Ranking The Top Ten Blockchain Social Media Platforms
I will be listing my top 10 platforms and ranking them across several qualities. I will be rating them between 1-5, 1 being the worst and 5 the best. I will provide a short blurb as to why I’ve ranked it as such and help quantify the order of the platforms.
1. Minds
2. Publish0x
3. Steem
4. Uptrennd
5. Sapien
6. Trybe
7. BitChute
8. Hyperspace
9. BitTube
10. DLive
For each of these platforms I will give the total ranking and brief breakdown on the individual rankings of the each the 14 categories: feature set, blockchain integration, cryptocurrency monetization, ease of use, mobile application, design and layout, community, centralized versus decentralized, fully operational, troubleshooting, user favorability, promotion and advertising, and website load time.
Before I dive in, given no platform comes close to being perfect I would like to explain what I would view as a 1 and what I’d view as a 5 in each category.
Feature Set
Their feature set refers to the comprehensive coverage of their features. This could be anything from groups, to messengers, chatbots, and then the basics you’d expect like publishing, channels, etc. A 1 would mean the site essentially is too beta to function properly, a 3 would mean the site has enough features to function, but may not have all the extras, and a 5 would mean they have every feature you can think of plus more.
Blockchain Integration
Blockchain integration refers to how integrated with a blockchain the platform is. Most platforms are only partially integrated which would land them with a 3, a 1 would mean they are not using the blockchain at all, and a 5 would mean the platform entirely runs on the blockchain
Cryptocurrency monetization
This refers to whether you can earn cryptocurrency and how their monetization model works for the platform. A 1 has no cryptocurrency monetization, a 3 is where it has and it works decently, and a 5 is a perfect model that is seamless and easy to earn without little to no resistant or tediousness.
Profitability
This is like the above category, but more specifically refers to how much money can you make off the monetization of the platform. A 1 would coincide with there being no crypto monetization, a 3 would mean it’s possible to earn profit, but it may be challenging or worth very little, and a 5 would be a very valuable coin that can help you earn a living wage.
Ease Of Use
This refers to how easy and intuitive the platform is. This mostly refers to navigation, but also encompasses all relating concepts and aspects to the question: “how easy is the platform to use?”. A 1 might be an extremely clunky and hard to use platform, a 3 would be a moderate platform, and a 5 would be a perfect platform with amazing navigation and is simply easy to use.
Mobile Application
This is straightforward. A 1 means you don’t have a mobile application. A 3 means you might have one, but it’s made by a third party and or not very well designed. A 5 means you have an application, it’s built by your platform, it works well and looks just as great as the desktop version with no loss of features.
Design and Layout
How well is their platform designed? Is it modern and sleek or clunky and outdated? A 1 would be an un-intuitive design that lacks the basics, is challenging to navigate, and looks awful. A 5 would be an intuitive and easy to navigate design with everything covered and it looks awesome.
Community
This is more subjective relating to how friendly the community is, how interactive they are, how involved they are, and their general attitude based on my experiences and observations of the platform as it is currently. A 1 would be a negative environment, inactive, uninvolved, with a very unwelcoming attitude. A 5 would super friendly, active, involved one with a great attitude.
Centralized / Decentralized
This is a trickier one because many platforms need to start off much more centralized and work their way to decentralization, so this is more relative to the time range in which this review was done. A 1 would mean the platform is fully centralization, you need approvals for posts, anyone can remove you at any time without terms of service violations, and you have virtually no control or say in your own use of the platform and your contributions to it and is run by a small group of people who are biased. A 5 would mean the platform is fully decentralized, you cannot be removed at all, it’s community run, and unbiased.
Fully Operational
This relates simply to whether the platform is fully operational. Does it go down? Are all the base features working correctly? Is the site fully usable and operational? A 1 would mean it regularly goes down and or isn’t finished and way too beta. A 5 would mean the platform rarely ever has issues and is fully complete and working smoothly.
Troubleshooting
This relates to how often bugs appear, how quickly they are fixed, and how well the support process is managed and handled. A 1 would mean there are bugs, they aren’t fixed, and there is no support system at all. A 5 would mean there are almost never bugs, they are handled quickly, and they have an amazing support system.
User Favorability
This is how a user is favored over the influence of investors, advertisers, or anyone that isn’t a consumer on the platform and the most affected by any changes. A 1 would mean that the platform is built entirely to favor anyone but the user whereas a 5 means the user is the champion and held to a high regard.
Website Load time
A 1 would mean they are very slow and have poor performance whereas a 5 would be close to the speed and reliability of Twitter which has one of the best website performance and load times results.
Promotion & Advertising
A 1 would mean they have no promotion or advertising means at all for users but serve ads to you externally. A 2 would mean they either have something very basic or they at least don’t advertise to you. This would gradually increase with better systems all the way to 5 which would be a perfect system built for the user and ads aren’t intrusive or invasive which there is no reference to currently.
Minds
Minds easily has the most robust feature set, the most developed mobile application, it’s the fastest with the most ease of use and continues to make strides of improvement. Some of the biggest gripes about Minds are user favorability, troubleshooting, cryptocurrency monetization, and blockchain integration.
They are pushing to integrate more with the blockchain, so I’m not too concerned there, but for the profitability of Minds tokens… well, there is little. It’s one of the lowest valued and least flexible tokens for trading and making a profit on in the blockchain social space. Though it is supposed to be worth $0.15, I saw it has low value because most people don’t want to buy it given, they cannot sell afterward, and boosts have been fairly inconsistent and have had issues in the past month. Keep in mind, this is still much further along than most platforms. I ranked them 2/5 given you can’t really make much money off Minds, but you do somewhat have the option through rewards, selling directly, and the one lightly used an unlisted exchange. There is one exchange, ForkDelta, that allows you to trade Minds tokens on an unlisted URL, but it’s hardly used and largely controlled by a few big token holders.
In regard to troubleshooting and user favorability, every issue I’ve had or seen on Minds isn’t just an issue in general, it’s one that usually heavily negatively impacts the users whether it’s wasting their tokens on ineffective boosts, or editing your post and it deleting the majority of your content. They have amazing help and support group and are great with troubleshooting, but some issues take longer to fix than others. Boosting has gotten a lot better since last month when hardly any boosts were working, but the issue with your content disappearing is still just as much of an issue. I hate to sound like I’m bashing my favorite platform, but for the platforms, I love the most, I have the most criticisms for because I use the platform so much more and want to see everything fixed and optimized because I know it has the potential to be 5/5 in all categories. Their mobile application is one of the best, but it loses all the features and benefits of boosting.
All this being said, Minds still takes the #1 position. If you are looking for a great social media alternative, this is it. It likely won’t earn you any money, but you can spend your tokens on boosting which I’ve found to be amazing and find creative ways to spend them with other users. Their advertising model works very well, and you can even spend 20 tokens a month to have ads removed. The great part is if you use the platform enough, earning 20 tokens a month shouldn’t be too hard, otherwise it equates to a few dollars a month. For promotion, you can spend 1 token per 1000 views as a boost for your content and it had some issues last month but seems to be working great again achieving an amazing ROI.
Total Ranking - 54/70
Feature Set – 5/5
Blockchain Integration 3/5
Cryptocurrency monetization 3/5
Profitability - 2/5
Ease Of Use – 5/5
Mobile Application - 4/5
Design and Layout – 5/5
Community – 4/5
Centralized / Decentralized – 3/5
Fully Operational – 5/5
Troubleshooting – 4/5
User Favorability – 3/5
Website Load time – 4/5
Promotion & Advertising – 4/5
I also interviewed the cofounder and CEO Bill Ottman as well which you can check out below
Publish0x
Publish0x is still very new so a lot of the things that it didn’t score highly on are on the way and are under development. I still think that Publish0x has the best monetization model and the most profitability for any user that is very fair and creates equal opportunities for everyone. When compared with Steem people may advocate that Steem is worth wildly more than cryptocurrency you’ll earn on Publish0x, but because it’s crypto agnostic meaning they don’t have their own coin or bias, they have much more flexibility.
On Publish0x it’s also much easier to earn at any level, new or established. Though it ties with Steem pointwise, with basic improvements adding the rest of their features, creating a mobile application, and setting up troubleshooting support, they will be very far ahead. I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt given they are still extremely new, but they have all the potential. The biggest gripes would be that they are currently fairly centralized in that if someone was censored you wouldn’t even notice anyway, it’s not easy to find help and support for troubleshooting or reporting bugs, but you can contact [email protected] or use their Telegram group: http://t.me/publish0x. Currently, there’s no mobile application, and they haven’t gotten their notifications and comments fully working yet. As they evolve and hopefully integrate more with the blockchain, focus more on distribution and decentralization, develop their feature set, release a mobile application, and build out their help and support, they will likely lead this industry.
Again, it sounds like I’m being critical, but realistically they are still so new and it’s reasonable as to why these features aren’t released yet in their beta state. I believe they will eventually be the best platform if they can pull off everything that they’ve set out to achieve and am keen to see that to fruition. These are some of their recent updates: https://www.publish0x.com/publish0x-official-blog/publish0x-may-update-xrynno.
I will eventually be doing an interview with their founder, so be on the lookout for that!
Total Ranking – 49/70
Feature Set – 3/5
Blockchain Integration - 2/5
Cryptocurrency monetization - 4/5
Profitability - 4/5
Ease Of Use - 3/5
Mobile Application - 1/5
Design and Layout – 4/5
Community – 4/5
Centralized / Decentralized 3/5
Fully Operational 5/5
Troubleshooting – 3/5
User Favorability – 4/5
Website Load time – 4/5
Promotion & Advertising – 3/5
Steem
Steem is a very interesting platform indeed. It’s a blockchain network with many decentralized applications built on top of it, most prominently, Steemit and DTube. I believe it is one of the most profitable platforms, but that concept collides with the fact that it is very challenging for new users to make money. Their currency is by far worth the most given it’s been around the longest, but it’s very hard for new users to start earning without investing money into Steem for boosting or staking their investment. Their features are pretty expansion given the number of platforms they have, though there are some that fall short like groups, messenger, and navigating all their dapps to find what you want can be confusing and cumbersome.
They by far have the best integration with blockchain given they have just about everything existing on the blockchain and are the best example of a true blockchain social media platform rather than just a blockchain integrated social media platform. Their monetization model is also an amazing one allowing you to earn for curation, creation, and even just for holding stake and or delegating it to those who will pay out dividends. I give it a three for ease of use because while there are easy platforms that are more intuitive depending on what you want like Steepshot for Instagram or DTube for YouTube, or most notably their first interface Steemit. The issue aside from people conflating the blockchain Steem and the platform Steemit is that Steemit is very challenging to get started with. Given its so decentralized no one is helping you get started or recover your password amongst other things. Though there is a learning curve, a true blockchain social platform advocate may tell you that Steem is the only blockchain that supports social media on the blockchain whereas all others are only partially integrated. They don’t have an official mobile application, but they have many third-party ones that work well. Their design and layout vary depending on the platform you’re using but Steemit is a bit challenging for newer users and lacks the layout obvious enough to help with navigation.
Steem also provides the infrastructure of an in-depth financial model built into it. The community is good and helpful when you start to poke around on the platform and I’ve rarely ever had issues on it. The Steem community is also the biggest by far. I’ve also been on the Steem network the longest for one and a half years now. The platform is extremely decentralized and does an amazing job of letting the community make decisions though it falls short of being perfect given a large staked investment affords you too much power and a small number of users control a lot of Steem. That is bound to happen with almost any proof of stake platform realistically with an unlimited stake capacity especially for early adopters, but it over rewards that with profound power and influence.
The biggest issue on Steem is likely to fall to their bid bots, which make it hard for new users as users with more Steem can afford to boost their posts with bid bots and given their content is quality, they are likely to earn back their investment in the boost. So, for established content creators this is a great way to fight through the noise and invest in your content that you believe in, but for new users or those not willing to invest, it’s a huge challenge that many have given up trying to overcome. The site is fully operational and rarely ever has had issues or been inaccessible. It’s not the fastest but given its use of the blockchain and the amount of decentralization, it’s very reasonable. They do lack troubleshooting support given they are so decentralized, but community members can help you though it’s not easy finding support groups, etc. User favorability isn’t the best given the bid bots and highly staked users reign supreme, but Steem also provides you a lot of security with their censorship resistant model.
At the end of the day, if you’re a serious content creator or crypto enthusiast, this is probably the best place to earn the most money, but for the average person, it may be a challenge. I may be doing some interviews with some executives from Steemit soon so be on the lookout for that!
Total Ranking – 49/70
Feature Set – 3/5
Blockchain Integration - 5/5
Cryptocurrency monetization - 5/5
Profitability - 4/5
Ease Of Use - 3/5
Mobile Application - 3/5
Design and Layout – 3/5
Community – 4/5
Centralized / Decentralized 4/5
Fully Operational 5/5
Troubleshooting – 2/5
User Favorability – 3/5
Website Load time – 3/5
Promotion & Advertising – 3/5
Uptrennd
Uptrennd is still in its early stages so I don’t want to go too hard on it because it has huge potential but isn’t quite there yet. They are probably one of the slower sites, you can’t withdraw their currency yet, they’re not really listed on exchanges yet, and it’s centralized for now. As they finish the basic features of the site, get the coin listed and trading, and decentralize more and more over the next 3 years, their platform will bloom and succeed if it comes to fruition the way they’ve planned it to. So, they got a low rating for blockchain use given it’s just for their crypto, and it’s not profitable yet either. They don’t have a mobile application and the site isn’t perfect, but their community is amazing, their UI is great, and their feature set is well thought out. I do have faith they will be able to create something awesome, it’s just in the works right now.
You can find a lot of information on them here: https://www.uptrennd.com/how-it-works
Also, this is an image they’ve included on their site to compare how they differ from Minds and Steemit though I wouldn’t say that Steemit isn’t empowering free speech or that it isn’t highly profitable.
Total Ranking - 37/70
Feature Set - 4/5
Blockchain Integration - 2/5
Cryptocurrency monetization - 3/5
Profitability - 1/5
Ease Of Use - 3/5
Mobile Application - 1/5
Design and Layout - 4/5
Community - 4/5
Centralized / Decentralized - 2/5
Fully Operational - 3/5
Troubleshooting – 3/5
User Favorability – 3/5
Website Load time – 2/5
Promotion & Advertising – 4/5
You can check out a video of me interviewing the founder Jeff Kirdeikis here:
I have much less to say on the platforms outside of the top 4 simply because they aren’t the greatest. Yes, they are in the top 10, but only because I did a top 10 and because many of you will use these platforms and I’d like to give my critical take on them. Everything onward will receive much lower rankings or even if they have a decent design or what have you, they fail in many places. If by some fluke they score higher on several categories and have a high overall rating, the really important factors are what determines their order
Sapien
Made massive improvements to their design and UI, but still is a bit clunky making posts and the community is still small and unengaged. The top posts on the platform had only between 50-100 engagements and the site was so slow that it timed out at one point. Every time I go on the UI seems better and I’m always impressed with their consistent improvements. Their community has slightly improved since my last review, but not really by much. Sapien is like Trybe, I always keep coming back hoping it will have improved to the point where I could start recommending it and am left unimpressed and unsurprised. My investment in their crypto was a bad investment, to say the least. Ironically it still makes the top 10 because again past the first few it diminishes fast.
Total Ranking - 32/70
Feature Set – 3/5
Blockchain Integration 3/5
Cryptocurrency monetization 3/5
Profitability – 2/5
Ease Of Use 2/5
Mobile Application 1/5
Design and Layout 4/5
Community 2/5
Centralized / Decentralized 3/5
Fully Operational 2/5
Troubleshooting – 1/5
User Favorability – 2/5
Website Load time – 2/5
Promotion & Advertising – 2/5
Trybe
Oh Trybe, I wanted this to be good and it had potential but, in my opinion, was a flop and yet it’s number 5. People don’t interact much and only really interact on blogs if they do. It’s also slow and clunky. Although the UI has greatly improved, it was insanely challenging to setup with Trybe and all the previous issue are still there. I spent so long trying to get Scatter working so I could use my Trybe and stake it – After more than a week and talking with 4 different support staff at Trybe and EOS, it finally worked. You may have a ridiculous amount of trouble getting started, but after that, it’s smooth sailing. They do have moderators that approve your posts now, but the staff members say they will only do this during its early stages and eventually decentralize more though it’s been years and no change.
I appreciate the wall posts and allowing you to use slideshows etc. like you would find on LinkedIn. There can be something to find after overcoming the initial challenge and or you don’t care about earning Trybe and just want to use this as a social platform. Coming back to the platform it does seem like the community is back in a small way, but as I said, all the issues are otherwise still there. I think everyone is back because there was an update to the UI which looks great, but it’s still slow, awkward, and inconvenient, and worst of all I couldn’t get my earned Trybe to sell and get out due to my awful Scatter account and you can only withdraw up to 1000 a day for some reason.
Total Ranking - 30/70
Feature Set - 2/5
Blockchain Integration - 3/5
Cryptocurrency monetization - 3/5
Profitability – 2/5
Ease Of Use - 2/5
Mobile Application - 1/5
Design and Layout - 3/5
Community - 2/5
Centralized / Decentralized - 2/5
Fully Operational - 2/5
Troubleshooting – 2/5
User Favorability – 2/5
Website Load time – 2/5
Promotion & Advertising – 2/5
BitChute
This is essentially a worse version of DTube (Steem) with no potential to earn cryptocurrency. It’s slow, clunky, and uses Disquis for comments which works poorly and is pro-censorship. They don’t really use blockchain technology or cryptocurrency, but rather they let you donate crypto to creators which is basic. Their features are decent, their ease of use is good enough and their site is operational, but it’s not the fastest and it’s a bit clunky. There also isn’t much of a community on this platform. They say they are for the freedom of expression, but I don’t see anything on how they are decentralized other than that they say their platform is peer to peer and they use similar technology to the blockchain.
Total Ranking - 30/70
Feature Set - 2/5
Blockchain Integration - 1/5
Cryptocurrency monetization 1/5
Profitability – 1/5
Ease Of Use 3/5
Mobile Application 1/5
Design and Layout 2/5
Community 2/5
Centralized / Decentralized 4/5
Fully Operational 3/5
Troubleshooting – 2/5
User Favorability – 3/5
Website Load time – 2/5
Promotion & Advertising – 2/5
Hyperspace
Hyperspace is very similar to Trybe and has a much better UI and design than Trybe but fails in all the ways Trybe does and more, hence being number 9. It has many of the same gripes such as approvals for posts and a not so active community. It also only lets you earn free $AMPs if you verify with your phone and it must be from a select few countries that don’t include Canada. Also because of that I’m blocked from the full experience of the website and can’t withdraw AMPs either so there is no profitability unless that works for you. They only have a small selection of categories. They do utilize the blockchain for their cryptocurrency currently worth about $0.02 but that is all. They claim their post live on a decentralized cloud that is uncensorable but have community moderators approve every post manually so that is a little contradictory. I do like that their communities are governed by smart contracts and are under the control of the community, but I don’t see that in practice again with biased moderation and lack of governance control for the user in the actual execution and use of the platform.
Total Ranking - 30/70
Feature Set - 2/5
Blockchain Integration – 2/5
Cryptocurrency monetization – 2/5
Profitability – 2/5
Ease Of Use – 2/5
Mobile Application – 1/5
Design and Layout – 4/5
Community – 2/5
Centralized / Decentralized – 2/5
Fully Operational – 2/5
Troubleshooting – 2/5
User Favorability – 2/5
Website Load time – 3/5
Promotion & Advertising – 2/5
BitTube
https://bit.tube/
BitTube uses $TUBE which is worth about $0.04 last I checked which is impressive given there is such a tiny userbase on there who are posting videos. Its coin is a Monero fork. I’m not totally sure how the regular platforms incorporate earning them, but from my understanding is that it works similarly to the Brave browser and you can donate your earned coins from ads you allow, etc. to creators or eventually just withdraw them for yourself. Its design and UI is mediocre and half of the content is ripped off. Their top videos get less than 1000 views. I’d say it’s a great attempt and maybe has a chance to improve, but it’s doubtful.
Total Ranking - 27/70
Feature Set – 2/5
Blockchain Integration - 2/5
Cryptocurrency monetization - 2/5
Profitability – 2/5
Ease Of Use – 2/5
Mobile Application - 1/5
Design and Layout – 2/5
Community – 1/5
Centralized / Decentralized – 3/5
Fully Operational – 2/5
Troubleshooting – 2/5
User Favorability – 2/5
Website Load time – 2/5
Promotion & Advertising – 2/5
DLive
DLive is last because it’s hardly a blockchain streaming platform, but it has the potential to be one, though if they stay on Lino, it will be a private, centralized, trashy attempt at a social blockchain integrated platform. This uses the Lino network and it's not an actual blockchain network. I want to include them and give them the chance to improve and build, but as of now they solely hand out points that you redeem through PayPal and there is no blockchain or crypto aspect at all. Yes, you can stake Lino points, but that doesn't make it a blockchain network. It was originally on the Steem blockchain competing with DTube and has since moved off and become more independent. I wouldn't give a primary recommendation because if you were going to live stream and wanted a blockchain alternative, this isn't it however it may be something you'd like to use if you aren't using Steem or want to explore more options. It does have some unique feature that you don't have on Twitch but is currently ultimately very similar.
Going through their year-old FAQ they talk about how the blockchain main net was in testing and not launch and that there will be no specific launch date. DLive is a third-party application on Lino so if Lino doesn't follow through, DLive is useless. They also have no white paper or terms of service that I could find on Lino though they do have an overview: https://docsend.com/view/y9qtwb6
The main thing they are pushing is no platform cuts which is good, incentivizing as many actions as possible which is also good, and decentralized ownership which isn't what they are really doing because they can and have banned people for hate speech amongst other things. They claim they aim to prevent centralized decision making. I’ve also already covered this previously here: https://www.minds.com/scottcbusiness/blog/why-dlive-isn-t-what-you-thought-976274417411973120
Total Ranking – 27/70
Feature Set - 3/5
Blockchain Integration – 1/5
Cryptocurrency monetization – 1/5
Profitability – 1/5
Ease Of Use – 3/5
Mobile Application – 2/5
Design and Layout – 3/5
Community – 3/5
Centralized / Decentralized – 1/5
Fully Operational – 2/5
Troubleshooting – 1/5
User Favorability – 1/5
Website Load time – 3/5
Promotion & Advertising – 2/5
Conclusion
I decided to expand more on the website analysis for the main platforms on another article: Taking A Critical Look At The Top Blockchain Platforms, purely focusing on the basic data and not such an in-depth analysis.
So that’s it. If you do decide to sign up on any of these and you already haven’t, please use one of my referral links:
https://www.minds.com/register?referrer=scottcbusiness
https://www.publish0x.com/?a=gl9avjgaG1
https://www.uptrennd.com/signup/MTY1Mg
https://partiko.app/referral/scottcbusiness
Minds, Steem, Uptrennd, and Publish0x all serve different purposes and I’d recommend using all of them. Minds is robust and has everything to some degree, Steem offers high profitability and full blockchain integration, Uptrennd offers a new more gamified approach, and Publish0x is the most user-friendly, offering consistent profitability with an awesome crypto-agnostic model. I also feel that Publish0x you have the most chance to earn money as an average user whereas, on Steem where you can make more, it’s very rare that the average casual creator earns much on Steem but could on Publish0x.
Let me know if you feel I’ve made a mistake, or you disagree with my rankings and I will consider your position and potentially edit it. I’d love to hear from you in the comments below!
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