RE: Today's "hardfork" (Steem update to version 0.13.0) explained in laymen's terms and why it was important for the community!
Slight correction:
"Basically: Without "mining" there's no blockchain and no Steem."
That's somewhat wrong. This isn't like Bitcoin.
The network is actually ran by witnesses - the top 19 witnesses make so much more than miners, the miners are just there to allow people to get something out of the network through computer power, rather than trust/stake.
Blocks are done in "rounds" of 21 blocks. 19 blocks go to the top 19 witnesses in a random order, 1 block goes to a miner, and the final block goes to a RANDOM witness outside of the top 19 (but partially based on their total votes), thus for every 1 block a miner gets, 20 other blocks go to witnesses.
Check out Dan's post here for more information on Witness+Miner Scheduling: https://steemit.com/steem/@dantheman/steem-witness-scheduling-algorithm
Without miners, Steem would probably run just fine.
Thanks mate! I was aware of that, I just wanted to keep it as simple as possible. But you're right. It's not 100% correct the way I put it!