Scholar and Scribe?!?! Background and Overview

The idea of Scholar and Scribe came to me when I was looking into the various creative writing content type tokens on hive engine.

It seemed to me that a lot of what we have to reward posts that are oriented to creative writing are things like CCC and perhaps a few other tokens that have been created at one time or another throughout Hives history. Other than these few tokens author's seem to be using specific communities to promote their content and/or tagging a variety of the "general use" tribes or frontends for more exposure.

That got me thinking- why isn't there a more creative writing focused frontend or a token specific to creative writing rather than the more general use tags and tokens I'm seeing author's use? I realize that the combination of general tags, CCC, and HIVE can be pretty lucrative to authors- especially when they manage to get their creative writing posts upvoted by some of the larger accounts. Still... Most niche's on Hive seem to get filled successfully by a tokenomics model to better reward that specific type of content... So why not Creative Writers?

This got me thinking about tokenomics models and how the curation features work on Hive as well.

Upon reflection I realized that authors have a lot of impetus to engage in both writing their own content and curating others content for the purpose of earning both curation returns and authors returns. The problem though is that they are stuck in somewhat of a catch 22.

An author wants to write because it is something they enjoy doing but they also want to monetize their content in order to be able to earn a living or supplemental income from the content they create right?

But on Hive they are put in a position where they either have to hope they can create engaging content every time in order earn a steady stream of smaller votes from the community or catch the attention of a whale account or curation initiative consistently. This is no easy task! As creative people we often shy away from creating specific kinds of content simply because we don't want to pigeonhole ourselves or tailor the kinds of content we create just to earn. This is creative writing issue number 1.

Creative writing issue number 2 is this- writers on Hive have tough decisions to make once they start creating here:

Do I cash out my earnings regularly in order to actually benefit from the monetization of my content? Do I build stake in HIVE and various other tokens in order to earn more rapidly over time? Both of these options offer their own conundrum to the writer!

If they choose to take profit regularly from the chain they are missing out on opportunities for compounding returns and to build out their account. Still this is a better option for some writers- 20 HIVE a week is a modest amount that most of us can achieve but can make a lot of difference in people's lives.

If they choose to build stake in order to compound and maximize their account they are able to grow their presence much more rapidly- but this option comes with another burden. As an account builds stake in various tribes and frontends it becomes more imperative that an author take time to engage in curation efforts and engage with other users on their posts in order to utilize their stake most effectively. Not only is a content creator choosing to forego potential income- they are adding to their workload simultaneously.

Hive being what it is and the onus is on curators to ensure their votes are focused on quality content. This leaves the author with additional work that needs to be done in order to maximize their earning potential. At the same time they are not actually able to cash their earnings out readily as it is all locked up in staking for the curation returns.

All of this added together presents a dilemma for creative content writers here on the chain. Do they focus on tokens and communities that have high reward potential? What do they do when one of those tokens becomes less valuable? Especially considering the unstaking period of the various tokens! Do they stake everything and dedicate time to curation- leaving less time to actually write? Do they not stake anything and focus just on creation of their own content?

Scholar and Scribe aims to resolve some of these issues for authors in several ways:

First Scholar and Scribe will utilize 2 tokens: SCHOLAR token and SCRIBE token. These tokens have already been created with the supplies shown below:

These two tokens do not yet have staking or curation rewards enabled but I wanted to announce that these tokens DO exist already! The intention with these two tokens is outlined below and is certainly open to be adjusted as necessary before the staking and curation returns go live.

SCRIBE- author focused- grants 80% author rewards 20% curation rewards. Paid entirely staked. 4 week unstake, 2 week payout window. No Delegations. Max supply of 1,000,000. Holding staked SCRIBE mines SCHOLAR over the long term. 5% of supply reserved.
SCHOLAR- curation focused- grants 30% author rewards, 70% curation rewards. Paid 50/50 staked. 2 week unstake, 1 week payout window. No Delegations. Max supply of 10,000,000. 5% of supply to be mined by SCRIBE stakers, 5% of supply reserved.
Scholar and Scribe will have a post beneficiary requirement of 1% within the community. In the short term this 1% beneficiary will be used to build the curation funds of the community account and fund the acquisition of BEE needed for unlocking staking and curation on the two tokens. Long term this will be used to continue to build the curation capabilities of the community account and fund buybacks of tokens on the market. The beneficiary requirement can be adjusted if necessary.

The two tokens will each prioritize a different purpose within the creative writing community:

Author's will quickly be able to build each other up with their stake of SCRIBE- giving Author's the ability to reward each other well via their votes even if they have not built up a substantial stake yet! This will enable content creator's to reward each other and be less dependent on curation accounts for their earnings.
Author's posts will also be able to earn SCRIBE over a longer period than the normal 1 week window- this will enable late voting for content that an author might otherwise have missed the opportunity to reward!
-These features combined with the slow mining of SCHOLAR should incentivize continued staking of SCRIBE.
The SCHOLAR token will more heavily reward curation efforts and will be more liquid, with a very short unstaking window as well as a small portion of the supply being mineable by SCRIBE stakers. I expect that this token will see more action on the market. This is because it will be more liquid, because it more heavily rewards curators and so more likely to be bought on the market, and because it has a larger supply.
Both tokens will reward based on the same tag(s). This will allow users of these tokens to adjust their stake and returns by balancing the staked amount of each token however they wish.

I will be accumulating BEE and other tokens on the community account to fund the next phase for these tokens and to continue to build out the community here. I hope to see more people start posting here over time! Please use #scholarandscribe as the tag when posting in the community and then any other tags you might normally use for your creative writing content! Delegations in general frontend tokens will be sent to the community account from my main @dibblers.dabs account to start the ball rolling for the community account and any other delegations or help getting this kicked off will be appreciated! Stay tuned for updates about the status of the two tokens- and any feedback on this project or the tokenomics ideas I have laid out here are greatly appreciated!