I am working on a number of new features to extend Hivemind, as a way to experiment and help develop a testbed that apps on Steem can use.

Today, I want to talk about one of these experiments, as well as share a broader vision for the work I am doing.

The feature is called Native Ads and it aims to enable any Steem community to monetize by selling ad space and time using STEEM or SMTs. I'm still working on the alpha version; I hope to get a stable beta out within a few weeks.

For a more technical and in-depth explanation of how it will work, read the Design Overview document on GitHub.

Benefits and new features for Steemians:

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For Users

• Turnkey monetization for community owners; just turn on and start accepting bids
• Advertisers or promoters bid in an open, transparent market, all data on the Steem blockchain
• Community moderators review and approve ads that are acceptable in their communities
• Revenue streams supported by an open protocol, based on free market principles
• UI agnostic community monetization; any interface adhering to the Hivemind protocol can display your ads

For Front-End Developers

• "Monetize My Community" feature for community owners
• Bid market pages offering realtime, competitive bidding
• Moderator review pages, with ads sorted by price-per-time-unit
• Single-community, special-purpose websites can be monetized as a way to support development

For STEEM holders

• Utility value for STEEM and SMTs creates demand for these tokens
• Speculation and trading opportunities for the various types of "attention tokens" (SMTs) that will be developed because of Native Ads

My vision

My aim is to extend the Hivemind codebase by adding features that enable the creation of new experiences within Steem communities. My Hivemind fork is open-source and anyone can check the code out.

Think of it as a testbed for new Hivemind features for apps on Steem. The features that prove to be most successful and valuable may be merged into Hivemind core and become part of the core codebase.

Some of the other features I am thinking about:

• Polls: enabling community members to capture the quantitative distribution of opinions, within a community
• Discussion Rooms: sections within communities for holding realtime discussions, with messages chronologically ordered, in an experience similar to Telegram groups

I shared a few thoughts about these on this post.

I need your help

Once I get stable versions ready, I will need the Steem community's help in these areas:

• running the nodes with the new Hivemind code
• integrating the features in front-end apps and testing them
• giving feedback and collaborating on changes/improvements

So if you are interested in experimenting with Hivemind to create new experiences on Steem, join the discussions in the Hivemind community (beta site) to share your perspective and ideas.

Support my development work

If you would like to support the work I'm doing, you can upvote any of my posts.

• I post weekly development updates on my blog: @imwatsi
• I will be sharing my ideas in the Hivemind community as well

Thanks for reading.

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All of life is an experiment :-)

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See the code on GitHub: https://github.com/imwatsi/hivemind/branches