For this week's lesson we learn how Steemit works, how payments are made and other interesting facts about the platform. I have been a member of Steemit for over five years and I actually never even worried about how payments were made or what took place behind the scenes. Of course eventually curiosity got the better of me and I got a working knowledge of this, still I must say I have learned a lot from this lesson.

Steem Blockchain: STU, Reputation, Author/Curator Ratio, etc

1) What is STU? What is the break-up of STU? Take a real example to indicate the STU and calculate the different rewards that Author and Curators generated from your last Post Payout? (Screenshot required)

What is STU What is the break-up of STU?

STU or Steem Token Unit is the breakdown of how a post is paid on Steemit. As we know we are paid in Steem Power or STEEM, and in Steem Backed Dollars SBD. We also know that whatever rewards our posts generate are divided 50/50 between us as authors and the curators.

Curators receive their pay in SP, every reward received is automatically powered up and increases the curator's Steem Power. Authors on the other hand are paid half in STEEM and half in SBD, depending on factors determined by the price the SBD is going for. But right now we are getting rewards 50/50.

Take a real example to indicate the STU and calculate the different rewards that Author and Curators generated from your last Post Payout? (Screenshot required)

I posted this article as a response to one of the Steemit Crypto Academy Assigments: "Bitcoin's Trajectory - Crypto Academy / S4W5 - Homework Post for Professor @imagen".

The payout for this post was as follows:

Now my friends the Curators got as SP 50% of the rewards my post got this was $5.88 in USD, Steem at that moment was trading at approximately $0.61 so the curators were rewarded with $5.88/0.61 or about 9.64 Steem Power directly into their account. I on the other hand had my reward given to me half in SP and half in SBD, so I got 4.82 SP and at that moment SBD was worth about USD6.84 so as half of the authors reward will be given as SBD what I got was USD2.94 * 6.84 = USD20.11. So my post actually was worth $5.88 in curator rewards, $2.94 in SP and $20.11 in SBD for a total of $28.93, quite a nice reward I think.

I received a much higher reward than the curators because of the fact that the SBD is worth so much more than a US Dollar, of course this is great for us authors, but remember this is not always the case I have even witnessed an SBD worth less than a US Dollar.

Of course, both the curator and author receive the added bonus of a similar amount of Tron as a reward.

(2) Indicate the Raw reputation score of your Steem Account and calculate your Reputation? Cross-check it with the Reputation score displayed in Steemworld.org?

My account's raw reputation is 63,867,285,204,110, taken from Steemd.com.

The formula for calculating REP is:
Reputation= (Log10(Raw Reputation Score)-9) * 9)+25

So my Log based 10 is (13.805278456068233-9)=(4.805278456068233*9)=43.2475061+25

This gives me a total of 68.2475 REP. When I go to SteemWorld.org I find that my REP is 68.247, so I guess I did all right.

I must admit Logarithms were never my forte, in fact I skipped all classes where these were the subject of the day, so I have had to use an online log calculator. Suffice it to say that this formula is very well made and it gives you your exact REP.

(3) What percentage(of the Post Payout) was generated as liquid rewards(SBD) from your last Post in terms of USD equivalent? Explain how the rise of SBD has shifted the supply dynamics? As per your last post payout calculate the ratio of Author:Curator Reward in terms of USD equivalent?

I will have to use my previous example:

The SBD rewards for this post were equivalent to US$20.11. I do believe that SBD at such a high price is not sustainable and we have been seeing the price go down, On the other hand high SBD price is good news for authors as rewards are so much higher. This is very good news for countries were things are rough right now, this includes mine. But I think the higher price necessarily means less supply.

The Author/Curator ratio in this post is approximately 4 to 1 in my favor as an author, having received $23.05 vs curations of 5.88 USD.

(4) Explain how & why an initiative like #club5050 can shift the demand/supply dynamics in favor of STEEM?

#club5050 is a community or a movement promoting the continuos efforts to Power Up Steem. As we all know Powering Up Steem helps our coin remain strong, reduces volatilty and actually makes us work harder for the platform, higher SP higher curation rewards. These type of ideas are very good and do help Steem reach its goals, but we must bear in mind that some people just need at least small amounts of Steem just to make ends meet. I think that the middle road is for people to just use the minimum available liquid Steem and not power down for their own uses.

But as to the question itself I really do believe any initiative that promotes the keeping of Steem on the platform is to be applauded, as a healthy Steem is in all of our interests.

(5) Consider a user having a reputation lower than you, upvotes your Post-- Does it affect the Payout and increase the Rep? If the same user goes for a downvote, does that affect your Payout and Reputation both? Explain Why & How; with Examples?

An Upvote from any person having a positive REP will increase both Reputation and payout, bear in mind that what does increase the power of the votes value is the SP behind the vote, so actually a vote with an SP of 15 will have a very slight effect on rewards. If a user with positive REP but lower than yours downvotes you it will remove the reward but will not affect reputation.

Thus as a member with a REP of 68 an up vote cast by someone with a REP of 60 will increase my reward and also it will increase my REP proportionately. If this person on the other hand downvotes me, I will see my rewards reduced by whatever weight his vote has and by the percentage of it used to downvote me, but it will have no effect whatsoever on my REP.

Conclusions

Great lesson, and I think everyone should be reading this regardless of whether you can participate at this Academy level or not. I was really impressed by how the REP is calculated, I had no idea. As for the other parts of the lesson I did have a workable knowledge of this but I think after this I know a lot more about how our platform works.

@sapwood