A month ago the 1UP hivemind curation system has been activated. It lets users vote for the best contributions on Utopian.io outside of the normal Steem system and activate a trail of upvoters. This post is explaining the idea and vision of 1UP but not how to set it all up. For further infos please read the 1.0 post.
1UP is developed by @flauwy, @stoodkev and @andrejcibik.
The Problem Before 1UP
The Steem blockchain has two big problems: The distribution of good content and the consequential low payout for these posts due to lower exposure. To get to the Hot or Trending page is often the only way to find more followers and upvotes. And that is in times of upvote bots and autovotes difficult to achieve without paying for it. It requires just one upvote from big Steem Power holders to make posts visible due to the Proof of Stake system - while the Proof of Brain of the majority of the readers does little to spread the post and find the deserved audience.
Specifically on Utopian.io - the huge Steem-based platform for Open Source rewards - there are so many great development posts and other contributions that are getting the great Utopian upvote but not the deserved attention and exposure. Additionally there are curation reward hunters who upvote nearly everything that will be a profitable upvote in combination with the following Utopian bot. That does not invite more quality to the platform.
The Solution That 1UP offers
With 1UP all Steemians with a reputation of 45 or higher will get a brand new upvote button to give daily up to ten 1UP's to the best posts they find. These 1UP's are free and avoid the usual Proof of Stake system because no matter whether a whale or a minnow gives the 1UP - it always counts the same! The posts land on the special 1UP Ranking Page where ten times a day the post with the most 1UP's will be upvoted by the 1UP trail account and trigger all the 1UP trailers to also upvote the post. The trailers are additionally incentivized to participate through a following whale upvote which increases the expected curation rewards drastically.
The pilot project for 1UP was Utopian.io. Here we have a guaranteed whale upvote after a moderator accepts a post. This is the moment when the 1UP button is being activated and it stays active until the post is being upvoted from the @utopian-io whale account. The 1UP Ranking Page also list the previous winner to allow even more exposure to them. The integration of the 1UP button takes currently place with the free browser extension @steem-plus.
1UP is the first system that allows for decentralized voting system for posts on the Steem blockchain and allows higher exposure and payouts for quality content. It also automates the voting power on any platform using 1UP to efficiantly delegate upvotes to the posts with the highest hivemind consensus without ever going idle at 100% voting power again. This allows to maximize the usually delegated Steem Power for big platforms like DTube, DSound, DLive, dMania who are all still manually upvoting and often have long idle times creating great opportunity costs.
The 1UP Vision
The potential of 1UP is huge. There are so many win-win's in it that it is logical to integrate 1UP in any Steem-based platform eventually. As mentioned before, the big fancy new platforms with large Steem Power delegations are all manually upvoting and hence subjectively and inefficiantly. Using 1UP will benefit the entire ecosystem through higher quality, greater curation rewards and a fairer and better post distribution than the current blockchain way with Hot, Trending and Tags. Using special trails for each platform would be ideal to allow the trailers to support exactly that project that they favor.
To incentivize more users to use the 1UP button we can think of a further gamification for everyone that will somehow make the process profitable for each participant. Maybe a reshuffeling of the otherwise fixed curation trail to achieve better positioning and hence a more profitable spot. Other ideas to realize that are possible as well.
Finally we have created the new account @boost-1up to upvote all posts that win a 1UP round. So it will basically trail the trail. This will make it even more profitable for all trailers which hopefully will lead to a large support of the community. This account will accept Steem Power delegations and is meant to grow significantly to make 1UP truly a game changer for the community.
What do YOU think about 1UP so far and what would you like to see for it?