Charles: Steem ‘Can’t Last’

The Yours platform, which like Steemit pays users who upload quality  popular content, is still in its test phase, with a limited preview set  for later this summer. “… One of the top questions we’ve been asked is ‘why bitcoin?’” Charles wrote in a blog post Thursday. 

By leveraging  bitcoin, we can take advantage of the largest blockchain technical  ecosystem including open source software, documentation, standards, and  APIs, as well as the largest blockchain social ecosystem including  companies and experts.
 

Steemit had been paying its users  in its own currency, Steem dollars, using a separate blockchain. In the  post, Charles specifically outlined Steem dollars as an example of what  he described as “the very approach we determined wouldn’t work.” “Although  we are delighted to see blockchain social media a reality, we worry  that Steem can’t last,” he wrote. “The burden of building not just a  community and a technical platform, but also a novel cryptosystem and  supporting economy, is extremely high.” He noted that while building a platform on legacy Bitcoin blockchain  parameters meant developers “would have full control over our  blockchain’s technical properties to suit our community’s needs,” the  problems associated with forging everything from scratch outweighed the  advantages. 

Timely Words

Charles’ post was seemingly released while news of Steemit’s hack  was still confined to smaller circles. Instead, he offered that in  hindsight, it was fortunate Yours had not been built on Ethereum. “A few months ago I wrote an article called ‘Why I’m Sticking With Bitcoin,’  which was about why Yours was not using ethereum… Since then, the DAO  was hacked and the enthusiasm around ethereum has dampened,” he  concluded. “The timeliness of my article was an accident, but it  reassures our stance.” 

Like any good  scientific theory, the bitcoin theory has not yet been nor can ever be  proven, but so far has withstood every attack.
 

Steemit meanwhile has restored functionality to its website after amounts of up to $85,000 had been stolen, with CEO Ned Scott announcing “potentially compromised accounts” with balances over $100 being ring fenced. “After  conducting further analysis and following hack containment procedures,  Steemit has been able to narrow the potential number of compromised  accounts,” he wrote in the update. “As a result, we can ensure these accounts are restored to their rightful owners. This process has been completed.” He added that partner exchange Bittrex was still analyzing wallets,  after which deposits and withdrawals of Steem dollars would reopen.