That I hadn't realized. I just read the license on the steem main source and these are the relevant conditions:
Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:
.3. The currency symbols, 'STEEM' and 'SBD' are not changed and no new currency symbols are added.
.4. The STEEMIT_INIT_PUBLIC_KEY_STR is not changed from STM8GC13uCZbP44HzMLV6zPZGwVQ8Nt4Kji8PapsPiNq1BK153XTX, and the software is not modified in any way that would bypass the need for the corresponding private to start a new blockchain.
.5. The software is not used with any forks of the Steem blockchain that are not recognized by Steemit, Inc in writing.
So while technically possible it could land some people in court 😓
Not necessarily. You could start a new, nested blockchain inside the current one and still adhere to all the conditions listed.
It wouldn't even be that hard. Im sure i havent thought of everything, but here's a basic model.
You post a genesis block. Make a whole different coin. Call it Meets or something. Meets transactions can just be specially formatted replies to the block post.
The next block is a new post that includes all the transactions. The one who gets to produce it is the first one to achieve a signature that is less than some predetermined base 58 number (i guess it would be variable like BTC mining difficulty).
The cool thing about meets is you could use it on the steem blockchain... you could have (if you wanted) your own meets reward pool. And vote on posts on the steem blockchain with it. this is the way golos would have done it if they were smart.
Seem like it could be technically possible to do that. I'd love to read a more detailed proposal of it, even just as a "what if" scenario. Get some debate going from the more technically savvy than I because I have a niggling feeling there's a catch there.
Interesting idea, thanks! 😁