Dapps do not exist yet. I plan to be the first person to create them. How can I make this outlandish claim? Simple.
A dapp is an extension of cryptocurrency. Currently, crypto is the only decentralized app out there. In order for a dapp to actually be decentralized, it must be owned, operated, policed, developed, and profited from by the community that uses it (just like crypto). Using this definition of dapp, it's easy to see why none exist. You can't just thread your centralized service onto Steem and call it a dapp.
Even Cryptocurrency is a sad excuse for a dapp. Why? Because you can buy coins with fiat. If you can use a centralized economy to buy in to a decentralized one, you've immediately corrupted the decentralized economy. Yet another reason why no one should be rooting for a Bitcoin ETF.
But what if someone created a dapp that couldn't be bought by fiat? That's a hard sell, because everyone still values fiat and everything has its price in this world full of greed. However, what if someone made a dapp that required proof-of-brain to create inflation? This is doable, and these are the products I aim to create.
The best part about making dapps is that I could have the most revolutionary ideas in the world, but i can still share them freely without having to worry about my ideas getting stolen. Decentralized ideas can't be stolen. If someone stole my idea and made the product that I wanted to make that would only help me. Why? Because the product is not owned by the creator, it's owned by the community.
I have ZERO competition. Why? Because I'm working for free to build a product that I don't own. Who in there right mind would try to do this? Someone who lives in abundance and wants to win The Race To The Bottom. That's who.
So, what do I want to make? Well, I have very few resources at my disposal, so I have to prove myself to the community that I deserve more. The goals are for my products to make money, attract front-end developers, and possibly get delegations from whales.
I have a lot of ideas, but many of them require a team. Lot's of overhead in terms of time and money (assuming I can't find people to work for free like me). The trick here is to start with the smallest ideas first; the ones I can develop on my own, and then go from there.
I was VERY close to having a working Cards Against Humanity clone (@smartasscards). The game worked. I had just begun development on an Android App for the first time. Decks were stored directly on the blockchain. In fact, the entire game was played directly on the Steem blockchain by way of comments. It was pretty cool, but then the wrapper I was using @steemj broke and the creator abandoned the project. This was depressing and I put it on the back burner.
I realized that I desperately needed to learn JavaScript. JavaScript is a choice language for almost every blockchain these days. It is basically the foundation language of web pages themselves, and you can easily run it on any browser across any operating system.
The trick to programming is to create modules. You want to create code that is reusable and can be used for other projects. The main module I need to make is is a JavaScript dapp that will scan the blockchain and link people up who are trying to do similar things. If two people want to play the same game, they need to know each other exists to start it. If one person want to sell their Byteball airdrop to someone else, again, they need to be connected. Programming this should be an easy task, but it's not going to be because of how primitive the Steem API is. They weren't thinking with these concepts of dapps running directly on the blockchain, so I might have to start my own node to accomplish it. This would be annoying, because it would be a form of centralization. We'll see.
Right now I'm learning JavaScript and dsteem at the same time. My first proof of brain app will be something I've been talking about for a very long time: Part 2: Improved Filters
Wow, 8 months, time flies... and no one has stepped up and made this happen, so now it's up to me.
War On Curation
In the coming months I will be waging a war on how curation works on Steem. It is broken and nonsensical. I will be exploiting and undermining it at every turn and teaching other people how to do the same. More importantly, I will be offering a superior solution to take it's place.
Why did Facebook takeover MySpace? Many would point to the algorithms that went into creating a personalized Wall of content. The Steem feed is a sad replica of this idea. We need to make it better.
Because we are not Facebook and we all have unfettered access to this transparent blockchain, we can create something that Facebook could never dare to. We can create feeds with HUMAN intelligence, and we can do it in a decentralized and customized fashion. This is what I'm working on right now.
It's actually mind blowing to me that no one else is doing this. It's clearly the next step when it comes to making the Steem experience one that promotes and displays higher quality (or simply higher demand) content. Steemit, Busy, SteemPeak... none of the Steem frontends are doing this, and I simply cannot understand why.
Therefore, I will make this product and offer it to the Steem frontends for free. I certainly wouldn't want to be stuck programming my own frontend. That's a lot of work. Open source collaboration for the win.
Backend programmer
This is what I like to do: tinker in the background and create these systems that are the foundation of innovation. The problem here is that I need frontend programmers to make my dapps look pretty, or they will never get mainstream adoption. Hopefully, I can incentivize frontend programmers to my dapps with the decentralized model they are based on. My dapps will be owned by the white hat developers that maintain them, so it might not be so hard to lure them over to my team.
Steem Stake Sterilizer
This is what my filter is called, and it's goal is self explanatory. My Steem filter will mitigate the damages of vote buying/selling and allow all Steem users to dive deep and find content without having to scroll through the trash that gets paid to be there. It hardly has any functionality so far, but already I've been able to find content that I never would have been able to see before, simply by looking at other people's feeds.
This is my first proof-of-brain concept, and it needs to be monetized so Steemians have an incentive to create filters. The obvious first solution is to promoting tipping. If someone spends a few hours creating a filter that's really good, and then 100 other people start using that filter, those 100 other people will be asked to tip the filter creator in the form of upvotes.
This isn't enough though, because the foundation of this filter is to find good content, which means the foundation of this project is to enable anyone on Steem to be a high quality curator. Unfortunately, as I've said, curation is totally broken and reserved only for the Steem elite. This needs to change. As it stands, curation needs to be deleted from the Steem blockchain. All curation should be granted in the form of resteems. If you resteem good content and that content gets upvoted because you resteemed it (classic referral affiliate program) then you get those curation rewards. This would require a hard fork and a lot of support, so I'll have to sidestep that and create something on the side to show the merit of the idea to the community.
Other Ideas
My biggest idea revolves around a turn-based (block-based) Role Playing Game where players will create digital items that are provably rare (legit). I imagine it will be a while before I'm able to make progress in this area... although a part of me just wants to stop everything and start here because it's going to be amazing. Unfortunately, it's too much of a commitment and risk at the moment.
Conclusion
I will be at the forefront of dapp creation and a champion of the proof-of-brain system. Everything I make will be owned, not by me, but by the Steem community. This will incentivize viral adoption by employing frictionless systems of economy and innovation. Witness me.
Return from Dapps Are Mind Blowing to edicted's Web3 Blog
