Decentralised blogging and social media platform, Steemit, is about to undergo its biggest transformation since launching three years ago.

Steemit has just has announced a massive upgrade to the Steem Blockchain, which underpins the platform, will take effect following a hardfork on August 27.

It is the 21st Steem blockchain hardfork, but Steemit developers see it as the biggest and most important in the platform’s history.

A new worker proposal system will give the blockchain the ability to fund its own development, while the upgrade is also expected to reduce the influence of bots.

Steem Proposal System includes US$2m funding pool

The Steem Proposal System, to be known as Steem.DAO, will allow Steem users to publicly propose work they are willing to do in exchange for payment in the Steem Dollars cryptocurrency (SBD).

Developers say they’ve learnt from the difficulties faced by the infamous Ethereum DAO and have ensured Steem.DAO will have none of the same security vulnerabilities because of Steem’s application-specificity.

The Steem.DAO will enable users to leverage their stake in the platform to vote on proposals.

The winning proposals will then receive funding directly from the blockchain itself, creating a true decentralised, autonomous organisation which will distribute an estimated $1.5 million to $2 million US annually.

In a media release, Steemit’s Senior Blockchain Engineer, Michael Vandeberg, labelled the move a “big step forward”.

“The Steem Proposal System is the best way to support entrepreneurs and Steem users who want to build projects on the Steem blockchain,” said Mr Vandeberg.

“The proposal was brought to us and developed by prominent community member and entrepreneur, Blocktrades.

“We look forward to more partnerships between Steemit and our community. The Steem Proposal System will help make that a reality.”

The end of dodgy bots?

Steemit claims to have already distributed over $100,000,000 worth of cryptocurrency rewards to the most influential bloggers on the platform.

But questions have been raised about the use of bots to falsely inflate the popularity of influencers, resulting in cryptocurrency windfalls.

While traditional blogging and social media platforms continue to grapple with bots, Steemit believes its upgrade will have a significant impact on the dodgy practice.

“Changes to the economics of the system will reduce the influence of malicious bots and lower the incentive to self-vote,” says Steemit.

It does appear Steemit has a big fight on it hands though. Posts on Steemit such as ‘how to use bid bots effectively‘, remain popular.

“This took my post rewards from about $1 to $21.74. Not too shabby since my aim was only to bring up that post’s reward for a more consistent look on my profile page,” the author writes.