SteemHunt - One of Steem's most undervalued DApps

When I looked at the list of decentralized apps that were suggested for this assignment, a couple that jumped in my eyes immediately were Steempress, and Busy.org since I am, after all, a blogger, and those are some that impact my activity greatly.

However, then I quickly decided to pick something else because the two of them are already known by most of the people in the community, I decided to pick something that’s highly undervalued, and that’s SteemHunt.

Many people associate SteemHunt with posts that are considered to be of lower quality that are made through their platform, and that is precisely the reason I see it as such an undervalued platform since there is more than meets the eye to this application.

 

 

The reason I picked this DApp for the assignment is not that it is necessarily impacting my industry but, because it is impacting the whole blockchain since the people behind this platform are developing something truly exciting.

On this blockchain, Steem, the more stake (SP) you have, the more power and influence over the distribution of rewards you have. This system of rewards distribution, on a decentralized platform, besides all the good it is making, can also present many opportunities for people to game it in their benefit alone, and harm the community.

No system is going to be perfect since our human nature is flawed but, it is in our duty to build new systems, to try to innovate, and improve the way things work currently. Moreover, so far, on this chain, all the big DApps are utilizing the same system, and are using a handful of curators to distribute the rewards amongst their users. That, on its own, is not a bad system but, it presents no innovation.

Thus, the reason I’m saying SteemHunt is so undervalued is because they are building a new system of rewards distribution, on top of the current system, on top of the current blockchain, they are building a micro-economy, pushing the chain as a whole forward.

The System
Initially, they had a system where the people were deciding what posts get rewarded the most, by upvoting them. Based on the rewards those posts were having, they were compiling a top, and the posts listed higher were getting bigger upvotes. But, that system was mostly in the benefit of those that had more, since they were getting rewarded better thus, it got changed.

Next, they implemented a system where the users were still in control of who’s getting upvoted but, this time, their stake in the platform got replaced by a user score. That user score reflected the user’s activity; the more helpful you are to the community, and the platform, the bigger your score; this way everybody had the same chances. However, due to its nature, the system could still be rigged by groups that were colluding, even if there were penalties in place for such actions.

And now, there’s a system in place that upvotes everybody based on their user score. It doesn’t matter if you’re a whale or a minnow, you have the same chances to get an upvote if you’re helping the community. The votes are cast automatically after 6 PM KST but, even in this system where everybody gets rewarded automatically, based on the individual's activity, the users are still playing a highly essential role.

The users are still in control of the rewards distribution to some extent since only the first 100ish posts, depending on the day, get rewarded, thus it is needed that the users curate their favorite hunts (posts) to build the top. This is no bulletproorf system but, the rate of abuse has dropped significantly since its introduction.

And, such a system was never built on top of this blockchain before; it is not necessarily better than the current one but, it is undoubtedly new, and innovative. Only by trying, and building new systems we will evolve, and adopt an economy that empowers its individuals greatly.

 

 

There’s a lot more to the way this system works, you need to play a bit with it in order to understand it fully, and I advise you to give it a try at SteemHunt.com.

SteemHunt is a lot more than meets the eye, besides this rewards distribution system, they are developing a HUNT token and a whole economy around it, with the main focus on technology. Besides the product hunt platform, they are also planning on developing a crowdfunding platform, Ideahunt, for technology, so, I urge you to check out all their work at @SteemHunt, or even better on their HUNT Token Economy Website.

This post is not meant to say that one system is better than another but, to showcase the innovation that SteemHunt it is doing, and I hope you find this article useful.

Now, how would, in your eyes, a perfect system look like?

_{All the pictures come from @SteemHunt.}