Steemit Vs. Publish0x - My honest review

Image Source - Made by the author

Steemit was launched in 2016. It was the first application built on the Steem blockchain. Steemit is the first decentralized social media or publishing platform in the history. It has Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS) mechanism which protects the blockchain. The contents published are immutable here. The native digital asset of Steemit is Steem token as it runs on Steem blockchain. Steemit rewards content creators, curators and remitters. Steemit has ‘Proof-of-Brain’ mining system which allows people to earn fast and feeless Steem tokens (payment happens in terms of liquid Steem token, Steem blockchain dollar or SBD and vested Steem called Steem power). A writer is rewarded when his/her content is upvoted as the content creates more value to the platform. The voters are also rewarded for creating engagement in the platform by curating and upvoting contents. It has been already proved that Steemit can handle high traffic and is extremely scalable.

Image Source – Alexa Analysis | Audience geography – Steemit

What I like in Steemit

• True decentralization: Steemit is completely decentralized. It is totally driven by community members. Contents are censorship free.
• Community engagement: Steemit is an excellent example of focal point of game theory where a community coordinates without explicit coordination. Just imagine two bicycles heading towards each other and going to crash. Now avoiding collision becomes a coordination game. One player can go right or left but he doesn’t know what the other player will do. Only aim is to avoid crashing. Ultimately one player decides to go to the right direction which serves as a focal point and leads to the winning right-right outcome. It appears to be a natural focal point using right-hand traffic. Steemit is operating since long time without intervention of any regulator.
• Flourishing dapps: So many dapps are being built in the Steem platform. There is Youtube alternative D.Tube, fitness dapp Actifit and Instagram alternative APPICS etc. Partiko and eSteem are applications built on top of Steem blockchain for Android and iOS devices, offering unique features to your daily social interactions and earning rewards. As these dapps are attracting good public attention, the interaction level in Steemit has increased a lot.
• Transparency: There is no doubt that Steemit is extremely transparent. You can view all details in the blockchain. It does not hide anything from you.
• Private wallet: Steemit has private wallet and you have full control over your fund. Image Source - Posts in Steemit website

Grey areas of Steemit

• Bot voting: Bid bots almost demolished Steemit by selling votes. Newsteem has banned vote selling bid bots technically but automated voting is a huge problem of Steemit. Steemit simply allows a user to automate voting by following certain criteria. So you will find many users who vote in Steemit without even reading or login. There are so many bots deployed also which keep on voting just for the purpose of generating return on investment.
• Abundant shit posts: Shit posts are abundant in Steemit. Some shit posts even earn good amount as the writer is part of big Steemit communities.
• Downvote battles: Steemit also has downvoting option. Downvotes are meant to keep the platform spam free but often we see downvote battles between different communities or members.
• Complicated system: Steemit is extremely complicated for a new user. If you have nascent or nil idea about blockchain and cryptocurrency, you’ll find the mechanism difficult. Steemit provides so many keys with different rights for different purposes.
• Limited earning period: Posts here earn only for first 7 days. Earning cycle is very less. Small earning cycle is supposed to produce motivation for generating more contents as per the founders.
• Poor ranking by search engines: The web search engines like Google generally do not rank the posts higher when you search with even perfect key words.
• Unstable value of Steem: Steem is presently trading at 0.12$. In 2018, it was trading in the range of 2$ to 6$. The price fluctuation forced many users to leave the platform.

Image Source

Publish0x is a publishing platform where both authors and readers get paid. It was launched in December 2018 and gained the stream of popularity very fast. It is quite different from Steemit. Publish0x is crypto agnostic. Anybody can become a reader by simple registration but to be writer, you need to apply. A writer can create his/her own blog here and post articles on various topics. There is no like or upvote, downvote option in Publish0x. Instead of that there is tipping option. A reader can tip the writer from a cryptocurrency tip pool. The pool most probably comes from the sponsors of the Publish0x. Presently tipping is done from the pool of Bounty0x, Project Hydro, DAI Stablecoin and BAT. The reader can choose the percentage of tip to be given to himself/herself and the writer. Publish0x is a no ICO project and they do not have any own token.

Image Source – Alexa Analysis | Audience geography – Publish0x

What I like in Publish0x

• Crypto Agnostic platform: As Publish0x is crypto agnostic, it can invite many more sponsors and tokens in the future. Community interest in this platform does not rely upon value of a particular coin like Steem.
• Innovative tipping: Tipping criteria is very flexible to draw new members. You can tip minimum 20% to maximum 100% to the author and retain the rest for you from the tipping pool. Withdrawal criteria is easy.
• Superior payment mechanism: Payment is instant. Withdrawal takes some time. There is no partner program to enroll for payment.
• User friendly: Even if you are unfamiliar with crypto currency, you will find the platform easy to use.
• Easy communication channel: The support team is available in their telegram channel. You can also email them.
• Life time earnings: The posts here earn for life time unlike 7 days earning model of Steemit.
• Page view update: You can regularly track the post views in numbers.
• High quality content: Content quality is extremely good although it is very specialized for crypto and blockchain related topics. Other topics may get popular once the platform grows enough.
• Multiple blog option: You can create multiple blogs to cover different topics.

Image Source - Posts at Publish0x website

Grey areas of Publish0x

• Centralization: Publish0x is extremely centralized unlike Steemit. Withdrawal takes place periodically after review. It is not censorship free.
• Less transparency: You can’t view who follows you. You can only view the authors whom you follow. Transparency is not optimum. You can’t know who is tipping you.
• Limited tipping: You can tip one author only once in a day and you can do consecutive tipping only every 8 minutes.
• No private keys: You do not own your private keys. It does not have its own blockchain.
• No curator incentive: There is no incentive for curating unlike Steemit.

Alexa Analysis

Charts are generated by the author from Alexa Analysis raw data

• Bounce rate: Bounce rate is the percentage of visits to the site that consist of a single pageview. Publish0X has a high bounce rate of 71.1% whereas Steemit has bounce rate of 56%.
• Search traffic: The percentage of organic search referrals to Steemit is quite higher than Publish0x.
• Sites Linking In: 500+ sites link to Steemit whereas Publish0x has nominal count.
• Alexa rank: Steemit has 2 times better Alexa rank of global internet traffic and engagement over the past 90 days than Publish0x. Although Alexa rank of Publish0x is quite impressive considering that is a new platform.
• Daily Pageviews per visitor: Steemit has 3 times more pageviews than Publish0x.
• Daily Time on Site: Average time spent by a visitor is 2:57 minutes in Steemit and 3:04 in Publish0x. It tells a lot about the quality of the articles published in Publish0x. Remember Publish0x is not running any bounty to generate traffic except referral scheme.

To conclude

Publish0x is an extremely young platform. It has definitely come up with an innovative concept. Instant payment system without any third party is quite attractive. It can offer serious competition to Steemit. But the publishing domain is growing at a rapid pace. This provides opportunity to a truly decentralized membership free/ad free platform like Steemit and a crypto agnostic semi-centralized platform like Publish0x to co-exist. It might be really exciting to see how the both platforms grow and reveal new functionalities in the near future. Both are going to play huge role in mass adoption of cryptocurrency and bringing revolution in publishing industry.