A Chat With The Man Behind SteemSports….Founder Of Peerhub....Steemians Speak…...This Week On Steemit… Free SteemFest Tickets Giveaway. SteemMag – Steemit’s Weekend Digest #12 p.2 (Plus A SPECIAL Note For You)

A Chat With @thecryptodrive

SteemMag:
What inspired you to start SteemSports?

@thecryptodrive:
Early on, I identified that Steemit and the Steem blockchain could be used for more than just content curation. There are many use cases, businesses and communities that can be created on top of the blockchain or within the Steemit

Before I joined Steemit I was heavily researching the Ethereum based Augur prediction market. I was going to do a Youtube Vlog on it, but started posting content on Steem instead, so I already had prediction market ideas bouncing around in my head to start with.

It then didn't take me long to figure out that users could vote on comments as potential prediction outcomes and that the author is the market maker just like the prediction market maker on Augur, but in the case of Steemit there is no monetary buy-in to participate in the prediction market, unless of course you want to power-up more to have a greater effect on the Stake Pool!

SteemSports itself, as a concept, came about shortly after Steemit HQ's call for gamification of Steemit to increase user activity and engagement. It was also noticeable that not every user is a writer or Blogger and it is important to create ways for others to earn and engage on the platform that doesn’t involve writing, to be able to retain the masses.

Furthermore, being from an African country with high inequality, much like yourself, my wish for the Steem ecosystem is that is that the vast gap could one day be bridged, so ever since the gamification announcement, I started thinking of ways I could help and have a positive effect on the above issues.

I am an entrepreneur, but also an entertainer at heart, with mobile DJ’ing being my first career at the age of thirteen; I love to see people enjoying themselves, which was also apparent in the 2010 Soccer World Cup held in my country, South Africa. For a brief time, people of all races and age groups stood together in jubilation and set aside their differences for a common event in celebration of their country. Government and corporate expenditure was increased on infrastructure and many jobs were created during that time.

SteemSports was created to help the economy, stimulate user engagement, create writer and editor jobs, demand for the Steem currency and to get people to be invested in the community through “Power-up” games, while participating and celebrating the wonderful platform we have available to us in comradery with each other.

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SM:
How has been Steemians response to it so far?

@thecryptodrive:

Actually it was quite amazing, post rewards have been slim lately so I was a bit concerned we would only make like 20$ on or first post, but the community really embraced it and almost all of our posts have had a few hundred Dollars worth of community participation and still growing.

@complexring was the first whale to identify the merits of this initiative and boosted the project from the first posts without me even asking for it and has been an advisor to me in a few private chats ever since, and takes part in our SteemSports private team channel.

@berniesanders has swooped in on a few matches and said in a public comment, he is happy to play along and @blocktrades nuclear-bombs in on most games when he is not too busy, these guys have been creating a lot of fun for everyone by being involved and I love seeing that.

@smooth gave me a few pointers and advice as well and has supported quietly almost every game; @nextgencrypto, @silversteem, @cryptoctopus, @steempower , @silver, @joseph, @kushed, @boatymcboatface, @jesta, @nanzo-scoop and a few others seem to be becoming regulars as well.

I also met a few sports enthusiasts who I have become friends with and two great guys from the Telegram Sports Betting channel have come on board as writers (Theo Goodman and Jeff Brown).

My @steemdrive team have also joined @steemsports, so we now have @cryptoiskey with mad graphics skills and a long history of UFC involvement and the enthusiastic@theprophet0 shoots out content like a machine, @kyriacos brings his graphics flair to the table, @metalcrypto86 will be trying out simulcast English/Spanish translated games, in fact I am busy editing one now, @acidyo and @bacchist will be writing for us and @kryptik has advised along the way.

As with everything, @steemsports is not necessarily for everyone, just like Steemit itself, Steemsports also has its sceptics, but I don’t see a reason why the sporting community can’t co-exist in the Steem eco-system, especially seeing how many people are enjoying it at present.

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SteemMag:
What has been your major achievements so far? And challenge?

@thecryptodrive:
Getting @steemsports off the ground was an achievement in itself, so I would say that! 

Challenges are balancing life with Steemit.life 😉 where it is often difficult to juggle one’s real-world obligations with Steemit initiatives, there just doesn’t seem to be enough time in the day.

It’s hard to do one’s normal admin and work when all you want to do is be innovating on Steemit.

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SM:
On a broader scale, do you think Steemit has been successful in rewarding content diversity?

@thecryptodrive:
There are great initiatives such @teamsmooth , @robinhoodwhale and @curie as well as a few avid curators, but on the whole there are so many users and content to be curated and the platform has such a great Steem Power divide where only a few can affect post outcomes dramatically, so many authors are falling by the wayside.

I remember sometime back I went into the “business” tag and just saw a wasteland of zero value posts and a few people I met on steemit.chat have also left and I miss them.

I don’t know if I am too optimistic, but I hope Steemsports will help to “Power-up” the community through Mass SP Winnings Distribution; so they can help effectively in the curation game and @steemsports itself will also be set to autovote regular sports authors.

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SM:
Which features would you like to see being added on the Steemit interface to make further gamification projects like yours successful?

@thecryptodrive:
I think content discovery is key, many of the tags are not visible unless they have popular content, top-level and sublevel categories would be great to see and a dedicated category page akin to craiglist.com would be beneficial.

Also for gamification initiatives to happen, users need to be able to create alternate accounts to host their initiatives, currently this can be done with the CLI wallet but not everyone is adept at using that and with Facebook verification in force it becomes difficult to create a new account unless you have multiple mobile phone numbers or use a temporary text service on the internet which is a hack,

I’m sure users would be happy to pay for new accounts from the front-end, most existing users don’t care about the free SP that comes with the account and would be happy to pay to get up and running quicker.

Aside from that, I have had a “burner” of a week so don’t have my “thinking cap” too tightly on, but I will have ideas coming up in the short term.

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SM:
Which additional features/programs should Steemians expect from you and where do you see SteemSports in the next 3 months?

@thecryptodrive:
We have had a lot of requests for hockey, PC Gaming, basketball and chess to name a few, we will try accommodate where we can dependent on available writers. We are looking into providing stats as well on winners of the games and payouts. Saying, much more than that would be “giving up the cat” so to speak .

In three months, I see @steemsports doing SP distributions on a mass scale on regular daily games of varied sports and events with of thousands of dollars of SP distributions per game, maybe even some “airdrop” support from Steemit HQ if we are lucky; that may be a bit ambitious I know, but I do hope it happens,

I am “dipping my feet” in the witness pool having just set up thecryptodrive witness a few days ago, the witness application post to follow this week and I hope to setup a witness for the @steemsports and @steemdrive initiatives in geo-diverse locations as well in the coming months.

Furthermore, we have registered the domain www.steemsports.com and hope to develop that and even look into the possibility of making it into a sidechain of the Steem blockchain with more diverse betting features, automated payouts and paid human oracles to confirm predictions like in Augur, but that may be more than a three-month projection to get to that point.

Once a publicly accessible, easy to understand front-end is in place; it may also be worth a @steemsports / @steemdrive billboard collaboration…just saying !

In the short term however, we hope to grow in support, entertain the community and help retain active users to the best of our ability. As our slogan goes: *“together we can all win!”

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Thanks @thecryptodrive for the insightful replies.. It must be exciting coordinating 2 of the most popular initiatives on Steemit – Steemdrive and SteemsSports. Wish you loads of luck in you endeavors.

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A Chat With @steemrollin

SteemMag:
How and when did you start PeerHub?

@steemrollin
I started Peerhub in early 2014 and it was my first startup project since following Bitcoin in mid-2012. I thought it was great having new blockchain money, but most people weren’t using Bitcoin as money or for payments. I thought having a marketplace would be the key to making Bitcoin or blockchain money the foundation for a New Economy.

It took me some time to realize most people want to invest and save Bitcoin like gold and didn’t want to spend it so I began waiting for a blockchain dollar solution to come about. I put Peerhub on the backburner in 2015 until the Steem blockchain came out with the Steem Dollar and thought it would be a perfect match.

SM:
What encouraged you integrate Peerhub with steem and how has been the response from Steemians so far?

@steemrollin :

As a longtime member, I think our Steemit community is amazing and there seemed to be a growing need for members to use Steem Dollars to pay for things so I thought the timing was great. I was confident enough in the Steem development team to ensure the Steem dollar has much closer parity with the US dollar in the future so I decided to start ramping up activity with Peerhub.

Support has been fantastic. Since posting about Peerhub about 10 days ago we have had 160 resteems of our original introduction post. I’m fortunate to have@anwenbaumeister helping us to lead growth and outreach efforts. We had over 150 signups and over 150 listings in Goods. Items in Art, Fashion and Technology seem to be popular so far. Over 10 listings are listed in Services so far now. We have had over 5 transactions as well. We really appreciate the support from the community!

SM:
In what way can Steemit Inc and the community support you?

@steemrollin :
Steemit Inc and Steem developers can continue to do great development work making Steem Dollars more liquid and making it closer to achieving parity with the dollar. All the new features such as the account recovery system, savings account and escrow are amazing!

I think our main objective is to serve the Steemit community so we want it to be a place to give exposure to all the goods, services and housing listings the Steemit community has to offer each other. We really want to kickstart economic activity #usesteem. It would be great to eventually see people living on Peerhub and Steem dollars. The two things that can help us tremendously are: 1) for members to sign up and list their items and services! 2) Tell others about Peerhub as a place to buy and sell anything for Steem dollars.

SM:
What are your expansion plans for Peerhub and what new features should Steemians expect from you?

@steemrollin :
Some of the features we plan to implement :

1. Steempayments for easy checkout (most likely using Steempay.io)
2. Better location filter for International users.
3. Steem blockchain escrow

In the future we may want to allow members to add listings to the Steem blockchain for products that are restricted or illegal, but are more likely to have public support like food & dining services. Why can’t we sell the fruits and vegetables we grow to each other? We’ll start for now by just encouraging people to list food & dining services on our platform now, but if regulators want to make a big fuss we’ll just add the ability to add listings to the blockchain so we have limited liability as a company and can still allow users to have freedom.

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Thanks @steemrollin for taking the time to have a chat with steemMag... Cant wait to see more features added...Peerhub reaching the scale of a mini- Ebay and expansion to more fronts. Keep up the great work !

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Steemfest Tickets Giveaway #2

After the first round of winners has been announced last month, I thought it would be awesome to run another round of SteemFest Tickets giveaway.

I’ve got 4-5 tickets to give out this month

….For this weekend’s special edition, I will be giving 2 free SteemFest tickets…

And I really don’t have any criteria for the giveaway… So just drop a comment on this weekend’s issue either on page 1 or 2 and you just might get a free Steemfest ticket. (A regular ticket goes for 111 euros - 144 SD).

41 days to go

See you there!

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A SPECIAL NOTE FOR YOU

Releasing 12 editions of SteemMag so far has definitely not been easy… But I’ve certainly had fun having the interviews and curating all these information together.
I will like to give a shoutout to all those who have taken their time to have a chat with steemMag in the past and other steemians who have offered support.

To @steemed, @smooth @berniesanders @jamesc @blocktrades @svk @complexring @phareism @roadscape @arhag @amcq @riverhead @steempty @donkeypong @stellabelle @gavvet @cass @anyx @thecryptodrive @bittrex-bill @fairytalelife @laonie @roelandp @curie @robinhoodwhale and a host of others.

Y’all rock!