Social media has become so embedded in most people’s everyday lives that it’s hard to imagine life — or even a span of a few hours — without it. While the social media revolution is huge, there’s another revolution within that revolution, driven by users into cryptocurrency, privacy, and immutability: incentivized, blockchain-based social media.
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Steemit as Pioneer
Coming on scene as a pioneer in July 2016, Ned Scott and blockchain developer Dan Larimer’s Steemit boasted to be a first of its kind blockchain-based social media platform, allowing users to earn rewards via Steem for posting, curating, and commenting. Many users compared the site’s style to a kind of “crypto Reddit.”
Larimer, the creator of the Bitshares DEX, DPoS (Delegated Proof of Stake Algorithm), and the current CTO of Block.one (EOS developer), built the site with co-founder Scott on the Steem blockchain, a Graphene-based, DPoS chain. While the site enjoyed initial, highly sensational success — with one well-known and controversial libertarian podcaster raking in $15,000 for a short “introduce yourself” post — user interest has since flagged significantly. A series of seismic management and corporate structuring shifts (including Larimer leaving the project in 2017), coupled with the crypto winter of last year, saw many loyal users searching out greener pastures.
One thing that Steemit did help establish, however, was the potential of blockchain technology to provide relative censorship resistance and successfully reward users for engagement. Neither the platform nor other users could deplatform anyone by reporting or flagging a post (a huge problem currently for many giants in the field like Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube). And when the first payouts
