What Is Steemit and Why Am I Using It?

in #steem5 years ago (edited)

Steemit is a social network that looks and functions a lot like Reddit, but with one HUGE difference:

Steemit pays both the content creators when their work gets upvoted, as well as the people who curate the best content on the site by upvoting others work.

This is possible because the Steemit platform is built on top of a new kind of digital currency called Steem. (Think Bitcoin, which is another kind of digital currency that has been around for a while.)

Every day, new units of the currency are created by the network and distributed to its users, who can exchange these digital currency units for actual real money. And it’s completely free to get started.

How does Steemit work?

In some ways, Steemit is similar to other digital currencies. For example, Steemit currency units can be traded, bought, and sold on the open market just like all of the other digital currencies.

With other cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, the actual currency units that are created each day are distributed to the people who run a special bitcoin software program on their computers that perform a process called Bitcoin Mining. The amount of computing power you have dictates how much money you get.

Steemit allows for currency mining as well, but it’s not the primary way to earn money. Every day, new Steemit currency units that are created by the network and distributed to the people who engage with the site. The more you engage, the more you get.

People who create content are rewarded for their content. People who upvote content are rewarded for helping to curate the best content available on the site. Commenters who add to the discussions are paid too.

The 3 Steemit Currency Units:

One big difference between Steem and other digital currencies is that there are three different kinds of Steemit currency units.

There is Steem, Steem Power, and Steem Dollars.

Steem:

Steem are the units that are bought and sold for actual money on the open markets. You can trade them as you would bitcoins or a company’s stock.

But you don’t want to hold on to these for too long because more Steem Units are created every single day. If you hold onto Steem Units for a long time, they will become diluted and lose value.

Steem Power:

Owning Steem Power Units is essentially like making a long term investment in the currency because you can’t sell Steem Power Units for 2 years. But there are a lot of good reasons to have Steem Power.

By keeping your currency as Steem Power Units, you will be able to make considerably more money in the long run because you essentially have ownership in the network. As the network grows, so will your piece of the pie.

And you’ll be heavily rewarded along the way. The way things are set up now, 90% of the new Steem Currency that is generated every single day is distributed to the people who already hold Steem Power Units in the form of additional Steem Power Units. (The other 10% goes to content creators and curators).

Half of the pay you receive for your content will be in Steem Power Units.

Also, the more Steem Power Units you have, the more your curation vote will count. You will have more influence on the site and you will also get paid more for upvoting other people’s work. (When you upvote someone’s work, they will get paid more as well.)

Steem Power Units also play one final and very important role. They prevent massive price swings and volatility on the open markets. Because everyone is locked in for 2 years, we can’t all sell our currency all at once if the market starts to dip, which would crash the price were it to happen.

Steem Dollars:

Steem Dollars are the third and final form of the currency and never get diluted or lose their value. They are designed to be a stable currency that you can sell at any time. When you create popular content, 50% of your pay will be in Steem Dollars.

And you’ll be rewarded for holding Steem dollars too. It’s not nearly as much as the rewards for holding Steem Power. But because it still keeps the currency in the network, holding Steem Dollars pays 10% interest.

When you earn Steem Dollars for creating content, you have three choices:

  1. You can convert the Steem Dollars to Steem and sell it immediately on the open market for real money, essentially cashing out.

  2. You can hold the Steem Dollars, which keeps the money in the network and pays you 10% interest. You can sell them at any time. If you think the value will go up and want to sell at some point in the near future, this is your best option.

  3. You can exchange your Steem Dollars for Steem Power. If you want to invest in the future of the currency and reap the biggest rewards, this is the way to do it.

How are the newly created Steem distributed each day?

Every day 90% of the new Steem units are rewarded to the people who hold Steem Power Units.

10% of the new Steem units are paid to content creators, curators, and commenters.

When you create content that actually earns money, 50% is paid to you in Steem Dollar Units that can be exchanged for actual money right away (or converted into Steem Power). The other 50% is paid in Steem Power. The Steem Power Units are locked up for 2 years.

If you want to give it a try, I created this guide for getting started: Steemit Made Simple: Everything you need to know to get started!

36.8k views · View 149 Upvoters · View Sharers
Your feedback is private.
Is this answer still relevant and up to date?
Sponsored by Elvenar
Enter a world of mysticism and magic.
Create an enchanted elven kingdom or a mighty human empire in this fantasy city game. Enter Elvenar.
Play now at elvenar.com
Related QuestionsMore Answers Below
What's your opinion on Steem and SteemIt?
What is everyone's opinion about STEEM?
Should I buy STEEM?
What are the differences between Bitcoin and Steem?
How does STEEM plan to combat spam and/or clickbait?
Puneet Gupta
Puneet Gupta, Blockchain Explorer, Entrepreneur
Answered Sep 20, 2017 · Author has 847 answers and 1.6m answer views
Steemit is a new social media platform where you can share information, videos, opinions, photographs etc. You get rewarded when you engage with a post on the Steemit platform. You will be rewarded for posting, commenting and upvoting on the the posts.

You are rewarded in digital tokens called Steem. Steem is similar to Bitcoins. It has a decentralised network. There is no central authority.

It is different from Bitcoin in its consensus algorithm. Bitcoin works on PoW. Steem shifted to Delegated Proof of Stake. Steem does not have miner, it has ‘witnesses’ who produce blocks. 10% of the block reward goes to the witnesses and 90% of the block rewards goes to content creators, curators.

You can read more about steem here: Steemit

12.6k views · View 13 Upvoters · Answer requested by Pillu G
Srikrishna Krishnarao Srinivasan
Srikrishna Krishnarao Srinivasan, Been writing blogs on Steemit
Answered Oct 15, 2017
Steem is basically writing blogs on Steemit. When I first came to know about Steemit a few months ago, I was blankly staring at the screen what exactly is the benefit of Steeming. I recently cracked the question and got a good idea what Steeming is and what is so unique about it.

I read through several Steems to understand. There were very nice self-introduction blogs. Some people have Steemed about quitting their job and travelling full time, with pretty nice pictures and videos. Some people just had blogged about their favorite place, food and so on.

I wrote my first Steempost and followed up by second one as well. If you like please upvote me, here is the link below.

The Techie Mon(k)ey Fitness Development Political Entrepreneur — Steemit

http://Steemit.com is a self regulated, decentralized platform. People curate the content posted by upvoting. So, good stuff gets higher upvotes. There are no filters or algorithms to present one content over another, it happens by the community upvoting some articles over other - so good content pays.

Literally. If people take time to create good content, it get higher upvotes and earns Steem$. It is a service to community by creating good content. And it is payback time if you post good content which others approve of.

That is the fundamental. There is more to it. You will learn as you Steem. I highly recommend.

Again please visit for a sample

The Techie Mon(k)ey Fitness Development Political Entrepreneur — Steemit

4k views · View 3 Upvoters
Sponsored by Privy
Do you think emails are valuable for your business?
We think so too. Privy makes it simple to easily grow your business and list. Over 300K owners use Privy.
Learn more at privy.com
Gennaro Cuofano
Gennaro Cuofano, Creator FourWeekMBA.com (2015-present)
Answered Apr 20, 2018 · Author has 597 answers and 1.2m answer views
Steemit is a platform that combines blockchain technology, social media, and cryptocurrency for the creation of user-generated content and community building. The social community helps to produce content and curate it, while it gets rewarded with two main cryptocurrencies: 50% in Steem Power and 50% in Steem Dollars.

As we will see throughout the guide, Steemit uses financial tools similar to those used by startups. With the main difference, those rely on the blockchain technology and cryptocurrency, rather than on a few venture capital investments and equity ownership.

A little caveat: I’ll use the term Steemit and Steem to mean the same thing.

How did Steem start? A brief history of Steemit

The company was co-founded by Ned Scott, CEO, and Daniel Larimer, CTO in January 2016.

Both Ned Scott and Daniel Larimer were looking at ways to put into action the blockchain technologies for practical problems. The more they thought about it the more it made sense for them to use the blockchain to build up a community. In fact, as Ned Scott affirmed in an interview for coinreport.net:

When the idea of Steem and Steemit really began to form we had been exploring several different blockchain-based business models. We were looking at micro insurance on the blockchain and a few other ideas, but ultimately, we kept coming back to the idea that the most useful and powerful thing to leverage around a cryptocurrency is a community.

And it went on:

Steem was born out of ideas about insurance and mutual aid: it was the idea that people would be able to help each other peer-to-peer if they were struggling to solve problems or needed assistance. It quickly grew into a much larger vision and Steemit was born as a place where individuals get rewarded by a community for posting and voting on content. That was back in January of this year.

We were in May 2016. In April 2016 Steemit had launched an alpha testing, helped by more than 150 early adopters. As specified by Ned Scott in the same interview, the uniqueness of Steemit stands on the fact that everything that is done on the platform (posts, comments and voted) sit directly on the blockchain.

Why is this important? This not only allows to manage things with a distributed system, where there is no central authority. It also should put an end to the old paradigm that took over the web in the last two decades, of a few tech giants that take over the world thanks to the data users give away for free.

Read more: What is Steemit? The Decentralized Social Network That Is Challenging Facebook Business Model

2.4k views · View 7 Upvoters
Buck Buchanan
Buck Buchanan, International Executive Technology Sales Management
Answered Jan 28, 2018 · Author has 307 answers and 765.5k answer views
The one-sentence answer is that it’s a distributed block-chain database that supports community building and social interaction with cryptocurrency rewards. It’s also the fundamental unit of account for Steemit, an online Reddit-like (but again, incentivized) information-sharing community that is based on the STEEM database platform. It’s like Reddit with an in-line crypto currency payment system that rewards content providers and curators with digital currency. The underlying asset is ownership of (or debt secured by) the platform itself.

To build a startup, or more specifically a platform like this you either offer debt or ownership. Buying ownership assumes those risks and rewards of ownership, while those who buy debt are guaranteed a specified interest rate but don’t participate in profits (or losses) through the platforms growth (or shrinkage). Additionally, ownership could either be liquid, and able to be sold at any time, or it could require that it be held for a vesting period before it could be sold, offering even more value to a startup community.

The currencies representing those three asset classes come in three forms: STEEM, the proof of stake fundamental crypto currency unit of account, is what the other tokens derive value on the blockchain, and is a liquid currency that can be bought and sold on exchanges just like Ether, for example, or it can be transferred to other users in the STEEM community.

The vesting version of STEEM, where the buyer commits to hold the investment (vesting) for a specific period of time (13 weeks), is called STEEM Power (SP), and when you commit to that vesting schedule and convert (“Power Up”) to SP you get paid a greater piece of the platforms growth in value as ‘interest’ AND get a greater influence (directly proportionate to amount of SP they own) in the voting on ranking of content, and thus the distribution of rewards in the community as well.

The remaining asset class is debt, pegged to the USD, called STEEM Dollars (SBD, which stands for STEEM Blockchain Dollars), and it is created by a mechanism similar to convertible notes. This is common in the startup world, and it allows the holder of SBD to covert to STEEM with a minimum of notice in the future at the fair market value of STEEM (in USD) at that time.

Through the use of tactics like rate limited voting, consensus algorithms, dynamic fractional reserves, and blockchain-based attribution and content rewards, they hope to provide an incentivized online public information platform that cannot be easily be gamed by bad actors, and one that offers fair value rewards to those who provide valuable work for the community, including those providing valuable content (as judged and ranked by the community’s volunteer curators of that content) as well as those who curate that content fairly — and they are controlled through rate-limited voting (the more often you vote, the less it counts).

So it’s a Reddit that pays!

1.9k views · View 8 Upvoters
Vinay Ghosh
Vinay Ghosh, works at Freelancing
Answered Jul 4, 2017 · Author has 168 answers and 381.4k answer views
Glenn has already provided a great amount of information about what actually is Steem and how does it works. I will add some more points here. Actually Steemit is a website that provide content curation and creation rewards to its users. Curation rewards means the rewards provided to the users when he or she curates good and unique content of other users by upvoting, commenting, and replying. Content creation rewards are the rewards that the person gets when he or she upload good quality content on the Steemit website. Now, where does the money come for rewarding? Simple! It comes from the blockchain mining, which is done with the help of users when they do something on the Steemit network. Just like bitcoin miners are rewarded for mining the bitcoins; Steemit users are rewarded for content curation and creation. Steemit has 3 currencies: Steem, Steem Power, and Steem Dollars. Steem is a liquid currency like bitcoin that can be mined like bitcoins and may change in value just like bitcoins. Steem power is the currency that the Steemit platform pays you for content curation and creation. Steem power is like an influencing power of your content and voting power. The more steem power you hold, the more value and power of your content curation and creation has. Steem dollar is a fix currency that Steemit platform pays you. Steemit platform pays your rewards in 50% Steem power and 50% Steed dollars. You can also buy Steem and power up your Steem power currency through the powering up process. So, this way you can not only earn from creation, but also curation.

9.2k views · View 7 Upvoters
Rahul Shisode
Rahul Shisode, Freelancer (2013-present)
Answered May 23, 2018 · Author has 142 answers and 143k answer views
What is Steem and how does it work?

in Others

Before we get to know more about STEEM, we should know something about Steemit, a social network which allows users to discuss and read, just like Reddit. But unlike Reddit, Steemit pays its content creators when their work gets upvoted, and people who curate the best content on the site by upvoting others work. Commentators who add to the discussions are paid too. Steem is what makes this process possible.

Steem, a new kind of digital currency, is the fundamental unit of account on the Steem blockchain. All other tokens derive their value from the value of STEEM. In social platform like STEEM, every activity you participated will be rewarded in the form of digital currency. New units of currency are created by the network and distributed to its users. The digital currency units can be exchanged to actual real money, which means that the more you engage, the more you get.

Someone looking to enter the Steem platform will have to buy or sell STEEM. Once STEEM has been purchased, it should be converted to Steem Power or Steem Dollars to mitigate the impact of dilution over the long term.

What is STEEM?

STEEM is sort of cryptocurrency that could be traded freely on the Internet. In some ways, it is similar to other digital currencies. You can trade, buy and sell it on the open market just like any other digital currencies. You can purchase STEEM directly, or you can be rewarded with STEEM once you publish a post or participate in the discussion on the platform. One big difference between STEEM and other digital currencies is that there are three different kinds of Steem currency units: Steem, Steem Power and Steem Dollars.

What is Steem?

Steem are the units that are brought and sold for actual money on the open market. You can trade them in the same way as you trade your bitcoins and your company’s stock. Steem units are created every day, so if you hold on to your Steem units for too long without selling it, they will be diluted and lose their original value.

What is Steem Power?

Steem Power is a a more appropriate way of digital currency if you are looking for a long term investment because you cannot sell Steem Power units for two years. Your STEEM can be converted to Steem Power. The higher Steem Power you have, the easier for the topics that you published or joined to get more attention, which means that you are more influential on the site. Therefore, more STEEM earned by you.

Steem wants to build a community that is mostly owned and entirely controlled by those who with a long-term perspectives. Hence, 90% of the Steem Currency will be distributed to the ones who hold Steem Power in the form of additional Steem Power Units, and the other 10% goes to content creators and curators.

Half of the pay you receive for your content will be in Steem Power Units. The other half will be paid in the form of Steem Dollars.

Steem Power cannot be used directly unless it is converted to STEEM. There are some requirements for you to meet if you want to converted Steem Power to STEEM. First, you need to have 10 times of the Steem Power than you first registered. Second, the transfer request will start over 104 equal weekly payments. In this way, Steem Powers prevent massive price swings and volatility on the open markets.

What is Steem Dollars?

Steem Dollars are the third and final forms of the currency and never get diluted or lose their value. They are designed to be a stable currency that you can sell whenever you want.

The value of one Steem Dollar roughly equal to actual one dollar. Steem Dollars could be viewed as a short term savings. It takes only seven days for the Steem Dollars to be transferred to Steem. You can also get certain interests when you are holding Steem Dollars.

How to earn STEEM?

  1. New registered uses can have five Steem Power for free.

  2. Publish new topics and participate in discussion of other topics.

The more attention you are getting, the more original and meaningful of the topic that you published, the more assets that you are creating. (50% of it is Steem Power, 50% of it is Steem Dollars. ) Among the assets, 25% of it will be rewarded to participants and the ratio will be decided according to the clicks that the comment gets.

  1. Upvote the new topic can also increase your Steem Power.

  2. Steem Power and Steem Dollars can earn you interests.

  3. If you are a computer savvy, you can download related programs from Steem - blockchain-based social media platform to mine and get the reward.

  4. If you loan your STEEM to others and be a part of the debit game, then within a specific amount of time, user who have the highest transaction number of times will be rewarded with a STEEM of large amount.

503 views
Frank Rummel
Frank Rummel, works at Self-Employment
Answered Mar 13, 2018 · Author has 117 answers and 23.6k answer views
Crypto is complicated…

Short answer to your question: In general, STEEM is a cryptocurrency similar to other currencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum and many others. It is a unit of value that is transferred from account (wallet) to account, over computers.

FYI:

STEEM is a tradable cryptocurrency.
Steemit is a social media platform that utilizes STEEM and other monetary assets in its operations.
I suspect that you need to do some research, get some experience and refine your question in order to get the information you want.

Do you really want an explanation of how STEEM is “minted” in assocition with a Delegated Proof of Stake blockchain?

Steem is intimately associated with the Steemit social media platform where it is involved in day to day operations. It takes time to understand Steemit and it’s 2 other additional assets, Steem Power and Steem Backed Dollars (SBD).

It would take pages to explain it all and hours of experience to begin to thoroughly understand it.

395 views · Answer requested by Nathan Wild
Knut Andre
Knut Andre, studied Business & International Economics
Answered Jan 27, 2018 · Author has 501 answers and 626.1k answer views
What is Steemit?

Steemit is a social network that looks and functions a lot like Reddit, but with one HUGE difference:

Steemit pays both the content creators when their work gets upvoted, as well as the people who curate the best content on the site by upvoting others work.

This is possible because the Steemit platform is built on top of a new kind of digital currency. (Think Bitcoin, which is another kind of digital currency that has been around for a while.)

Every day, new units of the currency are created by the network and distributed to its users, who can exchange these digital currency units for actual real money.

And it doesn’t cost a dime to get started.

You can create a Steemit user account for free, right now, and be publishing your content directly to the site within minutes using Steemit’s built in blogging/publishing tools.

If you’re skeptical at this point, I get it. I was too.

But it’s definitely the real deal.

So let’s dive in. I’ll show you how it all works.

How does Steemit work?

In some ways, Steemit is similar to other digital currencies. For example, Steemit currency units can be traded, bought, and sold on the open market just like all of the other digital currencies.

With other cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, the actual currency units that are created each day are distributed to the people who run a special bitcoin software program on their computers that perform a process called Bitcoin Mining. The amount of computing power you have dictates how much money you get.

Steemit allows for currency mining as well, but it’s not the primary way to earn money. Every day, new Steemit currency units that are created by the network and distributed to the people who engage with the site. The more you engage, the more you get.

People who create content are rewarded for their content. People who upvote content are rewarded for helping to curate the best content available on the site. Commenters who add to the discussions are paid too.

source: Steemit for Dummies (like me) - Everything you need to know in simple terms

1.9k views
Ronnie Kilkenny
Ronnie Kilkenny
Answered Sep 2, 2018 · Author has 148 answers and 83.4k answer views
Steem représente une fusion d’idées, tirant à la fois des médias sociaux et des crypto-monnaies pour créer un nouveau type de plate-forme. Tout le monde peut créer, partager ou échanger du contenu sur le réseau Steem, en gagnant des jetons de crypto-monnaie basés sur les performances de la communauté.

Steem et Bitcoin ont été conçus pour une fonction particulière. Bitcoin a été créé pour servir de monnaie numérique, poste à poste. Steem est, à la base, une plateforme de médias sociaux. De nombreuses plates-formes de médias sociaux utilisent des systèmes de vote, tels que les abonnements, les actions ou les «J'aime» pour hiérarchiser le contenu. Steem intègre ces concepts dans une plate-forme unique basée sur une chaîne de blocs qui paie les utilisateurs de STEEM pour leur contribution au réseau. Alors que STEEM et Bitcoin sont tous deux des crypto-monnaies, l’utilisation de STEEM est spécifique aux réseaux sociaux.

cours trx

151 views
Martin Tumusiime
Martin Tumusiime, Freelance Writer & Blogger, Social Media Manager. at Kampala, Uganda (2014-present)
Answered Mar 13, 2018 · Author has 67 answers and 386.9k answer views
Joining steemit is not by far the hardest step compared to other existing money making platforms . Infact i decided to document this process in my blog post below to enable you try it out as well.

Step one:

You’ll head to steemit official web page and select sign up from the top right hard corner . The sign up page will require you to enter a username of your choice and once it’s available, you can select continue .

Step Two :

Next step allows you to enter your email and continue .

Step three:

Here you’ll be required to enter phone number for verification .

After your phone verification process , your account is put on a pending list waiting for approval which normally takes 7 working days . I must sincerely say mine took close to three weeks to get approved . However what matters at the end of the day is whether you get in .

So what’s next, read this How do you get started on Steemit .

624 views
Chadwick Palmatier
Chadwick Palmatier, Prof Voiceover Artist*Certified Bitcoin Specialist (2014-present)
Answered May 11, 2017
in a nutshell, Steem is social networking that rewards its authors. People who post on it are called ‘steemians’, and they post original content, post links to various stuff, questions about stuff, etc, etc….

steem users then upvote or downvote peoples various content to vreate interesting posts, and to reward the author (usually with a few bits of btc)

thats about it in a nutshell…. ;-)

5.6k views · View 6 Upvoters
Carl Anthony
Carl Anthony, Holder of Coinomat shares, which convert all cryptos instantly, www.adfete.com
Answered Jul 13, 2016
Short version: steem is the currency for the steemit platform. Steemit is a decentralized version of reddit, currently in beta (july 2017). The main attraction to steem is the developers behind it, which are mostly from the bitshares platform. I'm expecting great things from this project!

8.3k views · View 13 Upvoters
Naveen Davis
Naveen Davis
Answered Oct 24, 2017
its a crypto currency based. Unlike blogspot, you get paid in crypto currency(steem) for your contents and your upvote(like)/comments etc.

the steem can be converted to other bitcoins and you can get the real money..

Steemit

2.1k views · View 1 Upvoter
Related Questions
Is mining steem profitable?
How good is STEEM at L'X?
How is STEEM able to stay decentralized with no fees?
What are the differences between Bitcoin and Steem Dollars?
What is the difference between Steem, Steem Power and Steem dollars?
What are the differences between Steem and Lino?
What are the differences between Steem and Steem Dollars?
Why is Steem the most heavily used blockchain in the world?talos.jpg
Why is Steem Back Dollar (SBD) not part of post payouts?
What do you think about Steem cryptocurrency?
What does George Tung think about Steem?
How does traderium work?
What are your options about Steem, Digibyte and FeatherCoin?
How can I create a crypto on Steem?
What is the future of Steem coin?