Ryan X. Charles on Choosing Bitcoin and Why Steem ‘Can’t Last’

In the wake of social network Steemit’s hack, Ryan X. Charles, co-creator of Yours, explained his reasons for using Bitcoin for his own network despite the disadvantages.

Charles: Steem ‘Can’t Last’

The Yours platform, which like Steemit pays users who upload quality popular content, is still in its test phase, with a limited preview set for later this summer.

“… One of the top questions we’ve been asked is ‘why bitcoin?’” Charles wrote in a blog post Thursday.

By leveraging bitcoin, we can take advantage of the largest blockchain technical ecosystem including open source software, documentation, standards, and APIs, as well as the largest blockchain social ecosystem including companies and experts.
Steemit had been paying its users in its own currency, Steem dollars, using a separate blockchain. In the post, Charles specifically outlined Steem dollars as an example of what he described as “the very approach we determined wouldn’t work.”

CmnHxLJVIAECu1t“Although we are delighted to see blockchain social media a reality, we worry that Steem can’t last,” he wrote. “The burden of building not just a community and a technical platform, but also a novel cryptosystem and supporting economy, is extremely high.”

He noted that while building a platform on legacy Bitcoin blockchain parameters meant developers “would have full control over our blockchain’s technical properties to suit our community’s needs,” the problems associated with forging everything from scratch outweighed the advantages.

Timely Words

Charles’ post was seemingly released while news of Steemit’s hack was still confined to smaller circles. Instead, he offered that in hindsight, it was fortunate Yours had not been built on Ethereum.

“A few months ago I wrote an article called ‘Why I’m Sticking With Bitcoin,’ which was about why Yours was not using ethereum… Since then, the DAO was hacked and the enthusiasm around ethereum has dampened,” he concluded. “The timeliness of my article was an accident, but it reassures our stance.”

Like any good scientific theory, the bitcoin theory has not yet been nor can ever be proven, but so far has withstood every attack.
Steemit meanwhile has restored functionality to its website after amounts of up to $85,000 had been stolen, with CEO Ned Scott announcing “potentially compromised accounts” with balances over $100 being ring fenced.

steemit-share“After conducting further analysis and following hack containment procedures, Steemit has been able to narrow the potential number of compromised accounts,” he wrote in the update.

“As a result, we can ensure these accounts are restored to their rightful owners. This process has been completed.”

He added that partner exchange Bittrex was still analyzing wallets, after which deposits and withdrawals of Steem dollars would reopen.