In a previous post, I explained why I found the Steemit subjective proof-of-work to be more interesting than the Bitcoin proof-of-work. In this article, I will explain why I think that the Steemit plateform shows that we may not need an ambitious project like Ethereum.
Ethereum in turmoil
As you know, Ethereum is facing a succession of improbable situations but nonetheless interesting to observe: TheDAO hack was not a hack per se; The immutability of the Ethereum blockchain is gone; Ethereum Classic introduced a "quantum" situation for ethers holders...
All this ends up making us forget the original value proposition of Ethereum: To allow developers and entrepreneurs to create decentralized and autonomous services based on the Ethereum blockchain. But this original promise of Ethereum is a mirage for now because no major project has been born. The only one "TheDao" is just a fiasco that has questioned the entire Ethereum 'raison d'être'.
The rise of Steemit
In the same period, a decentralized service based on the same fundamental principles of Bitcoin and the smarts contracts emerged: Steemit. At first glance one might say that Ethereum and Steemit have nothing to do with each other as their goals are definitely not the same. The first one is almost an abstract and multifaceted project that only geeks can really understand ("create decentralized services"), while the other one answers a simple and understandable problem by all ("pay people to post and curate content"). But the reality is that Steemit is precisely the kind of decentralized service that Ethereum is supposed to enable.
What observations can we make?
What's interesting is that the paths of Ethereum and Steemit are instructive for developers and entrepreneurs:
- On the one hand, the success of Steemit shows that a small talented team does not need the Ethereum infrastructure to build a DAO (which has delivered its service to its users without any major issues so far).
- On the other hand, the difficulties that Ethereum have to face shows that it may be even preferable not to build a DAO on the Ethereum blockchain. Indeed, why take the risk of building a DAO on the Ethereum blockchain if the entire common infrastructure may be jeopardized by another DAO badly written by some other users?
If the Steemit devs had tried to build their project on Ethereum, they would have been limited by infrastructure problems that they would not be able to respond directly.
The idea of Ethereum is ambitious and the intentions of their creators are laudable. But the moral of the story is a reflection of the core values of the Internet and the Bitcoin protocol: avoid all forms of centralization. Although a blockchain is by nature (usually) decentralized and public, in view of the current situation, it is more desirable (at least for security reasons) to see a thriving ecosystem of independent blockchains rather than one dao ecosystem built around the multifunctional Ethereum blockchain.
Two different paths toward "One blockchain to rule them all"
That said, we can not prevent ambitious entrepreneurs from trying to build THE blockchain that will dominate all others. It is the ambition of Ethereum founders but also of the Steemit founders who consider the idea of an ecosystem built around their steemdollars.
But even in this common ambition, Steem approach is certainly smarter and humbler than the one chosen by the founders of Ethereum. Having wanted to build a virtuoso technology, the founders of Ethereum found themselves in a delicate situation where they have in their hands a technical solution looking for problems to solve.
On the other side, the founders of Steemit took the opposite path. They started with a problem (paying the users of a social network) and then build the best solution for this specific problem. While allowing their vision to be understood by an audience outside the crypto community, this also enables them to stay extremely focused and avoid convoluted technical problems like the ones Ethereum have to face.
The Steemit approach has the merit of having already proven. Indeed, it is often by adopting this kind of approach that larger companies were born. (Google went from a search engine to a technological empire; Facebook from a social network to an empire built around different services). If Steemit keeps growing and reaches a key milestone (eg, by exceeding the number of Bitcoin users), it will certainly be a key player around which a solid ecosystem of services can be built upon.
Thank you for taking the time to read my article!
I hope it brought you some interesting perspective on the subject. Feel free to comment or argue, I would be happy to discuss. (Also, I'm a non-native english speaker, sorry for the typo or the grammar. Do not hesitate to correct me)
Jako
Sorry but can't agree with the article. You mentioned some good points worth discussing, but the main idea "we may not need ethereum because we have steem" is somewhat off. Especially since you are comparing two very different projects with different goals.
First of all, I must admit that I have participated in DAO experiment, and sold my tokens (with a big discount unfortunately) before hard fork was voted on. I even participated in an eth pool mining so you can't consider me as a "dispassionate bystander". But I have been watching crypto sphere for quite some time and I was investing in a few coins before ethereum was even born. Now I participate on steem project and if something better rise up, I won't hesitate a second to join in.
But back to the article - we can say that DAO was some sort of a flagship of ethereum for some time and a huge success until the hack. You don't see 155M projects raising very often , even less so in crypto sphere. DAO itself held almost the same capitalisation as steem holds now. It was supposed to be an ultimate investing vehicle but due to flaws in the code it ended as a disaster. I don't blame eth developenet team to support hard fork, in the end it was the community that decided the next course of action, and this community must now bear the consequences (ETC split and lost some portion of supporters). But consider this - DAO accident would break almost any altcoin in the cryptosphere, yet ethereum is still here and there are still plenty of projects being developed on this platform. I see no reason why to regard ethereum as a failed platform. Do you think DAO was the only project active on it? What about DixigDAO, or Maker? They are too "DAO"s you know, and I haven't heared that they are negatively impacted by the incident. The original Ethereum proposition "To allow developers and entrepreneurs to create decentralized and autonomous services based on the Ethereum blockchain." is still here. In contrary to your belief I think that ethereum now is even more valued by potential developers due to two facts:
Steem on the other hand is still young, has limited itself to a socialization site and any possible bugs are still to be found. You are right in one thing though - that "if the steemit devs had tried to build their project on ethereum, they would have been limited by infrastructure problems that they would not be able to respond directly". Any project of such proportions would better off on their own I guess.
Thanks for taking the time to write this answer Mark,
I would like to clarify few points that seem not clear. First and foremost, I use the word 'may' on purpose. If I had to rephrase I would say: "Do we really need the abstract programmable layer that Ethereum offers to build decentralised blockchain applications?".
The quality of the Steemit project tends to make me think that it is not necessary: If a small team achieves a project like Steemit, I'm ready to bet that we will see other teams building astounding blockchain app that will have real impact on our society without using Ethereum. My thesis is nothing more than that.
I do not prejudge the quality and the goal of Ethereum, this project is great, its community is far more developed than the steemit community and I am sure we will see valuable dApps emerging from Ethereum. My point once again, is that it is not the only way, and Steemit proves it.
Concerning Steemit. Appearances are deceptive. Steemit is a social network, ok, but the steem blockchain can and will certainly evolve particularly around Steem backed dollars. In other words we are going to see other applications on the Steem blockchain (if of course, this project scales)
Thank you for your reply. I didn't want to underestimate or belittle Steemit in my last paragraph. It was meant that by limiting (or probably better wording would be focusing) itself into one chosen field, the platform limits possible problems, bugs etc. Will be great to see Steemit evolve, grow and move to other fields, however I see it as a great tactic to start small as a social network with rewards management and payment processing, master the filed, gain critical mass of supporters, and then move into something else. Added benefit being that by the time Steem get there, it will have plenty of time to tune the code.
I was just thinking about this actually... Ethereum keeps talking about how they are waiting for the "killer app". Steemit kind of seems like the app that they were waiting for BUT it's not built on Ethereum. I still think Ethereum is going to do incredibly well, however the potential behind Steemit is almost unfathomable!
Thanks for the article
That's cool if we don't have to be dependent on Ethereum because Steemit is way better platform and I love to be part of it for future too.
Thanks for this article! -upvoted Here you can read an article about the new two blockchains of Ethereum: https://steemit.com/ethereum/@future24/after-the-hardfork-ethereum-s-two-ethereums-explained Im happy about your visit & upvote too!
Bitshares + Steemit together!
I must admit that I don't know much about bitshares yet except that it is the same team behind Steemit
BitShares: A Decentralized Asset Exchange founded by Dan Larimer that can trade SmartCoins, User Issued Assets, and offers multiple financial tools for things like Project Funding, Recurring & Scheduled payments. Think of it like NASDAQ, and a Central Bank, all decentralized and owned by the same people who use it.
source: Steemit Glossary
What amazes me is how fast something like this can grow. Yesterday I was ignorant, today, thanks to Hacker News (and Reddit) I am in the club. I'm still not sure what the club is about, or whether it will turn out to be worthwhile, but what an adventure! If it does one thing - gets rid of social network trolls - it will be far more valuable than anything else so far. IMHO.
People tend to upvote good content and people who bring something positive in the platform. In other words, there is no incentive to be passive agressive or trolling on Steemit. As you navigate, you'll see that this kind of behavior tend to be very marginal.
The Steemit approach is more investment worthy . Indeed, a social network with reward service s a key for users and content ecosystems can be built upon steemit
thats a nice start for a Betta steemit stage .. keep the Good work ...
p.s. if you like read my post , ..lol
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thx John!
NXT sux at there marketing aspect but if they really pull off what they say they are going to in the Ardor platform. I see them as overtaking Etherum. As far as Steemit goes I agree they are just on the ground floor of a huge build to the moon!
It's definitely way more "problem" focus. As a marketer I saw steemit approach as the best:
Doesn't take a genius to see the huge potential. My whole family is on steemit now. They would have NEVER got into bitcoin...EVER. Its already a huge success in my eyes.
Now what we need is a steemit debit card and we are golden.
Your whole family is on Steemit!? What a lovely statement to hear :-D
Cg
A debit card already ? We are still in the very early days, I may want to see how the system, the community and the steem charts behave when we will reach the first million users.
👍nice post @jako
The Debit Card is in process,
i'm building a strong team behind this project and we are trying to build reputation so we have the trust of steem community.
check this link
I have a meeting tomorrow with same supplier that serves Xapo, Wirex, for bitcoin debit card ;)
Hope to be able to start the project asap
Also join us on steemit.chat to see updates
Yeeh but i would not say it is like that.
Steemit is something completely new, we didnt see such a thing before, however you cannot expect that it will change the game that big as you assume it will, i would say we may have some innovations but i would not get over-excited about steemit. Just keep doing hard work and im sure it will be a good time investment :D
it is too boldly.. i think.
Can you elaborate?
"Steemit is precisely the kind of decentralized service that Ethereum is supposed to enable." - This statement is simply not true. Steem it is far less decentralized, nor are they trying to provided the same service as Ethereum in any way. You sir have totally misunderstood the Ethereum project and where it is heading. The next 6-12 months will open your eyes.
According to you my statement is false because Steemit is not enough decentralised. Ok, I can understand that. I won't argue on the level of decentralization one may need to consider Steemit as a decentralised platform.
Nowhere in this article I stipulate that Steemit try to provide the same service as Ethereum on the contrary. But in this ecosystem, I notice that there are still some renegades that prefer to build their own blockchain rather than using the Ethereum's one.
And this is the 'kind' of decentralisation that we need to mitigate the risk of failure and experimenting on various directions. Anyway, I can't wait to see a project coming out of Ethereum, and specially akasha.world.
The DAO hack and then the fork has really hurt Ethereum.
Definitely. In retrospect, I tend to believe that it was a good thing that a crisis like theDao hack happened promptly in the history of Ethereum. It highlights some fundamental flaws behind the Ethereum concept itself.
It was good to find the flaws early on definitely, and I believe etc will rise as ETH will drop to the same level before rising again. Though there are a lot of concerns in relationship to he hard fork. -John McAfee: "If you hard fork, the code is no longer the law....we have destroyed beauty of mathematics...." So there definitely is some skeptism about the hard fork. Many others are saying it was a good idea that is now turning into a pump and dump
Nice informational article jako! Thanks-
thank you for your comment steemit-life :-)
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