The opportunity of a Steem lifetime

A couple of days ago I wrote a post looking a little at the difference in basic user groups, investors, developers, contributors and users which was based on another post on SMTs a few hours before @ned announced cutting 70% of the Steemit Inc staff. Tonight @andrarchy wrote a good post on the simplification of focus and creating division between user groups.

This is a good thing to recognise in my opinion as it is a step toward redefining roles of user groups which means better exploring the incentives and the models that can support them. Essentially, it means understanding the needs of each group and providing infrastructure that is needed to satisfy the demands.

Blockchain > Developers > Contributors > Consumers

This is the basic process required but as you might notice, the investor group is missing from the model and despite what some people seem to think, investors are vital to the health of the ecosystem. Investors are those who are willing to put their funds into Steem or the projects upon it and by doing so, support the contributors and the delivery to consumers.

If we look at Steemit Inc now as Lead Dev on blockchain protocols alone, it is their job to deliver the infrastructure needed so that application developers are able to build compelling uses for the blockchain. Part of this development needs to attract investors in to finance and support development itself at both the blockchain and application level.

A few weeks back I started pushing for an option to lock up stake for 100% return which could be used as both a truly passive investment vehicle as well as a way to empower those same investors to reinvest into various areas of the blockchain and application development through RC pools and their portion of the inflation they draw from the pool. This means that they could potentially use their investment to finance the creation of the tools that will enable creators and consumers to have a much better experience as they will be separated in by application and behavior.

Of course, this would require SMTs to be built in to the system because rather than the inflation pool used to distribute across the entire network, SMTs become the reward mechanism for projects. This has added benefit also as at the moment a lot of the applications are very much inward facing and reliant on inflation to fund their development but this must change.

Applications and services are going to have to increasingly become outward facing and leverage the Steem protocols to create compelling enough experiences to attract their own investment and of course, their own contributor and consumer base. They have to be able to stand on their own two feet eventually, just like any startup looking to survive long term. This means that their business models will have to be much better thought out than ways to get access to the pool.

These are uncertain but exciting times as effectively this is the point that Steem as a community has recognized that it has to get much more serious and business-like going forward. We are now at a potential fork in the road where it moves from cottage industry into the true development phase where the foundations are built to support the city upon it. Rather than too many cooks, there can be a separation of roles and tasks so that various groups can each find their core competence and leverage it to build their piece of the city.

The community as a whole still is a community under the one Steem umbrella but separating out the various group incentives and making it more of a project management based system means many more needs of groups can be met as well as a much higher population of Steem citizens. Rather than trying to satisfy every group simultaneously, development focus along the chain can concentrate their resources on the customer in front.

The protocol development serve the application developers, the application developers serve the contributors, the contributors serve the consumers. At each step of along the line, there can be various investment models implemented to serve investors at the level they chose to buy-in at, whether at the blockchain level by staking in, the application level by investing into development, the contributor level through voting.

At the end of the day, the end customer is the consumer level who will hopefully be able to come here and enjoy their experience across a range of applications that cater to their individual needs. Some of these will also chose to come in at different levels of investment to as they may recognize potential value themselves and create a more circular economy. The difference is that through the division they will recognize the differentiation of roles and better set their expectations through a greater understanding.

Obviously, a lot of thought needs to be put into how best to serve each group but this is the benefit of having a community made up of all of those groups as the expertise exist and can be leveraged and tested against continually. While people are worried and stressed about the uncertainty of the future, they tend to miss the opportunities that exist within it and at the moment, no matter what group you happen to be in, there is a great deal of potential to innovate and create an experience that provides both enjoyment and satisfies needs.

As I have often said at different points of Steem's evolution, interesting times. This time however, this could be the watershed moment that drives the kind of development that makes Steem much more than a brilliant idea with potential and takes it into the realms of true implementation.

Exciting times.

Taraz
[ a Steem original ]