Steemit Explained: resource credits

Steem Investors, if your building a store or game on the blockchain there is one detail you need to know: Resource Credits.

Hi Steemians
The Steem blockchain has no transaction fees unlike a blockchain like Ethereum were you pay ether for transactions or a blockchain like Neo where you pay gas for transactions on Steem there are no transaction fees , per se . However on the Steem blockchain you must own a small amount of Steem to perform transaction because if you own Steem you earn something call Resource Credits. These credits are consumed when you perform transactions and these credits are regenerated or you earn more each day for just holding the same amount of Steem. If you don’t use the Resource Credits you earn they accumulate.

Surprised? Well some people are because Resource Credits work quietly in the background and because Steem’s price is low, many people own enough Steem and this earn enough Resource Credits that they never know this is an issue. But as we have more games and applications where people come to Steem to play games or to buy items on the markets developing here we will need to create mechanisms to provide these players and purchasers enough resource credits to transact.

Travel.io has a solution of delegating new people 15 SP when they make an account which is more then enough to post travel blogs. I believe Splinterlands does something similar. Delegation works well, as you can delegate and remove delegations easily if the account is inactive and if the account is active they will build up their own Steem and thus resource credits. A simple solution which works.

Definition: Resource Credits are non-transferable credits given to each account based on how much Steem Power it has, which get “spent” whenever a user transacts with the Steem blockchain. This term is defined by it’s creators, the software developers who work for Steemit and publish information on their blog called @steemitblog .

What function do Resource Credits perform on the Steemit Platform?
They are a form of currency you spend to enact or perform transactions on the platform.

What are Transactions?
They are votes, comments, transfers and power ups. You pay or expend Resource Credits when you perform transactions or interact with the Steemit platform. Each transaction has a specific cost in Resource Credits, if you have enough resource credits to cover the cost, you can perform the transaction.

How much do transactions cost?
These are the costs I see on www.steemd.com:
comments 1,570,000,000
votes 282,000,000
transfers 259,000,000
powerups 259,000,000

If you don’t have enough resource credits you get an error message telling you that you are unable to perform the transaction or interaction. You should also be aware that the cost of transactions varies depending on factors that effect blockchain perform and the available supply of resource credits.

**Other important information from a this is a question and answer section from the Steemit blog.++

How do I get resource credits?

Answer: You are given a certain amount of resource credits in direct proportion to how much Steem Power you have. You need at least 15 Steem Power to be awarded any resource credits.

If I spend all my resource credits, do I have to buy more?

Answer: No, resource credits regenerate each day by a certain percentage, which is believed to be 22% and it takes 5 days to fully regenerate your entire allotment from zero.

Can I buy resource credits?

Answer: No they can only be given to you buy Steemit when you buy Steem Power.

Can I give my resource credits to others?

Answer: No, these tokens are non-transferrable, they are attached to Steem Power. But you can delegate part of your Steem Power and the resource credits go with the delegated Steem Power.

Sources

@steemitblog Steemd.com Steemit GitHub

✍🏼 written by Shortsegments

“Knowledge, it never spoils or goes out of style. It’s always new and refreshing to the uninformed.”
-Shortsegments

Read other articles by me on the Steemit Social Media Platform, where writers get paid for their content by the community by upvotes worth the cryptocurrency, called Steem.

Read my Steemleo investment Blog

Please follow my Twitter Feed Here

Shortsegments is a blogger or writer on the Steemit platform, where writers, photographers and video bloggers, along with other content producers get paid for posting their content. Steemit is a decentralized social media platform on a blockchain called Steem. A very important difference between Steemit and centralized platforms like Facebook, Instagram or YouTube, is that there isn’t a central authority or owner to take your account away from you and your account can’t be deleted. You are the owner of your account. Find out more at this Link

Steem Onboarding helps you apply for an account and is a series of videos which explains how Steemit works. You don’t need to understand everything about the blockchain to post content and our Onboarding help is available in six different languages.