Brainstorming Tokens For Ranking Movies

This article by @for91days is part of a creative blockchain investigation series. Learn more about the #dappexplorer project here.

This month, @sndbox has asked us to think about creating our own decentralized app. We have ideas for two! The first one is connected to @travelfeed but @jpphotography will be introducing this joint idea soon.

Criticker Films & TV

As you might know from our recent re-introduction to Steemit, we're also behind the movie, TV and gaming recommendation engine, Criticker. This website has been calculating accurate and independent recommendations for over a decade, and building a tight-knit community at the same time. Our users interact with our database thousands of times per day, ranking titles, leaving mini-reviews and staring the reviews of others.

We could envision all these interactions being connected with matching interactions on the Steemit Blockchain, by implementing Steemit Smart Media Tokens. We could create our very own tokens (maybe calling them Flicks?) which represent our users' interactions with the Blockchain. We could do a lot of special things with them, too, for example rewarding extra tokens if their mini-reviews receive multiple stars. We could imagine our tokens being sold for STEEM, or used for paying for subscriptions services likes Netflix or Amazon prime.

That said, we don't really envision a separate app, but more an intelligent integration of SMTs into our existing website (which is optimized for different devices). One fear we have, though, is that it might attract users who aren't interested in interacting with @criticker in an honest way, but instead are only there to earn tokens. Our community is very dedicated to movies and games, but small, and a sudden influx of bad actors just looking for tokens would cause disproportionate damage to the site.

To prevent this we're thinking of only providing the option to earn tokens to long term users. Our algorithm actually could handle nonsense rankings and continue to give meaningful recommendations to honest users making an effort. But we don't want to fill our website with junk data, and instead we'd like reward honest users. There's also the fear that our existing user base would be turned off by the introduction of SMTs, because the great majority have nothing to do with the blockchain, Steemit or anything to do with Bitcoins.

This is just an idea, what do you think? All the technical aspects of actually integrating SMTs is another story entirely.

This post was authored by @for91days, a member of the sndbox incubator. Learn more, follow @for91days or begin a conversation in the comment section below.

^{Empower artists, writers, musicians, non-profits and community initiatives - delegate Steem Power to @sndbox (using the links below) or follow our curation trail. Learn more about Sndbox - watch our introduction, here.}