What Is The Agoric Challenge?

in #agoric-challenge7 years ago (edited)



@agoric.systems has developed what we believe to be a novel strategy for effectively onboarding users from around the globe to the Steem blockchain. We're calling it...
The Agoric Challenge.


Because we have developed The Agoric Challenge this far, with private consultation from various members of the Steem community, and being that we are already determined to go ahead with making this a success, we are posting this here under both the #growth-ideas and #growth-proposals tags, for additional community consideration.


Overview

  • @agoric.systems has created a faucet at portal.agoric.co that enables us to register accounts, offer prizes, and guide the user sign up process on the Steem blockchain.
  • This faucet is designed to use unique redeem codes which will be found on 'invite slips', or Agoric Scrip which we have printed, for distribution by the Agoric Systems team, or any member of the Steem community.
  • This method of transmission offers new and versatile pathways for prospective users to register accounts and greatly reduces the friction to sign up for a Steem account.
  • Discovery and redemption of Agoric Scrip may be incentivized through randomly distributed prizes of Steem gifted to new accounts created in this way, as funding allows.
  • This strategy will organically leverage the power of our diverse and widely distributed Steem community by creating a kind of game, an invitation system, a global treasure hunt, and whatever else the collective imagination allows.

The Challenge

The decentralized nature of the Steem blockchain means that no one team can possibly bear the burden of promoting the entire ecosystem to every conceivable demographic.

However, as has been noted by @andrarchy and @zurvanic in creating the Crowdsourced Marketing Protocol, and demonstrated through several community marketing initiatives thus far: there is also great power in the decentralized nature of the Steem community.

In addition, before the Steem ecosystem and its related apps become fully mature and user-friendly enough for the masses, it requires that we reach increasing numbers of early adopters, quality content creators, innovators, and thought leaders to help cultivate a robust and valuable community that can carry us to the mainstream.

The Power of How

@agoric.systems, in collaboration with Steemians around the globe, intends to leverage the power of our decentralized community by creating a game that the whole community can play, adapt, evolve, and co-create; a game designed to reach ever-widening circles of new users in an intriguing new manner.

This game is made possible through the distribution of paper wallets, or Agoric Scrip as we call them. Each scrip is printed with a unique invite code that will enable a prospective Steem user to register an account on the Steem blockchain through the faucet we operate at portal.agoric.co.


Agoric Scrip Design by @emanuellindqvist   -   Photo Credit: @kommienezuspadt

Flipping the Scrip

The acquisition of physical scrip may be a prize for undertaking an adventure, a treasure hunt, for attending a live event, etc., and may be used to create a kind of intrigue marketing campaign, publicity stunt, and so forth, much to the benefit of Steem, Steemit.com, Busy.org, chainBB, D.tube, DSound and the whole family of emerging Steem-based apps.

Furthermore, possession of a unique physical scrip may potentially be employed to grant the holder special access to future events, services, token distributions, and more.

This is where the magic of a decentralized community can really shine! To be truly successful, we will need participation and collaboration from a broad segment of the Steem community. The potential dimensions of this project are vast, and the means of gamification are virtually limitless.



Agoric Scrip Design by @emanuellindqvist   -   Photo Credit: @kommienezuspadt

Phase One: SteemFest²

We begin Phase One of the Agoric Challenge at SteemFest², the ideal location to reach a large number of highly motivated Steem community members from a wide array of geographic locations.

Although we understand that many worthy Steemians are not able to reach SteemFest², those who can will have the opportunity to be seed participants in the first phase of the Agoric Challenge. Future phases of the Challenge will involve any member of the Steem Community, but our Phase One pilot is limited to attendees of SteemFest².

All attendees of SteemFest² will receive (two) Agoric Scrip. Attendees are encouraged to hold one ticket for themselves, for future use, and distribute the other to a prospective Steemian as an invitation.


Agoric Scrip Design by @emanuellindqvist   -   Photo Credit: @kommienezuspadt

Beginning the global treasure hunt - The Agoric Challenge

If you are sufficiently intrigued by our proposal, and you are going to be at SteemFest² We want to meet you!

So keep an eye out for @lovejoy, @spurious-claims, and @robrigo, as we will be there representing Agoric Systems, and we are seeking community members from the broadest geographic distribution possible, and will be coordinating with those who would like to help make this project a global success!

We anticipate this campaign will run indefinitely and evolve towards a more fully-featured onboarding system through additional waves of distribution by an ever-increasing number of teams across the globe. The goal is the ongoing development of The Agoric Challenge, by Agoric Systems and its partners.

We are devising methods to incentivize, sustain, and expand participation in the Agoric Challenge, and we look forward to discussing these possibilities with you further, in person, in the comments below, and in the follow-ups to this post.


Agoric Scrip Design by @emanuellindqvist   -   Photo Credit: @kommienezuspadt

Funding Goals for The Agoric Challenge, Phase One.

Currently it costs a faucet 6 STEEM to register an account on the Steem blockchain, and for the initial round we have printed 3,333 Agoric Scrip to be sent off into the world. At a minimum then, funding the creation of that many accounts will cost 19,998 STEEM. In addition to covering the account registration fee, the goal is to create random prizes associated with the acquisition of Agoric Scrip, so that a user will receive a ‘treasure’, of some kind, hence a global treasure hunt.

To be able to offer random prizes to the new account holders for their participation in the Agoric Challenge, we would like to fund the @agorian account in excess of the 19,998 STEEM minimum. We feel that anything beyond 25,000 STEEM in the faucet will allow us to create a compelling prize structure for the first round, with most accounts receiving just the registration fee, and a few accounts receiving some generous rewards.

We are aiming to reach our funding goal of 25,000 STEEM by the close of SteemFest² on November 6th, 2017 - and to be working with various teams around the globe to make a big impact between then and into the new year!

The @Agoric.Systems Funding Pledge

Agoric has already covered the printing costs of the initial run of Scrip, and we are willing to seed the faucet with 1000 STEEM to get the ball rolling. In addition, 100% of the liquid rewards from this and any #agoric-challenge posts made by @agoric.systems will be used to fund the faucet at portal.agoric.co.

All funds received at the @agorian account will be used exclusively for funding the faucet for new Steem sign ups and any associated prizes, and will never be used for anything else.

Furthermore, if @agoric.systems is voted into the active witness lineup we will pledge 10% of all earned funds back to @agorian for the duration that @agoric.systems is an active witness.


If YOU would also like to help fund the faucet and expand the reach and impact of the Agoric Challenge, please contribute directly to our @agorian account and include “agoric-challenge” in the memo.


What we present here is just the beginning, with some hints as to what is possible in future iterations. We appreciate and encourage any insights and ideas you would like to share to help us shape this game for the benefit - and the fun - of all!


A very special thanks to @emanuellindqvist
who created such beautiful artwork for the Agoric Scrip!

Please show him some love!



Sort:  

YES. This is awesome. Just sent you some STEEM. Keep kicking butt.

Thanks for your kind words and your contribution! We really appreciate your support for the Agoric Challenge! :)

Nice post! What will happening, if someone resteem your post?

cool.. that is awesome.. hehehe

For pitching in, enjoy a 100% upvote as a thanks!

You'all may get me to play games yet! Love the idea, I can't wait to see this play out. I can't make it to steemfest 2 but I will be following you.

Awesome! We will need all the collaborators we can get. As soon as we have the funding we need, and the infrastructure to offer it, we would love to ship the Agoric scrip to various Steemians around the globe. Thanks for your interest!

Certainly it.....!

I see you pitched in to the @agorian account! For that, we come back at you with a hefty vote as a thank you.

A very special thanks All of you

The best idea to play again..........................

What an incredible amount of powerful initiatives here!

Thank you so very much and good luck to us all with this new venture that seems to me to be not only promising but a great success on the long run.

Long live the agoric.systems! All for one and one for all! Namaste :)

This is "beawesome" (= beyond awesome)!
I love your concept. It reminds me of a marketing initiative a friend of mine ran a couple of years back to promote a party series in Munich. It was called "The secret society". He distributed keys which weren't actually keys but necklaces among a group of friends. Every friend received two - one for himself and the other one to give it away to a friend. Like that an intimate group of friends was created. A couple of weeks later EVERYBODY in Munich wanted to enter these parties.

These type of concepts create a high demand, that's what makes them so successful.

Again, that's an amazing idea! Fully upvoted and resteemed.
Also I can't wait to receive my Agoric Scrips!!! :-)

YES! There are so many ways to use this... the allure of exclusivity is powerful, as is the allure of rarity, or finding treasure. When I think about the ways to communicate the Steem experience to others through story, it is ofter framed in a sort of "follow the white rabbit" kind of metaphor. I want people to feel like they're finding something special, joining something secret... an open secret, and then by the time we reach the masses it won't matter as much how they find it. The Agoric Scrip can also act as a kind of funnel, where we weed out the ones who aren't curious or motivated enough to make it out and find one of these. You know the studies where people value things more when they have a cost, or when they have to expend effort to get something. And events, I would love to see people throwing parties where you have to have a Steem account to get in.. or possibly, some Agoric Scrip. ;)

I can't wait to meet you in Lisbon and talk about all the things!

Hi @agoroc.system and @agroian .
its a good initiative, its not an easy task spreading the steem gospel. We always have a challenge is account registration. i am from @steemnaira community in Nigeria and will be attending the confrence on the 2nd of nov.

COMMUNITY PROPOSAL
We will be grateful if we can also get scrip here in Nigeria. it will ease account registration for new user who feel reluctant due to late email responds(some times to no avail)

MY QUESTION
what will be the fate of new users with with very low steem power ?

It's @curie @ocd, @muxxybot that are really supportting minnows from different countries all over the world. if not, so many minnows would have stop using steemit.

CONCLUSION
We fully support this growth-ideas and suggest that attension should be given to minnows too. We get motivated to steem on if we get a fair reward for creatively writing contents.

Yours sincere Steemian
@michaelcj

Hello @michaelcj! You pose a great question, and it's certainly a topic that is going to require some additional discussion, since this is one of the great challenges we face as a community.

One of the ways The Agoric Challenge might help minnows is by creating a kind of community, where everyone who gets invited in through agoric.co would be encouraged to help one another, and the group would be easy for whales to identify. Also, the way we are currently doing account registration by paying the cost up front, will re-distribute stake to new accounts, thus helping to level the playing field over time. There are other things we can do as we develop this project to support and encourage new users. Ultimately the more widely STEEM is distributed the more people that will be actively voting with a significant stake.

We anticipate that 'communities' and 'SMT's' will play a huge role in helping minnows to succeed as well. If I'm not mistaken, we should see the communities feature implemented by the end of the year.

Let's talk more about this at SteemFest! We look forward to meeting you there, and would definitely see some of the Agoric Scrip travel home with you to the community in Nigeria!

Thanks for your comment and your support!

pocketsend:10001@agoric.systems, this donation is of almost no value currently, but may it count as a token of my hope for your success!

Successful Send of 10001
Sending Account: biophil
Receiving Account: agoric.systems
New sending account balance: 835169
New receiving account balance: 10049
Fee: 1
Steem trxid: 1d7730476cb29ec45d5d9f00a407165760c582af
Thanks for using POCKET! I am small bot and right now I am running this code.

Every pocket counts, Phil. Every single pocket!

This is great. If I contribute to the faucet, can I get my hands on some invite slips? I'd love to be able to hand them out to promising people.

@adept, will you be at SteemFest²? Initially we may only be able to distribute these to attendees of SteemFest², but potentially afterwards we can get you some. If not from the initial round, then the next. We'd like to make a big splash with the first round, and make it a real distributed treasure hunt. :) Where are you located?

Great question. We're aiming to distribute the first batch at SteemFest. I do think it would be good to reserve some of this first run to mail out to our supporters, too, since everyone can't make it to the fest.

Awesome!

This is where the magic of a decentralized community can really shine! To be truly successful, we will need participation and collaboration from a broad segment of the Steem community

That's the idea behind it. Our hope is that people run with this and find creative ways to use the faucet. But you're right, we need Steemians to support it!

hahaha "scrip". LOVE IT! sending y'all a donation immanently :)

Thanks, we appreciate the support!

Daaaaang, Izzy! $20 SBD!? You rule!

well written article, loved every bit of it