Life on the Steem blockchain is full of twists and turns. You can say a lot about what takes place here but you can never say it is boring. Each day is full of new challenges and, at times, drama. If you do happen to fall asleep through the chaos, you might miss something important.
Over the weekend, there was a witness call that showed a great deal of promise. The witnesses were open about the issues as they say it with Hard Fork 20 and owned up to the fact that they need to do better. The same idea was echoed by @andrarchy, the Steemit liaison with the community.
One thing that was brought up was the site, steemit.com and how it is a poor representation of the blockchain. It is outdated, confusing, and poorly designed. As I type these words, access of the blockchain via this interface is below 50%.
@andrarchy stated that the Steemit team felt the best use of their resources was to focus upon the blockchain. The applications are best left to the other developers outside of Steemit. I could not disagree with this at all. I feel better knowing the Steemit development team is focused solely on the development of the blockchain. No need to confuse their direction with a side issue like an interface.
Which brings up something that I learned. I want to thank @trevonjb for bringing this to my attention. He brought it up in his video a couple nights ago.
https://busy.org/@trevonjb/dkldpojl
@ned made an appearance in one of the Steemitblog posts about the Hard Fork. There were a few situations where some drama took place as some used the opportunity to voice their views to @ned directly. I won't get into that since it is there for all to read.
What is important, in my view, from the comments was this:
Wait a second. Does that say what I think it says?
@ned is working on a UI that is going to take the mantle of onboarding "normies"? This is rather big news don't you think?
Of course, when I heard this, I asked myself what is going on? Is there a disconnect between @ned and his communications liaison? It is possible especially with all that took place over the last few weeks. Perhaps @ned decided this was the time to announce it and something was in the works for a while and he hadn't transmitted that to the entire Steemit team.
The questions were answered as I started to read through the comments. There was this gem:
That is an interesting twist. I bet you didn't see that one coming.
So we are going to see a new corporate structure (read: company) that produces new interfaces, including a mobile one, that appeals to people new to the crypto world. This explains why the message from Steemit is that they are focusing solely on the blockchain. The entity that works on this project is separate from Steemit.
This is not uncommon in the blockchain world. I am watching it happen with Bitshares and a number of different teams working independently yet having some overlap in what they are creating. Whether @ned pulls it off or not remains to be seen.
Personally, I hope his vision, whatever it truly might be, does come to fruition. It could only help this blockchain. One thing that came to mind as I pondered some of what this meant is that @ned has one advantage over everyone else: he has an idea of what the Hivemind/communities software is going to look like. It is possible that is seeks to develop something that meshes well with that.
Or maybe he just fancies himself as another...
...by running multiple companies.
Whatever @ned's motivation is, I am not that concerned. I don't share some of the venom others on here do. My view of this situation is simple: anything that moves the Steem blockchain forward is a good thing and I do not give a hoot who is responsible for it. If @ned has a grand vision that he can pull off which will benefit the entire Steem ecosystem, then he has my full support.
Of course, I say this knowing that this blockchain has a lot of very smart programmers who, given enough time, will figure a lot of things out. From what I saw out of both the Busy.org and @steempeak teams, we are in good hands no matter what the vision is. Each day, there are a lot of coders working on building a "better mousetrap".
And because of this, Steemians will benefit.
There is another tidbit that was brought to my attention that I will mention. Bear in mind this is second hand so take it for what it is worth.
A few days after the Dlive withdrawal, @heimindanger put up a post under the @dtube account. It dealt with the elimination of the extra curation rewards that @dtube was paying. There are multiple reasons that went into the thinking but there is one section that is very important.
Finally, but probably the most important reason for this drop, is that Ned has announced publicly, and has personally told me he is confident on the release date of March 2019 for the SMTs. This date represents a certain date where DTube would finally be able to create its own token and start giving value to the token, and monetize from it. (emphasis original)
https://busy.org/@dtube/hf20-activated-dtube-lowers-beneficiary-rewards-to-10
The way it was explained to me is that since this public statement of personal assurance from @ned, the developer I was interacting with stated that there are now a ton of ideas and DApps floating around. When I questioned what that meant, it was stated that many of them are ETH based and looking to switch because of the transaction fees.
I can only presume that public (and private) confidence in SMTs being live by March has put in motion the developers who were waiting for something to provide clarity.
As I stated, this is all second hand information. One thing I can say is this developer mentioned on a number of occasions having "5 months" to get things completed. Thus, the prevailing mindset, at least for this individual, is March.
You can make up your own mind about this.
It does fit into my thinking for the last few months. Over that time, I came across a ton of articles discussing new projects, ones that sounded really good, only to find out they were going Ethereum. I kept wondering how these people thought they were going to grow knowing some of the issues ETH is dealing with between scaling and transaction fees.
I guess I have my answer. If what I was told is true, ETH was a temporary stop until SMTs became live. Many of these developers might have never intended to remain on ETH or use it for any other reason than to get the token live.
So my question for everyone today is:
What if @ned does have a vision for an interface that is kick ass and will woo the non-crypto masses in AND a large number of the Ethereum developers are getting busy in anticipation of jumping ship to join STEEM?
If you found this article informative, please give it an upvote and a resteem.
None of this is to be considered financial advice or used in making financial designs. This article is for informational purposes only.
I think you missed this little nugget ;)
Need is making me feel bullish haha
Ha. Yes. Or he is at least hoping to make people feel bullish.
That is a gem.
Cheering, @ned to pull this off. @TaskMaster4450
Exponential tech?
Interesting, a brand new domain and company as the "face" of the STEEM blockchain.
Is it the end for Steemit... or will Steemit focus only on the back-end core coding for the STEEM blockchain going forward (this take on things does tie back to their squeaks on the recent witness call)?
As you say, with the likes of busy and steempeak already working on their front-end UI for STEEM, competition can only be good.
I wouldn't think it the end at all. In fact, it gives Steemit the opportunity to focus on the blockchain only.
Plus, I like that, even though it will be a close relationship, technically it will be a different company, hence a degree of decentralization. It might be a brother in law type deal but at least they will not be one.
Wow @ned referenced your post:
https://steemit.com/gathering/@ned/new-behind-the-scenes-project
https://steemit.com/busy/@taskmaster4450/ned-designing-a-new-user-interface-not-steemit
"New UI" The actual part of the sentence that should have been discussed.
Maybe an official mobile app too?
He did state in one of the comments about mobile.
I dont know how "official" it will be.
Hehe yeah. Official is probably the wrong word, but 99% of people call Steem Steemit, so blah. 😁
If there is an app I hope it is not just a WebView of the website or something. Something native would be great.
But anyway when I think normies, it's an app, not just a mobile website. Like my parents and even friends don't really use websites, they use apps like Facebook. And nothing else. 😂
Just look at the hiring page and you will get a feel for what kind of talent they are lacking in.
Oooo, thanks. https://jobs.lever.co/steemit/e9a53827-4524-4386-92e8-c31c9a370640
Well, I would probably use one from another dev rather than STEEMIT INC. just because they usually end up looking prettier. Busy vs Steemit.
Great article. It's nice that you keep us all informed of all the news developments on Steem.
Well - at least they are cooking something for the frondend/app side - thats good.
Even though this is positive news in general, I think @ned should have put that effort into the interface of Steemit itself. Let’s hope this works out positive for all Steemians in the end...
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@ned UI based on Steem blockchain, is it called @steempeak ?! because so far steempeak and all its features is doing incredible work at moving Steem(It) forwards... It just needs more marketing.!
You are so good and inspiring for one to stay long on steemit
I'm confused. Where does Ned say he is specifically doing this new grand plan on the STEEM blockchain?
His wording in the second quote raised some flags for me:
So people will need to join this project? This isn't something we're already a part of?
Is this the new company's name that will be scalable? Does this mean the name doesn't need to include anything relating to Steem?
So the whole mission will be new and based on the experience gained from Steem/Steemit? This doesn't sound like the wording of someone trying to improve an existing project.
On a side note, I didn't really keep up with how it's all been going but did Ned ever comment on the whole situation with dlive/lino? Last I saw he hadn't spoken on it, perhaps it's because it wasn't/isn't a concern of his anymore?
Are there any Steem front ends that have 50%?
No Busy.org is the next closest with 10%.
Sounds great. I can hardly wait.
Thanks for the information you just shared.. Having an entirely new UI will take steemit to a greater dimension. Thank you @ned and your team for ur efforts to keep steemit alive.
I like the fact that the focus is on onboarding users as it is something that really has been left with the community right now as the FAQ has become somewhat outdated. Also really excited about the mobile focus as I recall that the mobile interface is what led to exponential growth with other social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook as more people in the world access the internet through mobile devices than computers these days. Exciting times to come!
Thank you taskmaster - well written, highly informative and I hope you are right re the intentions of Ned and the positive future for Steem.
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Nice article. Great UIs are definitely needed, but also simple ways for new users ("normies") to join. Hope @ned includes that in his thinking.
So far, I agree we're well off with Busy and @steempeak, so it at least should have a different focus.
I can't imagine, however, that a lot of developers who are currently building for Ethereum are actually waiting for SMTs. They aren't a replacement for full-fledged smart contracts, and if people really looked for a "zero-fee" alternative, they now have EOS. In addition, I haven't yet seen a final spec for SMTs, so at least to me it's unclear whether they will have such a huge impact on Steem adoption. Having said that, it's probably a totally different story for Steem-based DApps like @dtube, for whom it must be a huge pain to have to wait another half year. But okay, we'll all make it until then ;-)
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You bring up very good points. Although, while not known by many, there are now smart contracts on a sidechain that was created. I doubt any of the ETH developers know that so your point still holds.
We will see what ends up on here and how much word spreads. Right now, a lot in flux but, seemingly, moving in the right direction.
Wow. Ok.
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This article took my attention but overall, I have no idea what will happen after. But that twist is really intriguing.
This could be really important. I remember trying to get people on over a year ago and they were like “Is there an official app? Awwww man, let me know when there’s an official app...”
🤣🤣🤣🤣 None of these lames remember joining Facebook or MySpace for FREE and EXCITED AF for no reason! And now that cash is raining from the sky they need an official app for that 🤣 priceless, hope Ned really does care about the “normies”!
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It is not ready for an official app as its still too complex and they had to deal with scaling issues. The worst case is to go mainstreem too early and have people try and move on as you can never re-gain that launch momentum again.
@ned does have enough stakes (SP) to rain the user of new UI to make it popular, after all, all it matters to end users is how much they are going to get benefited. So everyone will go there , be it built under what ever structure.
This is amazing news. We need something like this quickly before more people abandon this platform.
This is amazing news. We need something like a new you quickly before more people abandon this platform.
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This New Ui creates a lot of questions. In some ways I hope this is for Steemit to improve it somehow but in second hand I'm kinda worry about Steemit.
Phenomenal! I hope he does do it, because as you said, he is in the best position to know how to work with what's coming later on the blockchain. The commitment to making a user-friendly UI for non-techies is the key commitment needed to help STEEM get traction with end users. That's what's needed to grow, no matter how many dapps get built by developers. Developers competing with each other to see what they can do on various platforms is cool and there is some progress there, but none of it amounts to anything if you build it and the public doesn't come.
This is lots of fantastic news. Thanks for sharing it.
Elon Musk shilled info on his companies stocks and got castrated for it. Publicity is a strange game and @ned has to be careful about what he says.
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@friendly-fenix here read this post.😃
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Hi @taskmaster4450!
Your post was upvoted by @steem-ua, new Steem dApp, using UserAuthority for algorithmic post curation!
Your UA account score is currently 5.905 which ranks you at #329 across all Steem accounts.
Your rank has improved 17 places in the last three days (old rank 346).
In our last Algorithmic Curation Round, consisting of 278 contributions, your post is ranked at #6.
Evaluation of your UA score:
Feel free to join our @steem-ua Discord server
I'd love to see him create a kick-ass interface that could not be copied by competitors.
Regarding Dtube, are you saying that their token isn't going to come out until March of 2019? I've been eagerly waiting to be able to start getting my hands on their tokens.
Thanks for sharing this. I am still confident in Ned and the Steemit team to make the right calls. It’s been a slow drawn out process, but I still think that Steem is so far ahead of the competition in terms of content tokenisation, that they can afford to wait and get it right.
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Interesting news, this mobile app of Ned sounds like the old idea from the 2017 roadmap. This could be something massive. Ned likes to speak in high words of this project. Let's see what he has up his sleeves.
Absolutely my friend.
The proof is in the pudding as they say. It is what he brings out that counts.
But this might be the tie in on the Token for nice people that he mentioned some months back.
UI is really important if we look from that marketing aspect, to attract newbies and investors, but we can consider that part just as ''cherry on the top'' after everything is settled down.
People don't understand that this is still beta and that there is long way ahead, there's no need for drama. As long as we have this UI, it's actually good sign because it means that there are much more things to be worked on and that Steemit is progressing, just behind the scenes.
I'm big believer in SMT, I've circled March 2019 in my calendar since this video
Thanks for this info :)
Resteem.
What would happen to Steem ecosystem if @ned left? The witnesses also work without him, right. Which essential rights for steemit are based at steemit.inc? This is rather a theoretical question.
that would be interesting to see what kind of approach it will hold to get more users on board
yeah whats gonna happem?? is ned gonna actually pull thgriu? why is he so secretive?
Good stuff! I can't wait to see what he's brewing up. Getting non-techies involved with Steem is going to make this place explode.
That @ned news, just something simple like that changes many bad things of not doing anything to good things. Need more simple things
Great thoughts and analysis. I agree about ETH being a temporary stop for a lot of projects who can worry about availability if they have the fortunate problem of having a lot of users turn up.
Time will tell !
I was skeptical at first @taskmaster4450 and actually wondered if @ned was going to be building a non-steem platform, but after careful thought, I realized it makes sense for @ned to build a platform that shows the power of SMTs.
I believe it will be a lot like @steemit showing the power of @steem.
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I suppose that prompting @ned to reply to my points and create all of the following excitement is my biggest contribution to Steemit so far, despite well over a year of trying to make a dent.
Actually, I did see this coming. It's been happening all along right before our eyes. Steemit Inc. has made it abundantly clear they have been working on the backend of the blockchain and Steemit.com is just a basic UI which is why it's been in Beta all this time. Meanwhile other UI like DTube, DSound, Steempeak, etc. have received lots of support and delegations. It's clear that Steem Inc leans towards supporting other Apps and UI's.
They would have pushed towards making improvements to Steemit.com and moving it out of beta if that was the intention. The vision has always been larger than just creating a website.