From SteemVerify to X Blue Checks: Could Burn-to-Verify Work?

Steem once had account "verification"

Back in Steem's early days, there was the @steemverify service. If a steemizen paid them some amount, they would issue a "verified" badge for the steemizen's account, and that badge could be placed in the author's posts to indicate that they were a verified author. I'm not sure, but I believe the amount was 1 SBD for a lifetime badge.

To be honest, I never really got the point of those badges (and I still don't). I never subscribed to the service, and I'm not sure what, exactly, the service was verifying. Further, (IIRC) the fee was not high enough to provide much friction against bots masquerading as people. I have no idea who the implementer was, but ultimately the service did not survive.

A comparison to Twitter

I suppose SteemVerify was probably modeled after Twitter's "blue check" program where blue checkmarks were issued for celebrities and political figures to guard against account impersonation. To the best of my recollection, however, SteemVerify didn't (and couldn't) actually verify any identity. Their verification amounted to "This account paid us an SBD", which added no value for the broader community and could be verified on the blockchain, anyway.

Fast forward to today. Twitter is now calling itself X, and it has revamped its blue-check program. Today, anyone can get a blue-check and become a "verified" user by sending $8 per month to X (or less under periodically offered discount programs). Crucially, however, this so-called verification has at least four aspects that the old @steemverify program missed.

1. Creators who pay the fee get additional reach in exchange for their payment. No fee paid = near-zero reach.
2. The fee is high enough to provide real friction against bots & spam posting. This provides value for the community at large.
3. Content consumers who pay the fee get a reduction in advertising content that's pushed into their feed.
4. The blue check is visible everywhere on the platform, not buried in the footer of a blog post.

From what I can see, this form of account "verification" seems to work better than previous attempts from Twitter or SteemVerify.

Can Steem learn from Twitter (X)?

So, my question is this, can the Steem community reimagine a Steem verification service in a way that creates utility and a sink for the tokens in the Steem ecosystem? We build verification mechanisms on top of token-burning, and connect them to one or more of the various Steem front-ends.

Of course, a SteemVerify style verification badge could be created on a simple website using logic that wouldn't be much different than the animalCards Portfolio Search that I already created. But, let's also look at the four aspects of X's program:

Additional reach

ok, so I've been harping on Visibility as a Service (VAAS) forever, and there is a reason for that. Aside from rewards, I think "reach" is the main thing that the Steem blockchain has to offer for content creators (and so far, we're still not very good at it). Creators will pay for reach.

If the community is not ruthlessly working to provide reach to content creators who bring value, the only thing left is rewards. And that's why we have delegation bots that control ~37% of powered-up SP and distribute rewards to vacuous posts. Without providing reach, Steem is stuck.

So, front ends could use something like the blue-check (or a little flame icon) to attract eyeballs, or they could provide certain views and spam-free pages that are only available for verified accounts.

IMO, each web site operator should figure out the specific mechanisms for their own site, and the best solutions should face-off in a competitive landscape.

Friction against bots & spam

The program would need to cost enough that someone with 1000 accounts or 10,000 won't be able to sustain a spam campaign using verified accounts.

To me, this implies recurring burn requirements and expiration dates for whatever benefits the service provides. Burn amounts would need regular adjustments in order to accommodate changing market prices and usage levels.

Reduced advertising

I'm not aware of any substantial advertising in the Steem ecosystem, so I'm not sure how relevant this is, but it's something to be aware of. The obvious implementation is for some front-end to go ahead and implement advertising with a provision to reduce or eliminate ad placement for logged in accounts who meet the burn requirements.

If Steem has account holders who are here for the reading and voting, they'll only participate in a verification program if the front-end offers something of benefit for them, too. Reach, alone, will not do it.

Blue-check visibility

An implementation of this also seems obvious, the front-end just publishes some sort of little "burn icon" next to posts, comments and profile icons of the accounts who meet the burn requirements.

Conclusion

We are almost 11 years into the Steem journey, and people are still thinking of the blockchain in terms of web 2.0. Post content -> get upvotes. So much more is possible.

In this post, we see how the blockchain's burn mechanism can be used to create token utility by turning token burning into a decentralized account "verification" service, in the style of X's blue-check mechanism.

With just a transfer to @null, there's no need for a committee or verification service provider - just a front-end that's willing to check it and deliver benefits to participants.

Thoughts?