Cryptonews aggregators for people in a hurry - Berminal issue

Berminal and underlying protocol (The Berm)

Hello dear reader, and welcome to I guess (yet) another write-up about Berm (and Berminal itself), the crypto + political + financial news warehouse website (as well as a mobile app) that operates on decentralized blockchain powered protocol.

The natural question is “why”? Actually, it’s two “why’s”:

1. Why Berminal was created?
   This question will be answered in an article a bit later, to its fullest (I am skipping obvious “to make more money by making the world a greater place”)
2. As for “why am I writing this?”
   I am taking part in a competition of a sort and picked the “write a review” task because there are no good ones about BERM guys. Usual article I read about Berminal tends to miss the point of the Berminal, then repeat some of the well-known facts from other reviews, and post a step-by-step description of the app\website GUI and functionality. I will try to refrain from this practice.

However if you eager for some basic info and lack information on what is a “crypto news aggregator terminal” — I recommend visiting the source, official Berminal blog here https://hackernoon.com/introducing-berminal-the-crypto-news-platform-83c20d608013

With the second “why” being addressed, let us proceed to the first “why” itself. 
Firstly, a really brief...

ELI5 abstract about BERM\Berminal for people in a hurry

Berminal is a mobile application and, at the same time, a website that can show a lot of useful information.
The bad:
— Berminal website design is not excellent
— Mobile app needs to be optimized, too 
— Berminal has a lot of rivals, who can show a lot of information in the similar layout too.

The good:
— Berminal is free of the subscription model
— The team (coders and marketing guys) seems to know what they are doing and using all the fancy toys (quiz, game, community hub, fast improvements) in their work
— Berminal uses the power of BERM, (which is only logical for crypto news portal) while providing additional goodies:
- it is very easy to earn coins if you post, comment or upvote good content
- posting bad content is not profitable; which means less bad news and more good news
- good content creators are paid more and faster (direct payment from the community to the creator)
- people who hold coins (Community) are in charge of moderating news (so, less fake news)


Now if you have 10 minutes to spare I urge you to read:

More detailed explanation on Berminal\BERM

A typical boring Berminal review (while being usually derivative, and, in fact, boring indeed) also tend to overlook the hugely important fact: Berminal itself is only a “proof of concept”; an alpha-version or just a mere example of what can an application built on top of the BERM protocol do. To understand why is it important let’s compare Berminal to some of the relevant rivals:


Berminal vs CryptoPanic:
Cryptopanic is using subscription-based paid PRO accounts system, while Berminal uses free model. Users can upvote\downvote content in CryptoPanic (as well as in Berminal); and while news is getting rated in both portals, users are not getting rewards\rating capital in CryptoPanic.In short, CryptoPanic, while providing news about “Internet of money”, still rely on decades-old approach and can be easily manipulated by an army of bot accounts.
But what about new-age blockchain-based portal like SteemIt? Let’s do:


Berminal vs SteemIt:
SteemIt got STEEM and SteemDollars (pretty much like BERM and BMP) currency, and users got their rating\value written in the blockchain, so manipulation is a lot harder here than in typical news portal. Both platforms allow good creators to gain more coins for their good work. You can register on SteemIt for free as well as in Berminal. The difference lies in a bit deeper layer.SteemIt site is the main product, which uses blockchain to operate (think of it like of a one-trick pony), while Berminal as a news portal is just one of many examples on what can be achieved with BERM protocol. The protocol was designed to be used for quizzes and polls, for games, social networks, and forums (multi-usage tool).

Fun fact:
Berminal is not related with

lake Bermin, located in Cameroon.

Also no known relationships

whatsoever to BERMuda triangle

or military\gardening berm.

Good vs Bad

All of the above said, as good as it sounds is good only for the possible future usage, right? But what is the current situation with the platform? I will try to summarize current state here: 

The good stuff

The BERM protocol actually works. More than that, it has already live incarnation (the Berminal); this fact alone differentiate it from 99% of other projects, those who have died at their initial ICO or post-ICO period. The growth rate for the site is impressive indeed; Alexa site ranking estimated growth from 0 to 400K visitors in three months after its initial launch, which is pretty impressive (https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/berminal.com)
The BERM approach to its mission is up-to-date and successful as well, with the team using games, chats, airdrops, and quizzes to engage the audience. A good indication for the professionalism of the team behind the project is the fact that ideas stated in Berm whitepaper (yes, there is one - take a look at https://protocol.berminal.com or use direct link https://docsend.com/view/jjvty8q) are being introduced to life on schedule - fast and consistently, morphing what used to be “SteemIt of Google News” into social interactive hub. More than that, crowd-based artificial intelligence is used in Berminal to predict future price fluctuation in cryptocurrencies! Okay, I might be out of line with the “artificial” part, but the other part is true: games users play in Berminal app is actually the “wisdom of the crowd” approach to problem-solving; the same strategy is used in a trial jury or a Wiki-type of knowledge source, or, related to crypto - in a projects like Augur, Gnosis or Cindicator (for more refer here: https://www.worldcryptoindex.com/wisdom-crowds-theory-cryptocurrency)
Voting and coin earning (called “mining” in whitepaper) processes are tied together, and are aimed to create and strengthen solid community, able of casting out obviously fake or biased authors and content out of the system; note that while active and sensible posting, commenting, up\down voting the news, providing reviews and participating in discussions might feel like work — especially when you bear responsibility for your actions, with every step being recorder onto blockchain and available for future review — it can actually make you money (in a form of crypto payments in a form of BERM\BMP). This is yet another worthy principle being introduced from ideals of blockchain directly into real life — making people pay only needed amount, and making sure people who do all the work got paid (unlike subscription-based model resources). 
So in a nutshell, usage of Berminal is not only free but, vice versa, users are actually paid with cryptocoins for being active; what is even yet better - payments are not made from central sources, like news agency; and not processed by single authority like Visa or PayPal; but are coming in a way of millions tiny micropayments by the whole community on P2P basis. 
This way of interaction on the Internet is, basically, what was called “WEB 3.0” by Tim Berners-Lee (inventor of the World Wide Web) — decentralization and blurring limits between “creators” and “users” of content (more on Web3.0 https://medium.com/@matteozago/why-the-web-3-0-matters-and-you-should-know-about-it-a5851d63c949)

After re-reading above I have fallen under the impression of the article being a paid upbeat review; so it's time for some of...

The bad stuff:

While the concept of having only good and genuine news on the portal is pretty good, it requires huge real community (so that incentivized paid\fake account could not take over and upvote needed news or downvote unwanted ones) at least of several million people; the more the merrier. Right now I have no idea how many users are there, but judging from website statistics no more than ~100K users. 
Also, a lot of visitors are coming from paid traffic and airdrop campaigns (at least this is what ad agencies like https://www.semrush.com/info/berminal.com report), which shows that “word of mouth” is not taking up for Berminal yet. 
Coin profitability issues. This problem is not BERM-specific one; this is a concern about the whole crypto world going down. However, if your earnings in a platform will decline in a bear market - the enthusiasm will slowly fade and the masses won’t be incentivized enough to participate. 
Regional issues. Right now Berminal boasts different languages support, but in fact, it’s only automated Google-Translate level of support. News looking funny at best at non-English versions, or unreadable at worst (honestly I can speak of Russian and Deutsch sections only). The Alexa ratings also showing Berminal 80% of visitors are coming from 5 countries. Hope this will get better soon.
Lack of competent QA team. The core of the BERM team is hardworking guys who are driven by the idea, and it really shows. Important and geeky stuff being introduced fast, the website is accessible all the time and app is stable; however small things are left unnoticed (like unusable coin price fluctuation graphics, prompt to enable phone notifications that pops out every time you switch app, or troubles with login on the website). This is a strong sign of project being developed by the team of coders+business managers with no actual “client” and QA\user experience team.

Fun fact:

42 lines of code

15 references

6 schematics

15 pages and

15 equations
are present in the
BERM ICO white paper 

Conclusion

As funny as it might sound (because the main function for these two are pretty different), Berminal reminds me mostly of CoinGecko (http://coingecko.com) project — both of the projects are aiming at a bigger target than their rivals do, both projects team are really open for discussion, trying to build great community and making leaps, not steps into their future. There are a lot of crypto news aggregator sites (CoinNa, Faws, CoinLoop, CoinSpectator, Ccowl to name a few); however most of them are popular only in some regions of the world (like India, Africa, South Korea) and so far none of them got such huge popularity spike as Berminal site (more than that, most of them are even declining in popularity, I guess due to bear market phase in crypto and public losing interest).
So, while Berminal is not without its drawbacks, it is a pretty unique approach to the news market and I would definitely recommend to install and use Berminal (at least mobile app), while surely keeping more traditional news sources around as well.
Chose decentralized, trustworthy future, and let's start with news!

P.s. But what about the BMP coins? Basically it's staked BERM coin, but for further information, I suggest checking out the above-mentioned BERM protocol WhitePaper!

References (in no particular order):

1. Main BERM website: https://protocol.berminal.com
2. BERM whitepaper: https://docsend.com/view/jjvty8q
3. Alexa ratings: https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/berminal.com
4. Ad campaign analysis: https://www.semrush.com/info/berminal.com
5. CryptoNews aggregator: https://cryptopanic.com
6. Coin tracker site: https://coingecko.com
7. WEB 3.0: https://medium.com/@matteozago/why-the-web-3-0-matters-and-you-should-know-about-it-a5851d63c949
8. Crowdwisdom: https://www.worldcryptoindex.com/wisdom-crowds-theory-cryptocurrency