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RE: Through bull and bear — endless potential through endless chains
Dan, another great essay. Beautifully written.
My only quandary while reading was that of "critical mass." The viability of any blockchain, irrespective of aspirational intent, is dependent upon its adoption by a network of users. And, at some point, there is a number below which it simply does not function. There is an "emergent" aspect to all this and the positive feedback loops required to make everything work simply don't happen.
STEEM/Steemit currently has approximately 12,000 active users. Whatever its critical mass, it cannot be much lower than that. The same could be said for 98% of cryptocurrencies ... and any potential spin-off of STEEM.
Quill
I had actually planned to discuss the so-called "network effect" and removed it from the draft. I did allude to it here:
Critical mass is one of those nebulous concepts which is anything but nebulous in practice, and explicable only by foresight.
Something potentially interesting to explore related to critical mass might be looking at that small core of dedicated users that make up the "nucleus" of a user base, those inordinately stubborn ones that continue when others quit.
Also, it's worth considering things that have reached critical mass, had their heyday, then "faded" — but remain in the collective unconscious, influencing later developments. One example in the domain of social media might be http://xanga.com/, which was popular before even Myspace existed. !engage 35
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