2017 Steem Year in Review
The year 2017 was such a hectic one for cryptocurrency. 2017 is the year we saw many companies fundraising through Initial Coin Offerings, including Steem.
Steem—the fundamental cryptocurrency used to power blockchain-based blogging platform Steemit, has become more and more popular since its inception. Steem’s main blockchain, Steemit, is the social media platform that pays users (Steemers) for creating and curating content. Launched in mid-2016, Steemit has enjoyed a meteoric rise in the
past year, currently boasting of over 70,000 unique users every month.
Let’s review.
Steem is the foundational cryptocurrency of the Steemit network. All other units (Steem Power and Steem Dollars) derive their value from the value of Steem. Steem is designed to increase in supply 100% each year, making it a highly inflationary currency. Perhaps, this explains why Steem encourages its supporters to lock up their holdings as illiquid Steem Power as opposed to keeping them as liquid Steem.
Steem 2017 Roadmap
When the 2017 roadmap for Steem was released, although 18 days late, there was a mixed reaction among Steem supporters. The Steemit 2017 roadmap promised a bucket list of potential as well as raised some concerns in the community.
The Pros
The 2017 roadmap promised to scale the platform by introducing new exciting features to attract more users and developers to the platform. It proposed faster delivery of services by implementing feature upgrades and server speeds. In early stages, the massive user influx caused server drop-outs, making server it such a big issue for early adopters.
Also proposed in the 2017 roadmap was the introduction of achievements for users, and a status bar for users to monitor their progress. Personally, I was excited to hear about the plan to introduce a new Steemit referral scheme which gives Steemers rewards for referring posts to others.
Steemit also suggested a new feature called sub-steems. This revolutionary feature, received with a lot of excitement by Reddit users, refers to a sub-group in Steem that allows special communities to have their own private space on the platform where whales from the other groups don't have voting power by default and therefore can't dominate. This means English speakers will not be able to dominate trending posts on, say a French sub-steem.
Besides end-user features being introduced, new developer tools promised included user account sign-up authentication, third-party application integration, side chains for testing blockchain upgrades and sponsoring Steem-application developers.
Lastly, the Steemit.io site was also scheduled for an overhaul to allow individual developers and businesses to create and deploy their own applications on the Steem blockchain.
The cons
From the investor’s point of view, the 2017 Steem roadmap doesn’t promise much.
There’s a good reason for that.
The proposals have failed to address the fundamental revenue stream of the platform.
Although the post-sharing feature is a new way to generate revenue for users, there’s no revenue stream for the actual Steem blockchain. In fact, the issue is not addressed entirely. The economy, therefore, is highly unpredictable to investors.
Another issue not addressed is the confidential transactions and encrypted messaging.
Many people prefer to remain anonymous in the cryptocurrency blockchain. If anonymity feature is introduced, it will be great news to Steemit enthusiasts.
What has not been achieved so far?
While Steem blockchain developers have taken several steps to improve user experience and make the platform easier for developers to work with there’s still a lot of things to be accomplished.
Some of the things not yet completed as per March 2018 include:
What’s next for Steem?
Steem promises to create a more vibrant community that rewards individuals for creating and curating content on the network. With the new features being introduced, user adoption will no doubt grow.
Because the intrinsic value of Steemit network is to create an influx of new users, achieving the goals proposed in 2017 roadmap is vital to accomplishing this objective.
Steemit interface has changed since the 2017 roadmap was launched. Just days ago, Steem launched SteemPlus 2.5. This is the latest version of Steem with lots of new features implemented, including votes information, votes tab, links tab, search bar, mentions tab, follower table etc. You can learn more about SteemPlus 2.5 here.
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