For the past 2 weeks there have been news after news around the Steem platform. If you are living in a cave and have not caught up with them, here are just a few that should get you excited.
MIRA Soft Roll-out
Steemit Inc announced the soft Roll-out of MIRA, short for Multi Index RocksDB Adapter. MIRA is set to reduce the cost for hosting Steem master and witness nodes. With a cost reduction of up to 75%, we can expect to see more witnesses running more master nodes. This will be great in terms of decentralization.
According to this Steem Center page, we have less than 20 full nodes that are operational. This is quite worrying when we consider that Steem is a decentralized blockchain. With MIRA, I hope more of such full nodes will be available.
Steemit.com Out of Beta
For the longest time, I thought the tagline of Steemit.com should be changed to "Forever in Beta" 😂. But following a recent update, Steemit Inc has officially brought Steemit.com out of beta. In the same post, Steemit Inc also stated that they are now out of "survive" mode and is transiting into "thrive" mode.
This is great news! While many of the developments on Steem are community driven, Steemit Inc is still the primary driver behind the fundamental changes on the blockchain. With them finally back in business, I expect much more focus from them to bring Steem to greater heights.
Fast and Free. Most Importantly, a Great Community
One of the top selling points of Steem is the fast and free transactions. With just 3s block time, Steem is one of the fastest blockchain around. Beyond being fast, Steem transactions are also free. These attributes should make the platform really attractive for aspiring dApps developers.
However, that's not just what Steem is good at. Steem's competitive advantage is the fact that there is a great community behind it. There are actual users behind each accounts. This is the most compelling reason for developers to use Steem. If you want to build a dApp that require social interactions, Steem is the natural choice.
Despite all these, perhaps due to a lack of marketing, dApps developers have not regard Steem as the first choice. This might start to change as an award winning project has announced it's shift from Ethereum to Steem.
Cache is a social (and sometimes anti-social) cryptocurrency trading game, all set in an 8-bit dystopian cyberpunk universe. It originated as a winning project at the 2018 ETHDenver conference, the world’s largest cryptocurrency hackathon.
With this game moving to Steem, I am secretly hoping more will hop onboard as well. @cacheverse is in fact spearheading the #SwitchToSteem movement and I wish them every success. I will participate as much as possible if they ever need help.
SteemFest 4 Announcement
Amongst all these news, SteemFest 4 is also announced. This time it will be held in Bangkok, which is the first time it is held in Asia.
Being so near to home this time, I am seriously considering a trip there. Will need to check me schedule and see if it fits though.
With all these positive news, are you already pumped? Haha.. let me know your thoughts and thanks for reading!