The Rise Of Decentralized Social Media Ecosystems and Growing Pains of A New Dawn

Shattered Records

It’s literally no longer eye-popping. For the past few weeks, ICOs after ICOs keep breaking records that it has eventually become a norm for an ICO to raise millions of dollars within hours or minutes. What’s even more surprising are the complaints of several other intending ICO participants who scramble and hustle to get into these juicy ICOs. All without no success.

Status IM ICO


24 hours ago, Status IM raised over $44million in a few hours making its’ market cap over $270 million. Massive money for a coin with only an alpha product! Dayum!

Status is an open source messaging platform and mobile browser to interact with decentralized applications that run on the Ethereum Network.

Allegations of Scam and Centralization

A common notion among the recent record-breaking ICOs is the mass allegation of scam and centralized allocation.
A few days ago, Bancor ICO recorded about $150m making the largest crowd sale ever in human history. Amidst this record breaking moment was several outcries of scam. In fact, a notable blockchain enthusiast wrote thousands of words debunking the business model of the coin. Other crytpoheads alleged that true decentralization didn’t take place as only a few whales got majority of the initial coin offerings.

Status IM wasn’t without these allegations too. Ethereum rising gas prices also contributed to the fact that several intending transactions were returned. Many Reddit users decried the fact a few addresses got millions of the SNT tokens leaving out thousands of others.

Beyond The Negatives - The New Dawn


However, it’s important that despite all scam, bubble/bust and centralization contentions, we must not lose the fact that a new chapter in human history has been opened. Never have we seen the public exert such huge control over their finances without restrictions ( at least for now) in recent times.

The CEO of popular social media messenger app, Kik put this beautifully when he was questioned as to why his company was going through the ICO route as opposed to the VC fundraising.

“What’s exciting about cryptocurrency is for us it’s been very hard to monetize in the western world,”
“The broader motivation is that it is really hard for independent developers to compete with huge companies,”
“On one side, you see digital services, on the other, they are being owned and controlled by fewer companies because they are the only ones to monetize at scale using advertising. You try to sell things but you are trying to sell to consumers who think everything should be free.
Slowly, established creatives are realizing the power of cryptocurrencies.

Kik and Status IM - Rise of Decentralized Social Behemoths

Status IM in its whitepaper aims to evolve beyond just being a messaging platform for Ethereum apps. Gradually, it hopes to become a social all-in-one ecosystem allowing micropayments between users, instant peer-to-peer messaging and marketplace for goods paid with newly minted ERC20 tokens. It also aims to build an inbuilt browser that will help users navigate the blockchain.

In the centralized world, a social media app that has entirely encapsulated this idea is WeChat in China. Although Facebook is slowly getting there, WeChat is just more than a chat app for its billion users. Users can order for foods through chat bots, book an Uber ride, share dinner payments with friends and so much more. Their success in doing this has made them an unstoppable force in China. A business model other western social apps are trying hard to emulate.

Kik is also trying to get this done. Already popular in North America, Kik aims to, through their soon-to-be-launched coin called Kin, build a social ecosystem that will help developers tap into in a profitable way without having to rely on ever decreasing ad revenue.
The video below beautifully describes this:

Beyond An Alpha – Steem’s Massive Potential


One of the prominent criticisms of Status IM was why so much money was being raised for an alpha product.

Reading these criticisms made me realize the huge potential of Steem. Despite the several successful use cases, Steem is mostly known for Steemit - a social media that pays. On further introspection, Steem can and is being used for more than that.

Already, it’s already being used for donations/crowdfunding for humanitarian causes. Authors are already making huge returns from their books exclusively published on Steemit and several other use cases.

A little more effort in use cases like @thisisbenbrick’s SteemSongs or Peerhub or Steemgigs and we’re game. Slap in the ability to create tokens for special apps like @jesta has conceptualized and we can turn Steem to a coin that backs a huge social ecosystem. Rivaling the likes of Etheruem and IOTA.
Amazingly, unlike all its other competitors, it has got a successful test case, faster transaction rates with no fees and an enormous community using its tokens.

Conclusion

The way I see it. The rise of one or all of these aspiring social ecosystems is a win-win situation for all. It’s gradually time to put power back into the hands of the people and usher in another revolutionizing innovation.

For critics of the recent ICO craze and proponents of an impending crypto bubble, Kik’s CEO final remark during an interview a couple of months ago is an apt reply.

“The way I think about ICOs is it’s very similar to the dot-com era. There was a bunch of excitement, people made a bunch of money, people lost a bunch of money but Amazon and Google came out of it.”

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Really excellent breakdown. Thanks for putting in the time.

Thanks for the compliment. Makes me glad someone thought it was a good read.

I believe the ico adrenalinrush is over, people became more aware that most of them are bs. Its like when you remember back 2013. There was btc, ltc, 5other crapcoins like namecoin, peer, infinite. Everybody got excited when a new coin came out. Now there are 800on cmc and maybe 10k total.

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Exactly. The craze with ICOs is going insane. Good for anyone wanting to ride the hype train with the vision of insane wealth created in a blink of an eye.

I'm not saying all ICOs are bad, but huge majority of them don't really need ICOs at all. It takes portion of the risk out of entrepreneurship (by securing the devs way more money than they need) and therefore IMHO undermines the natural push for the product to be the best, so it can thrive on the market. This way you already have the money, so why should someone care?

I'm staying away & investing there, where progress has already been made. There are many projects/coins, that are alive 2+ years, living off themselves and small donations from the community. And guess what – they are still alive; they don't need $100m. Just saying.

I completely agree with you. Its saddening that some are overhyped but it comes with attendant FOMO by newbies armed with lotta money.

Its always nice to for what works for you. Nice POV. Thanks for.dropping by.

I could not agree more with you evaluation of Steem's abilities. We are already processing more transactions per day than Bitcoin at a fraction the of the time, with no fee. We have a community of 200K and growing daily. I believe that we are on to something huge and every time I get a knot in my stomach thinking about what could go wrong, I remind myself of what could go write. Such an exciting time to be alive. Truly blessed we are!

I'm wondering if everyone is jumping on the latest craze these days due to the fear of losing out.

I wonder the same thing.

Yeah but why not throw a little (time, effort, $) at it any way. Some people took a long shot on Microsoft and Wal-Mart in their infancy too at one itme.

The FOMO is too real these days.

I just joined steem today and absolutely love it. I'm really looking forward to see how it all unfolds and improves over the next couple of years.

I have no idea what I'm doing on here yet. :D

Welcome! Its gonna be such an exciting ride. Trust me ;)

Succinct! Its interesting to imagine the.massive potential Steem has. Funnily, I get those knots too as the.crypto.sphere.is so uncertain. Soon, steem will dine with the big market.cap boys too

i want to know about bitcoin more and more so upvote me and give information thats i am happy ..tnx

I upvoted you! Now your soul belongs to me! Now you have to upvote me everywhere!

Or not. Your choice. :P

upvote u friend..

Thanks for the information! If Steem can really thrive in other environments/projects in addition to Steemit, think of how strong the whole ecosystem would be; Steemit would get stronger too!

ICOs?

Lol. Its alreading happening. See mycelium.

Yeah. The possiblities are.endless. The way I see it, Steemit is just a small slice of the cake.

The rise of these ICOs gives the crypto community a bad reputation. The public sees these record setting ICOs and assume that all cryptos aside bitcoin ate scam.

There even an ICO in which the coin creator explicitly said to the public that his coin the Ponzi coin's proceeds is to be used to buy his Tesla.

The greed in ICOs will quickly.lead to broken promises and stolen money. This will make a perfect excuse for governments to regulate cryptocurrencies.

Hire a Tech Geek, make millions. A new bubble in the technology sector. ICO

I do agree with you. But the scenario you described is typical to all booms. During the 2000s, anyone could slap a .com suffix to their.startup and sell it for millions.

SOmething amazing is surely coming out of this craze.

The summary is spot on. There will be a bubble and it will get over hyped (getting there now). There will be bust in which people will lose money. But when the dusts settles, those left standing will be the future!!

Steem is the most undervalued coin right now. Steemit even provides it's own economy plus a bridge with the FIAT and Crypto world. As soon as the hype dies out from all the under-delivering ICO's, investestors are going to turn to the things that work.

A small shake up in the crypto ecosystem will make Steemit anti-fragile.

Totally agree, just bought more couple hours ago :)

Exactly. Only a few.coins have been able to.create.a self sustaining economy. It would be.interesting to see Steem go back to dining with the big boys

it will. I am sure of it

good post man :D.

And yea I also think this is just the beginning of the adoption of the blockchain technology, people who are in now and exploring the possibilities of this new tech are the lucky ones in my opinion :)

Thanks.
Yup. I do agree with you we all are early adopters. It would be cool to see how the next few years pan out.for.cryptos.

Amazon and Google....I hope we are aiming a little higher than that. They are no exactly virtuous. Perhaps he is judging the crypto space by old standards?

Haha. I think he was trying to give a similitude of how big things are going to be.. and yes, they are not virtuous at all