Introduction

Steemit has been at the forefront championing the idea of a decentralized social media platform where users get to contribute value and are rewarded in return for the value offered to the community.
It is an interesting platform that has grown so fast and continues to grow each and every day.
Platforms like steemit have completely revolutionized social media and how we interact.

Who would have imagined that someone can actually earn through posting stuff on social media platforms..?
I personally couldn't believe it until i came across Steemit .

Most of you will agree with me that steemit is a legendary invention and so far the best social media platform to have ever been in existence. On the conterary, some of you might differ with steemit being the best social media platform but that is just what i think.

My Curiousity

After Steemit, i was curious to find out whether there were any similar platforms such as steemit where people/users could earn rewards through sharing and curating content.
I began my research and found out that there are quite a number of decentralized user rewarding platforms.
Would love to discuss all of them in this post but i decided to talk about the project that looks a little bit more appealing and interesting.
Therefore i chose a project called Sapien today since it interested me the most. There is also another very promising project called APPICS that i wrote about a few days ago.
To check it out, click the link below.

https://steemit.com/smartmediatokens/@maxwell95/the-next-generation-social-media-application

Sapien

What is sapien and what does it stand for?

Screengrab from official Sapien website

The definition from their website says that :

Sapien is a highly customizable, democratized social news platform capable of rewarding millions of content creators and curators without any centralized intermediaries.

In simple word, Sapien is a decentralized (meaning it has no central entity/individual ownership) social news platforms that rewards its users (content creators).
This platform has been built with Meteor.js, the recommended framework for
Ethereum Dapps (Decentralized Applications)
.
The official sapien website looks cool (my thought). Purple and black isn't that bad.
Anyway, the colours on the website are not that important. The most important thing is the things and real value that Sapien will bring to it's users.

Ads and Marketplace

Sapien will have a marketplace where users will be able buy and sell both physical and virtual goods.
The platform will also allow advertisers to advertise their products and services. Users will however have complete control over their relationship with adverts on the platform. Revenue earned from ad purchases will be distributed to Sapien users who have enabled ads.

Sapien is mainly meant for:

Creators
Content curators
Developers
Freelancers
Media Companies

Sapien will also have a reputation score system probably similar to that of steemit.

Sapien, Steemit and Synereo

There is no doubt that sapien is closely similar to steemit only that it is built on a different blockchain .
I got to read the official whitepaper and can't help it but congratulate the sapien team for this unique amazing project.

The competitive analysis below is according to the Sapien Whitepaper

COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
I. Steemit
Steemit is another social news platform that rewards content curators and creators for posting, commenting, and
voting. While Sapien and Steemit both share a common goal of rewarding users’ time via a decentralized Blockchain,
the two differ significantly in philosophy and implementation.
a) Choice of Blockchain
Steemit is built on an independent Blockchain called Steem, which has been laden with controversies from the start. Steem developers unfairly “stealth” mined a large majority of Steem early on in the site’s development while giving the impression of equal opportunity.Sapien opts for Ethereum because of its strong community, remarkable technology, maturity, and transparency. And with the second biggest coin market cap and a more organic developer ecosystem, Ethereum has excited many with its potential to surpass Bitcoin. For these reasons, SPN will be built as an ERC20 token on the Ethereum network. We have not just decided to throw the Blockchain haphazardly onto the platform—it is an absolutely essential innovation that has enabled Sapien to have an immutable ledger capable of executing smart contracts and generating token payouts for our users.
b) Distribution of Power
Secondly, Steemit has tremendous disparity in the distribution of platform power. Only individuals who have been around since Steemit’s inception (also known as “whales”) have the ability to earn any substantial awards and, as such, possess a disproportionate amount of Steem power, enabling these users to selectively pick which posts become “winners” and “losers.” It is publically viewable that the top 247 accounts, most of which are held by developers and
friends, hold 87.5% of the Steem power on Steemit. For a site with more than 150,000 registered users, we believe that this level of inequality is not feasible nor sustainable in the long run. Sapien intends to learn from the innovations and shortcomings of Steemit to create a democratized social news platform. Steemit’s idea behind decaying and regenerative voting power was notable, as was its implementation of Zipf’s Law to fairly reward long-tail posts. To mitigate any possible disparity within Sapien, the largest SPN holder will have the exact same voting power as a
newly registered user. To minimize manipulation, voting power will instead be acquired as a function of how much reputation a user has earned through quality contributions on the platform.
c) Barriers To Entry
Lastly, Steemit faces significant obstacles to appealing to a broader market. Crypto economics are already challenging for the non-technical consumer. Steem further complicates this with three different Steem tokens: Steem Dollars, Steem Power, and Steem. Not only is it surprisingly difficult to understand the use cases of each, but the entire endeavor seems to discourage crypto novices from joining Steemit. The average user should not be required to have knowledge of crypto mechanics or how to optimize their token portfolio to maximize rewards. Our goal with Sapien will be to continually develop two parallel user experiences: one for the novice and one for the advanced user. For the novice, Sapien will automagically manage wallets, addresses, and two-factor authentication with a usability similar to that of Coinbase. Advanced users will have direct and full access to their wallet, along with various other metrics and customizations. By differentiating these two target users, the Sapien platform and the SPN token will be in the best
position for adoption by the most number of people.

The white paper also highlights Synereo in the competitive analysis. I will post about Synereo in one of my next posts. It is another unique decentralized platform that i have been using for some time now
However this is what the Sapien whitepaper says about Synereo.

II. Synereo
a) Technological

1. Synereo's older AMP token is not an ERC20-complaint token and its total supply is fixed. This prevents the
   token from taking advantage of the Ethereum Blockchain base security, the fantastic community, and continual
   developments like Plasma and Raiden.
2. Synereo intends to store too much information on the blockchain. This inherently limits its usability. Our
   multimedia storage options include IPFS, Swarm, and FileCoin—all of which will scale nicely and improve
   performance drastically.
3. WildSpark is an extension, whereas Sapien is an entire ecosystem. Our long-term vision includes opening up a
   developer portal to leverage the ingenuity of the open-source community where third-party applications can
   build and monetize on our platform while prioritizing user privacy.
   b) Token Utility
   The biggest difference between the two is in token utility is how integral SPN will be for Sapien's decentralized
   marketplace. Our marketplace will be powered by our token and offer users premium integrations, features, and
   content that can't be found anywhere else. The token will let creators set their prices and consumers enjoy a variety
   of community-sourced physical and virtual items. The Sapien Network will also let users share ad revenue in SPN
   tokens with users.
   c) Philosophical
   SPN tokens will be minted proportionally to the value created on Sapien, distributing the rewards among creators
   and curators. AMPs fixed supply makes people hesitant to give up something that is considered scarce. Essentially,
   Synereo's offering, Wildspark, is just a crypto-tipping extension that permanently asks its users whether it's worth
   "AMPing" something. We hope to eliminate this cognitive overhead with a sustainable secondary distribution model
   for SPN tokens that scales with the number of users and value generated.

That is one very interesting competitive analysis. Shows how ready sapien is to rival Steemit, Synereo and any other upcoming decentralized social media platforms.

You can read the whitepaper here

SPN Token

The Sapien network is powered by tokens known as SPN tokens.
They are ERC-20 compatible Etherium tokens that content creators will be rewarded with on the sapien platform.
Any individual or company who wants to purchase an ads space on the platform will use the SPN tokens.
SPN tokens will also be used to buy virtual and physical goods in the marketplace on the sapien platform.
These tokens can be staked and unstaked. Inorder to stake SPN tokens, users can transfer tokens to a special smart contract with the help of ERC223 whereby this contract
will manage the staked SPN so that users can interact with the Sapien platform.

Conclusion

The Beta platform is live and anyone can head over to the Sapien website and register for beta.
For anybody who might be interested in investing in this project, i would like to let you know that the crowdsale will take place in 8 days and you can also sign up to be included in the whitelist.

Crowdsale
Dates: March 28 - April 3
Total Hard Cap: 30,000 ETH
Currencies Accepted - ETH: Natively supported.
Token Exchange Base Rate: 1 ETH = 6000 SPN

Visit Sapien for more information.

Thank you for your time.

Images by @maxwell95