What does it mean to tokenize the web?
This is an expansion of my answer on @justineh's post here talking about creating a Steem fact sheet. It's really just about all of us who are here already really having a strong understanding of what's going on here with Steem which I 100% support. When I chat with some Steemians, I'm sometimes surprised by what people DON'T know about Steem. On the one hand I suppose it's good that you don't need to understand the inner workings to be able to use the network, but yea, I think the more people understand the better.
Anyway, one part of my answer that I wanted to expand upon was "What does it mean to tokenize the web?" This is one of the main goals set by Steemit Inc. and I think one of the major use cases of SMT's so I think it's useful if we all understand what this really means and why it's such a massive opportunity for Steem.
Our modern economic system is probably the best one humanity has had up until this point. It allows for massive specialization of skills by allowing one individual to accumulate a proxy for their labor in the form of money and trade that for anything else they want or need. Comparing this to a bartering system where you needed to trade something that you created/grew/raised for goods it's obviously vastly superior.
The internet is a relatively new invention, and it's potential is still developing and being explored, but one thing if for sure. There is a lot of value there. An insane amount of value. The thing is, a lot of the activity on the web that is valuable is not currently able to be transacted in an efficient way. What people are used to is "giving away" all their valuable activity for free and this has made a handful of companies insanely profitable as the sole beneficiaries of all of this value.
Tokenizing the web allows for a more granular and efficient way to transact any activity over the internet. Steem is a great flagship of this idea, but in reality is only the tip of the iceberg. Steem allows for users to engage in activity that others may find valuable, namely creating content, applications, answering questions, writing comments, whatever. Any activity that someone else may find valuable can be financially incentivised, rewarded, or traded here. On a free and open market that is global, neutral, permissionless and censorship resistant. I'm not sure people understand what this means or how powerful it is.
You data, your views, your activity on the internet is a resource similar to oil. This oil is a HUGE reserve of value that until now has gone mostly untapped except for a few tech giants. If that value was distributed across the many users of the internet it would have world altering ramifications. Let's imagine some examples.
- Movie/Music/Food/Whatever Reviews
Currently people do these things for free, but the fact that the applications that collect this data are profitable shows that this data is valuable. If this data was tokenized then a system could be devised to distribute a token to reviewers based on some logic by the original creator of the application. Perhaps the # of likes a review gets or the number of views or clicks, etc. Whatever the mechanism the point would be that Steem will empower entrepreneurs and developers to to tap into this huge reserve of value in a simple fast and easy way.
Another example,
- Artists posting their work online.
Again, this is something hugely valuable that the vast majority of artists currently do for free. Once they realize that not only is what they're doing valuable, but that they can and should monetize this, again, changes a lot for a lot of people.
I could go on with examples, but hopefully you get the idea. Basically tokenizing the web means that the web will become a new marketplace of activity. Since we already know that the value is there what we need are the tools to be able to gain access to these wells, and that's what Steem and SMT's plan to offer. Hopefully that makes sense. Would love to hear more thoughts on this in the comments below. See you all in the next post!
