This review has following contents:
1) Impression on Sapien - Why Sapien and Steemit can co-exist in harmony
2) Using the platform with screenshots (all usernames are removed)
3) The Token System (Also voters can earn tokens)
4) Something Negative?
Also - Another beta user has just released a beta video footage of Sapien as well, which is good cause I have no idea how to create such content in good quality. He seems to be a programmer too, as he explains the coding aspect of the Sapien project rather well. I will remark it at the bottom of this post.
1) Impression on Sapien - Why Sapien and Steemit can co-exist in harmony
I was given the privilege for early beta access, for the sapien.network Web 3.o Social platform, in order to write this article that you are now reading on steemit. Initially, before having had a look at the beta platform, I thought that in my review I will be writing about a competitive comparison, about what platform is better and what platform will survive. Within my first hour of using Sapien I realized, that this is not going to be the case. (I love using the word Sapien now, i got so used to it over the past few days)
Sapien and Steemit on the User Interface, serve different purposes, which will cause one group (the bloggers for example) to stay with steemit, while another group, seeking a more interactive environment will most likely use Sapien. In my view the most common scenario, the majority of the users, including me, will use both platforms, Steemit and Sapien, while dropping our daily interaction with facebook, instagram, etc. I personally enjoy writing in general, hence I will keep using steemit as one of my main social platforms, but Sapien will surely be my platform for browsing content and news that interest me. I am also likely to post more shorter content via Sapien. Why should I not write a long article on steemit and inform the Sapien community about it as well. I would earn double the tokens, most likely my new steemit article would also have a higher chance of being promoted well via the Sapien Platform. (Im too smart for my own good, I know) Let us not forget that even before the Web 3.0, many of us used and still use more than one social platform, instagram, discord, facebook, 9gag, twitter,reddit, you name it ( I dont use all of these btw, or ild have no time writing this)
It is also likely that Sapien will just be easier to scroll and read posts through, as content has size restrictions when it comes to writing (posts on Sapien are limited to 2,000 characters), the layout is much cleaner than on steemit (seriously steemit team, you gotta work on your layout, and on your writing/formatting tools). Sapien is by far one of the best designed platforms I have used up to now. When you operate it in on your browser, you experience a similar feeling simliar to when using a smooth app on your iPhone or iPad, where elements slide along and you smoothly search through all the content, it really does feel like a product coded by experts. Even though on paper, the core team of Sapien does not have professional experience to deliver like other ICO projects, (But who was Zuckerberg when he started his idea)
This is someones life's project who put all his heart and soul, in creating this platform, and you can only give credit to the team for what they have created so far. It's a project that wants to tackle the flaws that have settled within facebook over the past years. I can't even speculate how the platform will grow, with more financial back-up available, once the ICO is completed.
If I would summarize Sapien, I would say it is a combination of Twitter, Reddit and Discord, due to the User Interface Sapien manages to deliver. It should be mentioned that the chat elements are taken from Rocket Chat, an open source Chat program, but you can't give them any beef for using an open source program, since it implements incredibly well with the whole.
Sapien emulates following elements for me.
Twitter - As posts will have size restrictions of 2000 characters, generally I believe short posts will make up the majority of content here
Reddit - You can create forum like Groups, where you can discuss your favorite topics, videos can be embedded too
Discord/telegram - The implemented Chat lags nothing
If you have a platform that has the same potential to create as good a content as Reddit, with trustworthy sources (basically twitter without trump) and as good interaction as discord, with the token incentive on top, i don't see a reason why someone from these communities would't try it out.
What gets people started to use Web 3.0 social platforms?
I'm turning 30 this year, and I still remember how facebook was all new, around 16 years ago or so (omg its that long ago!! :( ) . It was a crazy experience to join this new web platform, that lets you connect to all your friends in a new innovative way. Until that point we all just spammed MSN messenger haha. That feeling is long gone and ads and many useless posts that I just don't want to see, spam my facebook wall in today 2018.
Steemit drives out the best of us, wanting to contribute great articles for the reader to enjoy and share to the community, it has generated a new social platform hype, and I like it. We are happy to join and new users surely get excited when their posts get seen, upvoted and generate actual value. It awakens a new side within many of us, including me. We can share our hobbies with the world, photography, blogging, travel, cooking etc. and in return receive real value, that we can then use to perhaps buy a new Flat Screen, (I'm desperate for a new flat screen btw, anyone?) This is what steemit stands for (not the flat screen), possible freedom just living up to our hobbies, Sapien has the potential to achieve the same.
But what will Sapien drive out of us, the news reporter?, the comedian?, could it become the general filter of the internet, filter out the bad and bring forward the best and most important content to the Sapien community, no limits of topics ranging from Quantum Physics to the truth of national revolts to best puppy gifs? We cant forecast how the community will use Sapien just yet, but the potential to become great is definitely given. After-all Sapien's main purpose is to filter out fake news, as trustworthy sources gain more and more reputation. Sapien and Steemit have different Mission Statements, thats what we should be aware of.
Sapien is not built to be a blogging site, instead its strength lies within the interactive communication in between the users. Moreover you will have an easier time to find trustworthy articles about a specific topic that you might have in mind, perhaps you want to know only about the Venezuelan revolt, or you want to know everything about Pokemon Go, ( does anyone still play that btw? ), channels and groups can be created, where you can interact with the community on a chat basis, even voice and video communication is going to be an option.
When you will use Sapien, you will search for groups and topics that interest you, from those groups you will find users worth following, instead of spamming the follow button on random users, due to the interaction you will find there (I pledge guilty of having spammed the follow button on steemit btw), thats why I feel that many Reddit users will find Sapien worth to try out. Interact with a community with the incentive of crypto.
2) Using the platform - with screenshots
Expanding/Compacting Posts for viewing
Compacted all embedded images and videos are not shown, with exemption of your own posted material
Expanded the posts take more screensize, you can just click on videos and see images
Great so you saw the wall that you can scroll along, René, you said the site is interactive with massive chat functions.
Yup now if you have a look to the right, you see your favourite channel groups/branches, if you click on one of those you enter the chat room of these topics shown. In the example below I will just click on "Game" Also for your info, the chatroom coding has been taken from Rocket Chat, an open source chat code.
Chatroom - In this example a user also explains the difference between branches and groups, so less work for me hooray :D
ok its too small to read so the explanation for branches and groups is as follow
"groups have their own private channels and branches have an associated public channel
groups also have a group page , with wall posts for the group" (good old copy/paste)
Sort by hot/new/top posts - posts also show all their tags, you can then sub click another topic that got you interested because of the post
Public and Private Publishing
You may have noticed the big Sapien "S" in the middle of the screen, if I click on it, I can switch between public and private mode. In the white mode I use my real name to make posts and write in chat.
In private mode my username is displayed instead, and not my real name, so I can stay anomynous at any time.
Creating a Post
You have word art tools to format your writing easily (finally) , you can embed URL's of course, and embed videos, you could play youtube videos easily on the Sapien platform, without having to leave the site. It is likely that soundcloud could be embedded the same way, which would be amazing for all of the hobby musicians like myself (self advertising future ed sheeran here)
3) Token System
Under my amazing profile pic, you can see some points, points are currently just a testing scenario, in the future your tokens will be displayed here instead of points.
So if you create a post, who will be able to earn tokens from it.
First Option: Nobody, cause the post you uploaded suuuuuuuucked
Second Option: Nobody, because you didn't stake any of your tokens for this post. Nobody can earn tokens from this post at all, if the creator doesn't put at least one of his own tokens at risk, initially. As far as I understand, non staked posts would generate Tokens for the Sapien Platform token pool, from the upvotes generated.
Third Option: the Creator, because he staked Tokens, the post was liked, after 7 days the creator gets a payout, receiving up to 90% of all Tokens generated by upvotes. (You can stake between 1-10 tokens, the more you put at risk, the higher the potential payout in the end. Tokens also generate better visibility, so non staked posts will have a lower chance of being viewed than higher staked posts)
4th Option: The voter: 10% generated tokens get distributed to the voters, early voters of the post get a bigger share (this builds the incentive to dig through piles of new posts, just keep scrolling)
5th Option: Comments
6th Option: Voters on comments and so on
I know that Sapien's first and foremost target is to become a news platform, that filters out fake news. If you post something that is simply not true, just like in steemit, you can be flagged/downvoted, a good post will get you upvoted, and you think to yourself, whats the difference. The difference is, even voters earn Tokens for a post by simply upvoting, not just the creator, giving the community an incentive to search for new posts.
People will die to dig through new posts in order to find high quality content before the other users. If you upvote a post, which you believe has the potential to reach hot (and you staked your token for it), you will receive a greater payout than those users who upvoted the post in its "trending" or "Top" lifetime stage. Further on Sapien will implement every possible method to root out and ban bots from the platform. Tribunals will be established as taken from the Sapien whitepaper
"Tribunals
Users will be able to flag other users for inappropriate behavior within a branch, creating a tribunal. During this
process, a random subset of users of a branch will be selected as validators, and will need to vote to determine
whether the flagged user has acted inappropriately. The selected users will be notified and the next time they open
the Sapien platform, they will be asked to participate in the tribunal. Once consensus is reached, votes will be weighted
by reputation to ensure that trolls are adequately punished for acting against the values of a community"
I like that. I couldn't throw any rocks at users in the beta platform yet, but I'm looking forward to the tribunal system.
Staked and Unstaked Tokens
Now then there are also staked and unstaked tokens. Wtf is that. Basically Staked tokens can only be used in the platform and unstaked tokens can be sold on exchanges, turn them to cash so to say. It takes 12 months for all your staked tokens to turn into unstaked tokens automatically, or you can turn all your tokens into the unstaked form, for a little fee, the fee decreases as the window for unstaking approaches closer.
This is meant to decrease price volatility of the token.
Also after 6 months, Staked tokens receive a power increase when used on the Sapien Platform,
1 Staked Token will have the power of 1.15 Tokens.
4) Something Negative?
The negative points so far for me are the things the beta platform couldn't reveal yet. I was not able to try out the token system by myself so far. I think the theory of the whitepaper makes perfect sense of how an evaluation system of posts should work, but we still need the proof that it works, even as beta users.
Advertising was also not implemented , but it will be. Sapien will allow for people to advertise on the platform. Dont worry you can choose if you want to see ads or noting the future. Looking at ads of course grants you tokens. A lot of digital marketing blockchain projects are out there using this method, but none of them have their own social platform to use it on, so there goes the benifit of the doubt to Sapien. But its something I would have liked to try out as well already. A small paragrah about advertisers directly taken from the Sapien whitepaper goes as follows
"Advertisers
Ads will be purchasable on Sapien with SPN tokens and will be served to users who have enabled them. Advertisers
will receive a substantial discount for purchasing ads with SPN tokens. Advertisers will be able to place ads on public
branches that align with their target audience. The advertising experience will be similar to existing social platforms,
except a majority of ad revenue will be given to users. "
The beta is also not open to many people yet. Most likely the Sapien team will find more bugs or errors once the beta is open to a bigger community. The experience of what it its going to be like, when thousands/millions of users use Sapien, is still a mystery.
5) Conclusion
Sapien has it all needs to be come center stone of the social media platforms. It would still be an early player in the blockchain era, and thus has a lot of potential to attract a lot of users. The chat elements, and easy to use interface, make it easy to search and ook through high quality content, creating the possibility that communites of web 2.0 platforms whill enjoy their experience just as much as on Sapien. The Sapien platform is already complete and I would use it without the token awards, but the token awards will be available too, I cant wait how it will work out. The elements feel incredibly smooth, so you can only give credit to the programmers who created this platform.
Sadly I was not able to witness how ads will be placed. I couldn't stake tokens yet to advertise my own posts and I couldn't earn tokens yet from up-voting (as the token system is the next milestone to be implemented in the upcoming weeks before the beta is released to the public) Number of users currently is also relatively small to give you a perfect feedback of the community and how the platform deals with it.
I would recommend anyone to at least try out Sapien.Network in the future, once the beta is released to the open public. So far I'm convinced that it delivers all the potential aspects to become great. Now the platform just has to open up to the public and proof its capabilities.
That video I was talking about
Me reviewing sapien on YouTube
Sapien.Network Whitepaper
https://www.sapien.network/assets/SPNv1_1.pdf
Homepage of Sapien
https://www.sapien.network/