First Introductions
PAL stands for Peace, Abundance, Liberty, and was brought to us by the good folks from @minnowsupport. This post is just a collection of my first impressions of this project, along my path of learning about what some say could be an alternative or even a saving grace to Steem. While I can't say anything about that at the moment, I want to record my experimentation with this new coin and Steem front-end.
For those who like to go straight to the source, check out PALnet's official WhitePaper.
New Front-End to Steem
Okay, so there is a new front-end for blogging on the Steem blockchain. Great. It's not the first time I had the chance to get to know an alternative to SteemIt, so I wasn't more than slightly excited by this news. Out of the previous candidates I looked into, Partiko was more mobile friendly, even though I don't like posting from my phone. Out of all the rest, it was SteemPeak with all its useful features that really convinced me to switch over, and now I couldn't even imagine going back to SteemIt. Thus, writing this post on PALnet feels a lot like taking a few steps backwards. That's fine though, I'm just experimenting.
The other thing I found a bit strange, is that unlike on other front-ends, my previous posts do not show on PALnet. That's a bit of a bummer for those of us who are as vain as me, and love to look at their list of stuff they've scribbled. But okay, I'm just checking things out at the moment.
Claiming the Airdropped Tokens
Still, I want to give it a try, because it promises other advantages, namely its own token PALcoin, available for trading on Steem Engine. The coin drop is still in effect, so if you happen to be having SP (most of us busy on Steem have at least a few of those), you're eligible to claim it on your Steem Engine wallet. This is what I did today, and I was surprised to have gotten 465 PAL coins, worth around $80 at the moment. Whoo-hoo! But now that I've become so suddenly rich, what am I gonna do with it?
Staking and Promoting Posts
Two functions of this new coin I have come across reading up on it, is staking and post promotions. The former is simply another word for powering up. The more coins you have staked, the more powerful is your up-vote on other people's PAL posts. Okay, makes sense. The way I understand, since PAL is still on the Steem blockchain, a post will receive all its SP and SBD rewards, but if it is published on PALnet, and its first tag is also palnet, there is an additional reward in PAL, depending on how many people with staked PAL up-vote your posts. Let's see...
You can stake your PAL on your Steem Engine Wallet, by clicking on the lock on the right.
The other thing is post promotion, which I'm not sure how I feel about. It's buying up-votes, basically, something I've experimented with for a while, but eventually let it go. It wasn't really that lucrative (maybe I should have spent more money on it, - hahaha!), and on the other hand it felt a bit like prostitution: my post doesn't need to be genuinely liked, but as long as I pay, they will give me up-votes. Now, I would still try to produce quality content, but that didn't change the feeling that the up-votes I bought were somehow undeserved.
Since this is an experiment on PALnet, I still intend to try both functions. Out of my 465 PAL coins I want to spend five on promoting this post. As for staking, I think 100 PAL should be enough to experiment and see how it affects my up-votes. Supposedly there is a little promote button on the bottom of my posts. Now I can't see it, but I hope there'll be one once I hit Post.
Hopes, Fears and Expectations
So let's see... after spending five PAL, or 1.07% of my hard earned PAL coins, the least I can expect is to get that much PAL as a pay-out, hopefully more. Of course, given the complexity of the cryptosphere, I'd be a fool to actually hope for this. In fact, I think it's much healthier to expect less, if anything at all. Still, doing this experiment is probably way wiser than not doing anything. The worst that can happen is I spend all my PAL without getting much out of it. But hey, I haven't payed anything for it either, right?
Sure, you could point out that I could follow the price fluctuations and trade the coin on Steem Engine... But looking at the current that sounds even less promising for me.
For now, I expect this post to appear on my PALnet blog, as well as on SteemIt, Partiko, SteemPeak, etc. I hope there will be some pay-out (I've always gotten a few drops of SP and SBD), most interestingly in PAL on my Steem Engine Wallet. I'm going to give out up-votes on PALnet with my stake of 100 PAL, and I hope this will have a decent (or at least some) result. In other words, I hope the post promotion and palnet tag will have their desired effects.
In any case, I'm excited that @minnowsupport has brought out this project, and if it turns out to be still as interesting in a week, when my first pay-out is due, I may even get back to delegating some SP to them. Until then, cheers to all who've read this, especially you leave an up-vote!