Review Of Cryptocurrency Based Publishing Platforms
Pros and Cons Of Crypto Publishing Platforms
There's a number of ways to earn cryptocurrency out there on the internet. Other than Bitcoin faucets, one of the emerging crypto micropayment cases has been to try to create a system whereby users can be rewarded for their publishing efforts. Unlike Facebook, Twitter or some of the other major platforms that exist out there that simply mine all of your personal data and keep all of the profiteering for themselves, there are some cryptocurrency based platforms that allow writers to publish their materials (sometimes without censorship) and can potentially even earn some minor rewards for their efforts.
These platforms usually attempt to solve a few problems but in so doing, they may create a few problems themselves. The major benefits to the cryptocurrency publishing platforms can be as follows:
- Monetization potential for their user base encourages and promotes use
- Ownership in platform security or utility tokenization creates brand loyalty
- Sometimes they offer decentralized / p2p infrastructure
- Niche groups focused on topics of interest
All of the above may sound great, and you may almost wonder how there are any problems. With the primary incentive structures in place, it would seem like these models take a lot of powers away from the creators and central entities and place more power in the hands of their users. This is true, to an extent. However, as is often the case, by solving some problems, some new problems can emerge. Some newly found problems with these platforms can be (but are not limited to):
- Exploitation of website monetization by low content producers leading to spammy like content and comments
- Centralization of power among the cryptocurrency-rich players
- Smaller user bases than the larger players leading to less frequent/rapid content
What Are Some Of The Platforms?
MintDice has experimented with a lot of the various publishing platforms and has created a short list of it's favorites. Each website operates in it's own fashion giving out it's various rewards. We'll go through them one by one in short detail.
Publish0x is attempting to be like Medium, but for cryptocurrency. It offers rewards presently in ETH, BAT and LRC. It's rewards payouts are relatively high compared to other sites. It has a clean interface and pretty good content. It requires moderator approval to initially publish your content and you must continue to post high quality content or else you can be banned from the website. Once you are given the green light to publish, you may post high quality content that others may tip you for, for free, and you may tip other users, for free.
ReadCash is a Bitcoin Cash based platform that operates most closely like a Medium / Reddit hybrid. The rewards here are perhaps some of the highest in the industry due to a very large sponsorship by one of Bitcoin Cash's wealthier members and donators to the fund, Marc DeMesel. The rewards based program attempts to use artificial intelligence to delegate payments efficiently but unfortunately a large level of abuse and poor quality content permeates through the website for now. Hopefully they figure out ways of fixing this.
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UpTrennd
UpTrennd is a centralized but cryptocurrency centric and powered version of Reddit using their native token 1UP. 1UP is the backbone of all advertising, upvoting and website reach on the website. Unfortunately, from our experience, they have some of the worse abuses of spam and low quality content found on any of the publishing platforms by us. This frequently leads to a catch-22 situation whereby you lose traffic by filtering out spammers and with no traffic, you can't gain traffic by not having enough content. Regardless, Uptrennd will need to do some serious algorithmic changes to improve the quality and conditions of their website. As far as their site's monetization goes for it's users, it is presently in the low-medium range.
The Steemit and Hive platforms tried to create a decentralized version of Reddit powered exclusively by their native tokens, STEEM and HIVE. Unfortunately, there has been a lot of political problems with the platforms over the years since it's inception a number of years ago. More notably, it can be very difficult for new users to gain much traction on the website to monetize their efforts. That said, for the users that do make it to the top of the chain, the rewards can be absolutely enormous. On average, users can expect to make medium-level rewards on this website. Spam levels tend to be low-moderate as a lot of bad activity gets moderated out or filtered out by various governing bodies. These platforms are also, in terms of userbase, some of the largest on the internet for cryptocurrency based platforms, which is a small plus.
LBRY uses it's own native token as well, LBC, for it's platform that is accessible both by the web and a desktop client. For the most part, LBC is required to begin using the website which allows users to post both censorship free videos and blog post type materials. Once a user is set up, a user must post revocable support for it's content both via it's channel platform and by it's individual content pieces. If content is liked enough by it's users, they may contribute their own LBC in support of the channel or donate with tips. Overall, LBC is one of the most expensive platforms to get started on and requires a lot of dedication to eventually monetize efficiently. Because of this, however, the spam levels on LBRY have been and will likely continue to be extremely low, but this does prohibit many otherwise would be honest content creators.
Which Platforms Are Best?
In our assessment, probably the single best overall platform is Publish0x. This platform provides some of the highest quality content and provides the highest monetary efficiency for it's user base. This is all done through the Publish0x foundation that moderates it's users with the long-term intention of creating sustainability through the website via advertising with cryptocurrency companies and other such entities over time.
Of course, what one user defines as "best" will likely depend on the person. LBRY will probably be the best platform for honest and diverse content. But UpTrennd might be the best platform to earn some quick micropayments each day with the lowest quality content. Side note, but if Uptrennd does interest you, do use our referral link as the first 20 customers to do so will be credited with 50 free 1UP tokens!
More importantly though, all of these publishing companies are in an emerging and developing market. Companies can quickly change their infrastructure and invalidate a lot of what is written in this article over night, so do your own research, especially over dated time expansion from the release of this article.
