So it's officially time to starting planning for the 2018 Steem Silver Round.

We made the official first announcement in this previous post HERE

And some further Follow-up Here

There's a lot of info and discussions over on those posts that still needs input, but in this post we're just going to focus on the design idea and I feel that's the first major step.

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Here's a quick reminder of the 2017 Image that was used. The Round was titled "Community" and created by the amazing designer @bearone.

We will once again go to the community for designs and art submissions, but first need to establish what the design is going to be. So we are not at the design submissions stage yet!

The obverse(back/heads) will stay the same with the Steem Logo and standard silver round markings. It will give it a nice clean look and keep the flow between the annual releases.

The big question is what to put on the Reverse, or Front/Tails side of the round.

I'm currently undecided personally, but the whole point is to have maximum community engagement and input with the project so we're reaching out to everyone with feedback.

Community vs Open Design?

Community

Half of me thinks we should really continue to make this a "community" round, and look for the designers to find another way to display the community feel here on steemit and capture that on the round. For me 'community' has always been the most important aspect of steemit and the reason most of us stay as active here on the platform as we do.

Open Design

The other half of me thinks we should just keep it wide open and let the designers come up with anything steem/steemit related at all. It could be absolutely anything to do with any aspect of steemit at all. Most of the other initial submissions that were also excellent were very different than this first one.

Here is a recap of the other designs for last years project.

Other Ideas

Of course there's also the likely possibility that someone around here has a way better idea than me, and has another idea for an amazing theme or design for the round that would help carry the project in an exciting direction and there is still lots of time to have more discussions about that.

I know this year with the expanded focus on the project and the chance to better reward the designers that make submissions, as well as the fact we're no longer restricted to a 2d die, the finished project is going to be amazing.

Depending on where the discussion heads from here we may proceed with a vote or if there is a clear preference, we will continue with the design contest shortly.

The remainder of the discussions, and more info about the 2018 project are still happening over here

Lastly we are committed to keeping matching COA numbers for the number 1-100 rounds for 2017 customers and we are also trying to crowdfund the project to ensure we can keep the price point down and reward designers so any donations can be sent to @steemsilverround, we are also committing the SBD from post payouts to help fund the project.