Welcome to the ninth day of the May 30 days writing challenge. If you don't know what this challenge is about, please have a look at the introductory post. Also, at the end of each article I will post the links to all the posts in the challenge (if you're joining the challenge, I encourage you to do the same). Also, if you join, don't forget to tag your post with #challenge30days and also leave a comment with the link of your post, so I can evaluate if you're one of the 3 lucky Steemians that will get a full upvote from me.

Where Do You See Steemit In 5 Years?

That's one of my favorite topics. Not exactly how Steemit will be / look like in 5 years, but making predictions. I like to throw out my mind at things and apply different models and see how it will play out. Knowing this, it might not be surprising that my favorite movie / book genre is Science Fiction. Altered Carbon type of Science Fiction, to be more precise.

So, how will Steemit be in 5 years?

I think there will be at least 3 layers which will cover the "Steemit experience":

the blockchain
the apps
the semantic networks

Let's take them one at a time.

the blockchain

In 5 years, the storage requirements for the Steem blockchain will be literally humungous. By then, some sort of sharding / splitting mechanism should have been developed and implemented in such a way that running a Steem node would be a task in itself, much like Bitcoin mining is a task in itself now.

There are already steps taken in this direction, with AppBase rewrite. I expect to see specialization: some people will run only consensus nodes - and get rewarded for that - while others will run only storage nodes - and get rewarded in a different way for that. The Steem blockchain will be an industry in itself.

the apps

I believe there will be many more apps built on top of the Steemit blockchain. Now we have less than 10 relevant apps on this blockchain:

text / image - Steemit, busy.org,
video - DTube,
live streaming - Dlive,
image only - Steepshot,
mobile only - eSteem
notifications only: Steemifications
and a few others that I won't mention here.

I believe we will have many other apps, on many other channels. The line between TV and computers is already blurring, so I can see in 5 years some sort of TV-based entertainment, but built on top of the Steem blockchain. Also, intelligent watches are starting to pick up, and I can also see some sort of micro apps for micro content hosted at your wrist.

Oh, and by then cars will also be way more intelligent than they are today's, so probably some stuff will be built on top of that vertical too.

the semantic networks

On top of the previous two layers I also see a differentiation based on the actual semantic of the network. Just like now we have Facebook and LinkedIn, which are basically the same thing (make friends, advertise yourself, interact) but with different goals (one is entertainment, the other one is business) I can also see these equivalents on the Steem blockchain. I also see StackOverflow / Quora clones, and, why not, Tinder clones.

So, that's it, that's my prediction for Steemit in 5 years. It's done and it will remain in the blockchain forever (or for as long as the blockchain will exist) so we may come back to it in 5 years and see if I was right or not.

Your turn now. Leave a link to your post in the comments so I can check it out.

Previous Posts In The Challenge

I'm a serial entrepreneur, blogger and ultrarunner. You can find me mainly on my blog at Dragos Roua where I write about productivity, business, relationships and running. Here on Steemit you may stay updated by following me @dragosroua.

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May 30 Days Writing Challenge - Day Nine: Where Do You See Steemit In 5 Years?