Steem: An In-Depth Overview!
The most in-depth and clearest guide to understand what Steem is and what it can do for you!
Ever Heard of Bitcoin?
Bitcoin, like Steem is a cryptocurrency. Bitcoin was the first cryptocurrency. It was launched on January 3 2009.
N.B. The total value of all cryptocurrencies as of today is roughly $38B. This puts cryptocurrencies in the top 130 biggest companies when compared to S&P 500 which are the biggest US companies. Bitcoin represents ~60% of this value. Their price have gone up approximatively 259,900% since January 2011. Yes, 1,000$ of Bitcoin back then is now worth $2.5M. Play it smart. Take some time to learn about Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies which are the best performing currencies/technologies in the world today. (For more on Bitcoin see my sub-chapter named Bitcoin)
Now What is Steem?
The Gist
Steem is a cryptocurrency and social network which reward its users for the content they create. Every 3 seconds new Steem are created and distributed. Each Steem are currently valued at more than 26 cents and can be sold on many exchanges. Currently there are ~64,000 new Steem created every day or ~16,000$. Details about who receive those newly created Steem are under the sub-title name "Steem Rewards" and "Reward Pool".
The Technical
Steem is based on graphene which is based on DPOS as opposed to POS and POW. Steem is an open source software. It was launched on March 23 2016. Steem can currently process more than 100k transactions per second as opposed to around 7 for Bitcoin. In the future it should be able to process millions of transactions per second. Due to its decentralized nature Steem can't be censored or tampered with by any central authority.
What is Steemit?
Steemit is a social news service which runs a blogging and social networking website on top of the blockchain database, known as Steem.
The project was founded in 2016 by Ned Scott and Dan Larimer, creator of BitShares. The two are founders of the Steemit Inc. company which runs the Steemit.com website and funds ongoing development of the platform. [Wikipedia]
N.B. Steemit.com give access to the Steem blockchain just like Busy.org (@ekitcho), eSteem (iOS) (android) (@good-karma) and many other websites and apps do.
What is a Cryptocurrency?
A cryptocurrency (or crypto currency) is a digital asset designed to work as a medium of exchange using cryptography to secure the transactions and to control the creation of additional units of the currency. [Wikipedia]
What is a Blockchain?
A blockchain is a distributed database that maintains a continuously growing list of records, called blocks, secured from tampering and revision. Each block contains a timestamp and a link to a previous block by design, blockchains are inherently resistant to modification of the data — once recorded, the data in a block cannot be altered retroactively. Through the use of a peer-to-peer network and a distributed timestamping server, a blockchain database is managed autonomously. Blockchains are "an open, distributed ledger that can record transactions between two parties efficiently and in a verifiable and permanent way. [Wikipedia]
*Each cryptocurrencies have their own blockchain. There exist more than 300 cryptocurrencies. Steem has the 20th biggest market cap valued at ~$60M. (source)
A ledger is a book or other collection of financial accounts of a particular type.
What All of This Jumbo Mumbo Means?
There is no need to fully understand what is above to understand Steem. Also I plan on writing an in-depth post solely on Bitcoin at some point but there is no need to understand Bitcoin to understand what is below.
Every 3 Seconds a new Block is Created
Every 3 seconds since the genesis block [1] [2] of March 23 2016 a new block is created. There are currently more than 11 millions blocks. The sum of all these blocks is called the Steem blockchain. Every block is a record of all actions taken by Steemians during those 3 seconds. Steemians are the users of the Steem technology.
Included in the Blocks (not extensive)
- The texts of all posts and comments and their editing
- All transactions of Steem between users
- All upvotes and downvotes (aka flag)
- All follow, unfollow, resteem (aka re-sharing)
- All new accounts creation
- Password changes
- Power up, power down, convert (explained below)
- Etc.
Steem Inflation
At block 7,000,000 there was a 9.5% instantaneous inflation rate, decreasing at a rate of 0.01% every 250k blocks. In other words one year after block 7,000,000 there will be ~9.3% more Steem then there was back then. (source)
Steem Rewards
Of that ~9.3% inflation
- 75% is distributed to content creators (75% to authors & 25% to voters (aka curators))
- 15% as interest on Steem Power holders
- 10% to Steem witnesses
What are Steem Witness?
Steem witnesses are computers or nodes run by some Steemians. These are running 24/7. They provide the computational power required to process all Steem actions recorded on the Steem blockchain. This is communally called: "signing blocks". Those computers run the Steem open source software. There are 20 witnesses and 1 backup witness. Each 20 witnesses sign around 1400 blocks a day and the remaining backup witness blocks are signed by all remaining witnesses in a rotation. Signing block is done automagically as long as the computers and software are running properly. Top 20 witnesses are assigned block to sign at random.
Anyone can vote for witnesses here. Everyone has 30 votes and these can be change at any moment. Those with the most "Steem weighted" vote become part of the 20 witnesses, all of the remaining witnesses are in rotation for the remaining witness slot in proportion to the vote they receive. Each witnesses receive an "x" amount of Steem for each block they sign. The full list of witnesses can be found here or here.
I'll discuss Steem Witness in more detail in an upcoming article, how they are elected, how to set up a witness, how to vote for witness, etc.
The Reward Pool
The content reward pool is often referred to simply as the "reward pool". The reward pool distribution is determined by upvotes and downvotes each posts receive. Whenever someone creates a post or comment people can upvote or downvote it. The more Steem (aka Steem Power) an account holds, the more Steem or $ their votes or downvotes are worth. A down vote lower the $ on a post and redistribute the $ to the reward pool. Each post are paid 7 days after they have been post. After the upcoming Steem update (aka hardfork 0.19) and introduction of a linear reward curve, everyone will have a say directly proportional to their stake. This will be a big shift in regard to how rewards are allocated. (source)
What is a Hardfork?
A Steem hardfork is whenever the Steem software is update and makes the old version of the software incompatible with the new rules or new version. Witnesses are currently running Steem version 0.18. There has been 18 hardforks. Some witnesses are running version 0.18.1 while others are running 0.18.2. These 2 versions are compatible. When a new version is released witnesses agreeing with the new rules and features are entice to update their software. It takes 17/21 witnesses running the new version for it to be activated. Hardfork are set to take effect at a precise block number. If there isn't enough witnesses running the new version then the rules and Steem features remain has they were.
Curation
Steemians are paid for each upvote they cast. This is called curation reward. This is 25% of the content reward pool. Each vote and downvote lower voting power by 0.5%. With hardfork 0.19 each vote will lower voting power by 2%. Voting power is regenerated linearly as time pass. There is no limit to how many votes someone can cast but to maximize curation reward one should currently cast around 40 votes a day at 100% and 10 votes at 100% with hardfork 0.19. The sooner someone vote on a post which become popular, the better the curation reward with some exception. Voting power can be seen here or here.
If you vote immediately after a post is made, then 100% of the curation reward will go to the author. If you vote after 15 minutes, then 50% will go to the author. Any votes made 30 minutes or later 100% will go to the curator.
There's a lot more to curation than what is mention here but I will leave it to here for now.
Steem, Steem Power And Steem Back Dollars
Steem exist under 3 different form.
- Steem: liquid, can be sold on exchanges for Bitcoin. (Doesn’t influence voting power and doesn't generate interest)
- Steem Power: not liquid, can't be sold on exchanges. (Influence voting power and generate interest)
- Steem Back Dollars (SBD): 1 dollar worth of Steem, can be sold on exchange for Bitcoin or converted to Steem (doesn't influence voting power, generate interest and their price is almost always ~$1 USD)
50% of content rewards are paid in Steem Power the rest are Steem and SBD. Steem can be powered up. When powered up, Steem are called Steem Power. Withdrawing Steem Power is called Powering down. Powering down will automatically withdraw 1/13th weekly of your Steem Power and convert them into Steem. Withdrawing or Powering down 100% of your Steem Power takes 13 weeks. Also Curation rewards are paid entirely in Steem Power.
More detail can be found in the wallet.
Find Out More
The current post is the second of a series of essays on Steem. There is more to learn about Steem but this is a pretty good start.
- What I Stand For: I stand for What Feels Best! (link) (Money in the world today is created out of thin air by a small elite group at the expense of everyone else.)
- Thank you Dan Larimer! You are a great mentor! (link) (Dan is the Ex-CTO of Steemit)
- Steemit.com Set To Become The World's Most Popular Website (link)
- I'm also writing: "The ultimate Steembook"
- The History of Steem/Steemit Launch in the Words of @dan Larimer from the early Launch Days. (link) (very interesting information)
- Transcript of STEEM AMA - Bittrex Slack 17.04.2016 (link)
- Steem (Github)
- Steemit (Github)
Sign Up!
Have fun and sign up!
It only take a few seconds! (It now necessitate a little waiting time but make sure to sign up.)
No need for a credit card.
Buy Steem
With a credit card (possibly very high fees, make sure to compare)
With Bitcoin (blocktrades.us/ @blocktrades)
With Bitcoin (list of exchanges)
In The End
Financial wealth is just a tool and not an end in itself. Joy is what I'm about.
Cause true wealth comes from good health, and wise ways. - Dead Prez
Please consider upvoting, resteeming, following and also approving my witness.
To vote for my witness:
Follow the link below, type teamsteem at the bottom of the page, then click vote.
Every votes help.
(https://steemit.com/~witnesses)
Thank you to everyone who's been reading and Steeming!
Questions and comments are very much welcome!
Oh dear @teamsteem you over nailed it. I have never read and understood stuff about Steemit and the steem blockchain like I just did. I so appreciate your hardwork here for taking time to explain everything in details. This is one post I should save for future reference. Thanks again sir
Thank you very much!
Well this is the most amazing and detailed article about steem that i ever read on Steemit because you shared about Steemit and why it's revolutionary and how we can actually give rewards to our readers that was not possible before Steemit,
And your these lines :-
Show us the power and speed of Steem Blockchain and why this is always on the top of daily transaction number as compared to other Cryptocurrencies,
Steem is now just become a part of our life and it's like we are sharing something with each other and we actually gave rewards to people who produced value on the platform,
Steemit is still in it's early stages but if we see it's community and development then we only saw continuously increment, because each day the community members comes up with new tools that helps others members to know more about Steemit and how it's works and apart from Blogging the other apps if steem Blockchain like :- @dtube and @dlive are also a revolutionary step by the developers because these Dapps total disrupt the traditional way of video sharing that we used to use from long time now,
And People of different countries are now connected with each other and apart from calling themselves by their name they all preferred called by name "Steemians" and it's show us that steem is more then a social media platform for all of us and iam sure by time passes we are going to see more people engaged with the community and more new Dapps are going to created on steem Blockchain and that would make steem a one of it's kind Blockchain.
Wow! It's been a year since this was written. It was last week of August when I signed up for Steemit and it was September 1 when I officially joined the site. I wish I saw this before. But nevertheless, it isn't too late for me to read this. In fact, this would go directly on my bookmark page so that I could send this out to my invites so they would have better understanding of what Steemit is all about, the steem blockchain and the likes. Everything they need to know is basically here!!! ❤😱
I remember it was December of 2017 when the Steem and sbd's value reached $8 and $16 respectively. Now the Steem's value is playing at $3 to $4. Not bad!! It has increased a lot since last year and Steemit has helped many lives through the rewards that we get just by posting original contents and interacting.
I've read from a post before questionning if Steemit could be a main source of income for people who doesn't have stable jobs or those from countries wherein jobs are really limited. For me, it is very possible but a lot of perseverance, motivation and patience would be needed. Posting quality contents would attract good audience and it also gives you a chance to earn more so I'd say that this would all still depend on you and your will to earn. Steemit gives us a chance to earn and I'd be forever grateful for this. It helped me tremendously to pay for my bills, travels and a lot more! Steemit is an ultimate blessing from above! Thanks to Ned and Dan for making this happen. ❤
Very nice and informative post @teamsteem!
P.S. I've already voted for you as a witness long ago. Rest assured that I'll continue to support good witnesses like you 💕
Hello @teamsteem, I would have loved to read this post, the day I decided to join steemit, I feel that it should be the introductory post of each of the people who join this network.
There are some interesting facts that are worth highlighting, really data that I didn't handle:
This statistic catches my attention so much, maybe from the moment of publication, until today, the data differs, however, a block every 3 seconds is an important amount vs. time, at that time with only 60,000 counts, the amount of blocks impresses me, I imagine that today that figure can easily be tripled.
I'm clear that prices vary, what I didn't know was that sbd generate interest, I definitely want to know more about it!
Everything would have been easier for me to digest, starting with this publication (I should be on the home page of steemit) I feel that this project has objectives with benefits for everyone, that you can notice in the reward system, in general lines, I continue to learn and make my trip here as healthy as possible, I appreciate your practical way of teaching us, I wish you a great night.
Thanks @Teamsteem for the post full of gold nuggets. Bookmarked !
With over 10 years in Online Marketing experience and working from my home full time for the past 9 years, I can honestly say that Steem is the most exciting thing I have ever been a part of !
I thought I was passionate about creating products, sale pages, squeeze pages, doing affiliate marketing and making money consistently from this. Well that was until I found the Steemit platform and all the great people involved here and endless opportunities at the tip of our fingers. Opportunities to help ourselves and other people in Steemit and best of all the World around us :)
Creating my own Content on diverse topics and having an immediate audience ready to read my material and interact with me and reward my work ... well it's just incredible to me :)
And just think all these years I participated in online money making forums and places like Facebook and Twitter and NEVER made a single penny from my "content".
And now at Steemit I can actually earn from something I was already doing FREE for many years ,
That just blows my mind...and in the best way !!
Again thank you @teamsteem for the informative post. I definitely picked up a few things I didn't know before ;)
As many of my fellow Steemians say..."Full Steem ahead" :)
Good evening @teamsteem.
First of all, I'll like to congratulate you for your effort into putting this up. Your posts are mostly lengthy with lots of valuable information embedded in each of them. Like the one that talks about the visionary plans of Dan and why you're an
Keep being amazing, our support is with you always.
Okay, I'll say a big thank you as I just got to know more about the Steem Blockchain and some of the terminologies used in the crypto space.
Could there be a hardfork where Steemians get to see this post as it will help understand the fundamentals of the Steem Blockchain and how it works and why it is necessary to vote for witnesses that help the community grow.
I just learnt about Curation rewards fully here, never knew timing was of essence when voting on a post as it gets to influence both author and curators rewards.
I have a question, what do you think about EOS, I'm still struggling to really understand how it goes. Will it have a social media similar to Steemit ?
In all, I just want to say a big thank you to Dan and Ned for creating this platform as I've got to learn daily, make friends, interact with different nationalities and also gain financial freedom.
Stay awesome always Sir Guillaume. Thanks once again for this compendium of knowledge .
Wow this is truly amazing. Been here for few months but I can tell that I have more understanding with this. Wow... Now I know that Bitcoin was the first cryptocurrency and was launched on January 3 2009. Also gotten to know that Steem is a cryptocurrency and social network which reward its users for the content they create.
Then, due to its decentralized nature Steem can't be censored or tampered with by any central authority. I was made tobunderstand that Steemit is a social news service which runs a blogging and social networking website on top of the blockchain database, known as Steem and that the project was founded in 2016 by Ned Scott and Dan Larimer, @ned and @dan respectively. These are truly amazing personalities.
I've also gotten to know that a cryptocurrency is a digital asset designed to work as a medium of exchange using cryptography to secure the transactions and to control the creation of additional units of the currency.
Blockchains are "an open, distributed ledger that can record transactions between two parties efficiently and in a verifiable and permanent way. Each cryptocurrencies have their own blockchain. There exist more than 300 cryptocurrencies. Steem witnesses are computers or nodes run by some Steemians and these computers run the Steem open source software.
The content reward pool is often referred to simply as the "reward pool".
Steemians are paid for each upvote they cast. This is called curation reward. This is 25% of the content reward pool. Each vote and downvote lower voting power by 0.5%. Interesting.
You never cease to impress me...You wrote this overview a year ago and I bet it can still compete with many steemit overviews of today.
I just wished that I had joined steemit sooner.
Steemit has changed my life. I am getting punctual, open minded and one step closer to financial freedom each day I spend on steemit. Steem has shown me a ray of hope...perhaps one day, courtesy of steemit I can quit my lousy job and be on steemit 100%. I can be myself here, no feigning or pretending to be someone else contrary to the my current job.
Please accept my humble regards...you are the role model for me to follow on steemit.
Please let me know anytime if I could be of any service to you...it would be a genuine pleasure and honor for me.
I have read the Steemit white paper and I'm still curious about a lot of things there, among which is:
I will like to know how the above is implemented without the computers breaking down at some points or how do the steem witnesses supervise the activity of their computer when they travel?
About this:
The above represents more than 2/3 of the top witnesses, which is good. However, in view of the new version. What if some of the top witnesses do not welcome what the new version tends to implement in the blockchain due to some sort of personal reasons, won't it delay the advancement of Steem? And what do you mean by "entice" in the upgrading to a new hardfork?
I find this somewhat confusing:
Meanwhile, I have a question regarding voting and Steempower please. Does voting power as at time of voting influence curation reward? To illustrate: I know the value of 100% upvotes decrease with number of votes one make. Now, assuming I vote 100% on 5 of Karen's post in a day at 30mins after her post, and all the 5 posts earn a total of say 43 or 45Sbds, will my curation reward be the same?
More of my confusions is in this:
I interpret that statement to me that for the said 75% author reward (though not exactly accurate most times, another confusion), 50% should be in sbd and the other 50% of the reward should be in Sp worth of 50% Steem assumed powered up at the post payout time. Can you explain more in layman's term please.
I wish I can fully understand how cryptocurrencies work. I am thankful to you for the links to your works. I will appreciate your reply on this.
Thanks.
It's better to be over cautious with updates than be zealots and risks too much.
Yes but you shouldn't mind as your curation reward are probably too low for you to really mind about them.
Lol. I will grow with time. 😀🙈😀
Hey @Teamsteem. Hope you have a good time in the States. I am glad you rolled up this blog again. It is still relevant and so informativ! Sometimes these older posts are hard to find and your contest helped me to read this!
I did not know a lot about Steemit and I like that the founders were creators of Bitshares. That's some solid backround!
Looks like you also had more comments this time:) compared to the last contest:)
Enjoy your travels and maybe we will hear you again on discord!