For the past few months I was head deep into planning and building new things for Steem.
This resulted in the launch of SteemAnchor (STEEM and SBD listed on Stellar DEX) and the standard proposal for Non Fungible Tokens (NFTs) on Steem.
Steem has become my primary focus and I actually quite enjoy the challenge of developing for the ecosystem even in current market conditions. However the market has forced Steemit Inc. to cut 70% of their staff and left us all here with a dilema - sit and wait or shift gears and go faster?
Going faster means getting the people around you to contribute actual work towards making Steem ecosystem a better place - building tools and beautiful user interfaces, bringing in new users, getting tokens listed on more exchanges and much more.
Yes, but funding...
As you can imagine funding any of these activities is impossible without proper financial support, investment or aggressive monetisation. Financial models based on Steem or delegations alone tend to break down and become unsustainable very quickly in bearish market conditions - a thing I've experienced firsthand more than one time.
I thought quite a bit about how to approach this and I think I've found the solution - Patreon. Patreon allows to support your favorite creators with small monthly contributions.
It occurred to me that if every one of my 1000+ followers here on Steem would support my work with just $1 a month, I would have a stable passive income to continue developing for the Steem ecosystem uninterrupted and without the need to put a paywall or fees on every project I launch.
So let me put it this way: at a cost of less than a cup of coffee each month, you can create a full time development position working to build infrastructure, apps and services for Steem ecosystem - isn't that cool?
HINT: it's very cool.
It helps Steem become more decentralized and less exposed to a single corporate entity, market fluctuations or financial instability.
Yes, but what are you going to...
Assuming everyone of you can find a $1 lying around, this is where the money would go towards in the next 6-12 months (oh, look - a roadmap!):
- Contribution to the independent marketing campaign to promote Steem ecosystem (lead by @littlescribe)
- Development and open sourcing of new Steem ecosystem standards.
- Development of a next generation of Steem infrastructure making it easier for any developer or a company to get started building on Steem, maintain low cost and low learning curve.
- A brand new user interface enabling new creative ways to curate content (for web and mobile).
- Tools for every user to better interact and understand the activity of witnesses and dApps.
- New data solutions (feeds, endpoints, algorithms) for content.
- Cross browser Steem wallet.
- More financial products (focus on exchanges, e-commerce payments, etc.).
This is amazing, here's my $1!
I invite you to become my patron via my Patreon Page. Thank you!
P.S. The $5 or higher support tier will also get you access to private posts, which will contain product-related sneak peaks and information ahead of public release.
But wait, there's more!
Why not adapt this model to more creators who work to advance the Steem ecosystem? Do you know someone who could be a massive help if they could work on Steem development, content or curation full time - tag them to this post!
And if you are one of those people - please consider launching your own Patreon page and post a link in a comment below.