Steem Coin Design Contest 2018

I wanted to take a minute to explain my steem coin contest submission.

I noticed in the contest post that they were going to keep one side of the coin in the same format to give continuity to the coins as they are released every year. The steem logo is incorporated in this so I didn’t want to just use the logo as the centerpiece in the drawing.

So I decided to look to the white paper for ideas. Towards the end of the paper there is a section about blockchain based attribution: "Under blockchain-based social media, a creator or author would always be able to point to a public record and timestamp showing proof of their content origination."

So this was cool and something I wasn't really aware of and I thought a light ought to be shined onto it. I encourage you to read this section of the white paper if you haven't already. If we look up attribution in the dictionary it states "the action of ascribing a work or remark to a particular author, artist, or person."

I did my best to represent attribution by using the archetype of the water bearer. In this case the water that she pours into the stream represents the content. The stream represents the blockchain. You'll notice that she has two water vessels. The idea is that ideally we don't want to dump everything onto here only the things that are of quality. Which is also shown by the "magical" up-vote icon that floats above the stream.

The second component I wanted to celebrate was the diversity that I see on this platform. This is represented by the fruit and flowers in the tree (I really tried to get those bananas just right lol). Now horticulturally speaking this makes no sense but don't worry it's just a drawing. The gnarly tree represents the core team responsible for steem in the first place. which is why I patterned the tree off the basic shape of the steem logo turned sideways. This is why the stream/river falling down a tall waterfall because steem didn't invent the blockchain. The blockchain is sort of like a programming element like earth or water. The waterfall mountain is a tip of the hat to all the individuals that have made contributions to the development of the technology.

This design was also an attempt (possibly failure) to not rely so heavily on the nautical theme that seems to be present in the steem universe.

Anyway I had fun doing this and I hope you enjoy the image.