Contest: Proof-of-brain || By @jaspichman125

Hello fellow Steemians and kids lovers, hope you're doing great? I'm glad to participate in this amazing contest organised in @steemkidss community

What do you understand by proof-of-brain?

The proof-of-brain (PoB) is a community-based consensus mechanism that is utilised on blockchains like the Steem blockchain to distribute incentives or rewards to authors and curators of contents.

It should be noted that, the Blockchain consensus algorithms/mechanism is different from the consensus mechanism upon which communities operates especially on the Steem blockchain.

The PoB is not run by complex machines or computers, rather, by people. The people must have a consensus (agreement) over the integrity, authenticity and validity of a particular content before it will be regarded as quality or meaningful content. This is because, Steem blockchain is a decentralized distributed social media platform.

Therefore, the PoB helps the entire community to have agreement over the value of contents produced on the blockchain.

A content is judged as “good”, meaningful or quality content when:-
• It is original and plagiarism free
• It adds value to the community and life in general
• It is informative
• It does not violate any rule guiding the Steem blockchain
• There’s no hate speech, racist connotations, or any form of bigotry.

Contents that obey all the rules are adjudged by the community as quality or meaningful work therefore, they’re entitled to get rewarded from the reward pool (a pool of tokens allocated for incentivising content creators and curators).

The combination of the reward pool, Steem power (SP) holders, and the consensus of the community members makes up what we call the proof-of-brain (PoB).

The PoB is important in a decentralized social media like Steemit because with this mechanism, it is easy to determine the value of contents when the community members reaches a consensus on the quality of the contents.
Why is it important to know and understand?

• It makes content creators to use their brain rather than copying other people’s ideas or contents
• It encourages content creators to be innovative, creative and productive.
• It discourages plagiarism and encourages hardwork.
• It helps content creators from falling victims of “intellectual properties theft” or copyright infringement.
• It encourages adherence to copyright laws

How can you apply it?

Steps to follow in order to apply proof-of-brain are:

• Whenever you want to create a content, start by brainstorming the ideas you have. Don’t just go and copy someone’s work or ideas.
• Develop and organise the ideas
• Analyse whether the content is capable of adding value to the community
• Can your post drive engagement in the community?
• Can your post drive new members to Steemit as well as the community?
• Write your post/content

Example of a proof-of-brain;

Steemkidss is an example of a proof-of-brain because the founder, @ngoenyi thought that there should be a community which is dedicated to kids and kids lovers around the world most especially on Steemit platform. Nobody has ever thought of that, so the idea was originally hers.

Someone might come up with a community for instance, steemchildren which is a poor proof-of-brain because it is just a copycat to steemkidss

How does it relate to our stay here as Steemians?

Proof-of-brain relates to everything we do on Steemit because we’re encouraged to always create and post quality and plagiarism – free contents. This means that, every post we make most be at least 80 % original. The remaining 20% is for the images or materials we sourced from other sources online or offline.

It also means that whenever you want to create your “community on Steemit”, don’t name the community similar to existing ones. Example, don’t create another community on Steemit with a name #steemchildren because it is similar to #steemkidss. Such kind of instance is a sign of poor proof-of-brain.

How can we learn to make use of proof-of-brain?

• Understand it first. Know what it means by proof-of-brain and how it works
• Decide to be better at using your brain o create quality contents rather than “copy and paste”/plagiarism
• Everybody is good at one thing or the other. Learn to create articles on your areas of passion/interests or hobbies e.g. foods, kids, sports, health, personal development, love and relationships, etc. When you begin to create contents based on your passions or areas of interests, you’re more likely to produce quality contents as a proof-of-brain.

What are the challenges of proof-of-brain?

There are several challenges of proof-of-brain. Few among them are:-

• It takes time to create articles or contents that meets up the proof-of-brain standard as a result, some people just resort to “copy and paste"
• Proof-of-brain is and art/skill. It takes time to develop.
• Even some of those that talk about proof-of-brain don’t actually know the meaning and how it works.
• In some cases, copy and paste is glorified more than proof-of-brain.
• Sometimes an author has a proof-of-brain content of 150 words but he/she will be told to make it 300 words or more this discourages hardwork and encourages copy and paste. As far as your content is lengthy, nobody cares to know whether it is an outcome of proof-of-brain.

Why should we make it despite the challenges?

Hardwork as they say, pays. Through persistence and perseverance, we can all come to understand proof-of-brain and how it works.

Dedication and consistency also matters. Because we want to be good bloggers, we must be consistent in our efforts to use proof-of-brain.

Regardless of the challenges, we have to strive to learn how to produce contents that are proof-of-brain because that is the surest way of scaling the ladder of success on Steemit.

Conclusion
Proof-of-brain is all about how a community reaches agreement over the value of a post/content produced by authors on Steemit platform. It is a mechanism for evaluating or assessing the integrity, quality originality authenticity and social value of contents on Steemit.

I encourage every Steemit member to produce contents that meets the proof-of-brain standard.

I invite my friends @hyellgda, @elchariddai, @olabank96, @goodypen, @justiceanietie, @peterabagi to participate in this amazing contest.

I have set 10% of the post payout to @steemkidss

I am number #21 on Steemkidss curation trail

Special mentions
@ngoenyi
@steemkidss

Thanks for reading through my blog. Hope you liked it?
Best regards; @jaspichman125