As promised by Steemit co-founders, @ned and @dan, the Steemit roadmap was released a few hours ago. It's a 22 pages PDF document which may be downloaded from here:
https://steem.io/2017roadmap.pdf
The Top 7 Key Points
For those of you accustomed with my detailed approach to the hardfork proposals, this will be different. I will leave you the pleasure to read the entire roadmap yourself. Not only will I think it will be an interesting read, but, as early adopters, I also think it's our responsibility to get informed as much as we can. We are all stakeholders here.
So, instead of doing a detailed review of all the points, I will gloss over the 7 most important ones. The choice is obviously subjective, it's what I think is important.
Steemit.com
These are features related distinctively to the steemit.com website. The one you'e using right now.
1. Steem Login and signing service for safe and easy third-party app integrations
Target: Q3 2017.
This features allows - if I understand it correctly - a standardized way to login into various external web resources, using your Steemit credentials, but independent from Steemit.com, a la OAuth. It makes a lot of sense that this feature should be created and monitored by Steemit, although other implementations, quite good, are already going on (steemconnect.com). This will incentivize third-party web apps creators to implement new ways of creating and consuming content off of the Steem blockchain. In simpler words, it will support accelerated growth.
2. Comment moderation for post authors
Target: Q2, 2017.
Right of speech and censorship resistance are at the very core of Steemit. They are also my number one reason to be here. But, as last months showed us, some people are abusing the platform in ways that hinders its organic spread. Moderation in comments means we, as authors, we'll be able to choose which comments are displayed and which are not. The comments we choose not to show are not deleted, they are still in the blockchain, if anyone wish to peruse them. I think this feature will clear up the air big time in the community. The level of toxicity during the last month was sometimes beyond my level of tolerance. I'm all for debating and supporting different points of view and opinions, but I'm completely thrown off by insults and meaningless trolling (yes, there is such a thing as meaningless trolling, even trolling can be done in an intelligent and constructive way).
3. Community Namespaces and Moderation
Target: Q3 2017.
As far as I understand, there are two types of communities planned: moderated and closed. "Closed" refers to the fact that only founders or members can post, not that the posts are private. "Moderated" means everybody can post and it's up to the founders and moderators to show / hide certain posts (similar to sub-reddits). I also understand that this feature can be coupled with the following one, in which founders can decide an arbitrary amount of rewards for community posts. This arbitrary split of rewards is by far the most important feature from this roadmap (and I already hailed it when it was first announced as a target for Hardfork 17) but even without the coupling, communities are a great way to increase affinity to the platform. It was also one of the most requested features when I asked for suggestions in regards to HF 17, so that means there are ears at Steemit headquarters and those ears are working. Very good.
Steem Blockchain
These are features related distinctively to the Steem blockchain, the data backend of Steemit.com.
1. Arbitrary splitting of post rewards, for revenue splitting
Target: Q2 2017.
I already said it, once implemented this feature will change the whole game of social media globally. I stand by my words. For those of you not yet exposed to this, it means that you can split the rewards of a certain Steem-based platform arbitrarily. Example: you run a website called SteemQuiz.com, which clones StackOverflow. Each transaction you post on the blockchain (being a post, a comment or a vote) can be customized in such a way that rewards are split, like, let's say: SteemQuiz.com 2%, Post: 50%, Comments 30%, votes 18%. I don't know if this will be the exact implementation, but that's the general idea. Once out, this will open the door to virtually anyone to leverage the Steem blockchain into their own projects. It's huge.
The only think that worries me is that if Steem, the blockchain, goes viral, there will be significant growth problems (read: blockchain bottlenecks in processing transactions). Which leads us, organically, to the next feature from the list.
2. Multi-Chain Parallelism
Target: Q4 2017.
Simply put, this means that around the main blockchain, more side-chains, oriented towards specific transactions, will unload the power processing into parallel tasks. In the roadmap, the term used is a "fabric" of chains, but I think that there are a collection of specific side-chains linked together. The feature is meant to address the potential workload generated by increase in usage and, to be honest, I would have loved to see this implemented sooner, not in Q4. I understand Q2 is unreasonable, but at least Q3 would make me happier. I also understand that creating this infrastructure is a huge computing challenge. I'd love to see this process unfolding and I'll continue to keep a curious eye on the Github repository.
Steemit Inc
These are organizational goals, related strictly to the creators of Steem and Steemit.
1. We’re hiring the best talent globally
Target: Ongoing
It was just about time. I think this is probably the biggest challenge of Steemit Inc for this year. Finding excellent, reliable and loyal team mates is a daunting task. I've been there oh, so many times. But there is a little bit of advantage for Steemit Inc here: being able to monitor for the last 5-6 months some members of the community (developers, writers, community leaders) they already have a potential pool of people. I already started to contribute, from my witness position, to this project and I am very curious to see what other ways are to be part of this.
2. We plan to decentralize the @steemit account stake
Target: Ongoing.
The @steemit account was the topic of many heated discussions, both on the blockchain and in the chat rooms. The fact that a lot of Steem is blocked into a single account raised suspicions. Some of the projects funded by Steemit during the beta stage most likely benefited from this account, but I don't think it was very transparent or standardized. The public announcement of the divesting process is very important. Strategically speaking, it signals the fact that worthwhile products and processes will be supported directly, which should increase both confidence and affinity.
All in all, I think this roadmap is doable. That's the most important quality of a roadmap, in my opinion, to be realistic, plausible and doable. There's no point in making a roadmap for taking people to Mars, for instance, if you know this is not yet possible.
Steem on!
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.
https://steemit.com/~witnesses