Phoenix Prime update: Proof of Burn++ (PoB++) and Visibility as a Service (VAAS)

TL;DR: Phoenix Prime already demonstrated Proof-of-Burn++ as a game, awarding badges for winning burn auctions on blocks with special numbers (primes, full houses, and so on). Now it also does Visibility as a Service (VAAS): burn STEEM or SBD and you don't just get a badge, you get your posts and custom messages broadcast to everyone using the app.

Last night, Phoenix Prime was updated to integrate these two separate utility cases for STEEM and SBD token usage.

A single burn transaction can now compete for PoB++ benefits while simultaneously purchasing visibility through VAAS.

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Phoenix Prime and BurnMaxxing

As you may recall, Phoenix Prime is a new program that my AI buddies and I developed to demonstrate the Proof of Burn++ (PoB++) concept (source, demo). PoB++ was first described in the post, Proof of Burn++: Turning Every Block into a Bidding War.

PoB++ is better than just tracking token burning because it adds a second dimension to token burning. It rewards the person who burns the most STEEM or SBD in a block. With this concept, developers can turn every block into a self-contained auction for virtual assets of any type the developers can imagine.

Phoenix Prime is the first demo of this concept. It awards badges to whichever account burns the most tokens in a block, with the badge determined by that block number's numeric characteristics. For example, you can get different scoring if you win the BurnMaxxer title in a block that has a prime number for its block number, or one that has each of the digits from 0 through 9.

Because PoB++ rewards historical burn activity, burn transactions made today can generate entirely new benefits when future applications launch.

For example, my voting bot is promoting a handful of posts from the @remlaps2 account every day in order to keep the /promoted page populated. It has been doing this for months. As a result, the account immediately received many BurnMaxxer titles when Phoenix Prime launched. So did any other Steem account that has burned tokens in the past. Here's a summary of the blocks where @remlaps2 won BurnMaxxer titles in the last 90 days totaling 521 blocks that included 30 prime numbers, 188 full-houses, and even one block with all 9 digits from 0 through 8 (Block #106,324,875).

The nice thing that we can immediately see about PoB++ is that the benefits are additive. Before Phoenix Prime existed, I could promote posts by burning SBD. Now, all of those post promotions get me badges that didn't exist until much more recently. Who knows what benefits my account might receive when future games or applications adopt the concept?

Visibility as a Service (VAAS)

Another concept that I've advanced for a number of years is the concept of Visibility as a Service (VAAS). Post promotion is one form of VAAS, but it's not the only form. As I imagined it some years ago, an account holder can purchase visibility from the blockchain in multiple ways.

With post promotion, we can only buy visibility for our Steem posts. They have to be active (before the payout window), and we can only do it with SBD. The way I imagined VAAS extends this basic concept in multiple ways:

1. Promote posts that are active and also posts that already passed their payout windows.
2. Gain visibility burning either STEEM or SBD, not just SBD.
3. Broadcast a custom message to every user of the application.

I introduced this concept years ago with the Java Steemometer application (pronounced like "speedometer", "odometer" or "thermometer"). Recently, I was able to use LLMs to port that Java code to JavaScript (source, demo).

The app reports blockchain statistics in one section, and in another section it shows a VAAS display based on blockchain burn activity. It looks like the image to the right.

PoB++ and VAAS

Last night, Cline and I combined the two by adding a Visibility as a Service (VAAS) module to the search page and leaderboard for Phoenix Prime.

Here's what that looks like on the search page.

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As with the original design in Steemometer, here's what will appear in the VAAS section:

1. Posts with beneficiary settings for @null.
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2. "Promoted" posts.
   • Unlike the /promoted feed, this includes promotion with both STEEM and SBD, and it also includes posts from the past or present. Any transfer to @null with a Steem link in the memo field gets included.
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3. Broadcast/vanity messages - where the contents of the text memos from transfers to @null will be displayed.
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And of course, the leaderboard looks similar.

So now, in addition to viewing badges and leaderboards, Steem account holders can also get additional visibility in the Phoenix Prime app by burning STEEM or SBD. This visibility can include links to current or historical Steem posts or just custom "broadcast messages" that they want to send to all app users.

What next?

It seems like the next logical step would be to separate VAAS from the particular application and modularize it so that anyone can use it in a way that matches their own JavaScript application's design theme. Also, developers can reimagine VAAS for their own apps, too!

Another important next step is for developers to find new ways to make use of PoB++. Right now, anyone can win the block auction, almost at will, for a mere 0.001 STEEM or 0.001 SBD. The more uses that it gets, the harder it should be to win that auction.

To me, these two concepts, PoB++ and VAAS, seem like the strongest candidates to give actual utility value to Steem tokens. (Perhaps with the exception of SVM, which may be a stronger candidate.)

Please visit Phoenix Prime and let me know what you think!

Thank you for your attention!