Summary
The Natural Medicine community on Steem grew out of increasing censorship of alternative medicines on mainstream social media such as Facebook and Instagram. Concerned that ancestral wisdoms around natural healing were being lost or obliterated, the community felt it was important to support and share everything to do with natural health; from herbalism and essentials oils, to food-as-medicine (including alternative diets such as veganism and vegetarianism). From meditation and mindfulness practices, to the relationship of humans to the natural world through wild-crafting, permaculture and other ‘healthy’ earth-centred practices. We wanted to do so without the risk of censorship.
To date, Natural Medicine is the longest running natural health community on the Steem blockchain. It offers a home for users who may have been deleted or censored on mainstream media, or are struggling to find a readership or a community that values their knowledge. It offers content curators engagement, and a rewards system that encourages them to continue to share what they know.
Other social media track their users and benefit from this information, without rewarding their users. The decentralised token economy of Steem and its social media interface changed this, and LOTUS and Natural Medicine, as an extension of Steem, operate with this same principle.
Natural Medicine enthusiasts from therapists to novices and ordinary folk, share a passion for natural healing ideas, stories, and knowledge without the risk of censorship, and be rewarded for it with LOTUS. This is a crowd-based, stake-weighted voting mechanism pioneered by Steem and advanced by Steem-Engine.
We have strong relationships with other communities or ‘Tribes’ as they are known on Steem, and encourage the cross-pollination of knowledge so that we grow stronger together. The first SCOT-powered platform, Weedcash.network, for example, includes the tag #naturalmedicine on their site because of the clear sisterhood between the broader herbal medicine community and cannabis. We are happy to embrace the homesteaders, homedders, and many other alternative tribes besides. We are also happy to link to Steem Leo’s trading DEX so that LOTUS can be traded on their investment focussed site.
We hope to nourish and nurture this community into a strong future.
Faucets and Sinks
The distribution of LOTUS and demands for its use-cases as a currency can be thought of as ‘faucets’ and ‘sinks’ respectively. A ‘faucet’ would be the distribution of LOTUS through rewards (such as competitions, gifts, airdrops, payments for services, etc.) and sales, such as accepting LOTUS for services and products.
The following explains the initial distribution of the token from the issuing account, 
Economics
The total initial supply was 140 million, reduced to 90 million for the overall benefit of the token.
First ‘AirDrop’
The issuing account (
The original working team were issued 175,000 each (0.5 percent) - 
Eight helpers and curators of Natural Medicine were issued 10,000k each (0.0057142857 percent) - 
A further group of people were airdropped 350 LOTUS each, (.00025 percent). These were users of the #naturalmedicine tag that were active in the community, either in Natural Medicine Discord or in the wider Steem.
Airdrop 2
After the first airdrop, 
The second airdrop was decided on the basis of who we might have missed on the first airdrop due to human error, as well as those who had staked their LOTUS, and their interactions with the community. These were divided into three tiers.
a) Those who have been consistently supportive of the community over the last year, and have helped it grow in various ways, from consultation to curation support - 
b) Curators and community ‘workers’ who missed out on the first round = 10K - 
c) Those who have staked LOTUS, missed out of the first round due to human error, or are consistently using the tag. 290 individual users were issued 250 Lotus each (0.00736111 percent) - they were distributed half staked, half liquid LOTUS.
A one-time fixed amount of LOTUS was distributed to the administration team in the form of payment for the work required to develop and sustain the LOTUS project. The admin team was issued 1,750,000 LOTUS each (7.8 percent (typically 10% is issued to the ongoing admin team in the form of payment for work, but we felt this was too great of an amount and thus reduced our payment to the known 7.8%)) - 
An account was also set up for distribution of further supply, 
Reward Pool
The current reward pool is 1800 LOTUS per day. Current settings have this decreasing by .5 percent every year. This could be adjusted in the future based on the size of the user base and the price of LOTUS.
How to Earn Lotus
There are a number of ways users can earn LOTUS and thus a percentage of the daily reward pool.
i) Proof of Brain
50 percent of POB rewards go to Content Curators
50 percent of POB rewards go to curators.
Account holders can earn LOTUS through PoB rewards by utilising www.naturalmedicine.io. Users of the front end can earn LOTUS by staking or ‘powering up’ their LOTUS. Staked LOTUS is called LOTUS power and forms your influence on platform rewards. The size of your upvote depends on the amount of LOTUS power.
Earn LOTUS and LOTUS Power by creating original, natural health related content and getting upvotes on that content, and by upvoting posts and/or comments to earn curation rewards.
ii) POS - Proof of Stake
5 percent of staking rewards gives you proportionate daily rewards based on the amount you have staked. Read more here.
iii) Various Use Cases - Existing and Future
Curation Rewards
Natural Medicine has fortnightly challenges whereby users can win LOTUS for posting excellent content based around various themes. Natural Medicine ‘burns’ a weekly amount for each curation post, which is matched by the issuing account, to create a sink to increase the potential value of the token for it’s users.
Mentorship Program
New users to Steem often disappear from the platform for lack of understanding how it works or for low rewards on posts. Natural Medicine offers a mentorship program whereby a small about of lotus is paid to receive mentorship from experienced writers and users of the platform. Read more here.
Loyalty Programs
For nominated amounts of LOTUS, whitelisted users can receive daily upvotes from the whale account, 
Participation in community
The core team often rewards LOTUS to curators and members of the Discord for helping others and offering valuable knowledge or resources. You can find more information about how to join Discord on our Welcome page on www.naturalmedicine.io.
Customisation
Currently users of the Natural Medicine front end can display a badge on their blog which may contain an advertisement, a quote or a product in exchange for LOTUS.
Users can promote their posts to appear in the ‘promoted posts’ section of the front end in exchange for LOTUS.
Personalised footers are also available.
Lotus Store - Homesteaders Co-op - Steemit has an existing marketplace for homesteaders to sell products in exchange for steem tokens. Some users may accept LOTUS as trade. Currently those who can offer services or products for LOTUS can list their products in the LOTUS STORE channel in Discord.
More information of these ‘sinks’ can be found on the Welcome section of www.naturalmedicine.io.
Ads may appear on the front end in the future.
Settings
author_curve_exponent: 1.1
author_reward_percentage: 50
beneficiaries_account: naturalmedicine
beneficiaries_reward_percentage: 4
cashout_window_days: 7
curation_curve_exponent: 0.5
disable_downvoting: false
downvote_power_consumption: 200
downvote_regeneration_seconds: 432000
downvote_window_days: -1
enable_account_muting: false
enable_comment_beneficiaries: false
exclude_apps:
exclude_beneficiaries_accounts:
exclude_tags:
issue_token: true
json_metadata_app_value:
json_metadata_key: tags
json_metadata_value: naturalmedicine
max_auto_claim_amount: 1800
miner_tokens: {}
mining_pool_claim_number: 0
mining_pool_claims_per_year: 0
muting_account:
n_daily_posts_muted_accounts: 0
other_pool_accounts: {}
other_pool_percentage: 0
other_pool_send_token_per_year: 0
pob_comment_pool_percentage: -1
pob_pool_percentage: 100
posm_pool_percentage: 0
post_reward_curve: default
post_reward_curve_parameter:
promoted_post_account: null
reduction_every_n_block: 10512000
reduction_percentage: 0.5
rewards_token: 1
rewards_token_every_n_block: 16
staked_reward_percentage: 50
staking_pool_claim_number: 0
staking_pool_claims_per_year: 0
staking_pool_percentage: 0
tag_adding_window_hours: 1
token: LOTUS
token_account: lotuscoin
use_staking_circulating_quotent: false
vote_power_consumption: 200
vote_regeneration_seconds: 432000
vote_window_days: -1
Summary of Settings
7 day payout windows
Unstaking occurs in 42 days in 6 installments - 1 per week
Reward curve is superlinear at 1.3 to encourage keeping LOTUS Power on one account rather than spread out.
Author/Curator reward split is 50/50.
To get a vote which receives LOTUS the post has to include the #naturalmedicine tag or be posted on www.naturalmedicine.io
The inflation rewards shrink every year by 0.5%
Voting calculation works like steemit.com - 10 votes a day.
You get 10 votes a day similar to steemit.com.
Your voting power recharges completely from zero over 5 days (20% per day).
Disclaimers
LOTUS as a token provides no income or profit sharing from any account that is associated with it’s management.
It offers the token without any guarantee that additional work or effort will be made apart from supporting the community with the tools it already has to hand.
It makes no claim that the token prices will rise in the future or assurances against it falling.
We are not a business nor do we intend to be one.
We also take no responsibility for any content posted on our front end. Readers are encouraged to research their own ‘medicines’ and exercise caution, consulting a professional rather than taking any information on the site as medical advice or ‘gospel’.
A Final Word
Many of the features and services we offer are experiments we believe are worthy, and we welcome constructive commentary and support. As with any new venture, problems and errors are expected, and we hope that users give constructive feedback and are more than welcome to support the collective by offering tools they may have at their disposal to make Natural Medicine.io the best it can be.
This paper will be edited and adjusted as we incorporate new features or change the settings to nourish and nurture this community.
All input and feedback is welcomed.
Oh, and if you're wondering what tags to curate? Our curators look at most of these tags and much more! Check out www.naturalmedicine.io for a full list of supported tags.
| naturalmedicine | health | healing | yoga |
|---|---|---|---|
| spirituality | herbalism | homesteading | innerblocks |
| vegan | meditation | wellness | cbd |
| qi gong | keto | tai chi | herbs |
Thinking about writing a #naturalmedicine post this week? We have upvotes to burn and will resteem the best of you to nearly 1,000 followers! Go you! We're also resteeming on our account, so go give that a follow too! That's the one where you'll see the LOTUS rewards.
All the curation and author rewards in LOTUS for this post will be burnt to help the ecosystem.
We need YOU! Please consider delegating to help keep this collective going. The minimum entry for membership is 20SP (free for members under 150SP), and helps give YOU upvotes, contests, meditation sessions, an awesome discord support group, and so much more!
50SPII100SPII200II300SPII500SPII1000SP
