So far, so good! =)

AKASHA is still in alpha stage and running on a private testnet so there's nothing to earn at this point; but from what I've seen so far it's outperformed my expectations from last year when it was announced.

If you've ever used the Qora client's decentralized web server you can quickly see that AKASHA has come a long way from those days, thankfully. It's far easier to setup and post than the Qora client, but to be fair, you can do a whole lot more in the Qora client compared to AKASHA at this early stage.

AKASHA uses a completely different approach to the social media problem (pay to play) compared to Steemit, and from everything I've read from outside of the Ethereum camp (including Dan) it's model is unlikely to succeed.



On the other hand, you will find plenty of people inside and outside of the Ethereum community that are really looking forward to and expecting the project to succeed.

Slow To Load

One thing right off the bat that will likely hinder AKASHA's adoption with anyone outside of the cryptocurrency ecosystem is how long it takes for the client to sync. On this attempt while writing this blog, the AKASHA client took 4m:28s to load.

 

 

The waiting doesn't stop there however. After my first post I had to wait around 3 minutes before the blog was posted. I'm sure over time things will improve, but if you've ever used some of the Ethereum wallets, you know this is not something likely to go away any time soon.

Let it be known that I have been spoiled since 2013 by Dan Larimer's blazing cryptowallet's and transaction speeds on both BitShares and Steem platforms. Therefore my standards are high in this category. ;)

The app does have a comments section underneath each blog post. Comments are not nested however and more closely resemble the Disqus model. You do also have to pay a little to post a comment, just as you do on a blog post and when voting.

Currently the app is using their testnet coin AETH which you can obtain by simply creating an account in the AKASHA client. The token has no value outside of the client and only allows you to post, comment, vote and tip within the client.

User Interface

There's not much at this time. Only a few features are activated in this early alpha release.

A would-be scammer is halted by the mighty @pfunk.


The Feed tab (above) shows you recent activity from people you follow. And the Profile panel (below) let's you change your avatar, background and short description and add some links to external sites.





Find out who's joined recently or view all AKASHA members on the People tab. Oh surprise, it's mostly squatting! I'm curious if anyone knows if these accounts from the testnet are going to be carried over? Considering people are getting these accounts for free, I would assume that is not the case and these squatters are wasting their time, no?





And probably the coolest feature the AKASHA client has at this stage is their built in chat. There's not a whole lot of discussion going on currently, mostly just questions about how to do this or that and people proclaiming how cool the project is, including Coinbase reps of course.

Summary

Everyone on Steemit should give AKASHA a try! If you have a complaint about your earnings or anything else, you will quickly realize how good we have it on Steemit now and for quite some time to come when compared to other blockchain based social media platforms.