What's up Crypto Soldiers?
Lunyr has just recently released their open Beta for public use, and I'm going to be reviewing it's current form and giving it some tips for future use.
As a full disclaimer I do hold some Lunyr coin so do keep in mind if the cost of Lunyr goes up I will benefit. However I would like to make it clear that I will make this article as unbiased as possible and I have not been paid by Lunyr for this content. It is your choice whether to carry on reading.
What is Lunyr?
Lunyr, put simply, is trying to be the wikipedia of the blockchain. An encyclopedia and academic knowledge base, all powered by decentralised blockchain technology. It is not quite clear yet whether in the future Lunyr will simply be an encyclopedia, and looked at sceptically by the academic community, or whether the academics will embrace it. If they do embrace it then it certainly will have a large edge over wikipedia (as as a biochemistry student wikipedia is avoided at all costs).
The Blockchain offers several benefits that normal websites do not. First of all it means that it is censorship resistant, and globally accessible. So no governments and companies should technically be able to tamper with it. Its always available and free, and run by the community. You are also incentivised to post content and review articles, being rewarded with the LUN token.
How it works?
You write an article and pay GAS to post it, currently around $1.38 worth. This is then reviewed (using GAS currently worth around $1.67) by people. If the article gets 2 positive reviews it is accepted, the writer gets 5 honour points and 5 contribution points. The reviewer gets 3 of each if they voted with the majority, and -1 if they did not. The honour points are supposed to represent how reliable someone on the website is, and the contribution points can be transferred to LUN.
This system is a good system as you must spend money to post and therefore it should remove any articles that are worthless and of a bad standard. However the fact that only two reviews are needed may need updating as the website gets bigger. For anyone who's been in science 2 peer reviews are very little, and this site doesn't guarantee that the reviewer will be a peer. This could be a problem especially with academic articles. It does seem like at the minute people are just up-voting articles in order to get the cryptocurrency.
The guidelines are standard academic writing guidelines for the most part, such as impartiality, neutral pronouns and no opinions. However they do state that the article must be 2500 words in length, which is very lengthy, and it's already being ignored, as seen with the FOMO article earlier.
The writing app is pretty good, with the ability to add pics, videos and titles to your work, and bookmark sections in the side. It would be nice to have subtitles on top of titles and a table function as well.
The Aesthetic
Although this isn't the most important field when it comes to websites of this nature, a good aesthetic does have mainstream appeal. Lunyr does look very clean and simple, almost too simple, and has a nice modern aesthetic. If you compare that to wikipedia then there is no competition. However do people really care about an aesthetic with a website like this? I don't think it's a huge deal.
[note I cut the right hand side off the post to remove my profile name]
Navigation
Navigation on a website like this is key. Unfortunately at the minute Lunyr haven't added category filters, or filters in general to the search bar. This needs to be added if the site is to grow. It will simply be too hard to navigate if there are thousands of articles on there. There is a featured categories and articles section, but thats no sub for a good navigation system. I hope they'll add this in the future.
Article Quality
The article quality ranges from short, uninspiring, definitions of HODL etc, to long, comprehensive medical articles. Of course, at the minute most articles are to do with cryptocurrency, but most seem of a good quality, with appropriate references.
Overall
Lunyr is a good, clean and interesting take on the encyclopedia model. I believe it's monetary incentive, as well as paradoxically the barrier, will bring good content to the platform and hopefully fill it out with quality. It remains to be seen whether it will remain an encyclopedia or be picked up with academics looking to make some good money on the platform. If they can initially get Blockchain researchers, computer science graduates onto the platform then maybe the rest will follow. As of now we can't know.
Future Improvements
The biggest improvement needed is with the navigation. If they can add filters and maybe a good old fashioned random button (who doesn't like that) then it will be greatly improved!
I would also like to see, as the website scales up, a larger number of approvals needed for articles, as two is pretty tiny, especially when they're not proper peer reviews.
In terms of actually writing the articles, it would be good to
That's all for today folks. Make sure you follow for more awesome articles and videos!
Thank you for reading :D
Mission Crypto Over and Out.
Great review! You didn't mention in your review however that the gas fees are all reimbursed weekly during the beta, so technically it's free.
Thanks a lot! Ah yeah I missed that :D
Thats awesome, even better then!