To Hive or to SMT, that is the question
Which one of them is more important to Steemit right now?
This is a question I hope to shine some light on today, but I already know that it isn't going to be an easy task.
These two major updates have been battling for attention lately. Both of them propose a major upgrade and potentially an influx of new users and financial capital. I only briefly looked over their respective Github repositories, as this is not something I would closely follow. Both of them are being worked on in a consistent manner. The announcements, however, have been less than sporadic. With SMTs being only a landing page with a whitepaper and the words: "Launching soon in 2018" at the very end of the page.
The thing is, they are only partly correlated to each other. In fact, one should not co-mingle the two terms: Steem and Steemit. The former is the blockchain that everything runs on, the latter is the frontend that displays the data. By design, the latter can be interchanged for any other frontend, such as Busy.org.
Hive(mind)
If you know Reddit, and I really don't know much people who don't, Hivemind is to Steemit what Sub-Reddits are to Reddit. I believe the success of Reddit was the inspiration to use similar concepts with Steemit, as the services appeal to a similar audience. Essentially, Hivemind is an update to the Steemit frontend that creates communities (Hives) around specific topics. There may be some other functionalities, but I'm going to leave that research up to you.
Even though I admire the progress that has been done with Steemit, I can't help but think that there are more dangerous threats to Steemit other than the lack of communities. I don't think that using a different approach to display data (on Steemit.com) is going to fundamentally change the way users act on the platform (Steem blockchain).
Hivemind seems like a great idea to me. One that could really help organize content within the platform. Maybe it would even help alleviate some of the problems with content discovery, to what extent, however, remains to be seen.
What are those?
Here, have this completely meaningless graphic illustration that says absolutely nothing about what SMTs do.
Yet again, I'm not going to go into too much technical details here. The advanced reader already knows what they are. To others, I'm going to give a quick explanation. In short, SMTs are to Steem what ERC-20 tokens are to Ethereum. They let you create tokens on top of the blockchain. You can then build your business logic around them. If you still don't know what that means, you should definitely educate yourself, because this is the future and it's coming fast.
How are SMTs going to help Steemit?
I don't know. As I've already said, the two terms (Steem and Steemit) are of different meaning.
How can they help Steem?
It could bring many entrepreneurs and companies wanting to build their Social and other products on top of Steem blockchain. This would most likely increase the price of Steem coins. A lot.
What's the answer to the question at hand, then?
Well, in my opinion, Hivemind would better for the average user of Steemit, as it directly affects the user experience. Because let's be honest here. Even though Steemit is a great site, it isn't for everybody. The same way as Reddit isn't for everybody. That's what we have Facebook for.
A quick note: If you haven't yet figured, this post is a part of @dragosroua's May 30 Days Writing Challenge.
My previous posts in the challenge
Day #10: H20, My Favourite Morning Drink
Day #8: May 30 Days Writing Challenge - Day Eight: What’s Your Most Consistent Hobby For The Last 5 Years?
Day #6: You Wouldn't Guess What My Reason To Staying On Steemit Is
Day #5: Do you know the difference between investing and speculation?
Day #4: What Are My Top 5 (More Like 3) Witnesses On Steemit And Why Should You Care?
Day #3: What’s The Best Thing That Happened To You Thanks To Steemit?
Day #2: May 30 Days Writing Challenge - Day Two: If You Had 1000 STEEM, What Would You Do With It?
Looks like the growing consensus is Hivemind. Keeping it basically attached to the blockchain directly through apps rather than outsourcing it to the rest of the internet and creating even more tokens.
I'm glad you broke out the definitions. Looked like plenty of us did that. I wonder if that was the subtler part of the exercise, to see if we would actually come up with those distinctions? :)
Even though I wrote my post only after reading some of the other articles, I don't think I let my opinions be influenced by them. I knew from the start that I wanted to include the definitions. In this case, the more the merrier, because the word gets spread out wider and more people get educated.
Overall, I'm very excited about the updates. Usually, not many people are, as they don't like change.
I'd say it depends on what the change is in my case. If the change is better than what exists, why not? If it's worse, than better to keep what we have. I don't know. I want to give the benefit of the doubt, because that's what's in my nature, but when you look around at what there is, opposed to what there could and should be, and you start to wonder about all kinds of things, like the real intent of all of this, or the competency of individuals. It's hard not to. And I've done it. Fortunately, though, I'm in a better frame of mind right now and I'm just trying to see where this will take me.