Hi. It’s with great pleasure I welcome you to another edition of SteemMag, (the twenty-fourth edition), a weekend digest for Steemians.
Every week, I take a look at some of the most important topics and have a chat with top Steemians who have expert views on such topics.
In case you missed it, here are links to Issue #1 , #2 , #3 , #4 , 5 , #6, #7 , #8, #9, #10, #11, #12 , #13, #14, #15, 16,#17, #18 , #19 , 20, 21, 22 and 23
In page 1, SteemMag had a chat with @xeroc, the CEO of the blockchain consultancy firm, ChainSquad. He has developed quite a number of Steem tools of which Streemian is the most popular. He also holds the record for the highest earning post of all time when he announced his tool, piston.web.
In page 2, I had a chat with @hilarski, the cofounder of 200Social and the Man running Steemit Official Twitter handle. We also reached out to a number of steemians for the Steemians talk feature.
A Chat With @xeroc
SteemMag: You've been one of the most prolific developers on Steemit. You also have the record of the highest earning post on Steemit. How did you discover Steemit? And what’s your favorite moment on Steemit?
@xeroc:
The whole story basically began in 2013 (if I recall correctly) with Daniel Larimer announcing ProtoShares, a minable coin that let's you join his pure stake based BitShares. I was hooked instantly and offer some of my spare time to the emerging community. Later on, I saw the need for some development and took that as a reason to learn Python. In that time, it started that the community and the core developers considered me part of the journey.
In Q1 2016 shortly before Steem was launched, Dan contacted me and asked to review a whitepaper - about a social network blockchain that already carried the name STEEM. I read through it and fell in love with the idea. Knowing alot about the underlying technology already, I decided to focus on it for a couple months to help it grow. I am still very involved in STEEM but also see the massive potential of BitShares to which I now also contribute more.
My favorite moment on Steem was when I wrote this "piston.web" announcement and was asking for alpha testers. Not so many alpha testers were found but it was entirely fascinated by the support of the community for my work. I couldn't believe a single post could pay out more than $8k and was stunned by the final payout of >$44k.
It is also amazing to see so many developers emerge and come up with great ideas and projects.
SM: You've developed a number of Steem tools. Which is your favorite of them all? And your favorite Steem tool not developed by you?
@xeroc:
Streemian is for sure my favorite. All the lessons I learned from the years developing in python have been integrated fully. It is fully based on python-steem and most improvements on streemian also benefits the python library.
In the recent days I have started to look into QT development again. It allows to build standalone apps. I am not yet sold on the idea of building a standalone app for STEEM given that nowadays people prefer browser apps but I am thinking of providing many smaller tools that allow to use specific parts of the steem blockchain only.
For instance a simple wallet for SBD like electrum, or even simpler. Or another app that allows you to quickly post, or only vote on stuff.. Maybe even with some gamification aspects. At the end, anything is possible on STEEM it's just a matter of someone doing it. @good-karma and @jesta are clearly showing the potential of STEEM.
SM: Your most popular tool on Steemit, Streemian recently crossed a major milestone of 2 million automated votes. How has the journey been so far?
The journey has just began .. We are approaching 3M quickly .. and those are only the votes from the curation trail. I am looking to grow FanBase more and have made some great contacts with community members to grow other aspects of it as well.
In fact, @curie has approached me and I have put quite some efforts already to help them optimize their processes by integrating parts of them into streemian. The partnership is still very young but I see a great future not only for curie and streemian, but also for many more guilds on STEEM.
The backend of streemian has improved as well. It is more robust than ever and it should scale for many more users. I am looking forward to the day when I need to offload parts of the backend to a separated machines for speed and the backend has been designed to support that, but we aren't there yet
SM: What is your opinion on the current criticisms on bots and curation trails on steemit?
@xeroc:
Well, exchanges have trading bots, STEEM has curation bots. It's not a matter of whether you like them or not (because you can't do anything against them), it's a matter of how to use them responsibly. That said, streemian does not offer any bots, or a curation trail, but offers people a way to build them on their own with streemian just executing their wishes.
For instance, there is an item on my to-do list to offer a specific slot in the curation trails to people that offer sophisticated curation bots. For instance, you run a bot that identifies the best posts using neuronal networks and a bunch of statistical metrics, then I could offer them a nicer spot to "sell" their service of running a special purpose and allow people to support him by joining his trail .. if people see value in your bot.
All in all, STEEM is a great tool that works best at scale. It makes no sense if everyone followed the same users, and that is why streemian let's you pick your favorites.
SM: It's been over 8 months you joined Steemit, where do you see steemit in the next couple of years?
@xeroc:
I am pretty sure that STEEM has the potential for "mass adoption" but there is quite some way to go until we get there. Most importantly, people (unfortunately) need to either understand the underlying economics, or simply trust that it is not a ponzi scheme (at least not more of a ponzi than bitcoin is, too 🙂 ).
Given how STEEM can scale and that it has free (rate-limited) transaction, it has massive potential. So many things can be done already today (without even adding a turing complete language) .. and it is just a matter of attracting developers to build these ideas and build businesses around STEEM.
If you look back at the last 8 months of STEEM, and compare the ecosystem (with all its users, usage, tools, and community) with what we have today, then it's easy to see what could happen. Oh, while we are at it, I am still waiting for @dantheman to add the crystal ball plugin to STEEM. Would you please do that asap. That would be wonderful 😃
Thanks so much for taking the time to have a chat with SteemMag. Looking forward to even more awesome tools from you..
Check out page 2 for more interesting chats and features Thanks :)
Page 2