AKASHA, a next-generation social media network powered by the Ethereum, IPFS and pays in Eth?
For the past year we have worked on AKASHA, a next-generation social media network powered by the Ethereum world computer and the Inter-Planetary File System. Today, May 3rd, we celebrate World Press Freedom Day by unveiling our project to the world at large and opening the signups for the alpha release.
The blockchain social media scene is heating up!
AKASHA certainly seems very similar to steemit:
- Content published on a decentralised blockchain
- Vote for entries
- Good content is rewarded with Eth
- Open Source
What appears to be quite different though is in how it's being presented to the world - as a means of enabling unfettered freedom of expression.
There is no doubt steemit now has serious competition on the horizon, but steemit is here now, it should be able to capitalize on this first mover advantage, while also learning from AKASHA.
What can we learn from AKASHA, how can steemit pivot to ensure it's differentiates, in what looks like will become a crowded market?
Very interesting project, we need as much competition in this space as possible. Being on the Eth blockchain means that they could implement their own points system that behaves similar to STEEM and that could gain its own monetary value. This monetary value could even be used to buy the ETH necessary to pay fees.
The appearance of any kind of fee will negatively impact how users behave. This is especially true for voting. As we know from Steem, we pay people to vote rather than expecting voters to pay producers.
The second major challenge comes with performance, the Akasha DAPP will be competing with all other DAPPs for a share of the 20-30 tps that Eth has demonstrated on their test net. I am sure performance will increase and may be able to hit the 250 tps required for reddit scale. Social media transactions will be competing with financial transactions which will bid up the cost of both.
Their roadmap has them 1 year behind Steem, which is an eternity when it comes to social media network effect building.
The main thing I think we can learn from them is copying some of their marketing strategy. I am interested in hearing what others think of their approach and what we can learn from it.
I like their focus on how the blockchain can provide censorship resistant record of content.
We can learn from this point and make sure it comes across in the steemit messaging.
We all take the blockchain for granted, but for new non-crypto users this is a powerful concept, and one that organisations that value truth will find very compelling - wikileaks for example.
Looks like their marketing is aiming for the millenial generation and their interest in disruptive tech as a means of widening the divide between themselves and the institutional systems whose trust is all but shattered by the onslaught of citizen journalism and commentary.
I would love steem to take this route but am not sure how the community would feel about it. I say we should be proud and push the disruption card out on the table too.
I agree, fees are annoying and in my opinion are a weakness of bitcoin, etc. Traction to market of all cryptocurrency l will increase as we solve this problem. See http://k0in.com/fees.txt
My first impression of AKASHA is that steemit was first. I love the name though. Their premise is similar to steemit--an open place to share.
Interesting. There is a learning curve to understanding ETH so having crypto-dollars like STEEM-backed dollars makes a big difference for mainstream adoption.
Dan nailed it:
Steem is an almost perfect example of a standalone app with not much interconnectivity potential which gains nothing from being forced to share a slow network.
IPFS is interesting as the persistence layer. Where is everything currently stored for steem?
Everything is stored on the block chain, but could easily move to IPFS in the future.
Seems like it should be a priority.
I'm guessing it is a straightforward patch to force all content to be an IPFS hash. I think there are some working http gateways for images, and the official full node could pin everything. It seems really critical to get this done, unless witness nodes can already prune content - but there's no reason to reinvent decentralized content addressing for this.
I hope they are not panicking because of steem. If it succeeds, it will probably serve a different niche as a side-effect of different economic dynamics. Different rules produce differnet outcomes. We'll all be better off if we saturate the internet with these steem-kinds.
Akasha aka "The Queen of the Damned". Interesting choice of names for a social media platform. ;)
Heh, didn't catch it at first, but the logo is also 666.
dang. i was unaware of that. nice find. sometimes i wonder how the hell all of this symbology gets thrown around. after awhile one would think it has to be more than mere coincidence..
yup pretty weird, has put me off the whole thing!
If it's art then it's too much art..
Akasha is a supposed universal etheric field in which a record of past events is imprinted. Sounds well suited to me.
Other projects to watch are Synereo, Yours and Alexandria
Competition is a pain in the ass, but it's usually good for development. All we can do is be better, faster, and hopefully find the right balance between practical and experimental.
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