A question we often get at Indorse is how do we compare to Steemit. This is a great question, and let me start off by saying that we have a tremendous amount of respect for what Steemit has accomplished and the platform overall. This article in no way is trying to disparage the work that’s been done by the platform operators and as supporters of the ecosystem, we support any effort to grow the adoption of cryptocurrencies. This article is our attempt to explain why we feel that Indorse’s method of validation is better suited for our use case.

The network effect of social networks based on blockchain has already been noticeable among early adopters. One website called Steemit, also based off of blockchain which has been live for over a year now, has seen quite a rise in usage and adoption, but still serves a very separate purpose from Indorse. Let’s take a look at some key things that makes Indorse’s model different from Steemit’s and some of the benefits that users will be able to enjoy through our model.

A couple years ago when the Ethereum main net went live, one of the first truly exciting propositions of the technology was its use as a platform for a decentralized and unstoppable computer — not able to be censored by anyone. When we think about all of the social networks which currently exist — many of which are largely free — our time, attention and in some alarming cases, personal information is what we pay in exchange for the service. While online social networks were in and of themselves revolutionary around the time of their inception (think ye olde days of Myspace and Facebook), the social networks of the distributed web are something that will empower users even further.

Social Network Posturing

But reputation is something that is not truly understood or leveraged on any social networks as they stand today. Especially on social networks where people build their personal or professional brands, there exists a large amount of unverified data about individuals which makes trusting the things they say and the content they produce difficult at times. In many scenarios, users can buy followers or acquire them rapidly and label themselves as influencers and rarely be questioned for doing so.

With Steemit, which largely has a model based on the popular website Reddit, content is voted up by users, creating a filtering effect of the most popular content by category at any given moment. Add to that, the crypto economic effect of having digital currency associated with the privilege of giving and receiving upvotes made Steemit a quick alternative favorite among users who enjoy websites like Reddit.

But where money or value exchange is involved in an open network, there is always an opportunity for gaming the system somewhat. What was seen on Steemit rather quickly after it launched to the public was an influx of spammers and people sharing poor quality posts, which in essence equate to the days of yore when domain squatters would post junk articles about random topics on Wordpress sites to back link and generate SEO ranking. What you see with Steemit is user coordinating between one another to help upvote posts and share links out to posts that everyone agrees upon to drive traffic to.

Fighting Fake News Through Reputation Building

Let’s look into what we saw really proliferate in the past few years in “fake news.” Fake news as a phenomenon isn’t so new — a lot of websites have existed since the internet was created which hold fairly worthless or false information. However due to the network effects and algorithmic data sorting approaches of social networks, fake news has been used as a tool to sway public opinion on topics which, if verified, would never even be considered true.

With Steemit, users are not incentivized to sniff out and vote down/report fake news. Indorse has created a unique model which encourages people not only to post true and factual information about themselves, but also incentivized users within each other’s network to verify if and when information is correct or not.

Fake news is in large part made possible by social media channels which don’t require users who post it to suffer or be penalized in any way for it. Information posted on Indorse’s network about users and content they would like to share will be directly linked back to their reputation.

Your Time And Attention Equals Money

First and foremost, Indorse is a platform where reputation can be garnered and earned. But uniquely to Indorse, compared to Steemit, Indorse’s advertising revenue and talent acquisition revenue models distribute profits to the active community members as rewards for continually posting valid information and verifying the information of others. This way the data in the system remains as clean as possible through a highly incentivized model promoting active community participation. This value shared with users does not get locked up in a gestation period for many months, like Steemit’s model — rather these earnings are shared and distributed as tradable tokens on a monthly basis (after a certain vesting period).

Beyond getting paid in tokens which accrue in value over time, the identity and personal brand that users grow on Indorse will be portable into other social networks and DAPPS, due to the virtue of the reputation token (SCR) being an ERC20 token. This enables the identity that a person builds for themselves on Indorse to be an asset in and of itself. Indorse seeks to enable users to benefit from all of the time spent curating their digital lives and leverage their attention which is in higher demand than at in any other point in history.