Steem: the $1 billion crypto for content curation and creation

Topics covered: 1) Pitfalls of existing platforms: readers rewarding authors via micropayment 2) What is steemit.com, a thriving community based on Steem, the $1B crypto? 3) Behind Steem: crypto design, blockchain mechanism, economy system 4) Why does it have to be on blockchain?

Transcript

1. Copyright 2018 Aaron Li (aaron@qokka.ai) Copyright 2018 Aaron Li (aaron@qokka.ai) Aaron Li Feb 20, 2017 https://linkedin.com/in/aaronqli/ https://t.me/ai_qokka https://facebook.com/ai.qokka http://qokka.ai/about Steem: the $1B Crypto for Content Curation reward content creation and curation without micropayment from zero to $1 billion market cap aaron@qokka.ai Founder & CEO @ Qokka - Pitfalls of existing platforms: readers rewarding authors via micropayment - What is steemit.com, a thriving community based on Steem, the $1B crypto? - Behind Steem: crypto design, blockchain mechanism, economy system - Why does it have to be on blockchain? Topics:
2. Copyright 2018 Aaron Li (aaron@qokka.ai) Copyright 2018 Aaron Li (aaron@qokka.ai) Announcement Coming soon: Crypto Information Platform Find out more at http://qokka.ai/crypto https://t.me/ai_qokka Summarizing news, discussions, technical papers, teams …
3. Copyright 2018 Aaron Li (aaron@qokka.ai) Copyright 2018 Aaron Li (aaron@qokka.ai) Pitfalls of existing community content platforms readers rewarding authors via micropayment Communities want to … => have readers to decide what content is good keep a sustainable business model reward people who write good content => have readers to pay for good content deliver good user experience & keep pages clean (no ads)
4. Copyright 2018 Aaron Li (aaron@qokka.ai) Copyright 2018 Aaron Li (aaron@qokka.ai) Pitfalls of existing community content platforms readers rewarding authors via micropayment Solution (existing platforms): Micropayment & Tips tips authors with small amount of money But…. do readers really pay more often? at minimal delay and near-zero fees * Very challenging technical problem, see link
5. Copyright 2018 Aaron Li (aaron@qokka.ai) Copyright 2018 Aaron Li (aaron@qokka.ai) Pitfalls of existing community content platforms readers rewarding authors via micropayment Large platforms using micropayment & tips: WeChat - Launched in 2015, lots of media coverage but with limited success Experimental: Flattr - Launched in 2010, acquired for undisclosed amount Blendle - Launched in 2014, >1M users, $3.8M funding Tibbit - Launched in 2016, ~$300k funding Brave (Basic Attention Token) - Launched in 2017, $42M funding, blockchain-based Coinbase (Payment Button) - Launched in 2018, blockchain-based Small Scale:
6. Copyright 2018 Aaron Li (aaron@qokka.ai) Copyright 2018 Aaron Li (aaron@qokka.ai) Pitfalls of existing community content platforms readers rewarding authors via micropayment To tip = making a decision to buy = calculate “Is this much of X worth that much of Y?” = mental efforts & anxiety from users only transaction users would approve without a thought: one cost them nothing (also see “The Case Against Micropayments” by Clay Shirky)
7. Copyright 2018 Aaron Li (aaron@qokka.ai) Copyright 2018 Aaron Li (aaron@qokka.ai) steemit.com: rewarding authors without micropayment the platform based on Steem, the $1B crypto
8. Copyright 2018 Aaron Li (aaron@qokka.ai) Copyright 2018 Aaron Li (aaron@qokka.ai) Motivation Reddit would be improved if everyone who contributed to reddit.com by posting stories, adding comments or voting were rewarded with a fair share in Reddit, Inc - Erika Morphy, Forbes, Oct 2014 (link) steemit.com: rewarding authors without micropayment the platform based on Steem, the $1B crypto
9. Copyright 2018 Aaron Li (aaron@qokka.ai) Copyright 2018 Aaron Li (aaron@qokka.ai) steemit.com: rewarding authors without micropayment the platform based on Steem, the $1B crypto Users don’t pay each other. Everyone gets paid by the system
10. Copyright 2018 Aaron Li (aaron@qokka.ai) Copyright 2018 Aaron Li (aaron@qokka.ai) steemit.com: rewarding authors without micropayment the platform based on Steem, the $1B crypto Users: >750,000 as of Feb 2018 (~3x Aug 2017) ~20% weekly active, ~10% daily active Launched in March 2016, new blockchain, no ICO $30M has been paid out to >50,000 users, as of Oct 2017
11. Copyright 2018 Aaron Li (aaron@qokka.ai) Copyright 2018 Aaron Li (aaron@qokka.ai) post new content vote (+1) on existing posts payout ∝ daily rank of upvote help decide who should get paid payout ∝ vote power spent keep 0% / 50% / 100% payout steemit.com: rewarding authors without micropayment the platform based on Steem, the $1B crypto What do users do?
12. Copyright 2018 Aaron Li (aaron@qokka.ai) Copyright 2018 Aaron Li (aaron@qokka.ai) steemit.com: rewarding authors without micropayment Three types of tokens Steem SP (Steem Power) SBD (Steem Blockchain Dollar) For? Trading & exchange Carrying influence Preserving Value Feature? Convertible to SP and SBD Vote on things (posts, witnesses, …) Pegged to USD (1:1) (not working well, needs improvement) Similar to? Currency Equity Debt Interest? None Yes (from 15% annual inflation) Sometimes
13. Copyright 2018 Aaron Li (aaron@qokka.ai) Copyright 2018 Aaron Li (aaron@qokka.ai) steemit.com: rewarding authors without micropayment the platform based on Steem, the $1B crypto Steem Price
14. Copyright 2018 Aaron Li (aaron@qokka.ai) Copyright 2018 Aaron Li (aaron@qokka.ai) Behind Steem: How does it work? crypto design, blockchain mechanism, economy system power down 1:1 over 13 weeks 1/13 per week Steem SP SBD power up 1:1 trade on internal exchange Convert to 1 dollar worth of STEEM in 3.5 days External Exchange Content creation / curation Witnessing (i.e. mining) Content creation
15. Copyright 2018 Aaron Li (aaron@qokka.ai) Copyright 2018 Aaron Li (aaron@qokka.ai) Behind Steem: How does it work? crypto design, blockchain mechanism, economy system SP (Steam Power): Get via witnessing, content creation / curation, or market Decides the maximum weight of votes you cast Steem: basic tradable crypto token for conversion into SP or SBD Also get by “powering up” Steem Convert back to Steem slowly over 13 weeks (1/13 per week)
16. Copyright 2018 Aaron Li (aaron@qokka.ai) Copyright 2018 Aaron Li (aaron@qokka.ai) SBD (Steem Blockchain Dollar) Behind Steem: How does it work? crypto design, blockchain mechanism, economy system Get via content creation, or conversion from Steem, or buy from market Supposedly stable token pegged to USD (not really working well…) Redeemable into Steem by conversion (which takes 3.5 days) or by trading market (which has different rate) Generate interest if SBD price is close to $1 USD (right now 0%) Promote content in “promoted” section (see link)
17. Copyright 2018 Aaron Li (aaron@qokka.ai) Copyright 2018 Aaron Li (aaron@qokka.ai) Behind Steem: How does it work? crypto design, blockchain mechanism, economy system
18. Copyright 2018 Aaron Li (aaron@qokka.ai) Copyright 2018 Aaron Li (aaron@qokka.ai) Behind Steem: How does it reward people? proof-of-brain: determines social value of content 15% 10% 75% Authors and curators Witness nodes Interest Rewards Pool New tokens at fixed rate every 3 secs Distributed to authors, curators, witnesses Works similarly to “inflation” in fiat currency Rate = 9.5% per year (Dec 2016) decrease by ~0.5% per year (0.01% per 250k blocks) until 0.95% (at about year 2037) How is the fixed rate computed?
19. Copyright 2018 Aaron Li (aaron@qokka.ai) Copyright 2018 Aaron Li (aaron@qokka.ai) Behind Steem: how does it prevent cheating? proof-of-brain: determines social value of content Voting Power Recharge 20% each day Depletes a little bit when vote Vote at X% power has X% weight Voting Weight Determined by SP
20. Copyright 2018 Aaron Li (aaron@qokka.ai) Copyright 2018 Aaron Li (aaron@qokka.ai) proof-of-brain: determines social value of content Bandwidth To prevent excessive amount of transactions (e.g. votes, posts, … any operation with blockchain) Designed to replace to “transaction fees” in traditional blockchains (e.g. Bitcoin) Measured by weekly moving average of bytes usage on the blockchain Behind Steem: how does it prevent attack?
21. Copyright 2018 Aaron Li (aaron@qokka.ai) Copyright 2018 Aaron Li (aaron@qokka.ai) proof-of-brain: determines social value of content Bandwidth (continued) Allowance determined by SP When network load is high, users who use bandwidth above their limit may get their operations delayed (votes, posts, etc.) “dynamic fractional reserve” model, a variation to “fractional reserve” model used by ISPs (see Steem whitepaper, page 21) Behind Steem: how does it prevent attack?
22. Copyright 2018 Aaron Li (aaron@qokka.ai) Copyright 2018 Aaron Li (aaron@qokka.ai) Behind Steem: How does the tech work? Steem blockchain technical details Blockchain - DPoS (Delegated Proof-of-Stake) Designed for up to 10,000 tx/s Each operation (vote, post, …) is a transaction on blockchain Miners = witness nodes; generate 1 block per 3 seconds Robust against forks (already had 18 hard forks, always only 1 chain persisted) >> Reddit scale ~= 250 tx/s (~= 220 votes + 23 comments + 2 posts / second)
23. Copyright 2018 Aaron Li (aaron@qokka.ai) Copyright 2018 Aaron Li (aaron@qokka.ai) Blockchain - Interesting Core Implementation Features (C++) Steem blockchain technical details Database: ChainBase (link) memory mapped, faster than key-value DB (e.g. LevelDB used by Ethereum) Modularization: AppBase (link) make Steem blockchain features modularized Architecture: LMAX (link) Single thread handling 6 million orders per sec, on some production system s Behind Steem: How does the tech work?
24. Copyright 2018 Aaron Li (aaron@qokka.ai) Copyright 2018 Aaron Li (aaron@qokka.ai) Why blockchain? Proof-of-brain: determines social value of content by public consensus without blockchain: value of content is arbitrarily set by some authority Public blockchain: prevents censorship, promotes valuable content without blockchain: easy to ban users / censor topic / manipulate content Rewards pool: pay contributors from community economy (inflation & interest) without blockchain: either readers pay, advertisers pay, or companies pay With blockchain v.s. without Decentralized system: fault-tolerant distributed platform at high tx/s, with little cost without blockchain: high cost, dedicated teams to operate & maintain
25. Copyright 2018 Aaron Li (aaron@qokka.ai) Copyright 2018 Aaron Li (aaron@qokka.ai) Contact https://linkedin.com/in/aaronqli/ https://t.me/ai_qokka https://facebook.com/ai.qokka http://qokka.ai/about Aaron Li aaron@qokka.ai Founder & CEO @ Qokka