Bitcoin Forum

Utopian is a platform on the Steem blockchain which rewards various contributions to open-source projects.
They do this by giving out high-value upvotes to articles with details of the contributions made to open-source projects.

Contributions are curated by moderators and they get a certain score which determines the value of the upvote.

https://i.imgur.com/ysFV6mt.png

Current website: https://join.utopian.io/

Now, the reason why I'm asking this is because they're currently running a crowdfunding campaign for building a completely new platform.
They seem to want to create a more standalone platform, with more social features than are currently available on Steem.

A large part of their back-end will still be running on the Steem blockchain, but with their (future) new platform, submissions will be much more visible and easier to filter through.

Link to crowdfunding campaign: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/utopian-empowering-open-source-innovation/x/4464230#/

What do you guys think of this? Is this something that will ultimately be of great benefit to the open-source ecosystem in general? Or is it a wasted effort?

I have contributed (in translation category) for a while on Utopian and I think what they are doing is indeed very revolutionary. Providing a means for open source contributors to earn is something we really need right now. Frankly speaking I find it hard to digest that so many people contribute towards open source without any monetary incentive whatsoever. I myself can't do that even though I use many open source software, platforms etc. So, I think if open source contributors are paid for their time and efforts, even if by a small amount, then they will be encouraged to contribute more and even those who generally don't, they will also look into it.

Best thing about this project is that it has high standards for contributions and you can't just create low quality stuff and try to get paid for it. So yes, I think this project will greatly benefit open source ecosystem.

I think I saw a couple of posts by those people who try to post on every site to get rewards (like Minds as well). The idea is really good, but I cannot say for the new platform if it can do better than Steem in eradicating the nonsense posters plus the bot voters. You can see that some of the regular bounty hunters also use it and manage to score a few rewards from it. Fair is fair I must say,,, I think the system also cannot detect poor content so well without human voters, so the pool of moderators or super voters must first be big.

The language factor is also a problem I think. A lot of good content expressed poorly due to English are sometimes voted less.

You're talking about Steem in general, right? Utopian has curators that assess the content that's submitted, I've always found the utopian content to be of excellent quality.
I don't really know what other blockchain Utopian could use besides Steem, I mean no other blockchain currently has the same blog/reward functionality that Steem has.


Yeah, I've published some articles to Utopian under the blog category myself and I was pretty pleased with how they were reviewed.
Also in the development category, you really see some valuable contributions being made.

One guy is even working on his Minecraft mod and being paid for it, just because he's releasing the code publicly.

I've already donated to the Indiegogo campaign.  I think Utopian is a great project and I can attest to the fact that they have some pretty strict guidelines in place to keep the content level high.  I have personally had a couple of my submissions rejected because I didn't follow the template or I left out one of the key components.  It is a great community and well worth supporting if you can spare a little bit of funds.

I'm not sure about building their own platform, have they tried other platform like Publish0x for example?

But if they want more flexibility then having your own platform is a must tho. The payment form doesn't really matter that much as you can simply integrate any blockchain platform (adding eth address for contributors etc). So if the aim is flexibility and more freedom to manage their own business, having their own platform is a must.

I think they'd rather build their own platform yeah. It really makes a lot of sense to do so, since they're already pretty active on Steem.
Now, with this new platform they can also support multiple other cryptocurrencies, so they're not completely dependent on Steem anymore.

I do not see anything bad in this, but on the contrary a lot of positives as the platform is engaged in the development of the field of polls and this is commendable and generally promotes the field of cryptocurrencies so I am satisfied with the work of this project and I think that it has a great future.

Huh what? They don't do anything to promote cryptocurrency, they incentivize the development of open-source projects.
Have you even read what I wrote?