemit Communities Are Just Around The Corner!
In a much expected update, @roadscape, the Steemit developer in charge of hivemind, the backend service behind the layer community of the Steem blockchain, laid out the current status of the project.
And there are many reasons to be excited about it.
First of all, if you don't know anything about hivemind, it's a separate project, which will add a new backend layer on top of the current steemd endpoints. In other words, if you want to access content from the Steem blockchain, you won't have to rely only on the blockchain nodes, you will be able to use hivemind as well.
From what I understand, hivemind, an API server written in Python, works likes this: it will index on startup the Steem blockchain, then it will expose a few API endpoints (to be announced later on) which will allow you to have a richer experience (see below). I think it will be an official hivemind API server, but I also think there will be also a downloadable version, which may be installed on a computer and run like any other server. This will be especially useful for those running full content nodes (me included).
Before giving a few more details about what hivemind status is, here's what you will be able to do with it (as a developer), or experience on a hivemind-enhanced server (as a regular user):
- reactions, bookmarks
- comment on resteems
- indexing of custom profile data
- reorganizing of old posts (categorize, filter, hide/show)
- voting/polls (democratic or burn/send to vote)
- modlists: (e.g. spam, abuse, bad taste)
- crowdsourced metadata
- mentions indexing
- full-text search
- rich statistics
- follow lists
- bot tracking
- mini-games
- community bots
That's quite a lot! Think Facebook-like, without Facebook bloatware, on a decentralized platform. Or, if the mere idea of Facebook scares you, think reddit on steroids.
Now, a few caveats.
Because hivemind is another layer on top of the Steem blockchain, there will be a little delay in how it will access data. This is happening because, as in any blockchain, there might be small mcrohardforks and it takes a few seconds until the last irreversible block is broadcasted on all witness nodes. So, in an optimistic scenario, you can experience 6 seconds delay from a site run on top of the Steem blockchain. Which is more than acceptable.
The launch will be made in two steps: the core (1.0) which will contain the indexer, and the communities (1.5) which will contain all the functions necessary to create nice stuff on top of the Steem blockchain. As far as I see on Github, the first stage is 86% completed!
I'm very excited about this development.
Apparently, I'm no the only one. Since the announcement was published on the official @steemitblog account, Coinmarketcap reports a three fold increase in volume, with a sudden appreciation of STEEM:
Good times are closer than we think :)
I'm a serial entrepreneur, blogger and ultrarunner. You can find me mainly on my blog at Dragos Roua where I write about productivity, business, relationships and running. Here on Steemit you may stay updated by following me @dragosroua.
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Too small an update to matter on markets.
Why do they have to add another layer @dragosroua? Why is this not just added to the original blackchain? Is this different people writing this bit?
Blockchain is for append new data to steemit database with a check on consensus mechanism.
But on steemit.com you need to query random data from a random part of chain to show you post or comment you ask. So essentially hive is a same data in a different form.
It's because each layer serves a different purpose. the blockchain level is more about consensus, or how the data is validated, and this must be fast and secure, while the hivemind layer is about data and this must be flexible and comprehensive. These are mostly hardware constraints and different software writing paradigms.
That's interesting @dragosroua. Thank you for the explanation.
Is there any hivemind layer at all yet? Is it the same on the other coin's block chains or is this something specific to the Steem Block chain?
Specific to Steem and not public yet, the announcement was for the alpha version, which may be downloaded and tested by developers from Github.
Ah. Of course . . . thinking about it. Bitcoin would have no need of communities etc. on their block chain would they! 😁
My favorite of these features are being able to comment with resteems, bookmarks, and voting polls. The community features here aren't that clear to me.
Communities bots? Meaning instead of delegating SP to a bot you could just have several people link their accounts to be an upvote bot? Or is this a bot with a completely different functionality related to communities, and not at all like our current bots on the platform?
Still don't know how community bots will work, I'm waiting for the actual API endpoints to see how it's implemented.
Can't wait for the full deployment of the hivemind! We are closer to having the same functions as other social media sites and that will make the whole platform more attractive for new users and investors!
My hope is that one day steem and it's multiple applications can be considered a full replacement for Reddit, Facebook and Twitter, at the same time.
These are the two most interesting part to me.
I read the original post on @steemitblog, I noticed that it takes less than 0.05 secs for post to get to new post once post button get hit. This is incredible, we are close to having 300,000,000 transaction on steem blockchain with unbeatable speed!
I was lucky enough to see that article too, and it looks curious to me that @roadscape was mentioning the fact that a lot of the information that will be used by this new layer will not be stored on the blockchain but instead it will be kept on a traditional database which will e synchronized with the blockchain. From his post:
It seems that the guys from Steemit Inc are doing this as a measurement to improve the performance and also the flexibility that they want to give to developers which is a great thing for the future of Steem and also for its scalability!
comment on resteems
that's been needed since the beginning of resteems.
I have to say the timing of the news was good, whether or not it moved the market last night or not. There's been a lot of talk about how things have slowed down around here and an announcement like this is helpful to keep people going while we all look forward to some highly anticipated changes.
The question now is, how long will it take to finish up the remaining bits, and how will it be deployed in relation to HF 20, since I understand those to be separate things.
I would hope that the communities/hivemind hybrid could be in place before Velocity and the flood gates open. I may have said this before, but acclimating current users to a new setup would be good so we can turn around and help the masses when they come. :)
This is very exviting stuff! Thanks, as always, for keeping us in the loop @dragosroua.
With your analysis here, u think hivemind has great prospects for the steem blockchain. This is a welcome developement .