10 questions to ask Voice
Voice is to EOS as DeFi is to ETH.
Block.one wants to create a model dApp running on the EOS chain to provide a comprehensive reference for other dApps on EOS, and Voice has took this role.
But compared to the popularity of DeFi, Voice has made some progress, but there are also a lot of doubts of it.
I have a lot of questions about Voice, and in the past year, Voice has not solved them.
These questions are as following 10 points:
Let’s first take a look at the Voice event schedule:
- In June 2019, Block.one announced gonna launch Voice;
- In February 2020, Voice released a beta version;
- In July 2020, Voice was opened to the world;
- In the first quarter of 2021, the official version of Voice App is provisionally scheduled for release.
On the surface, Voice is being developed step by step.
But for those who have been paying attention to Voice throughout the year, our experience does not seem to be so step-by-step. The reasons are as follows:
1.How many times to cry “wolf”?
I don't know how many people are like me. In the past year, I thought that "Voice will be released" several times, but it was not released.
And when such news comes out, the official attitude is either ambiguous or wait until the topic has fermented to a certain degree of heat before standing out to clarify.
Although I understand that Voice, as a highly anticipated project, does need to constantly throw some news to create hot topics when it goes through a two-year development cycle.
As an EOS loyal fans, I can't help but feel that Voice has called "Wolves Coming" a little bit too often and it's a bit consuming fans' expectations.
2.Marketing method kind of similar to "squeeze toothpaste"
Take Voice's July 4th update as example:
If July 4 is only open to reading, unregistered people still can’t register and can’t participate, please make it clear, please don’t hype it, and then add a few “detailed restrictions”.
This behavior is really like the crayfish shop with the "50% off today" banner downstairs of my apartment. When me and my friends are going to eat, but the owner tells us:
Sorry it’s peanut got 50% off now crayfish!
3.Has Voice let us wait for too long?
The team has made it clear that the official version of Voice will be launched in the first quarter of 2021.
We can’t say that it’s wrong to spend two years to polish a quality social platform, but we do feel that the two years are a bit long.
The time is too long, till the heat of EOS drops visually; the expectation of Voice also drops visually.
Moreover, from June 2019 to July 2020, more than a year, almost 2/3 of the official development time disclosed by Voice, but as far as the Voice we have seen so far, there seems to be no impressive highlights.
It has been less than a year till the official release. Will Voice impress us in the next 1/3 of the time?
It’s hard to say.
But as a firm holder of EOS, I am still willing to believe in that good things never come easy and willing to give more trust to the Voice team.
I'm not sure if Voice is engaged in hunger marketing, but I think everyone is really eager for registering Voice's account.
Because we can clearly feel Voice's control over the number of registered accounts:
Last year, there were not many users who successfully registered for Voice. We can understand it as a regional restriction, but according to the latest official update:
Although Voice will be open for global registration on August 15th, still not everyone can register-only after receiving an invitation from a registered user, then is eligible to register for Voice.
Kinda feels like hunger marketing!
There are community member guessed:
If Voice then implements a "limited number of invitations for each registered user" policy, then I am afraid that a Voice invitation code will be hyped by the market.
Anyone who has watched the Voice trailer knows:
Different from centralized social platforms, Voice hopes to use the decentralized feature to protect user privacy while keeping the right to speak in users own hands.
But Voice also has a KYC mechanism that is very contrary to the decentralization principle, which makes us have to worry about privacy leakage again.
Regarding to this, Brendan replied:
Only your name and nationality will be recorded on chain, other sensitive information will not.
But will Block.one get the user's private information? Does Block.one have the risk of revealing users' private information?
On the other hand, it is also said that the implement of KYC is a regulatory requirement to a certain extent, and we have also seen the efforts of Block.one for Voice "compliance":
Last year, Block. one accepted a fine from the US SEC. The SEC also granted Block. one an important immunity. Block. one will not be subject to certain current rules.
But supervision is precisely contrary to the principle of decentralization.
Although I always think that "there is no complete decentralization in the world", I also believe that social platforms do require a certain degree of regulatory measures.
But even so, for Voice, a platform that is called equality, freedom, and decentralization:
I still care if compliance with “regulation” be at the expense of fairness brought by decentralization, thereby harming the interests of ordinary users?
I think this is also one of the things that Voice hasn’t made clear yet.
Steem's disadvantages are:
1.Robots and deal hunters are rampant;
2. Old authors hold a group and obtain revenue by liking and commenting each other’s articles. It is difficult for new authors to have opportunities make profit.
In response to this, Voice made improvements:
1.Introduce KYC to eliminate fake accounts;
2.Modify the weights. The opinion leaders’ likes on Voice have the same weight as the ordinary people’s likes.
For the Voice Token, the currently known information is:
1.You can get Voice tokens by posting and like on Voice platform, and premium content producers/KOLs can get more Voice tokens;
2. You can make your posts appear in a more prominent position by paying Voice tokens;
3. Whenever someone pays more Voice than you, your post will move down, and the original used Voice token will also be returned. In addition, you can also get additional Voice, encouraging you to use a louder voice than before to try again.
This seems to avoid Steem's problems, but don't forget:
Voice tokens are tradable.
This raises another concern:
Can I spend money, buy a lot of Voice, and stick my post to the top?
In this way, if Voice really develops into a huge traffic pool, is the news I saw on Voice also the result of capital operation?
In response to this, perhaps Voice has a better design yet to be announced.
In fact, there is no need to tell users how a team spends money.
But Block.one is different. As the parent company of EOS, and holding 100 million EOS in its hands, its every move will affect the development of EOS more or less, so we care how Block.one's money should be spent.
At present, Block.one has invested $150 million in Voice to make it separate from Block.one and operate independently. The $150 million includes $100 million in cash and $50 million in intellectual property assets.
In addition, Block.one also bought the domain name voice.com for $30 million.
As you can see, the investment is very high.
But looking at the official Voice Twitter, there are only 4869 fans, and the promotional video released on July 4th, I believe everyone has watched it, and it’s not really impressive.
However, marketing expenses are only part of Voice's investment, and technology may account for the bulk, and after all, Voice has not been officially launched yet.
BM chooses to develop a social platform, and it certainly takes into account that EOS' strong user base can benefit Voice.
I am not too worried on this.
Someone did the math:
With a $150 million investment in Voice, Voice could easily reach millions of users at the ￥100 KYC customer acquisition cost.
But is EOS capable of supporting millions of users?
Although the performance of EOS can still be regarded as outstanding, but how EIDOS mining caused network breakdown half a year ago is concerning, and many people questioned whether EOS network could support Voice.
Some people say:
The dApps on the EOS can pay CPU for users, and Voice is backed by Block.one so we don’t need to worry about resource issues.
However, we mentioned at the beginning of the article that Voice is a dApp model on the EOS chain crafted by Block.one, which can provide reference for other dApp projects.
Not every dApp developer has the strength of Block.one. If from the perspective of paying CPU for users, is the development cost of dApp on the EOS chain too high?
Therefore, making technological breakthroughs and improving the performance of the public chain is really what matters.
Anyone who has seen Voice’s website can see that Voice is not limited to blockchain community, but covers all aspects of life such as sports, culture, and tourism.
People who think that Voice can gain external recognition have the following reasons:
1. Voice is the second time BM chooses to develop social platform, which might avoid many Steem problems;
2. The blockchain has three entry points with natural advantages: DeFi, social, games, Voice belongs to social;
3. Voice provides a free EOS account for each registered user, greatly reducing the threshold for use;
4. As a blockchain social platform, Voice's vision still solves the pain points of many centralized social platform users.
But it will depend on how well the official Version of Voice convert those advantages.
Although it has a lot of advantages, whether Voice can make external recognition, the user experience is also very important.
Having external recognition means a large user base, but technology is very abstract after all, it is difficult for you to require everyone to understand the technical logic behind the product.
Therefore, the experience of using the product is very important.
But compared to the already very mature social platforms like Facebook, Twitter, etc., we have not seen too many highlights from the currently released Voice beta version.
Even the vision of Voice products, such as decentralization, openness and transparency, rejection of control and manipulation brought by fake accounts, is difficult for users to actually feel.
Whether Voice can attract a large number of users is not yet known.
Does EOS have other moves?
Asking this question doesn't mean I'm not optimistic about Voice, but after all, everything has to be taken into consideration.
As we look forward to Voice, we can take a moment to reflect on the entire year of 2020:
In addition to Voice, have you heard other hot topics from EOS that has caused widespread discussion in the community?
This is not a good thing that Voice is the only project that attract people’s attention on EOS.
Voice can be a dApp model created by Block.one on the EOS, but this model cannot be the only one on EOS.
At present, everyone has high expectations for Voice, and almost 80% of the hot topics of EOS are made by Voice.
If Voice hasn’t met everyone's expectations, how can Block.one secure everyone's confidence in EOS?
This is the question i care about the most.
I once thought that, Voice was focused on the Chinese market.
After all, on EOS, the influence of Chinese market is there;
After all, Voice still relies on EOS to bring traffics at the early stage.
And who's dare to say BB doesn't care about the Chinese market, given the traditional chinese style cover of his Twitter profile in the year of the Rat?
But aside from some users who knows how to use VPN, for now, the Chinese market is really locked out of Voice.
Although there are regulatory reasons, but according to the past experiences:
The earlier you get in, the bigger benefit you make.
We hope that when the official version of Voice is released in the first quarter of 2021, we'll be treated equally.