STEEMHUNT- Be a talented Steemhunter and get rewarded.

We live in a century where we come across many types of innovations in technology sector on daily basis, that makes our life easy, convenient and organized. The technological innovation has become so fast in 21st century that every day we come across many innovations and the existing technology becomes a outdated one. This technological innovation always accompanied with constant development, upgradation and that further leads to healthy competition between different sub-sectors of technology and that competition is further attempting to bring the best for different use-cases in human life. Technological innovation has given rise to many types of products which address the specific requirement in human life & the society. That has an economic performance in return through business opportunities as well.

With the advent of blockchain technology since 2009, it has created so many sub-economy, so many marketplaces within the crypto domain. Many types of new projects have been evolving and the implementation of these products have been happening with blockchain technology. These projects are very well recognized as dapps on the top of blockchain technology in this ecosystem.

So we have blockchain technology, we have the traditional technology and technological innovation and that innovation has resulted in so many types of innovative and cool products. So as there are so many types of technology and products, it naturally creates an opportunity to list out the most innovative products out of those and make a digital library in the front end of blockchain. If that opportunity can be framed into a project, then it can create an opportunity where the users can hunt very innovative products out of the so many available in various domain and for hunting cool and innovative products the hunters can get a reward. As the project be implemented on the top of blockchain technology it can bring fair and transparent business for this opportunity. This underlying principle gives rise to the introduction of Steemhunt.

Steemhunt

Steemhunt is a decentralized application on the top of Steem blockchain which allows users to engage in innovative product hunting and can list their products in the online digital library of Steemhunt, which are moderated by the moderators and then curated by the curator/influencers. The top 100 rank products get upvoted on a daily basis based on their ranking and the interal user score of every individual who listed the product. The payout mechanism works in the same algorithm of Steem blockchain(SP+SBD). Apart from that, the users earn HUNT tokens which is the native utility token of Steemhunt.

The setup and different roles in Steemhunt platform

The HUNT platform is essentially a platform on the top of blockchain technology which bridges the hunters, early-adopters and the product makers. It has three main branches such as:-

• Ideahunt- Ideahunt is basically for crowdsourcing project & trading NFT tokens.
• Steemhunt- Steemhunt is for listing cool & innovative products to its digital library & rewarding the hunters.
• Reviewhunt- Reviewhunt is for running bounty campaign where the product makers can offer discounts and/or bounties for quality review of their products.

Steemhunt

The set up of the Stemhunt platform comprises of various actors and all of them perform multiple key roles in maintaining & achieving the goal of this platform. There are Founders, Moderators, Influencers, Curators, Hunters etc who perform their very specific roles and contribute to the ecosystem of Steemhunt. It creates an opportunity for the users to become hunters, list them to the digital library and get rewarded by the platform everyday.

Founders

The Steemhunt platform was founded by @tabris & @project7 and they have created this model of Steemhunt. They are also responsible for the constant upgradation of the platform & development. They also frame the guidelines, set & define the different parameters, which gives a clarity to the hunters, moderators, influencers, curators, etc to act in line with the objective of the Steemhunt platform.

Moderators

There is a well defined posting guidelines for the hunters. So when a hunter posts a hunt, he need to post as per the posting guidelines. Once it is posted, the same is reviewed by the Moderators of Steemhunt platform. If the hunt post is as per the posting guidelines, the Moderators approve it, else it gets rejected. The approved hunt post is displayed in the list and visible for other hunters to curate, also available for influencers to curate and finally at the end of the day it is upvoted from Steemhunt account based on the user score and rank.

Influencers

Influencers are simillar to curators who upvote the hunt post, they are distinct from curators in a way that they have better capability to boost a low rank post(with a good product). The user score is key here and Influencers have better boosting power as they have better score and that helps to boost a post significantly. So their primary job is to boost the low ranking hunt post, but ideally it should be a good hunt too. In that way, Influencers plays a key role in justifying the objective that "Innovative and cool products should be up in the rank". So influencers help to create a balance between decentralization and best innovative product when it comes to upvoting/curating a post.

Any curator can become an influencer. It all depends upon how a curator has curated the low ranking, good hunt post in last two weeks. As it is an automated process and in every two weeks the list of Influencers are updated depending upon their curating activities over last 2 weeks. One can check the list of influencers from the official discord channel of Steemhunt.

Curators

Once a product is moderated and listed in Steemhunt, the next process it goes through is curation. Once the hunt post is approved, it is listed & visible for all other hunters & influencers. Depending upon how interesting & innovative product it is, it gets curated. Curation means upvoted by other hunters and also influencers. A curator is free to curate the listed products in a decentralized way. Those hunters who have better user score, when perform the role of curators they help to boost the rank of the post. Influencers ideally have better boosting power than the normal hunters.

Hunters

Any user who joins the platform, hunts the innovative product and post it in Steemhunt are attributed as hunters. There is no specific eligibility required to become a hunter. Anyone can be a hunter. If you are good in hunting innovative, cool products then they have a great potential to earn from Steemhunt platform. So if you have that art of hunting innovative products, you could earn more. Conversely if you are new and don't have much idea how to hunt, then also you can get started with hunting and after a period of time you will gain experience in hunting really innovative product. The persistent effort will make you a good hunter after a period of time. So while it it is really easy to be a hunter, to get success in Steemhunt platform requires regular activity and persistent effort. During the initial period it may so happen that you struggle rise up the rank in your hunt post, but if you are regular and persistent, then you can get consistent result after some time.

Getting started with Steemhunt

Any user before getting started with Steemhunt must have a Steem account. One can get a Steem account for free(with a waiting time) or can get instantly with a nominal fees. There are so many services available now to get a new steem account. The notable paid services for creating a new Steem account are Blocktradees, Steem-ninja, etc.

Once you have a Steem account, you can login to Steemhunt with the Steem account credentials. Then the main job of a user(hunter) is to discover and dig innovative products, as the listing of innovative product in the digital library of Steemhunt is the core of its business. If you have discovered an innovative product, the next step is to post it Steemhunt. There is a posting guidelines in Steemhunt and the hunters must pay attention to that guidelines as that will give more clarity to their posting.

While posting a hunt it is required to fill :-

• Product Link
• Name of the product
• Short Description
• Images to be uploaded
• Hunter's comment
• Tags
• Boost HUNT(Optional)

The hunter's comment should be short & concise and should straightaway explain the main features of the product(that essentially makes it innovative & cool product). Nonetheless the user has a limit of 1000 characters to accommodate his/her comment.

The hunter must make sure that before posting a hunt, it shouldn't have had hunted by someone else before him. So for that the hunter must make use of the "Search Products" box which is available at the top right corner of Steemhunt main page.

Key components in Steemhunt

User-score

The user score is a key element in Steemhunt platform as that essentially indicates the user's activity in the platform. Better score means better activity and hence better potential to earn rewards in the platform. The maximum user-score one can achive is 10.

HUNT Power Score- It indicates the relative staking of HUNT tokens by a user as compared to others.

Contribution Score- It indicates the user's activity in the Steemhunt community as compared to others over a span of last 30 days and in the context of four sub-categories such as:-

• Trustworthiness of the hunter
• Activity of the hunter
• Curation by the hunter
• How valuable hunts/comments he has posted in the platform

So from the above formula of User-score, it is clearly evident that a user needs to be active in the platform, as that can bring them at par with other active users in the platform. As it is indirectly a function of user's relative activity as compared to others, it is natural that the user-score fluctuates on daily basis based on the activity by the hunter in Steemhunt platform.

Wallet

In the user interface in the Steemhunt platform, one can notice wallet. In the wallet all the earned HUNT tokens are deposited from where a user can withdraw the HUNT tokens. In order to withdraw HUNT tokens from the wallet, it is required to integrate the wallet with metamask. As HUNT token is an ERC-20 token, the user needs to have a ETH address and for that they essentially need a metamask wallet. Everyday you can notice the unlocked amounts are shown in the wallet which can be readily transferred to your metamaks wallet. At the moment, HUNT is a listed token in DayBIT exchange, hence you can easily exchange your HUNT tokens.

My Profile

The user's "My Profile " displays the User-score, Reputation, Followers, Steem power, Estimated value etc on the left side of the page and on the right side of the page you can notice all your hunted products till date.

Hunt Score

The hunt score is another essential element which indicates the aggregated score you have received to your hunt post as a result of curation by the different curators and influencers. For example if there are three curators who have user-score 5,7,8 respectively and if they have upvoted with full weightage then the Hunt score of the post will be 5+7+8=20. If they use a certain percentage of their upvote weightage then that will reflect in proportional to their weightage in the Hunt score. Higher the score, higher the rank is. Please note that user-score, hunt-score are the internal elements of Steemhunt and it has nothing to do with the Steem blockchain algorithm. Therefore if you receive an upvote from a person outside the steemhunt platform then it will not add to the hunt score of the post.

Search Products

You can find the Search products box at the right top corner of the Steemhunt interface. This search box will help you to not to post an already hunted product. So the hunter must make use of this search products option to check whether the product hunted by him is hunted before by others or not.

HUNT Token

HUNT token is the native token of HUNT platform and it is basically the utility token which can be used to serve various use-cases of Steemhunt, Ideahunt, Reviewhunt.

The use-cases could be earning of HUNT tokens by hunting cool & innovative products by the hunters(in Steemhunt).

Simillarly the Product makers can run campaign for the genuine review of their product(in Reviewhunt). For that they have to buy HUNT tokens in order to use the platform of Steemhunt to connect to the hunters. As it is powered with blockchain technology such a campaign can be executed in a fair & transparent way.

HUNT tokens can also facilitate crowdsourcing project(in Ideahunt). In case there is crowdsourcing of any product pre-launch then the hunters can participate in the crowdsoucring project and trade the Non-Fungible tokens with HUNT tokens.

Benefits

• As there is a reward to hunt cool & innovative products, it drives enthusiasm among the users to become a hunter. As they start hunting cool & innovative products, they go through a process of searching & digging over the internet to hunt those innovative products. In the entire process they get to know about so many products and it may so happen that regardless of whether the products they come across are innovative or not, they may find some useful product for their own benefit. Apart from that, there is a value addition in the form of knowledge base of innovative products.
• The hunters may earn a lving from the Steemhunt platform. As it rewards SP+SBD+HUNT.
• The product makers can reach the valuable hunters and early adopters through the hunt platform.
• The hunters equally get an opportunity to trade their HUNT tokes for NFT tokens in crowdsourcing project.
• It creates an ecosystem where the technologically innovative and cool products are listed in the digital library of hunt platform, the hunters earn an income, the product makers can run a review campaign by making use of the hunt platform. So it serves a composite objective for hunters, product makers & technology.

Questionnaire

What a talented Steem hunter is?

In my opinion, the definition of an ideal Steemhunter is "the one who invest some time to search and dig innovative & cool products using various resources available over internet, who has a clarity on what an innovative & cool product means in Steemhunt platform, who describes very well about the product within 1000 characters which should be brief & comprehensive & must also describe the distinct feature of it, who takes care of grammar & spelling, who does not plagiarize, who upload proper images & GIFs which are relevant to the product description, who don't add any copyright/trademark symbol, whose activity is consistent in the platform, who is a honest hunter(not a blacklisted one)."

Where are the places to dig for cool products?

I personally feel that if you are a geek then its an easy job for you to dig cool products but that does not mean that others can not dig cool products. If one is really passionate and ready to invest some time and energy over internet, then its not a hard task to dig cool products. The internet is so vast and distributed that one can easily find some resources to dig more cool products. Everyone has their own strategy to dig cool products. But before that it is essential to go through the guidelines of Steemhunt to know what type of products it accepts. So please check the posting guidelines for that.

While everyone follows different strategy to dig cool products and post in Steemhunt platform, I personally feel that your inherent characteristics also align with the idea of hunting a cool product. I am not a very seasoned hunter and with my limited experience I can suggest the following resources to check for and dig cool & innovative products.

• Google Play Stores- You can dig various cool apps
• GitHub- You can dig handful of innovative open-source projects
• Crowdfunding- You can explore crowdfunding projects
• YouTube- Through various environmental, technology related vlogs, you can explore cool products
• TheVerge-Search the tech category to dig cool products
• Stateofthedapps- You can dig some cool dapps
• ProductHunt- As it is also a hunt site, you can really find a lot of cool products

What would you like to see in a Steemhunt post?

There is already a field called "Hunter's comment" where the hunter generally describes about the product within 1000 characters and that should properly address the product description which can be easily understood by anyone who come across the hunt post.

The hunter should do away with "hi, hello, good day" kind of start and should land straight to the point and make the description which should be concise and should also cover the main aspect of it.

What I would like to see additionally is that, "as it is a hunt platform whose core principle is innovative & cool products, there must also be a separate field like "What is innovative about this product" where the hunters should write distinctive features of the product which makes the product innovative. This can make the hunt platform look more professional and can justify the tag of "innovative product".

What are the requirements to post cool products?

I feel that, in Steemhunt platform it is not just about how innovative a product is, it is also equally important how a hunter presents an innovative post. As it is basically a hunt platform, the product description should be very short and concise which does not require analysis type blog post. It simply requires the ideal description of the hunt post which properly describe the key features of a product which makes it innovative.

In that context, the proper use of English grammar and presentation skill can make the hunt post more appealing. If the hunter is uploading images, then it should be clear and should also be of good quality and also relevant to the description, in that way it can make the things professional. The GIFs can help anyone to very quickly understand about the product, where it requires a video to be uploaded, that should be done. The hunter's comment should not be plagiarized and the hunter should use his own word and sentence to write the comment. If using the original text of the official site, then blockquotes should be used.

How does one get a hunt approved?

Once the hunt is posted in Steemhunt platform then it is reviewed by a moderator. The hunt post must essentially be consistent with the posting guidelines of Steemhunt platform. The moderator reviews that in line with the posting guidelines. If it is consistent with the guidelines, then it is approved else it is rejected. If approved then it will be visible in the listing, else it will be hidden by the moderator and in the front end(Steemhunt) it will not be shown and hence it will not be listed in the competition. All approved hunt posts are eligible to get steemhunt upvote subject to its ranking and user score.

How do Steemhunters interact with each other?

In my opinion the most active place for hunters to interact is the discord channel and I have noticed that the regular hunters most of the time remain online in discord. However one is free to interact in other social sites like facebook, telegram etc. In the official discord channel of Steemhunt the ideal channels to interact with other hunters are #discussion, #coffee-lounge, #questions etc.

How to understand hunt token?

It is an ERC20 token and as of now it is a listed token in DayBIT exchange. So it has a real market value as of now. It is the utility token of hunt platform which serves the various use-cases of Steemhunt, Reviewhunt, Ideahunt.

In Steemhunt platfrom one can become a hunter, hunt cool products and list that to the digital library of Steemhunt on daily basis and get rewarded HUNT token daily apart from SBD+SP.

The total supply is 500 million out of which 50% is for "Community Building". As Steemhunt is a dapp on the top of Steem blockchain, it uses this fund(50%) for building the community & ecosystem of Steemhunt in the following ways:-

• Token swaps for STEEM delegations
• Airdrops to STEEM holders
• For hunting cool & innovative products
• Bounties for the participation
• Standby tokens for future distributions

The user-score is a function of how much HUNT tokens you have with respect to other hunters. The user-score is key to earn more. So it is a cyclic process. The more user-score means more potential to earn HUNT tokens and more HUNT tokens you stake means, more user-score you can have. Additionally you also need to be active for enahncing the user-score. You are free to trade/exchange your HUNT tokens, if you wish to do so.

The different ways you can earn HUNT tokens:-

• Hunting cool & innovative products
• Delegating SP to Steemhunt
• Commenting on other's hunt
• By clicking on shuffle button
• By sharing on other social media

How to prepare for review hunt?

In the era of technological innovation, while the technology has its essence, the marketing of a product is equally a tricky task. The economy to a large extent depends on how good it is in the marketing campaign. In order to ensure proper marketing, it is required to project the product to the appropriate social channel where the real adopters and reviewers can make a review and that can further create a wave of whisper if organized properly.

So in order to offer an organized way to market a campaign we need a platform where the product makers can reach to the early-adopters/hunters who can make genuine reviews across the popular social platform and in exchange they can get bounties and/or discounts on the products. Reviewhunt is exactly based on that ideology and it is one of the branch of hunt platform to cater this use case of review campaign where the product makers have to buy hunt tokens to use the platform and can organize a bounty for their product. Th hunters/early-adopter can get a great opportunity from such a platform to earn additional income.

Evaluation & Rating

In my opinion, for any dapps the most important parameter is sustainability. there are many dapps with so many concepts, but when it comes to delivery, not all become successful particularly in adverse situations. We have seen in 2H of 2018, when extreme bear market hit the crypto segment across the board, many dapps found to be struggling. But Steemhunt stood tall in Steem ecosystem. The user activity, consistency of Steemhunt platform all throughout the season (bull & bear) is a testimony of its sustainability.

The other parameters like user interface, support, easy to post hunts also matter. In those parameters also Steemhunt has delivered adequate result. The back office staff, constant development have also made the Steemhunt platform as a professional product hunt platform powered with a blockchain technology. The activities are also on a higher side and it is always considered as a very active dapp in the stateofthedapps.com. In Steem ecosystem it is really the number one dapp.

It does not require for a user to have special skill or geek level knowledge to become a hunter. That means any common average internet user can take part in this ecosystem and even if he is not a seasoned hunter, with persistent effort he can become a talented hunter with the passage of time and can earn consistent reward on daily basis. As far as I am concerned, many people have earned a living through Steemhunt rewards in past.

I have evaluated Steemhunt based upon various parameters as shown below and I would like to give a 4.8 star rating out 5 star to Steemhunt.

Conclusion

There is no doubt that hunting cool & innovative product and listing them in to the digital library on daily basis can open up enormous potential in the blockchain space. While the world is looking forward to decentralization, it is needed to ensure a hunting platform to fill the void of hunting space in blockchain realm. It has a great potential to create huge market place in e-commerce field. The product makers can organize their campaign in a transparent way. The hunters/early-adopters and product makers can be bridged up with a platform like Steemhunt.

The Hunt platform started its journey with Steemhunt and now scaling into Reviewhunt and Ideahunt to cater more specific use-cases. As it has survived very well all through the difficult time in 2018, its existence and the model has already earned a reputation. The Steemhunt platfrom has ushered the era of product hunting in blockchain space and it is an established economy in Steem blockchain which has added value. It has the potential to make the social blogging & Steem blockchain ubiquitous.

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References

• Steemhunt Website
• Steemhunt Github
• Steemhunt WhitePaper
• Steemhunt Posting Guidelines
• Steemhunt Discord

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Images & Logos have been taken from the official website of Steemhunt. The evaluation chart, graphical analysis are prepared by me.

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