@Steemitblog had a post about having community input on the 2018 roadmap for Steemit/Steem.
It was great to see Steemit, inc. reach out where the community can have an influence on the direction of this platform and what can be made as a priority for development.
As part of our 2018 roadmap, we would like to get input from all of you.
Of course, most of us know by now about SMTs and they mentioned that it being part of the 2018 roadmap along with an "improved account signup process". These are a given to have included in the roadmap and there were a lot of great ideas in the comments of that post.
I decided to leave a comment and mention some things I would like to see done as a priority in 2018.
I figured I would go into more details on this post.
Improved Notification System
Majority of us know that the notification system needs some work. This was supposed to be worked on but from what I heard it was pushed back for things of higher priority. The improved notification is supposed to be coming but I am not sure when and my hopes are that it's going to be a part of the 2018 roadmap.
From what I know, the improved notification system will have email and SMS text notifications for things like if your password has been changed. That kind of stuff is important and would be great to have as soon as possible.
Hashed Timelock Contracts(HTLCs)
Some of you might be familiar with this as it is used in the Lightning Network. This allows payment channels to happen off chain where users can send multiple payments to and from another user without clogging up the network with so many transactions. Since the transactions in a payment channel are not recorded on the chain yet, there would need to be a way to verify that both parties have made their payment. Here's where HTLCs comes in.
A method of forming agreements with people via the blockchain in a way that minimizes trust through the use of one way hash functions and a transactions nLockTime.
So multiple parties are able to set conditions on payment contracts to have a start and end time where funds are locked for that duration until conditions are met.
This would be really great to implement on Steem and would improve the scalability of the blockchain.
Below is a video that explains the Lightning Network and how HTLCs work.
Confidential Transactions
With the growing need for privacy, Steem is not exactly private when it comes to transactions. You can clearly see which account is sending and receiving funds. Even though an anonymous user could create an account anonymously, in order to turn STEEM/SBD into cash or trade it for another alt-coin, a user would most likely send it to an exchange where most of them go by Know Your Customer(KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering(AML) policies that can reveal a person's identity and what they are using their crypto-currencies for.
This can be a problem since users may not want to let the world know where they spend their crypto or the amount they have. Businesses may not want to share their transaction details for competitors to see either.
So having confidential transactions would be great to have on the Steem platform. Since we seen the popularity of privacy coins such as Zcash and Monero, should essentially add value to the STEEM token.
We are seeing coins like Litecoin and Ethereum implement confidential transactions using technologies like Zcash's zkSNARK or Monero's RingCT that Steem could possibly use as well. One form of confidential transaction that has some buzz is ByteBall's private payments system. It uses a private communication channel where a private p2p transaction can happen, and only the hash is recorded publicly on the blockchain to verify a private transaction happened and is not double spent. This is known as spend proof and does not contain amounts or sender/receiver information. Although it would need to be implemented differently to Steem if we were to go this route since Byteball essentially uses two currencies in their system: Bytes, and BlackBytes that are the only ones that can be used for private payments.
I couldn't really find a good video that explained their private payment system but you can check out this video a user recorded by sending both Bytes and BlackBytes.
Simplified Key Management System
There is a bit of a learning curve to Steem and I see on a regular basis that users that aren't tech savvy or new to crypto in general, have difficulty managing their keys for Steem. Users lose their keys, make the mistake of copy and pasting it in the wrong place, and accounts get hacked.
I know this one can be a tough one to tackle since I am aware that Steemit, inc. wants maintain the platform as decentralized and only users need to have their keys. If there can be a more simple solution for key management, think it would make it for a more enjoyable user experience along with the onboard of more new users.
Decentralized Exchange(DEX)
This was already mentioned in the SMT whitepaper and I'm sure they already have this as a priority but if not, this is something I would like to see as a priority. This is crucial for SMTs and token creators will need a place to trade their tokens. It's important to have a full functioning DEX when SMTs launch and I know that Steemit, inc is aware of this.
It would be nice to see the DEX have the ability to have trading pairs with btc and other crypto but not sure if that would be possible since there will be no trading and transfer fees.
However it turns out. I think the DEX needs to be a priority and probably already is.
Ability to Purchase Recharge of Voting Power
There are a lot of other things that should be higher priority but I thought I would add this as something to possibly work on in the future or possibly in 2018. This was something @Fyrstikken came up for having the ability to purchase a full recharge of your voting power. His idea also mentions having the ability to use 7 days worth of voting power but I don't think that's necessary to have. Although we could try it out and see what happens. I think this would be just fine without having the ability to use 7 days worth of voting power.
With having the ability to purchase a recharge of voting power, this would allow more rewards to be distributed. This may drain the reward pool if we just burn the STEEM/SBD but not if the funds used to purchase the recharge goes back into the reward pool. In order to recharge to 100% vote power, a user would need to pay the amount equivalent to the value of the amount that a user distributed from the reward pool. So if a user drained their vote power and distributed $100 from the reward pool, they would need to pay $100 to have a full recharge. Users won't have to wait for their vote power to recharge if they are willing to pay for it.
Edit: Burning STEEM/SBD would actually work since the reward pool is fixed. We also have downvoting to help keep things balanced.
Image Sources: 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8