Crypto Academy Season 3 Beginners' course - Homework Post for Task 1: STEEM & TRON

Homework Task-1
(1) What is PoB? What does curation mean to you in Steem Blockchain? What are the benefits of building SP? How do you explain self-upvote as a good or bad social behavior & why? Explore Coinmarketcap.com to indicate rank, STEEM price, and coinmarketcap of STEEM(screenshot required)? What are the different tokens do you earn by socializing in Steem Blockchain?

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What is PoB?

The proof of brain (POB) is a type of consensus specially adopted to secure a community network of authors and curators. This type of consensus serves as the backbone of the steemit platform. Steemit is a social platform focused on blogging and publishing of valuable content and at such give rewards to the participants of the network. For the network to thrive and remain reliable, there is need to secure the integrity and standards of published content on the network. This is being achieved using the proof of brains.

The Proof of Brain

The PoB consists of three components; the reward pool, the stake-weighted mechanism and the Wisdom of the people.

-The Reward Pool:
The reward pool is an accumulated newly minted tokens which are gained through annual inflation and distributed to the participants of the social community. The new tokens are accumulated at a fixed rate and distributed by percentage to different participants who add value to the network. The distribution by percentage is as follows:

Content Creators and Curators (65%)- Content Creators are authors of valuable contents that are continually published to on the network. On the other hand, the content curators are those that look out for, evaluate and endorse valuable contents that are published on the network. However, 65% of the total reward pool is shared between the creators and the curators.

Witnesses (10%) -witnesses are stakeholders on the network who are voted by the populace to create blocks, manage, secure and see to the development of the network. 10% of the total reward pool is distributed to 20 + 1 number of witnesses.

Vested Token Holders (15%)- 15% of the reward pool goes to the holders of steem power according to their stake. This is a form of RoI (return of investment) to every SP holders.

Steem DAO (10%)- This is a percentage allocated for steemit development. This fund is dedicated to improve the platform and execute development proposal.

-The Staked-weighted Mechanism: this is a system whereby a users' power of influence in the network is proportional to the amount of steem power help. Thus the more steem power you hold the more influence you have on the network.

-Wisdom of the People: The proof of brain is not effective without mentioning the brain activity of the people. The creation of contents, content discovery and evaluation and community engagement are the functions that are rewarded on network and thus it is called "Proof of Brain"

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What does curation mean to you in Steem Blockchain?

Curation is the process of content discovery, evaluation and rewarding such content. Curation is an activity that takes more than just reading through a content and rewarding but a process of effective distribution of token from the reward pool. This is to ensure that the right contents receive appropriate reward. The reward is distributed by either Upvote or Downvote based on the stake-weighted mechanism. When a content is upvoted, rewards are distributed from the reward pool and when downvoted, these rewards are redistributed back to the pool.

Curating a content would take you to read through the content; verify the trustworthy source of the content; if found valuable, engage with further information or personal view; If plagarised or contain spam, indicate that in the comment section to make it known to the community; If valuable, Upvote with appropriate voting power; and Resteem to share with your followers.

Thus, diligent curation of contents publicise valuable content to the network and attracts high reward to such content.

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What are the benefits of building SP?

As a platform structured on stake-weighted mechanism, there is a strong need to build up steem power. Building SP is also more than just a necessity but offers benefits back to it's holder in the following ways:

• Steem power make one benefit from the reward pool. The holders of SP partake of 15% of the total reward pool according to the stake-weighted mechanism. The more the SP you hold the higher your entitlement in the reward pool.
• Steem power determines your influence in distributing author's reward from the pool. The higher the SP held the more power you have to distribute authors reward. In the community, we have the SP holders as the Big whales, Orcas, Dolphins and the Minnows in their decreasing order of size. The whales' upvote are the most rewarding.
• Steem power determines your networking influence. Whales seems to attract a large community to themselves. The whales' contents receive more significance than someone with low SP.
• Voting Witnesses- voting of witnesses who creates blocks and manage network solely relies on the stake of voting power. The amount of support you offer is proportional to the amount of SP stake you hold.
• Security of fund: funds are secured when held as steem power because it takes a month to power down. Every other fund in the wallet is vulnerable to instant withdrawal when such account is hijacked.
• Delegation to Voting systems: SP held can be delegated to voting bots or voting accounts either to a community cause or to gain return of investment.

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How do you explain self-upvote as a good or bad social behavior & why?

There is no specific rule that forbid self-upvote. When you upvote your content, you earn reward according to your steem power just like you would upvoting a friends content but the steemit platform is more focused on community networking to acquire higher reward. A content created is meant to engage other users in the community and by so they endorse and appreciate the creativity in the content. Upvoting a self created content is like appreciating your efforts by yourself just like a scenario where you make a presentation to an audience and then clap yourself right there on stage. The approval or appreciation should be done by the audience. And the loudness of the applaud is expected to be based on the value of the content.
Thus, In my opinion, self-upvote is only bad when it is done to gain selfish reward. Rewarding low quality content cause harm to the system.

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Explore Coinmarketcap.com to indicate rank, STEEM price, and coinmarketcap of STEEM(screenshot required)?

On coinmarketcap.com, steem is ranked 184 following Smooth Love Portion (SLP). At the time of writing, the Steem price is $0.6112 and a market cap of $2,161,398,013,542.

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What are the different tokens do you earn by socializing in Steem Blockchain?

Socializing in steem blockchain can help you earn a number of transferable tokens. Two token are earned; Steem and TRX.
Steem is the original token of the Steem Blockchain and it can be exchanged for other familiar forms such as Steem Power(SP) and Steem Blockchain Dollar(SBD). The SP is earned direct from author's reward at a percentage of 50% or 100%, or can be gotten by making a power up with Steem at a one steem to one SP ratio. The SBD is also gotten as 50% of the author's reward and this is pegged to the value of a US dollar.
The Tron system began a partnership with the Steem Blockchain and gives steem users the opportunity to earn token of the Tron system alongside the Steem original reward tokens. The native token of the Tron system is known as TRX.

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Conclusion

The Steem Blockchain thrives on the quality of the Proof of Brain consensus which is centered on valuable content creation, systemic content reward and community networking. A functional part of this consensus is the stake-weighted mechanism that is adopted in such a way that the community influence lies in the hand of steem power holders. However, it is very beneficial and healthy for the network for users to hold steem power in order to promote and reward quality content.

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CC:
@sapwood

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