Rethinking Steem - Part 2 of Yesterdays Post

_{Art Throwback}

So this post won't make much sense unless you first read my post from yesterday.

In that post I basically outlined an idea I've had for a while now about expanding the donation capabilities on Steem frontends. I've actually written about it in the past mostly riffing off of how Fundition handles donations. Long story short, Fundition allows for donations in multiple cryptocurrencies as well as via paypal, and they handle converting that value into Steem which is what is deposited in the recipients account.

Initially when I found this out I thought, "...it would be great if every frontend had this." I still feel that way btw, but the new information here has to do with how we think about the role of Steem and this would also play into how we market Steem.

Before I ramble too much let me just get the main idea out of the way.

It's that we frame Steem as the cryptocurrency that you get rewarded for participating in curation, instead of it's main function being the cryptocurrency that is rewarding content creators.

So obviously if you know anything about Steem, you know indeed you do earn curation rewards for curating content, but it takes quite a lot of SP for the amount that you earn in curation rewards to not be totally negligible. This feature that I'm envisioning would be paired with a token, similar to Partiko points where it's awarded to people who donate to authors, probably based on how much they donate. (Similar to a curation rewards)

They could then in turn exchange this token for upvotes and therefore earn a stake in Steem to slowly build their "free" support resource. A lot of these pieces are already here, it's just a bit of reframing. So the main message of the Steem blockchain would be around being the blockchain that facilitates the rewarding of content, but not just with Steem, with a multitude of cryptocurrencies, but since all of these different cryptos would be converted to Steem, it would ultimately add value to Steem.

It would also greatly improve the UX here by making Steem something that anyone can come on and feel like they're making an impact on from day 1. This would also increase the liquidity of Steem for creators. Now I know a lot of people might not like the sound of that, ie people will earn Steem, but then just sell it, but my thoughts on this are that, this is an economy, people are going to sell their Steem, this isn't something people should be actively trying to deter other people from doing. In my eyes it's obviously selfish and ultimately just wanting someone else to use what they've earned to pump your bags. In short, get over it. Some people will see the benefits of holding and powering up etc, and some will sell. If tons of people are using it, we've won, and I think this is something tons of people would use.

Also before I forget, I want to give a shout out to the people over at Steempeak, as they're already talking about how the mvp version of this(just Steem donations) could be integrated into Steempeak.

If you think this would be a useful feature, drop by their discord and let them know.
https://discord.gg/s6XM5H

So what do you all think? As we get closer to having a worker proposal system, I want to get some of these ideas I have floating around out there, so people can poke holes in them or tell me how smart I am 😋 Anyway, hope you're all having a good one.

Thanks for looking!