Having thought long and hard about how to position my original post on the Steemit.com codebase, the overwhelming response has made this post much easier to approach (although I'm still winging it when it comes to putting thoughts down into words).
Prior to writing that post, I've had various conversations with people who understand Steemit much better than me and they occasionally mentioned things that I didn't understand. As is the case with many of my posts, the real value's within the comments and if you visit the post in the early stages, you'll perhaps miss some of the gold that's found within them. These comments helped me to learn (as usual) and helped me to understand things better so these are some more mature thoughts following those initial ones.
I'll probably still get plenty wrong and I look forward to being corrected 🙂
Financing
Many of the comments that I received related to helping fund anybody who wanted to work on enhancing Steemit. Suggestions included users committing to upvoting any code-related posts, a 5%/10% beneficiary being the default on any new site that was written and opening up the Steem DAO.
Whilst the first 2 ideas are appreciated, in my opinion upvotes alone won't reflect the level of effort required to progress meaningfully and the beneficiary idea, whilst being able to provide a constant stream of income, doesn't reflect the significant upfront cost involved in developing a site of this size.
The Steem DAO, however, is something I'd heard mentioned before but didn't understand. @remlaps mentioned that it's still receiving funds from the "reward pool" and I've seen that it's currently receiving approximately $150 SBD per hour. @tht shared a link to the current pot, sitting at a fairly significant $2.3m SBD. That's well over $10m USD at today's prices. Having guessed a ball park project cost in the region of $200k, there's plenty of money available even if my calculations are way off.
@remlaps highlighted 2 risks with this though and I'll add a 3rd:
- Selling pressure - Any developers working on the code and being paid in SBD / Steem will likely want to convert this into (what's considered to be) real world money. Whilst this is an obvious risk - I'd consider this to be an investment that would see Steemit progress, investors appear and we'd actually see an increase in price.
- Accountability - Seeing people trying to abuse the platform on a daily basis, there's a risk that we'll trust the wrong people. I've seen working websites before that were just a load of pictures and a hitmap layered over the top. We don't want to see this and I'm sure that staggered payments or similar checks could be implemented.
- Money Grabbing Scum Bags - The DAO was switched off during the infamous Fork War of 2020 and hasn't been switched on since. There's a risk that malicious code is present or something similar which will see this $100m disappear when reactivated. That would hurt. A lot. I wonder if there's another means of accessing these funds though which could be used to provide the much needed investment?
The most important point I've taken from these discussions though, is that there are funds floating around which were designed to be used for the very purpose we're all craving. We just need to work out how to access them safely and get them to the right people.
Steemit.com Codebase
My opinion on this hasn't changed and I won't be installing condenser ever again. Ever. No matter what the project. So I won't be working with the Steemit codebase in its current form. There are without doubt people who will be able to work with this but I'm certainly not one of them.
Instead, my hope is to work with @steemchiller's API and produce a "proof of concept (POC)" that will be able to demonstrate what's possible and how sexy Steemit could look in the future. I've opted to work with @steemchiller's code for the simple reason that I'm hoping he'll be able to help me understand his API in a way that whoever wrote Steemit's API can't.
Whilst this won't be a fully working and thoroughly tested product, it'll start to give us an idea of what direction we could head in if we commit more seriously.
There'll be 100's of questions and problems in getting any kind of POC to a working product but that's a problem that @future-gorilla can worry about (by the way, if you see @historic-gorilla, please tell him he's an arsehole).
Please Share Your Thoughts
Thanks to everybody who provided their input with my last post and hopefully this one gives you some optimism that things could change and that we might be able to play a part in making it happen.
For now, I'm going to enjoy a well-earned Christmas break (other than loads of Fantasy Football Updates) with my next challenge well formed within my fragile little mind.
