As the Block.one big announcement draws near this weekend, I find myself excited at the possibilities. I have gone back through interviews with Dan Larimer to find out what kind of guy he is. There is even one fairly good interview compilation of Larimer talking about EOS.
Based on what I have learned, it sounds like what B1 is putting together is going to be an advancement on what Larimer did here on Steem.
Something that struck me was an explanation that his relationship with his products is like the guys who built the infrastructure for the New York Stock Exchange. One thing is to build it. It's another thing to operate it. He sees himself as the builder, leaving the community to discover how they want to operate.
His first lesson with Bitshares was it was very complicated to work out voting and resources. His aim here at Steem was to put the power of distribution in the hands of the users rather than the guys controlling the blockchain. And, MEOS, if that is the new social media platform that will be announced, would build upon lessons learned here at Steem.
It would be a shame if MEOS turns out to be a Steemit Killer. Or maybe not. In a blog post here on Steemit, @Dan wrote about how STEEM was meant to be more than blogging. The blogging was just a way to make it easier for people to get interested in blockchain. He further explained that the true power was in the applications that could be built on Steem, including e-commerce. In this regard, Larimer may be playing with words when he says it would be a Steemit killer. We all like to point out to people that Steemit is not Steem. And so, he may just be having fun with people.
In any case, keep in mind that MEOS is likely NOT Dan Larimer's ultimate goal, just at Steemit was not. The goal is to establish a foundation that facilitates an economic system that promotes freedom and non-violence. MEOS is likely the way to onboard a mass audience so that they become interested in blockchain and decentralization, which was his stated goal for Steem.
The end product should operate like Steem, but be much simpler to use. I don't believe B1 wants to only attract cryptonerds. I sincerely believe that they want MEOS, if that's what it is called in the end, to be nearly indistinguishable from centralized social networks, except for the ability to earn money from interacting.
For die-hard Steemians, there is nothing wrong with the current setup. It's simple enough to use and exploit. Except that we tend to forget that signing up and figuring out how to trade in and out of Steem is not something intuitive.
If MEOS can make putting money in and taking money out much easier than it is to do on Steemit, I think we'll have a winner. We often hear lamentations about how the Whales on Steem control everything. Well, keep in mind that only about 50,000 active users on Steem do not represent a planet of 8 Billion. Blockchain needs a broader reach than 50,000 to say that it has made a difference.
Having our faces stuck to the screen, of course Steem seems huge. However, if you stand back, we don't have the numbers. The democratization of Steem is in the hands of too few. I applaud @nathanmars for trying to bring more people to Steem. We need more users if we want to grow the opportunity and grow the reward pool to the rest of society.
Perhaps the secret sauce of MEOS will be to make it stupid simple for people to sign up and use blockchain. If that happens, it will be a HUGE advantage. If you're thinking about dumping Facebook and stumble upon Steemit or MEOS, one takes a week to sign up and the other is immediate, which do you think will get the new members?
Or, what if MEOS has a way to use STEEM? STEEM would live on, but Steemit may not. I mention this because Larimer built BEOS so that users of his first creation, Bitshares, could interact with EOS. So, it may not be far-fetched that you could stake your STEEM to earn a token you can use on EOS in the same way you can stake BTS to earn BEOS.
Of course, all of this is speculation. We'll know in a few days.