Being that January has come to an end, I wanted to take a bit today to write and explain where my head is at for 2018 and a bit of a recap on 2017. Man, what a crazy year for crypto overall!
Please note - none of what I'm about to say is set in stone, I welcome suggestions and discussion, and am happy to change my point of view if/when needed. I make a lot of assumptions throughout this post and you're free to call me out on them.
Looking back at 2017
To kick things off, I figured it'd be wise to look back at what 2017 was for me. In my 20 years of web development, I don't think I've ever created
Vessel: Desktop wallet for Steem
chainBB: Forum interface for Steem
opBuilder: Transaction/Operation Builder
Steem Rewards History: python CSV exporter for accounting
Block Explorers: multiple blockchains, including Steem, Peerplays, Karma, Muse, Golos, Decent
Setup of dozens of RPC, seed and witness nodes
Powerbot (discontinued)
ICO Bot (Experiment, discontinued)
Steem Wallet API (in progress)
The year before (2016) also included SteemDB, Reprint (aka SteemPress), SteemStats, and a handful of witness scripts.
The point of this isn't to brag or beg for witness votes, it's to illustrate something I felt through most of 2017: I am spreading myself too thin.
A common saying I've constantly been thinking about in 2017 is "do one thing, and do it well", which I haven't been living by at all. I've been doing a ton of things, all that Steem arguably needs, but they've all been done with varying levels of "completeness" and there isn't a single one that's perfect.
I hope to change that this year and focusing on fewer, but more finished projects.
Prioritization with regards to other projects
When considering all of the projects I've started and all I'd like to do, I needed to take a moment and step back to consider what else is happening outside of my control in the larger ecosystem. In a very broad sense, what I see happening in 2018 (hopefully) is:
More frontends and websites being built with the
Steem blockchain
Smart Media Token launch and some level of adoption within the year
Improvements to the onboarding of new users into the ecosystem
Technical improvements to the Steem
blockchain software to assist with scalingThe development, progression, and adoption of many of these things are outside of my control as an independent developer.
As a witness, I can push for these as priorities, but ultimately my only role as a
witness is to approve proposed consensus changes via HF voting and to ensure the blockchain remains operational.
All of this should be accounted for when considering my own priorities.
Needs vs Wants
A lot of what I started in 2017 was things I "wanted" to see within the Steem ecosystem. To be completely honest, I don't think I knew exactly what Steem "needed" until I thoroughly explored every facet of the system. A lot of the projects I started, while awesome, aren't really what we "need" at this point of the Steem life cycle.
I think I have a better grasp on these "needs" today than I ever have before. It's a matter of analyzing the difference between "needs" and "wants", both personally and for the community.
Considering that, and considering I'd like to focus harder on fewer projects, I need to make some tough decisions about what to continue with and what to slow down on. I think I have a pretty solid idea of what's what, and I'd like to know your opinions on the matter.
Here's a list of what I've worked on recently, separated into what I believe are the needs/wants of the Steem community:
The NeedsVessel: A desktop wallet for users to stay safe and secure.
SteemDB: A block explorer for users to reference blockchain data.
opBuilder: An integration tool for other developers to build upon Steem.
Wallet API: A secondary layer (besides the blockchain) for useful information within a wallet.
The WantschainBB: A forum interface
Reprint: A wordpress replacement
SteemStats: A fancy account dashboard
Powerbot: A delegation bot
Personal Needs != Steem Needs
This is something I've come to realize in this process. A common theme in the projects I've classified as wants is that they were fulfilling personal needs (primarily in the form of income) and really aren't needs to the ecosystem as a whole. chainBB, Reprint, and Powerbot were all projects that generated revenue to help me sustain my work with the ultimate goal of setting up a business around them.
- chainBB - an example of a breakdown in its needs
For the past 8 months I've worked countless hours building the chainBB.com engine. I still use it, it has some great features, but fundamentally there are still roadblocks standing in the way of its success.
To illustrate this, let's talk about one roadblock involving account security. Two of the features I've been promising for chainBB's next release are: custom moderation teams and custom beneficiary payout structures.
These two features require a higher level of security - much more security than a posting key within Steem should be allowed to perform. You don't want an unauthorized user altering the payout structure of a forum you run, nor do you want this user to be able to change who's allowed to moderate its content.
For ultimate security, it's my belief that these operations need to be signed with an accounts active key. The active key shouldn't be entered on chainBB (or any website really) - which led me to develop the Steem custom protocol and integrate it with Vessel.
- Projects like chainBB need Vessel to keep users safe.
For the past 3 months now I have been bouncing between chainBB and Vessel development, trying to unblock myself, and Vessel still isn't ready to support what chainBB needs. This unfortunately has caused chainBB to stall in development and leaving me needing to rethink many things about Vessel. A simple analogy to the situation would be that I'm having to build the highway before I can ship any products, and building highways takes time.
This isn't the only roadblock either, with others including aspects of account creation, beneficiaries, and the actual content organization itself.
