Comparing Steemit And Ethereum: Some Thoughts
While comparing Steemit to Ethereum is like comparing apples to oranges, there may be some things to learn from the exercise. Steemit is social media powered by blockchain technology that uses a new cryptocurrency to reward users who upload articles, images, commentary etc. Ethereum, on the other hand, according to Wikipedia "is an open-source, public, blockchain-based distributed computing platform featuring smart contract (scripting) functionality. It provides a decentralized virtual machine, the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)".
Before we begin, I got the idea for this post from a recent post by @cryptohazard who felt that when it comes to understanding Steemit, "the code is the documentation". What follows is my response to @cryptohazards blog post...
Documentation is problematic for modern day technology. Engineers are great at solving problems, but many, if not most, lack the time and energy to write a plain English explanation of their work. Traditionally, this has been the role of the technical writer who has a good grasp of the subject matter and has the ability to translate technical jargon, abstruse equations and engineering mumbo jumbo into a plain English explanation.
The problem with having technical writers is that it is seen as an unnecessary expense because the computer engineers know what is going on and they don't need a technical writer to explain it. In addition, technology these days moves at an exponential pace and what is a standard of the industry this year can be deprecated or obsolete the next. Who needs a pile of deprecated manuals? What we need is a living mutating document that reflects the technology as it changes. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an excellent example of this concept, providing open standards and tutorials on Internet technologies like HTML, CSS JavaScript and many more as they progress.
Furthermore, IMHO, now the trend in technology is for users to guess how the new gadget works. Take the Smartphone as an example. You either know how to work one or you don't and there is no manual except FCC warnings and how to insert the charger. When an icon appears, what do you do? Swipe it? Press it? Press it twice? Once? Three times in frustration and get propelled to a hell of confusion or the device mercifully freezes up and you remember that you once saw someone pry off the back to remove and re-install the battery, so you do the same and that, at least, brings some order to the chaos?
What Steemit/Graphene (Graphene is the blockchain underpinning Steemit) needs is it's own Andreas Antonopolus who wrote the open source book, Mastering Bitcoin. As his story goes, he locked himself up for months gathering information, decrypting the engineering mumbo jumbo and creating a book that is probably the bible of Bitcoin. Andreas now travels the world evangelizing Bitcoin to the masses.
Steemit would greatly benefit from such a work that documents Steemit. Developers and others could now learn the ropes in days rather than months of pounding one's head against a wall.
Moreover, Ethereum, which is a direct competitor to Steemit with it's new AKASHA social media, has managed to publish a Homesteading PDF to guide users. Homestead is the name for Ethereum's stable release. Here is a quote from the PDF:
This guide should serve to be an entry level for all Ethereum users and developers. The goal is to create documentation with information, short tutorials, and examples that will cover all of the basic and intermediate functionality of using Ethereum to interact with dapps or develop a dapp.
Any information that is overly specific, technical, or not necessary to accomplish the documentation’s goal will remain on the Ethereum Github Wiki. It may be referenced in this guide if necessary.
Although much of the information will be similar between the Frontier Guide and the Homestead Guide, efforts need to be made to make sure the information ported over is still accurate. This document is client agnostic, and examples and tutorials may be based on any client that the author decides to write on, as long as a distinction is made as to what client is being used in the examples/tutorials.
Although overly specific and technical documentation will not be included in the first iterations of this guide, community use and popularity of this guide will dictate future decisions to move Github wiki documentation to this format
In fairness to Steemit, I should mention that Steemit is open source and free to use. On the other hand, the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) underpinning the Ethereum "smart contract" system etc. while being available to all, charges for many transactions; creating a contract, exercising a contract and every transaction even as fundamental as addition and subtraction incurs a cost in gas. "Gas" translates to Ether which is the underlying cryptocurrency of Ethereum.
Finally, Steemit and Ethereum have different MOs and philosophys and it remains to be seen which one will stand the test of time. Perhaps, both will find their own niche as the crypto world evolves into the future. One thing is certain - it will be interesting to see what develops.
All the graphics used in this post were cobbled together by me in Microsoft Paint. I hope Andreas is not offended by my using his image in one of the graphics. He has done a great service to humanity by writing his books and his YouTubes are very informative as well as entertaining.
Please upvote, comment and resteem this post if you enjoyed it...
This post has been ranked within the top 80 most undervalued posts in the first half of Feb 12. We estimate that this post is undervalued by $3.53 as compared to a scenario in which every voter had an equal say.
See the full rankings and details in The Daily Tribune: Feb 12 - Part I. You can also read about some of our methodology, data analysis and technical details in our initial post.
If you are the author and would prefer not to receive these comments, simply reply "Stop" to this comment.
It will never stop to amaze me how you can get +100 votes but only 25 view and one relevant comment. Anyway I am answering your comparison here, since I am more familiar with the technical details of Ethereum than Steemit.
Btw, you put an "s" on my name the second time ;-)
I have to admit I missed the documentation on Homestead but anyway, Ethereum has a lot of documentation, from the code, the wiki (not always up to date though), they website. They have a white paper, a real one. They have a yellow paper, for the technical details.
Steemit has a thing they called white paper that mix everything from economics to security. Just why?! We would have benefit greatly if they made like 3 different papers so average users, investors or/and coders would know where to look for. After reading Statoshi's paper on Bitcoin, you cannot not follow his path, with clarity and simplicity.
If I spend the same amount of time under the hood of Steemit, I won't have the same level of understanding.
Last, on the contract and gas, you have to compare having the whole platform being controlled by a blockchain or by some middle-man. For instance Steemit.com can decide to censored who they want, you would still see trace on steemd.com but you would only have busy.org to see it. The average user doesn't know how to download the whole blockchain and explore it.
In general I would prefer a model where end-users don't need to pay( I don't know what is the process for synero). I am very much into decentralization but I also like the trade-off of Steemit. Unfortunately, I don't think that Steemit has a big advantage as the first social platform on a blockchain. I feel like users will be very prompt to switch to next thing, because they more or less know what to expect and look for.
Again thanks for your post ;-)
Regarding your statement:
The 100+ votes were mostly bot votes who were voting at 1% voting power (observed this on steemdb.com). I suspect the 25 views is close to the number of humans that clicked on the link to this blog post. As for the relevant comment, I suppose it's a great deal better than none, but it would be nice to have a regular following firing a boatload of comments at me. 😎
On considering your recent commentary, I thought I might suggest collaboration toward some documentation for the beginning Steemian. I had been into delving into Steemit, but like you , I was disappointed by the lack of easily digested documentation etc. The world needs a Steemit for Dummies book.😞
In brief, I felt we are on a similar wavelength and if we both figure out Steemit in collaboration it might save much time and effort. We could create a series of blog posts providing a hands on guide of what's under the hood in the Steemit machine and split any rewards or apportion them with fair percentages. What are your thoughts?🤔
I like that idea... a lot!
In your recent post you said that one of your objectives is a:
On a similar note, I would like to see a "DIY Hello World Steemit Tool". While not an earth shattering engineering feat in itself, it would create a shell within which a novice could branch out and develop more sophisticated programs, assuming they have some basic programming skills. They have something similar for Ethereum.
How far along are you in your study of the Steemit platform? In other words, could you get Steemit to print "Hello World" as a Steemit Tool?
Finally, if you prefer, we can talk on the phone because it is faster to exchange ideas or we can continue correspondence too. Then there is also Discord and other speech mechanisms. We might even pull others with similar objectives into the venue and produce a document. Or, co-author a Google Doc. I've used them to collaborate on papers before and it is quite good.
we could use busy.org if you are there. If not I have been introduced to Discord very recently. I see we are not on the same time zone as I live in France.
Busy.org sounds fine. We can chat on the #steemit channel there to discuss what direction we want to go...
Assuming you are in UTC or UTC+1 (I'm UTC-7) and keep normal hours, 1500UTC to 2000UTC is our optimal window of opportunity for chatting.