Hi, @jayplayco here.
Now that we are moving forward with the preparation of Reviewhunt, it got me thinking about the three different pillars Steemhunt is planning to finalize the HUNT economy. First, we have @steemhunt, where all posts are also directly posted to the Steem blockchain and where the upvoting mechanism is still directly influenced by Steem, but the community controlled and watched by itself under a different set of rules, pushed and informed by Steemhunt.
After @steem-engine published their SCOT service, Steemians now have a chance to understand based on a separated condensor how it would feel when SMT would be live. Steemhunt is, if you look into it in detail, already offering a hybrid SMT version, because you always have the possibility to choose “BOOST” hunt instead of Steem rewards.
0. Repository
https://github.com/Steemhunt/web
1. First pillar - Steemhunt
Steemhunt itself is a community based project, where the community compete and encourage each other in a specific niche. This niche is for new and cool gadgets and software projects including a ranking board where community members, called Hunters, can upvote posts and push them up in the ranking. The Hunters are rewarded for being active or hunting a good product and getting a high rank.
An important part here is that you can devide the users into active Hunters, who are participating directly on the platform and visitors who found the platform either through a search engine or social media. Both kind of users are essential and also vital for the platform, as you need exposure outside the internal community to be visible.
During the IEO time Steemhunt had a MAU of over 400K, which shows the potential these kind of platforms can achieve.
2. Second pillar - Reviewhunt
Reviewhunt is planned for July 2019 and the Pre-Signup for influencers and companies already started to sign up in bigger numbers. If we have a look into the current status we can see especially from the company sides we have already 63 companies with a monthly estimated budget of 574K USD in marketing
The reason why Reviewhunt is so important for the HUNT economy is, that you will need a working for every token economy a working business model, as otherwise you will not be able to hold the value of your token, nor increase the value of it.
We will have to distinguish between a Security Token and Utility token here, as for a Security token, you will have always kind of a value behind the token already stored. A utility token is somehow starting to gain the value based on the service you can use with the token, which means that at some point you will need to be able to either change the utility token into a product(or service) or exchange it to another currency (normal exchange business). Most tokens and coins does have only the second part available (changing the token into another currency) and keeping the value with constant developing of their main product (or not) or spreading news about it. An easy rule for this is, as long you don’t have a product you can buy with your tokens is,
- If more people are wanting and buying your token than selling the value of your token will rise.
By the way, same with Steem. When there is no business model to keep at least a specific level of the Steem inflation stable and there are more users selling their Steem instead of staking it, the Steem price will fall. Stabilization of the Steem inflation rate would mean that, as example, Steemit Inc. would use part of the their income (ad, consulting, etc.) to buyback Steem.
Reviewhunt is exactly architected for that reason. It is accelerating the community behind Steemhunt and gathering them. Based on it, the influencers are funneled at Reviewhunt where companies can reach them easily at one place and very effectively. The IT Geek influencer “agency” Reviewhunt is getting “jobs” on board for influencers and the bigger and targeted group of influencers is getting companies into the economy to spend fiat, which is directly used to stabilize the HUNT token economy.
If the start would only mean just 10% of the registered companies would start a bounty, it would be still 50K USD that would be directly injected into the HUNT ecosystem. And based on success stories it would attract even more companies, as they could get a great marketing campaign based on a reasonable budget.
3. Third pillar - Ideahunt
The final pillar is Ideahunt, where we are adding ecommerce and targeted crowd funding. It is closing the economy, as the hunters have now also a way except selling the HUNT tokens on an exchange. It is important for a utility token that it has a final function of “buying” a product or service. Different kind of models can be adapted here, as it could be also possible to burn part of the HUNT tokens that are coming from the % service fee that Ideahunt would ask from the makers. Or these tokens could be used to push the product with affiliate marketing.
There are no limits if you have a finalized the token economy and have an incoming stream of FIAT and products that can consume tokens.
4. Personal thoughts.
As community manager of Steemhunt I am also taking care of the communication that is happening on different chat channels or social media channels. I do often see the comment that the price of HUNT tokens have been down since the listing, but for a rather new token on an exchange with in the moment not that much volume, I think it is quite normal. As hunters also have now the possibility to sell their tokens from bounties, this will still continue for a while. To backup this token economy Steemhunt is going to need Reviewhunt and that is the main reason that the whole team is currently concentrating on bringing Reviewhunt live on the one hand and also to launch HUNT on another exchange to be able to increase the volume.
As a HUNT token holder I am personally seeing Steemhunt rather as an traditional Startup than as a typical Blockchain based token project. And if we see it from the financing side, there had been only an investment (IEO) under 1 Mil. USD, which makes it at a a very early stage. Therefore in long terms I believe and a lot of HUNT holders also, that this project will be able to finalize their pillars and be able to sell their product (Reviewhunt, Ideahunt) to the market.
- Disclaimer: this is not a financial nor an investment advise and serves only the purpose of entertainment.