The all-seeing D

I was listening to @theycallmedan's cast before and it tied in well with what I have already written a bit about today yet, I would like to add a little more about the benefits of decentralization of applications on the same blockchain.

Yeah, DLive has Pewdiepie (I have no idea who that really is as I have never seen his YouTube channel) but they are a narrow niche provider and as I said in a recent comment, the niches will likely do well. However, they will have to compete in their class with all other similar solutions and keep pushing constantly to hold their position. Can DLive do that long-term?

I don't know.

But, the benefit of general blockchains like Steem is that they are designed to not care what the content is at all which means, they can hold all niches simultaneously. Yes, this did start as a blogging site but I think most will agree, it is much more than that now and it is always developing. It is always evolving.

I tried to create a maze type of effect with the Steem logo in the image but likely failed but crappy design skills aside, if you imagine the internet as a type of maze to negotiate with many pitfalls and dead ends, a niche blockchain has to choose a direction and travel forward - just like a company must. What this means is that mistakes are costly and once there is momentum moving the mass, changing directions is a full, ground-up restructure - marketing campaign included.

The problem with doing this is that there will be a core group of users who are happy with the status quo and when the change is introduced, they risk losing them too. A company that can't stay ahead of the trend curve soon dies out, as will a niche platform in the attention economy if it loses too much attention.

A blockchain like Steem however has a decentralized approach to more than just governance as the community of users are also the developers, investors and the consumer drivers of the evolution of the blockchain. Rather than being reliant on a single content type, medium or user base, Steem can support all kinds of multimedia content and use case - including feeless transactions.

How I visualize Steem in the maze is that it doesn't have to choose a direction at all because the community breaks off into the various search parties and goes looking for their own way. Yep, some will fail through traps and dead ends but on Steem, the mass will likely be able to always absorb the failed attempts since failure doesn't mean total devastation. An application that fails on Steem has transferable value that can be shifted to give attention to other groups travelling the maze.

As @mattclarke said the other day, Steem Power is a flashlight that directs the hose of the pool and in the maze of what is to arrive, the more people out there distributing their attention, the more chance of successfully negotiating the pits and wrong turns. The evolution of Steem is not coming through a board of directors, it is community driven by the very people who are also demanding and paying for the services.

This means that the more Steem decentralizes, the more of the maze it can cover and in so doing, the less risk there is of being caught trapped as a whole. Steem becomes a digital organism with many limbs that can lose a few without worry and, grow them back through attention paid. The reason decentralization is such a strong process is that it is the same one nature uses to negotiate its own course through the universe, evolving itself and all of its components in a continual feedback loop of experience.

Some aspects, use cases and applications will draw a huge amount of attention while others will draw only a narrow slice but, all of them will add to the continually strengthening foundation of the Steem network by providing service or utility for users in some way. The applications that cannot provide use case will disappear or adapt, while those that can will survive and thrive. Survival of the digital fittest.

Again, I do think that the niche platforms are going to do very well in the beginning of the run and into the mid-term but eventually, they will lose favor for various reasons, much like we are starting to see on the behemoth platforms like YouTube as eventually, they will not be able to adapt to the market and their attempts to control will further break their models.

Steem however is always adapting and if one was to take cross sections of Steem across time, it has changed massively in the three years of its existence and has continued to decentralize away from the core of Steemit and Steemit Inc.

At the point the full-blown SMTs and tokens arrive with a growing value base through mainstreaming and teams of professional developers and marketers wanting a piece of the Blockchain pie, Steem will be well positioned to onboard them as it lowers the barrier of entry and allows for all kinds of exploration into the maze.

As I see it, it won't be a niche provider that brings down the centralized media giants with a mighty blow, their death will come through a thousand decentralized cuts that will slice away at the attention paid to them from a thousand different directions - incessantly. Every time they are able to stem the flow of one, another two take up the attack from altogether different positions.

And, once the mainstream people get a taste of blood and content freedom, they will keep adding their attention to the growing mass that becomes a networked giant with no face but sees all and occupies every position on the maze.

In the decentralized future, the maze is not a maze at all, it is home.

Taraz
[ a Steem original ]