EOS and STEEM May Not Be in Competition, but Steem Dapps and EOS Dapps Will Be

Ned and Dan are locking horns, with repercussions that will likely effect the entire future of Steem and EOS.

Steem and EOS, at first glance, have very different goals. Steem is an inherently social blockchain, made primarily to solve the problem of micro-transactions and incentive alignment (between content consumers and creators). EOS is a new Turing-complete blockchain dApp infrastructure along the lines of Ethereum that is meant to be able to do almost anything.

Steem is niche, but is good at its niche. When SMT's launch (still waiting to hear word on them...) Steem is set to become fuel for the internet. EOS is broad, but it's potential is vast. When it launches the possibilities will be endless. Steem and EOS are inherently two different things, and for that reason I think it's possible for them to both exist. However, there was a little concern that, since EOS is so broad, it might attempt to do many of the same things Steem is trying to do.

This concern is further bolstered by the fact that one of main the creators of Steem (many would say the main creator) is the very same mind behind EOS, Dan Larimer. Lessons learned from the creation of the former will undoubtedly benefit the latter, but this is still not necessarily a problem.

Or so I thought.

Recently I'd begun to hear murmurs around the platform that Dan Larimer plans on launching a social media platform to compete with Steemit on EOS. This seems to have been confirmed.

Now it seems like both Dan Larimar (Hive account@dan) and Ned Scott (Hive account@ned) are both beginning to show their hands. Recently Hive account@dan made this post on the blog he still sort of keeps on Steemit (though he and EOS seem to be slowly putting less and less on Steemit and more and more on Medium, a slap in the face to Steemit in and of itself).

The post itself looks pretty innocent and innocuous, but it received an enormous downvote from Hive account@ned (later removed) and the following comment that was later buried by Hive account@dan and others with a downvote (none of which seem to have been removed):

Downvoted for aggrandizement.

edit:

The Streisand Effect here is intentional.

The vote and comment was strictly to make a point and draw out Daniel's long-running, subtextual, subversive intent to compete with Steem, to give the public alignment with his private discourse, which has long been filled with express intent to compete. And of course I will retract the vote.

Dan left Steem expressly to create a competitor to Steem and is advertising it with a supposed “inside track” to the future here on our platform while acting like he is no competitor. And whether he leaves the platform for good today or 6 months from now to join his Steem-competitor depends on if we choose to see through his intentions and care. It’s possible I am making the mistake of caring. It’s hard to really say until these platforms have existed for a while 10 months from now. I would prefer to ship our tokenization platform, Smart Media Tokens (SMTs), which outcompetes any version eos can string together, and get moving without Dan clouding the marketplace. He asked me for the same months ago. This is reasonable and all business. I vastly prefer Steem and SMTs.

More info on Smart Media Tokens (SMTs) at https://SMT.steem.io

This was such a straightforward and earnest comment, and sort of smacks of my general feeling about Hive account@ned: he's earnest and straightforward. Hive account@dan seems a bit more like the idealogue type, someone that will say and do what they feel they need to in order to reach their idea of the greater good. There's not judgment either way, but it's clear that they are both playing this game a bit differently.

However, I get the feeling Hive account@ned is a fast learner. That might be why we haven't heard any more particulars about SMT's yet. Why let his competitor know what he's got up his sleeve?

Either way, this is going to turn out great for the majority of us. I'm a loyal Steemian, but it'd be foolish not to at least take a look at EOS's social media offering whenever it does come out. I get the feeling a lot will go down by year's end, that there will be plenty of questions answered. But I also get the feeling even more will be asked.

Thanks for reading! Be sure to upvote and resteem!