Season 3 : Beginners Level Introductory Courses task 01 by Karupanocitizen

Greetings, dear fellow students and teachers of our prestigious @cryptoacademia last week of season 3, me it is an honor and pride not only to be able to participate and learn from the lessons taught by our teachers, but it is a great reason for joy to see how every time I learn a little more about the blockchain environment.

Today we will return to the fundamentals of our preparation by carrying out our first task, referring precisely to the operation of the blockchain that serves us as a digital home: Steemit and the tokens that are generated in it: the Steem, the Steem Dollar (SBD) and the Tron (TRX ), this publication is based on the very detailed explanation received from our teacher @sapwood, whom I thank infinitely for his dedication and effort.

Consensus protocols

In very general terms, a consensus protocol is a mechanism by which all the members of the network (nodes) that make up a certain blockchain, validate the data or the processed information that will later be registered in the corresponding block, this protocol can be a syntactic, algorithmic, computational or mathematical medium. The function of any consensus protocol is to allow everyone involved to receive/send information that can be validated, allowing everyone to reach the same conclusion in a system that is fault-tolerant.

The protocol used by the first blockchain network (Bitcoin) is the Proof of Work (PoW), so criticized for its excessive consumption of electricity, other existing protocols are: l Proof of Stake (PoS), Proof of Authority (PoA), Proof of Elapsed Time (PoET), Proof of Burn (PoB) and the Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS) created by Daniel Larimer and that serves as the consensus protocol of our Steemit blockchain.

The Brain Test (PoB)

I considered it important to start by clarifying the meaning of the consensus protocols, as well as the most important ones that exist, since initially, it generated confusion to know of the existence of the DPoS as a consensus test and of the Proof of Brain (PoB) within Steemit, however Now it is clear to me that we are talking about two different things, the first refers to the governance and block validation system, while the second refers to the mechanism for determining rewards for content creation.

The Proof of Brain system is what allows content creators to receive their rewards, this is achieved thanks to the votes granted by the "curators" who discretionally evaluate and through the use of their "wisdom" each publication, evaluating the originality and quality of content, based on their voting power (steem power), each vote will grant the creator a proportion of the “rewards pool”. From the foregoing, it follows that for the PoB to function, two fundamental elements must converge, the work of the "curator" and the existence of the "rewards pool".

The curation process involves a methodical review of each publication within the Steemit blockchain, in this review, the quality of the content must first be evaluated: good writing, absence of spelling errors, consistency, proper use of images and presentation, to then determine that the information contained in the publication is free of plagiarism and that the corresponding credit is granted for the images, texts or other material taken by the author from external sources.

Rewards pool abuse

As we mentioned previously, the rewards that authors receive come from the “rewards pool” and will be proportional to the voting power of each of the curators who vote positively for said publication. But what happens when one or more curators with great voting power decide to self-vote for each of their publications?

The practice of voting for oneself is socially frowned upon within the Steemit platform, this is because it shows a selfish attitude on the part of the curator, who does not agree with the 50% of the earnings that he or she will receive as a curator also wishes to receive the other 50 % of rewards assigned to authors in a publication. This practice not only creates unfair rewards (the curator should not evaluate himself) but also negatively affects the participation of other content creators, who eventually, due to abuse in the use of SP and the extraction of rewards from the “rewards” pool ”, could leave the platform causing the prestige and valuation of it to decrease.

Quotation of our tokens on the coinmarketcap platform

To know the updated value of the tokens that we receive within the Steemit platform, simply enter the page: https://coinmarketcap.com/, there you will find the list of almost all cryptocurrencies currently in circulation. To find the value of a particular token, just get the steps that I list in the following gif.

_{images taken from the page www.coinmarketcap.com, edited with canvas}

Another method to keep up to date with the price of your tokens is by downloading the coinmarketcap mobile application in the app store (for IOS systems) or the play store (Android systems), once downloaded you create a "watch list" and you include all the cryptocurrencies whose value you need to always have updated, the application will send alerts about the ups and downs that they experience. (This function is also available in the web version for PC)

_{images taken from the my selfphone, edited with canvas}

Knowing our tokens

Every time you receive a positive vote in the publications you make, you have the opportunity to generate two types of tokens: the Steem (Steem) and the Steem Dollar (SBD), additionally, since the CEO of Tron, Justin Sun decided to buy the Larimer brothers' participation in Steem you also receive Tron (Trx) in a proportion equal to that of Steem.

• The Steem (Steem )

Steem is the flagship token of our platform. This cryptocurrency is listed within the main exchanges so its value will be determined, like the rest of the other crypto assets by the supply and demand processes of the market, it can also be used to execute the Power Up process with which they become Steem Power granting greater voting power and participation within the platform.

• The Steem Basic Dollar (SBD)

This token was designed to function as a stable coin, that is, a cryptocurrency that self-regulates its value in such a way that it always maintains a 1: 1 parity concerning the dollar, although its value has experienced a very notable rise that has been maintained during In recent months, even reaching values ​​close to USD 12, it currently fluctuates in a range of USD 5.5 to USD 7.8

• Tron (TRX)

From the integration between Tron and Steem, generated by Justin Sun's investment in the latter platform, in addition to the aforementioned tokens, content creators also receive rewards in TRX, which is the native token of the Tron blockchain. These rewards are paid in a 1: 1 ratio relative to Steem.

I hope I have adequately covered the requirements raised in the first task of season 3 of our crypto academy, for it was a real pleasure to learn from the teachings of professor @sapwood who kindly offered us such valuable training.

Kind regards, we keep reading!