Pre-Introducing A New Photography Curation Project; Get Some Free Tokens

@revo here. I've been slowly working on a new photography curation concept, and wanted to introduce the idea and to seek any expressions of interest. I was intending to wait until the price of STEEM recovered and we would see an uptick in the amount of posts on the blockchain, but with the renewed interest in curating thanks to PALnet with 50/50 curation (and steem changing to 50/50 soon), I felt the time is nearing to release this project.

The project will be centred around a steem-engine token called PHOTO. The use of the token is mostly intended to "gamify" the curation process, as opposed to being a money making scheme for myself or those involved in the process. Having said that, the intention is for the @photocurate account to offer to buy tokens back on the steem-engine.com exchange. This isn't going to make anyone rich, but will provide a little something if you can manage to earn enough PHOTO.

The intention is for this to be a project for those who love good photography and want to help raise the profile of photographers on the steem blockchain.

How's it going to work?

The mathematics aren't settled and won't be fully settled until I see how the process is being used. But the intention is to have a large inflation pool that goes to holders to make sure there are enough tokens in the system to enable curation to be ongoing. Tokens that make their way back to the @photocurate account will be burnt and taken out of the system. A further faucet will be photography post promotion paid with PHOTO.

Discoverers

Anyone can be a discoverer of good photography. Simply reply with a unique tag to a photography post, and the relevant image will be added to the photocurate website for curation. Discoverers earn PHOTO everytime a curator votes on their discovery. There will be a balance between the amount of images a discoverer discovers and the amount of PHOTO they receive. Each extra discovery (without a curation vote) reduces the amount of PHOTO they will receive. The algorithm will ensure that discoverers won't just flood the system with crap in the hope of getting more PHOTO.

Curators

Intially curators will be selected by me, but once the project is live anyone can become a curator if they possess enough PHOTO tokens. Tokens can be accumulated either by buying them or earning them as a discoverer. Additionally, once you start curating you are in the running for weekly token rewards as one of the best curators for the week.

Initial curators will be airdropped enough tokens to get them started, and they (along with any hodlers) will get a monthly inflation on any tokens they continue to hold. This is to maintain enough tokens in the system to ensure curation can occur. The initial curators will be those who want to curate not for money, but for the love of good photography on the steem blockchain. Hence the intention that they won't just immediately sell their tokens, or hold all of them for years to reap in the inflation bonus.

When curators vote, some tokens will transfer to the discoverer. Due to the algorithm (something like (100 + 10 * votes) / number of discoveries), it's expected that more tokens will be removed from curators than are given to discoverers. Those extra tokens will be burnt by a 'float' account.

Daily and weekly posts will highlight the best images that have been discovered. The photographers will be rewarded with PHOTO tokens and upvotes. There'll also be weekly reward posts for the best discoverers and curators. Liquid rewards earned on these posts will become open buy orders on the steem-engine marketplace, so that those earning the tokens can convert to steem if they wish. Steem Power rewards will remain with the @photocurate account to pay for server costs and to upvote winners.

TL;DR

Discovers find good photos, curators vote on the ones they like and automatically transfer some PHOTO tokens to the discovers. Steem rewards from the @photocurate daily and weekly posts will go to purchasing back PHOTO tokens for STEEM. Those that hold will get a monthly bonus from the inflation pool. The whole process will be 'game-like' in that there will be rewards for the best photographers, discoverers and curators.

What's next?

The whole process will be automated with bots. The code is mostly finished, so the project could be launched fairly soon. However, I would prefer to wait for a little bounce in the steem price (to encourage more photographers to post), but will be watching keenly the interest level in curation generated by that most excellent project - PALnet.

Calling all aspiring curators!

Are you interested in being one of the original airdropped curators? You'll have a strong interest in good photography and hopefully are a steem photographer yourself. Let me know if you are interested either in the comments section, Discord (I'm @revo), or via a steem memo.

Get yourself some free PHOTO

To try and kickstart interest in the project those who vote on this post and also follow @photocurate will get 10 PHOTO. Resteem this post and I'll give you another 10 PHOTO. I'll transfer these after the post payout in a week. Thanks for your interest!