The History of Steem/Steemit Launch in the Words of @dan Larimer from the early Launch Days.

" I have collected most of the statements Dan Larimer made during the launch of Steem/Steemit. A record of this launch should be included on the Steem Blockchain.

Read this thoroughly, and make your own judgment on the fairness of the launch. As you will see for yourself people who made some effort to understand what Steem was all about and weeded through the usual bitcointalk posts of troll misinformation, got the message that dan was trying to relay clearly. Such people are today's steemit whales or early adopters as we should call them, people like @smooth, @berniesanders, @steemed, @witness.svk, @pharesim, @abit , @arhag, @complexring, @blocktrades, @tombstone, @summon, @cloop1, @steempty, @blackjack, @roadscape, @riverhead, @pumpkin and even @wang.

These people took the time to look at the code and understand there was a lot of hard work put into it. That's why they decided to invest their time and money into Steem early days, when there was nothing but speculation on the end result, but that speculation was supported by a little effort and understanding.

Reading through these statements will also give you a sense that Dan did not hide information as much as people like to think. When I noticed the steem thread a couple of weeks after the re-launch it only took me a few hours to read and understand, 24 hours later I was mining Steem, not as early as everyone else. So to make up for lost time as soon as steem hit bittrex exchange I purchased steem with btc and sent it to my steem wallet to vest. That was the best decision I made, but that decision was not foolishly done. Read these same statements and you will find my decision to buy steem on bittrex early on at a premium price might as well say, was well informed. "

@joseph

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Steem is an experimental Proof of Work blockchain with an unproven/beta consensus algorithm.

• No ICO, No IPO
• Currency Symbol STEEM
• 1.000 STEEM block reward at launch
• Approximately 112% APR long term inflation rate

Consensus Algorithm

The consensus algorithm works as follows:

At the start of the chain, "initminer" is the only node that can produce blocks, but it does not get paid. In fact, no one gets paid until 21 miners solve a POW.

Every time miner solves a POW and broadcasts their transaction, it gets included in a block and they get added to the queue.

The top 21 miners in the queue are selected as a "round" and are randomly shuffled. Then they produce 21 blocks.

At the start of each round one miner is popped from the queue (reducing queue length), and bringing in a new miner.

Once your miner is in the POW queue, you cannot submit new POW until you exit the queue. It takes about 2 hours to move through the queue. In effect, if you have more than 0.2% of the total hash power you should have multiple accounts mining.

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Broadcasting POW is a transaction that adds you to the queue. Once you are in the queue you produce blocks at deterministic time intervals.

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My interpretation of instamine is when the block reward is very high at the beginning giving non-linear returns to the first block producers. Here we get linear returns. If we get a full 24 hours with no competition then we will end up with less than 0.3% of the STEEM after a year.

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While any mining algorithm could be used, we would like to introduce a new algorithm that has several beneficial properties. The mining algorithm requires proof that the miner possess the private key for the account that will ultimately produce the block and receive the reward. The algorithm also requires the user to do an elliptic curve signature verification, the optimization of which will benefit the validation of all transactions and lower the cost of operating the network in the long run.
To be valid the POW must be less than the target difficulty and RECOVER_PUBLIC_KEY(H2,S) must equal PUB. The miner introduces randomness in either the selection of the NONCE or via the randomness required for elliptic curve signature generation. This, combined with the private key selection should ensure that no two miners are searching the same work space.

By starting and ending the POW with a cryptographically secure hash function we can ensure that any vulnerabilities or computational shortcuts that may exist in the RECOVER_PUBLIC_KEY algorithm or SIGN algorithm will ultimately cause the POW algorithm to revert back to a simple HASH-based POW.

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HASH() is SHA256, but the algorithm is dominated by RECOVER_PUBLIC_KEY() and SIGN() for which there is no ASIC or GPU code that I am aware of.

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Current difficulty: 000001ffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff

Most of what we are mining will be given away in the future, so what ever concerns there are about our early mining dominance will not matter in the long run.

Mining is very sensitive to latency due to having less than 3 seconds to receive a block, mine, and broadcast a solution.

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We would like to have the benefits of Proof of Work (aka mining) without the downsides such as unpredictable block production time, mining pool centralization, or the potential for recent blocks to be orphaned. The primary benefits of POW include:

1. An objective measure of quality that is expensive to forge
2. A financial incentive to optimize a useful/necessary computer algorithm
3. A distribution model that attracts tech-savvy users
4. Creation of a robust low-latency network

Unlike traditional mining, block production time is separated from the time when work is performed. When a solution is found that meets the target difficulty, a transaction is submitted the network and included by the current block producer. To be included, the POW must be derived from the current head block. The user is then added to a queue to be included in a future block production round. The target difficulty becomes a function of the queue length. A simple algorithm would require a number of leading 0 bits of a POW hash equal to the number of producers in the queue. We chose to make difficulty equal to queue length divided by 4.

With three-second block times, a POW miner needs to operate a node with minimal network latency so it can get the new head-block as quickly as possible and then submit its result to the network with enough time to propagate to the next block producer.

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Blocks are produced on a fixed schedule and must be signed by the private key that did the POW.
POW is a TRANSACTION that gets included by the currently scheduled block producer, the transaction adds you to the queue IF the POW is sufficient.

End result: 3 second confirmations (same as BitShares) and 100% predictability in block schedule and no orphan blocks, but you can have orphan POW TRANSACTIONS if they don't get to the scheduled block producer in time.

Block producers have more to gain by including your transaction than by ignoring it, they get paid to include your POW. You don't get paid for your POW. You only get paid when you eventually produce a block and/or include someone else POW.

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If someone signs two blocks with the same timestamp and someone catches them in a timely manner, they can seize the balance of the "double signer".

So no one can "produce" on two parallel chains without risking their balance.

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I know it is possible to build this on windows (it is derived from BitShares code which builds on windows), but I don't have a windows machine.

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The consensus algorithm works as follows:

At the start of the chain, "initminer" is the only node that can produce blocks, but it does not get paid. In fact, no one gets paid until 21 miners solve a POW.

Every time miner solves a POW and broadcasts their transaction, it gets included in a block and they get added to the queue.

The top 21 miners in the queue are selected as a "round" and are randomly shuffled. Then they produce 21 blocks.

At the start of each round one miner is popped from the queue (reducing queue length), and bringing in a new miner.

if no one in the round produces blocks then the network stalls until someone in the round starts producing.

The current queue:

["insurance","james","jandbzan","jason","jeff","mangox","andrew","jeffrey","jennifer","liondani","apple","arthur","balthazar","barbara","faddy",
"ben","billgates","bitchipper","cloop","bitcoin","bitcoinkkk","bitshares","bnrtx","bob","bobby","boltz","brian","bryan","initminer18882","carl",
"charles","chartbuddy","chris","cisahasa","cypherdoc","dan","abit","daniel","dannac","david","thisisnice","dealthandtaxes","devshuster","dnotes",
"doesntmatter","donald","jeremy","donna","john","jose","dorthy","acp","drays","drpd","elizabeth","eric","joseph","ernest","ethereum",
"facebook","adamstgbit","kevin","frank","fuck","gary","cloop1","griffith","helen","faddy1","coins4lunch","aaron","kointrend","almond",
"amph","amy","ander","hilariousandco"]

I can tell you that many in that queue are not me.

The algorithm is robust once the queue gets diversified and the active round is controlled by more than a single node.

In terms of Bitcoin, think of it like taking a random sample of 21 blocks and trusting them not to collude. Bitcoin depends upon no one having enough hash power to mine 6 in a row, which means this system is secure unless someone can mine 21 in a row and then stop producing blocks.

Note: I did pick many top names for name-squatting purposes.

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Before everyone gets steemd (let the puns commence!), let me explain a bit about what is going on with this launch:

1. We want to have a large amount of STEEM to give away via faucets
2. We don't want to spend a lot of money competing with miners just so we can turn around and give it away
3. So we have intentionally made the launch unappealing so that we could execute a longer-term strategy.

What this means is that anyone who reads the code and identifies the value within has a huge opportunity, you can get STEEM the cheapest you ever will be able to and therefore are rewarded for your efforts.

If you are offended by any of the following then it means you do not get the big picture and will ultimately miss out:

1. name squatting less than 100 names (registered via mining)
2. dev mining with 300K HPS (almost nothing really)
3. not knowing what this is all about
4. dev getting their STEEM cheap (which means others get it cheep too)
5. initial centralization of mining
6. someone owning a large fraction of what they created

All crypto-coins need a business model and a development team behind them or they will fail. Most coins opt for a pre-sale, ICO, or private mining.

We have instead opted to go for public mining but low information, which means we are giving savvy miners and people willing to look at our code a HUGE advantage.

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Participation rate is a concept brought over from BitShares. It is a measure of how many "missed blocks" out of the last 128 blocks that were scheduled to be produced. If someone mines and shuts down prior to producing a block then that can happen.

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You will get 0 HPS while your miner is in the queue to produce blocks. Add a second miner (privatekey+name) to produce while your first miner waits.

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You can pass in private keys via config file, look for config.ini

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can you please tell us, what is VESTES and SBD ?

(Smiley) Someone is asking the right questions.

1. the value of STEEM does not come from how it is mined
2. VESTS is VESTING STEEM or STEEM that has been locked up for an average of 1 year
3. SBD... now that is something that will be revealed in time.

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The goal of this thread is to help people DISCOVER Steem through the code.

https://soundcloud.com/beyond-bitcoin-hangouts/e147#t=48:30

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The purpose is so that we can mine this coin publicly and in a manner that gives everyone a chance to participate. If no one else chooses to mine because it is too difficult, too little information, or no interest then that is fine.

So, if this approach is not for you, then please leave and let those who are curious explore the code and get involved without a dispute about "how" things should be done.

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I have verified that anyone with a 1 year old i7 CPU can start it up and start producing blocks in under an hour.

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Dev, Do you own the Cryptonomex, Inc. ?

CNX is the company that produced Graphene & BitShares. We used their code as the foundation for Steem.

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transfer fromname toname "1.000 STEEM" "memo" true

It is important to have the full precision 1.000 and to use the quotes.

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I see the name of my account in this list above (drays)

Welcome drays, if you would like to have that account I will gladly transfer it to you. I reserved many accounts from bitcoin talk to keep them available for you.

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If you study the code you will discover that this chain has 6 different kinds of proof of work, most of them much more useful than spinning a CPU.

I am familiar with multi-algorithm POW. The POW in this is accessible to far more people than anything before it.

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Reward is constant until it inflation reaches about 113% per year, then it remains at that level.

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1. the coin is not impossible to mine, I have a standard desktop PC running the open source code and producing several POW per hour
2. you may have noticed VESTS (vesting STEEM), the Steem network is set up to ensure that 90% of all all Steem is locked for an average of 1 year continuously.
3. after the initial bootstrap phase, all mining rewards automatically get converted to vesting Steem (see code for details)
4. someone asked about the supply 143994.000 STEEM vs block number 35706 showing an average STEEM per block of 4.00
   • 50% of that supply is actually locked up by the network to be distributed on July 4th, 2016 based upon another kind of proof of work (already coded, no hard forks).
   • that leaves 2 STEEM per block, 1 to the producer for producing the block, and 21 to the producer for including someone else POW.

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relaunch

I have good news and bad news...

bad news: we have identified an integer overflow bug in the POW scheduling that only shows up when difficulty got high (thus didn't show up on our tests).
good news: we have decided to relaunch the chain with the fix and in a way that will hopefully make more people happy

On the relaunch we will do the following:

1. Start a new Thread
2. Give 30 minutes notice ahead of the start of mining
3. Not squat on any names

If there are any other requests for the relaunch we will consider them now.

Like we said from the beginning this is experimental / unproven consensus and beta software.

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You already overflowed one integer with this coin. What's going to happen to an int64_t after 12 years of doubling?

Reverse split, we have many years before that becomes an issue.

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Relaunch in 1 hour.
Ports will change
New thread will be created in 30 min.

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This launch has the following people in it:

cloop, nxt, thisisnice, dantheman

Accounts:
root, admin, administrator, steem, any, moderator, and unknown plus anything starting with steemit are our own mining efforts.

The distribution of mining is much more even with this launch than last launch.

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Because I don't have a windows machine to build on and other platforms have to build it from source.
Broadcasting POW is a transaction that adds you to the queue. Once you are in the queue you produce blocks at deterministic time intervals.
Do not plan on producing binaries for any platform at this point in time.

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The blockchain indicates that people are able to have names starting with all letters. If you are not using the config.ini file then perhaps you may need '"name"' on your console. It might be a shell issue.

In any event, I recommend using config.ini to save your setting and make it more secure.

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Or maybe I'm more like .

Too bad SMF doesn't let me post images yet, it would be fun.

Maybe all of this bumbling around is just a front to skillfully hide the super powers within Steem? But you would never believe that

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After mining for about an hour my hash rate has dropped to 0 hps. I'm not familiar with Bitshares, is this normal? I still appear to be connected to the network?

BitShares doesn't have mining.

If you see a hash rate of 0 then it means one of several things:

1. --miner no miners specified properly
2. --witness no witness specified
3. --mining-threads is not set
4. you already produced one POW and are in the queue

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I have identified a small security vulnerability that has been remedied with the latest commits on github. Depending upon the current queue length, someone could reuse the same POW up to 4 times in the same block. Ie: if the queue length was 88, they could do it 4 times, if it was 89 then 3, etc. If the queue length was 81 then there would be no vulnerability.

This bug is a side effect of a last minute decision to divide the queue length by 4 when calculating the target difficulty. Under the original design, each POW would increase the difficulty and thus it would have been impossible to reuse the same POW unless the POW was 2x the target difficulty.

The fix that has been implemented will reject duplicate POW when propagating the transaction or generating a block, but will still accept it if it gets included into a block. The end result is that no hard fork is necessary. So long as the majority of miners update their code, the difficulty of exploiting this will be much less likely than actually doing 4x the work.

I first discovered this bug when I noticed an attacker who appeared to exploit it by submitting more than one POW at a time. Bravo good sir and thanks for reviewing the code enjoy your spoils!

Upon reviewing the code it is clear that if you use the same private key for multiple miners on separate machines then you will generate the same POW on two different machines. If they are on the same machine then the NONCE will be different for each thread and you should be fine.

If / when a hard fork is necessary to fix some future bug, then I will include this soft fix as part of the same hard fork.

Once again, thank you for your patience as we work out the kinks in this new code.

NO FORK REQUIRED
NO RELAUNCH

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any windows wallet on the horizon?

Yes, on the horizon.

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is it ok to use the same WIF key for few mining accounts?
and to use the same accountname in --witness and --miner ?

1. only use --witness on one machine or you will double produce blocks and lose your account
2. you can use the same key so long as you mine on the same computer in the same process

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I'm trying to figure out if I should be using multiple accounts. What would you say would be an optimal hash rate for each mining account? And do you have any long term plans for Steem?

If the queue length is 92, then it will take about 92 minutes to move your account through the queue. Everyone should mine with at least 2 accounts.

A typical i7 can get between 15K and 25K HPS which will find one POW every 100 to 150 minutes.

If you are mining with an i7 then I would say 2 or 3 accounts is the most you will need to have no down time.

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I think it's time you find a way to get this compiled for Windows users, you've got enough.
It's only going to help the coin in the long run. Let us little guys have a chance.

Don't worry, little guys will have plenty of chance later on in the life of Steem.

NextGenCrypto asked if I had a GPU miner. The answer is no. I am mining via Amazon EC2 spot instances.

It should be possible to create a GPU miner, but that would require a lot of knowledge of how to implement elliptic curve signatures / verification which is something I don't have.

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A couple of things to note:

1. I build and mine with Ubuntu 14.04
2. Everyone loves proof of work, unless it involves real work like reading code or compiling source

The entire build process is more or less a clone of BitShares which also builds on Windows, the tools are free.

If the concept of proof of work is "I was able to download and run a script" then that doesn't represent real work, especially if those running the script already have the hardware and don't pay for their electricity.

Furthermore, most of those who are mining don't even know what it is they are mining or why it might have value. Many here make assumptions about Steem and we are counting on those wrong assumptions.

1. Some assume Steem needs miners to be successful, but we consider mining a niche that is too small to matter
2. Some assume 113% increase in STEEM supply every year is too much, but fail to investigate how the 113% is allocated
3. Some assume I am one guy acting alone with no money and no vision

Window's binaries will be made available when the time is right.

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For those who are doing the math, this means we have mined 75% of the STEEM held by current accounts.
For those who are worried about us dumping, we intend to convert it all to VESTS at the end of the week.
VESTS are locked up, non-transverable, non-divisible, STEEM that can only be unlocked via 104 equal weekly payments (2 years).

We recommend everyone convert their STEEM to VESTS.

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HODL was inspired by the same blog post http://bytemaster.github.io/article/2016/01/04/The-Benefits-of-Proof-of-Work, but we feel he didn't get the point.

FreeTrade, creator of HODL, has a bad reputation for several failed coins Memory Coin, Memory Coin II, etc.

Starting 30 days from launch, VESTS will get to vote on 19 witnesses. 1 witness will be selected by mining and 1 will be time-shared with the remaining witnesses proportional to their votes. A total of 21 per round.

After 30 days all block production and pow rewards are automatically converted to VESTS to reward miners who make long-term commitment.

The difference between this and BitShares is that the voters must be VESTING and cannot dump if they don't like how things go. Also, unlike BitShares, there are no worker proposals nor major changes to the protocol which
should take much of the politics out of the coin. There are only two real tokens, STEEM and SBD.

Lastly, unlike BitShares, VESTS are never diluted unless over 90% of all STEEM is held as vesting.

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Thanks for Eclipse for identifying a problem with the nonce selection, I have checked in a patch that will address this issue for anyone attempting to use the same key with multiple accounts. I didn't realize that libsecp256k used deterministic signatures rather than generating randomness for each signature like Open SSL did.

I have already checked in a patch that fixes the display of balances for anyone having issues there.

Mining for distribution was a last minute addition to this project which had originally intended to allocate 100% of everything and then sell off a fraction.

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You'll get dumped on by the devs pretty hard.
You need to stop getting scammed and actually read the fucking thread too.
They have mined all of it so that they can control delegated pow. They will be the only ones who can do pow, and they will mine very easy and dump continuously. To ROI they only need to dump 2-3 btc. Everything else will be pure profit. I'd run from this coin and try something else.

Scam. You Keep Using That Word, I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means.

Anyway, any developer as skilled as you knows that the code we released takes months to develop and can infer we have a greater mission.

I chose not to moderate your post above because you have no knowledge about which you speak and your post discredits you.

1. It is impossible to judge someones intentions, especially when you haven't gotten a chance to know them.
2. It is impossible to determine an honest bug from an intentional handicapping. We were bit by the NONCE issue ourselves.
3. There is no code of ethics among miners, any miner who develops a better algorithm, custom hardware, or other advantages keeps those advantages to themselves. This is true with every hashing algorithm on every alt coin ever. Quite frankly, there are people much smarter than I am who will likely develop more efficient implementation for STEEM. How can we possibly compete with botnets using stolen hash power? We are not miners, we hate mining, that is not our skill.
4. We consider lack of mining pools to be GOOD for decentralization.
5. The reason for the relaunch was that it was cheaper to do (for all parties) than a hard fork after just a few days. Hash power is insignificant next to development costs. We relaunched for several reasons:
   a. we had a bug that was hard to fix with a hard fork and didn't want to support the buggy code forever
   b. many people called for a relaunch because it would be more fair
   c. people had more time to learn about STEEM and so everyone was on more equal footing the second go around
6. Whether or not something is cheating depends upon the rules of the game. You are playing checkers and we are playing chess. We don't subscribe to your rules.

Our rules are simple: read the code or blindly trust us but don't complain about the rules of our game. We have given everyone an opportunity, a gift. If you are not interested in our gift and our rules then don't play.

We make no promises about the future value of STEEM. We are not attempting to pump STEEM.
We are only playing by the rules the regulators have given us. In fact, we don't even promise to support STEEM nor
certify that it is fit for any purpose. Given all of those facts, there is no grounds for any complaint.

This is an EXPERIMENT and the hypothesis of the experiment is that success depends upon completely different factors than you believe.

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What can I expect after converting to VESTS?

VESTS give you voting power and protect you from most dilution.
VESTS are indivisible, non transferable, and can only be converted back to STEEM via 104 equal weekly payments starting from the time you request conversion.

If you convert to VESTS you will not be able to dump on an exchange when that happens.

In other words, if you hold VESTS you will get more STEEM in the future than you have today.

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For Sale: 250 STEEM = .5 BTC
Will happily escrow. PM if interested.

We have our first estimate of market cap: 564834.000 STEEM * $0.8 around $450,000.
I would buy it from you, but for $200/day you could mine 33% of the daily production so mining is more profitable.

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how to withdraw from vesting ?
is vesting giving any ineterest ? how much ?

Vesting pays a dynamic amount of interest depending upon the percent of STEEM held in vesting.

For every 1 STEEM printed to pay miners, block producers, and others, 9 STEEM is printed to pay VESTS.

This means that if 90% of STEEM is held in VESTS then the inflation-adjusted rate of return is 0%.
This means if 1% of STEEM is held in VESTS then the inflation adjusted rate of return is practically infinite.
This means that if 95% of STEEM is held in VESTS then the inflation adjusted rate of return is negative.

Bottom line: VESTS holders are protected from almost all inflation, but they are illiquid, non-transferrable, non-divisible.

You can withdraw_from_vesting via 104 equal weekly payments that are automatically scheduled by the blockchain.

The remaining funds retain their benefits and you can cancel the withdraw request at any time.

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I stopped mining when I realized how much he was using...

In other words, you concluded that the price was too high and let us outbid you for the STEEM.

So I guess the questions that everyone should be asking is:
Why do the devs value STEEM so highly that they would spend thousands of dollars mining their own coin?

The total cost of the hash power spent on STEEM (assuming everyone was paying via EC2) is less than $3000.

Should STEEM have a market cap of less than $3000?

Even coins such as BBQCoin and others have a market cap north of $50,000 and contain little innovation. You would have to rank STEEM lower than Vcoin (#309 on CMM) to not mine at these prices.

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1. once delegated mining kicks in, all mining rewards are paid as VESTS and not STEEM so no dumping
2. we are not going to vote for ourselves when it comes to delegated mining

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VESTS represent a share in the VESTING FUND, if you were able to immediately convert 100% of your VESTS back to STEEM you would end up with the same amount of STEEM you started with.

Using the "info" command in the CLI wallet you can get the following stats:

"total_vesting_fund_steem": "1336248.000 STEEM",
"total_vesting_shares": "361249.423691 VESTS",

This means each VESTS is worth 1336248/361249 = 3.69 STEEM at the moment. So calculate your STEEM balance and you will find that you have actually earned significant amount of STEEM as a result of your transfer to vesting.

All currencies that have a fixed block reward start out with near "infinite inflation" that asymptotically approaches 0% as supply grows.

When you convert STEEM to VESTS you lock in your % ownership in exchange for long-term commitment.

The ratio of STEEM to VESTS will continue to grow.

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VESTS are not denominated in STEEM but represent a share in a pool of STEEM.

When you buy into the pool, you "buy VESTS" at the current price defined by STEEM_IN_POOL / TOTAL_VESTS and thereby do not dilute other people in the pool. Your STEEM go into the pool and you get a corresponding share in the POOL.

The network adds new STEEM to the pool without adding VESTS and by this means pays a "dividend" to all holders of VESTS while simultaneously increasing the price of VESTS in STEEM.

Early on a fixed rate of production causes very large percentage increases in supply, but as supply grows percentage increase falls. In other words the price of VESTS in STEEM is rising very quickly right now, so if you plan on converting to VESTS you should
do it quickly.

When you do buy, make sure you VEST them immediately to prevent dilution, or if you don't vest make sure you assume a much larger supply of STEEM when pricing.

Wasn't it more honest to just premine this and make an ICO, instead of running all those 'games'?

We would have preferred the premine + ICO route. It would have been cleaner, lower risk (in terms of getting desired stake), etc. Then we talked to lawyers and read the regulations and saw how Ripple was prosecuted.

Conclusion: premine + ICO could force us to register as MSB and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Furthermore, it would undermine the real use case for Steem. ICO also carries
the risk of SEC violations. I am not saying that a premine + ICO couldn't be done legally without becoming a MSB or violating SEC, I am merely stating that it is more challenging / risky.

Meanwhile Bitcoin, Litecoin, Dogecoin, and other mined coins appear to be accepted and explicitly accounted for in the regulations.

When it comes to the law and regulations, how you do something is often more important than the result achieved.

So we released a coin with open code that fully documents the protocol for anyone willing to work for it and didn't mine anything before all information about the protocol was technically available to the public. In theory,
anyone could see the protocol and realize the new business opportunities it creates. There is no "insider" information when the protocol is open and anyone can build on it.

Our only advantage is information about how we intend to use the platform. The irony is that there are legal risks in sharing information about what we intend to do for a
coin until after we have done it. That information could be interpreted as a promise that in turn would give the coin value derived from our future actions. So we didn't promise anything, but we still
know what our plans are. End result, we valued the coin higher than anyone else. We purchased it with our own miners. Speculators willing to take a risk competed with us even though they didn't
know exactly what we planned to do with the coin.

We also have learned from past experiences like ProtoShares that was used to launch BitShares. Invictus had intended to mine it and make money on the appreciation after BitShares
actually came out, but instead GPU miners and faster mining algorithms were developed within a week of launch. That left the BitShares team struggling for a solution. It is reasonable to
expect that anyone with a profiler and some programming skills could come up with a faster, more efficient, implementation of mining that we did. Higher performance could have been achieved
with just a hour of effort by a competent programmer.

So, if you are OK with the concept of premine + ICO, and if you value having a development team funded by capital appreciation, and if you value having a team do the best it
can to insulate itself for burdensome regulations, then you can appreciate what was done with STEEM. If you don't like 'games' then blame the government for their rules, don't blame the people who play by them.

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Hi; I am Ned Scott, the founder of Steemit, Inc., an organization that has mined and is currently mining Steem. Steemit, Inc provided the source code for Steem.
In the next few months, we will be releasing a white paper and a website to describe more about Steem, the cryptocurrency and blockchain.
The reason this chain has been manufactured into existence as is is most explained by the following blog post: http://bytemaster.github.io/article/2016/03/27/How-to-Launch-a-Crypto-Currency-Legally-while-Raising-Funds/
We appreciate everyone who has mined this into existence with us. I am available to speak privately with anyone who has mined this chain.
Look forward to being a part of the Steem movement with you.

I can confirm that steem is Ned Scott.

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