In the wake of yesterday’s TRAIL announcement, one question was asked repeatedly

What are they good for?

As promised, here are some details regarding the coin itself. This won’t be comprehensive, but hopefully offers enough insight to help participants appreciate the TRAIL project and the potential of the TRAIL token.

Trail Coin (TRAIL)

What is it?

TRAIL is a reward token for participants in the SteemTrail venture (#steemtrail). As stated in yesterday’s introduction:

The purpose of TRAIL is to reward those who participate in SteemTrail as curators and are active in the voting trail. Authors who are chosen by SteemTrail communities and upvoted by SteemTrail will also be rewarded with TRAIL.

Where can I purchase TRAIL?

The only way to gain TRAIL currently is by earning via participation rewards, though it will be tradeable on Open Ledger once distribution of TRAIL begins. TRAIL will be deposited into your Open Ledger accounts according to your participation in StreemTrail.

With this in mind, participants will obviously want to open an Open Ledger account. So will authors, since being promoted by SteemTrail earns TRAIL as well (more details below).

It is best to use the same name for your Open Ledger account, so as to avoid confusion when distributing TRAIL. Once you’ve done so, head over to the SteemTrail Discord server and provide your Open Ledger account info in the #open-ledger-account-add channel. Then please simply post:

OL account “my-username” and Steem account “my-username”

This will assure that distribution makes it to your Open Ledger wallet.

NOTE: If you have a Bitshares or BlockPay app, it is possible that your username was input to Open Ledger by Bitshares already. We’ve contacted them to try to see how to open the accounts, but won’t know more until some upgrades are completed, hopefully at the end of the month. We’ll keep you posted.

Can it be traded?

It’s a token, so everyone wants to be able to trade it. What good would it be if you couldn’t trade it, right?

Well, yes, it can be traded. But it’s not really openly traded yet, so it’s not as intuitive as other coins you’re used to. Currently, there is a fixed price of 4 TRAIL per Steem in Open Ledger. However, there is not really a supply to buy yet, so you won’t be able to just go buy them. Nor is there a market yet to sell them, though you could easily arrange a trade with someone else on Open Ledger if you desired. Eventually we hope to see it traded openly and rise in value. However, whether that happens or not, it is still a great token of gratitude for Steemit members. And we hope to see it transferred among members in appreciation for content or comments, or even for services.

Having said that, TRAIL is in no way competitive with Steem. Rather, it is complementary. It adds a level of incentive that Steem is not designed to do and provides a mechanism for promoting Steemit beyond the Steemit.com website… even beyond the Steem blockchain.

In the near future we will be producing more documentation to help clarify how TRAIL can be managed and exchanged on Open Ledger. This document, along with other supporting documents, will be made available in the SteemTrail Discord server.

TRAIL Rewards

In order to offer an objective reward system, each participant will receive TRAIL in accordance with their actions, regardless of their reputation or Steem Power. SteemTrail is confident that such a system promotes greater participation among all members, regardless of their Steemit status or ranking.

Currently, there are three main ways to earn TRAIL.

1. Follow the SteemTrail trail on Streemian.com. If you haven’t signed up yet, go to Streemian and set it up. It’s a good service anyway, for multiple reasons. @xeroc’s done a great job. Once you’ve set it up, pick “steemtrail” as an operator. For each vote StreemTrail makes on your behalf, you’ll receive one TRAIL. We’re estimating about 60-80 votes per day, with expectations of eventually approaching 100 votes per day. NOTE: If you are using another reliable method (ie. CLI wallet or voting bot) to follow SteemTrail, please let us know and you will be included.
2. Write great content. The author of each article that the @SteemTrail account upvotes will also receive one TRAIL. Your article is more likely to be found by SteemTrail if it includes #steemtrail as a tag. SteemTrail will leave a comment indicating that your article was upvoted, which will serve as your claim to one TRAIL.
3. Participate in a SteemTrail. SteemTrail Curators that are active in at least one trail will receive participation rewards of 300 TRAIL per week. To become an active curator involves announcing your intent to curate trail specific content, joining the SteemTrail voting trail, and participating in voting of posts selected. As a team, you set the guidelines for how this is managed and make decisions internally. Many trails are active now, but there are still many that are not. And we can always create a new one for you if you can’t find an appropriate trail for your interest or expertise.

What to do?

Folks are sometimes dismayed when they first get to the SteemTrail Discord server. Part of this is because the trails are not micromanaged. There are some general guidelines laid out in the documentation, but nothing really rigid.
Rather, SteemTrail serves as a facilitator and incubator. It’s our goal to provide the means and tools for groups to build a strong category based presence and curation team, promoting their passions and the Steemit community as a whole. Such a design will help develop topical communities, which will in turn serve to strengthen Steemit overall.
So, here’s what you can do.

• Join the SteemTrail Discord server.
• Check the existing trails to see if there’s one you want to become a part of. If there’s not, let @instructor2121 know so he can set one up for you. If there is, check to see if folks are already managing it and engage with them. If nobody is managing it yet, then feel free to start doing so and building your own team.
• Set up your Open Ledger account. Once you’ve done so, go to the #open-ledger-account-add channel in SteemTrail’s Discord server and share your account information (OL account “my-username” and Steem account “my-username”).
• Set up your Streemian account. Once you’ve done so, make steemtrail your operator (you can choose more than one, but be aware that your voting power gets diluted when you vote more). Or, if you’re using a bot or CLI wallet, let @instructor2121 know in Discord.
• As your team grows and your topic-trail matures, you may want additional features or see opportunities for us to provide more tools. Let us know, and we’ll keep you apprised of developments as the TRAIL initiative progresses.

You’ll also find an #ask-rick-and-joe channel on the Discord server. Please feel free to post ideas and questions there. There are other pertinent channels as well, including #trailcoin and #open-ledger-account-add.

In the Voice Channels you’ll find places where you can talk live with members, and usually can reach @instructor2121. We will be setting a time aside for daily discussions there as well, in order to answer questions, provide details, collaborate, discuss ideas and share about the SteemTrail vision.

Have fun! Steemit is a great community. And your participation in the SteemTrail initiative will help to make it better and propel it to the next level.

Thank you for helping to make SteemTrail successful. Together, we’ll continue promoting the success of participants and the Steemit community as a whole

Happy Trails!