What is Steemit? | Steemit Education Series | Episode 1
This is the first episode of the Steemit Education Series and there are more to come. Since Utopian rules require the first blog post of a series to contain clear explanations and expectations about the series, I will fulfill this requirement before moving to the main topic. People have been calling me a great Steemit teacher for many months now. The wise old man @kus-knee lovingly called me Professor Steem. I have studied Steemit greatly and shared a lot of knowledge so far. You can have an idea from my last Utopian contribution which was a Reputation Score 101 guide. You can expect nothing but quality guidance and education from this series.
The Steemit Education Series will take every reader from the very basics of Steemit to the advanced level of understanding. Application of the knowledge shared through this series will enable Steemit users, new or old, to succeed in gaining more rewards, reputation, followers, and appreciation. It is going to be a regular series with two to three posts every week. Stay tuned.
Let's come back to the main topic now.
What is Steemit?
While this post may help a lot of potential new users searching Google about Steemit, reading it is important for most of the current Steemians as well, especially the newbies and the users struggling to get a hang of this amazing website. It is important to know what Steemit is in order to have a greater chance of success with whatever you intend to do here.
Different aspects of Steemit are covered below.
Steemit is a Social Media That Rewards People With Crypto!
A social media website or app needs you to create an account, read content from others, share your content, interact with others through comments, and react to others' content in some way (like, clap, vote etc). Steemit does all this too so it is a social media website. Like all social media, you need to gain some following and get noticed.
But Steemit is not your regular social media. It pays, and that too in cryptocurrency. It is the first social media platform to do so and by far the biggest one.
Steemit is a Decentralized Blogging Platform
Consider Steemit like the WordPress software; the most popular blogging platform on the internet. Or consider it like Medium. The difference is that Steemit is decentralized and it pays. Decentralization means the absence of central control. The entire network is run by the users and the witnesses they choose with their vote. A single person or a board does not take decisions affecting the users. But there are some considerations.
Steemit does not need you to buy a domain name to blog. Your Steemit username is your blog.
It does not need you to buy online storage space from a web hosting company. It is managed as per your stake in the platform.
It has visual, markdown, and HTML editors to create your blog posts. Markdown styling is the most common editing option as the comments are styled only with this option.
Whatever you create (a comment or a post) can receive rewards if readers find your effort worth some upvotes.
Nothing that you post on Steemit can be deleted or lost, as it is permanently stored on the blockchain.
Many renowned authors, like @neilstrauss, are joining Steemit and using it as a blogging platform. I myself have almost abandoned my personal blog in favor of Steemit ever since joining here.
Steemit is a dApp Built on Steem Blockchain
As already discussed, Steemit is decentralized. This aspect comes from the fact that Steemit is a decentralized application (dApp) built on top of the Steem blockchain. Steem is the best performing blockchain in the industry right now. There are now a lot of dApps built on top of Steem, like @utopian-io, but Steemit is the first one and the primary implementation of the Steem blockchain code.
Whatever you do on Steemit is, in fact, an interaction with the blockchain. Your rewards and content are also stored on the blockchain. Have you realized how easy mass adoption of blockchain technology becomes with Steemit?
Conclusion
The purpose of this introductory post about Steemit is to build a solid foundation for the upcoming episodes of the Steemit Education Series. As the series progresses, I will cover everything step by step and hopefully create a great resource on Steemit for everyone; especially the new members. Share your feedback in the comments below. I am particularly interested in knowing what you wish to see covered in the series ahead.
Posted on Utopian.io - Rewarding Open Source Contributors
This is so nice! I am a newbie and found this one very helpful! Thank you so much @ilyastarar for sharing.
Well researched and presented as always!
Interesting post, and very informative and comprehensive in its content.
Thank you.
great work
Do we have to follow the series or can we already ask advanced questions ?
I understand the logic behind the creation of the SBD as a "stable currency" but I can't make sense of the rest of the explanation in the whitepaper. The mechanics for producing price feeds for the SBD seem to have broken down four months ago so I'm not sure what to make of it all
This is exactly what I am wondering about right now; the position of SBD in the Steem blockchain and reenforcement of a USD peg. The top 20 witnesses are to decide what to do and we can expect a consensus soon. I think SBD will be pegged to USD to fulfill its role as defined in the whitepaper.
The SBD part of the whitepaper is purely related to economics and finance in nature. I'm afraid I am not a qualified person to comment on that explanation.
A stable currency is a currency which holds its value and is difficult to fluctuate by design. A stronger USD peg would make SBD stable in value (consider USDT, for example) and we will always have SBD's value around $1.
Steem's price will be decided by the open market where it will be traded freely while SBD will act as a stability instrument. For instance, if an event, like SMTs launch, takes price of Steem to $10 but you know it may come back soon, you would be able to buy 10 SBD with one Steem at that high price. With those 10 SBDs, you can buy 2 Steem when price of Steem comes back to $5 and so on.
I'm afraid the explanations in the whitepaper are confusing. A peg to the dollar on an outside market (an exchange) would require Steemit Inc. to keep a large amount of dollars and a large amount of SBD in reserve and use both to compensate the market-price fluctuations. For instance if SBD goes to USD2 then Steemit would intervene and sell SBD (from the reserve) on the market to push the price back to 1. If on the contrary SBD would go to 0.5 then Steemit Inc would use the US dollars in its reserve to "mop up" - buy SBD on the exchanges in order to bring the SBD price back to $1
But this is not how it's been designed. Here the system is closed and the marketplace is the blockchain internal marketplace. The SBD is a proxy for the price of Steem on the outside exchanges. I'm speculating here: when a witness sees Steem trading at $2 on coinmarketcap it tells the blockchain to increase the generation of SBD so that there are 2 SBD created for every Steem created by the blockchain. Due to increased supply of SBD its price should go down with respect to Steem (with the objective of staying close to USD 1). When STEEM reaches $10 for instance the blockchain should generate a lot more SBD than it generates steem (as steem power for content production and curation).
The idea being that authors and curators receive SBD which they convert to steem (according to the whitepaper) and then sell on exchanges (to live) which in turn should bring the price of steem lower and compensate.
But this is still not the whole picture. I think I miss one or more initialization parameters related to "the value of an user" and the percentage of the reward pool being attributed by a vote given with a power of 1 SP ...
I think I have something to assist you in understanding SBD more. The availability of SBD on external exchanges means that it is part of a free market where supply and demand factors in. Price can fluctuate due to many reasons and so it did.
The option is not available in the wallet at the moment but there use to be a CONVERSION option from SBD to Steem.
When the peg was broken, the conversion feature was removed perhaps. One of the reasons the peg broke was that the SBD/Steem conversion was just one way. Had it been two way, users would have been able to convert Steem to SBD when Steem value was high and convert back to (more) Steem when the value was low. SBD would have stayed inside the blockchain in such a case and the price could not be manipulated on the external exchanges.
The recent discussion around pegging involves suggestions to implement two way conversion too. Let's see.
One of the most effective determinent of SBD generation is value of the votes. How vote value is calculated may be a bit complex but at least 37.5 % of all the votes that happen on the blockchain result in SBD (0.375 SBD from a $1 vote). That's a major consideration in knowing how SBDs are generated.
The factors that affect vote value affect SBD generation as well. I hope it adds to your knowledge around SBD and vote value.
Thank you very much, this is an extremely useful link which demystifies (in a positive sense) further the steem blockchain. As an IT architect, I now begin to understand the main entities in the steem data model - especially the interpaly between the "reward_balance" pool and the "recent_claims". very, very useful, kudos !
I remember my first days on steemit and remember how helpful was your post for me. I do agree with @kus-knee and i want to add that you are a talented teacher. You are talented about explaining a topic in many different ways. So this is a big luck for your steem follower and mates. And i personaly add that, no matter the aim of any content on steemit is, it has big links with financial (money) purposes. So that makes people on steemit to search ways of to gain more SBD. As you mentioned above @utopian-io is a related platform to steem and making more SBD.
A series about how to make more SBD and the related app/platform would be a good path shower for many of us.
Thank you @ilyastarar for your unconditional helps via nice content...
Respects... @octobre
This is a wonderful idea @ilyastarar. I have read many of your guide posts on different aspects of Steemit and have already learnt so much from you. Looking foward to the rest of your series as I'm sure I will be learning so much more. Thank you for sharing your knowledge. You have such a positive impact on this Steemit community
I should say this is the content i qas lookong for since month (being a newbie).I am going to follow the series with the hope of learning everyrhing about steemit.Sir it should be gradual and well tailored series so that we can systematically underatand and practize whatever we learn.i am going to resteem this post for my followers to follow.
Very grateful for this. It is a great help for someone, such as myself, to gather all the knowledge about this wonderful platform. I am a 66 year old digital artist and Steemit is an enormous help to build up a following. Many mistakes have been made but the rewards will come. Thanks for the education and glad I have found out about you!
very informative post brother, thanks for sharing.
Thank you for this very insightful and educative post @ilyastarar