Steem or Steemit? All about Cryptocurrency with Integrated Social Media
You have heard about Steemit but also about Steem and now you have confused ideas. In this guide dedicated to Steem and Steemit, we explain what they are for and how the two are related. Blockchain technology has paved the way for revenue opportunities for all, let's go and discover the first decentralized and functioning social media platform that pays content creators.
What is Steem
Steem is a blockchain-based rewards platform for publishers. Content creators publish videos, written content, open-source projects and earn remuneration based on the quality of the content.
Steem has been active since June 2016 and to date has distributed over 40 million USD through the native STM token, known as STEEM token.
What is a Smart Media Token
The SMT cryptocurrency is a native digital asset on the Steem blockchain, that is, it is the token that makes the economic system work thanks to the incentive of some activities carried out by the participants.
The SMT coin is like an Ethereum ERC-20 token, but with some typical properties such as 'Proof-of-Brain' and the reward system specifically designed for digital content.
The Proof-of-Brain Explained
Proof-of-Brain is a typical Steem algorithm. The altcoins generated on the blockchain are defined tokens rewards precisely because they encourage people to create curated content, from which to derive an economic reward.
STEEM cryptocurrency is distributed among content creators at the end of the voting or based on the likes that the content has scored. To do this, websites have been created that integrates a system based on STEEM and the Proof-of-Brain “philosophy” of the smart media token. We will talk about these websites shortly, but now let's see how the Steem blockchain works.
How Steem Blockchain Works
Steem's blockchain was built on Graphene, the same technology used for BitShares. Graphene is a type of distributed ledger capable of handling 1,000 transactions per second and with the potential to reach 10,000 and more transactions per second, by implementing the capacity of the servers and the communication of protocols.
How Consensus is Reached
Consensus on Steem is not entrusted to proof of work, but to a mechanism more similar to proof of stake, known as DPOS: Delegated Proof of Stake.
People with an interest in the future value of Steem vote to select individuals responsible for generating the blocks. Block generation occurs per round. Each spawn turn requires 21 selected witnesses to create and sign transaction blocks. 20 of these witnesses are selected with the vote of approval, the last being chosen from among the witnesses who have never entered the top 20.
At each round, the witnesses are shuffled to prevent any of them from ignoring the blocks generated by himself previously (to avoid double-spending). If a witness skips a block, he is disabled until the signature key of the skipped block is updated.
On Steem the blocks are generated every 3 seconds, enabling the blockchain to process a greater number of transactions in a short time.
Transaction Fees
There are no transaction fees in the Steem blockchain like Bitcoin. This is possible because the witnesses called to generate the blocks are fully remunerated with the STM tokens generated in the new signed block. The only case in which a user is obliged to pay a commission occurs if he uploads too many transactions together; in this case a protection mechanism is triggered to avoid overloading the blockchain.
What is Steemit?
Now that you understand what Steem is and how it works, let's get to Steemit.
Steemit is a social media where you can post written content that is useful for the community. Really useful content is remunerated with variable amounts based on the votes received.
If you know Medium, they are similar in some ways. In both cases, people post personal content that can be publicly read by others. Steemit differs not only for the remuneration given to useful contents but also because the contents are immutably registered on the Steem blockchain.
Every day the Steem blockchain coins new STEEM tokens, which are added to the community rewards pool. The added tokens are used to reward users for contributing quality writing, based on the votes they have received.
A very important thing to know before using Steemit. As a blockchain-based platform, if you lose your login password, there is no recovery system. Write the password in multiple places to avoid being out forever.
Finally, publishing content on Steemit is free.
Not just Steemit
Besides Steemit there are other websites that perform an identical or similar function. Like for example Busy.org where to post textual content accompanied by videos; DTube a kind of paid Youtube; Utopian.io dedicated to developers of open source projects.
They are all applications installed on the Steem blockchain. And now let's see where you can buy the STEEM token.
Where to Buy the STEEM Token
The STEEM token made its appearance on cryptocurrency exchanges in April 2016. Since then, the number of crypto exchanges that have listed the STEEM token has grown. To date, there are 10 exchanges including the most important in the sector such as HitBTC, Bithumb, Huobi, Poloniex, and Upbit.
Among them, we also have Binance, where exchanges on a daily basis are the most intense (26% of the total). The exchange has adopted three exchange pairs.
STEEM / BTC.
STEEM / ETH.
STEEM / BNB.
So let's see how to buy STEEM cryptocurrency.
Buy STEEM Coin on Binance
Register on the website www.binance.com and follow the quick registration procedure, entering your personal data. At the end of the registration of the new account, enter your login credentials and go to 'Exchange / Basic'. From the menu on the right choose the market between BTC, ETH, and BNB. At this point, search for STEEM and click on the pair to update the graph.
You're almost there. Under the price chart, set the quantity of STEEM cryptocurrency to buy and execute the order. The procedure is thus finished and you have invested in STEEM coin.
We have assumed that you have deposited bitcoin or ethereum on the platform. But if you prefer you can also operate with BNB, in this guide we explain how to buy Binance Coin.
In conclusion
Through this guide, you learned that Steem is the blockchain on which the Steemit social media application was built. You have discovered that with Steemit you can earn money by creating quality content that is useful to the reference community. But you have also known new applications that like Steemit remunerate users. Finally, you were able to learn how to buy the STEEM token and where.
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