Steemit’s breakthrough: Subjective Proof-of-Work

Reading the Steemit white paper, this caught my attention:

The applications of a currency implementing subjective proof of work are far wider than any objective proof of work system because they can be applied to build a community around any concept that has a sufficiently defined purpose.

I’ve been around the cryptocurrency community for years and this is the first time I’ve read such a commonsense alternative to the proof-of-work debate, which is usually about hashing algorithms and hardware.

The fact that Steemit is gaining so much traction should show that working your way into a cryptocurrency by producing and curating content is just as valuable as buying your way in, either through an exchange or by purchasing a mining rig.

The implications of this are huge.

Bitcoin was once known as "the people’s money", which made sense when you could mine on a spare computer and make a decent amount of money. But that’s no longer the case; bitcoin mining is clearly for professionals only now.

With Steemit, blogging is the new mining; so is commenting, voting and curating content. All of this takes time and effort, which should and is being rewarded by the community and backed by the blockchain.

The concepts that Steemit puts forward are truly disruptive to the business model of monetizing user-generated content and making billions of dollars from it while the users themselves are paid nothing.

Steemit blows this sharecropping model up.