Hi, steemians,
I want to sincerely welcome you to my blog once again. This is the second week of the engagement challenge program for season 2 and I'm delighted to be part of it. This week, the topic happens to be a very unique one because we are focusing on our blockchain I.e the steem blockchain.

All steemians must get to know how the steemit blockchain works so that they can better explain it to those coming into the platform for the first time. I have always been a promoter of this platform in my little way and most times I have to explain to those concerned how the platform works to get them convinced. Today I will be showing my participation in this contest by attempting the questions given below.

Every blockchain uses a consensus mechanism which makes it secure and works effectively. The first blockchain ever recorded was the bitcoin blockchain and it uses a consensus mechanism called the proof of work (PoW) which was created in the year 2009.

With the achievement of this blockchain, other blockchains started coming up but looking at the lapses in the bitcoin blockchain consensus algorithm, new consensus mechanisms were adopted by other blockchains to work more effectively. The steem blockchain is one of the blockchains that adopted a different consensus mechanism called the proof of delegated participation.

Proof of Delegated Participation which happens to be the consensus mechanism used in the steem blockchain is a situation where some vest amount is delegated to a user and the users with the higher vest delegated to them will be the ones to validate new blocks and also serve as witnesses in the blockchain.

The stakeholders here that act as witnesses and block validators are also responsible for decision-making in the blockchain anytime the need arises. The stakeholders also serve as miners because every transaction in the steem blockchain is verified by them.

There are 21 top witnesses selected to carry out the carryout this block validation, 20 of the witnesses work and the other one stands as a backup, these are people with the most delegated vest. Not more than 21 meet the vested amount to make them eligible for selection so that not everyone will be involved in the verification and creation of new blocks, this helps to serve as a security measure for the steem blockchain as well.

In the steem blockchain, witnesses are responsible for validating transactions and adding new blocks and this occurs after every 3 seconds. This implies that among the witnesses responsible to validate transactions, once it's your turn you do that after every 3 seconds.

Based on this timing, it implies that in 60 seconds 20 new blocks are added by the witnesses. In an hour, a total of 1,200 new blocks is been produced. This shows that the steem blockchain is very scalable as it handles more transactions within a few times. If you are observant enough you will notice that voting or posting an article also takes 3 seconds before the next can be done.

Every 3 seconds, new blocks are added and these blocks are produced alongside the 3.1 steem token. As we all know, the steem token was produced alongside the steem blockchain in 2016. When the token was produced it has a 9.5% annual inflation rate and it is also designed to decrease by 0.01% after the production of 250,000 blocks.

Based on calculations as recorded by the steem white paper, the inflation rate will decrease by 0.5% annually until it gets to about 0.95%. As I have stated earlier, as new blocks are produced a new token comes into the limelight as well. The new tokens produced are distributed among witnesses, stakeholders, content creators and curators.

The newly minted steem token is shared in this order, 10% of the entire steem token produced is shared among the witnesses that did the job of validating transactions, 15% is shared among stakeholders of the steem token I.e those holding steem power and finally, 75% of the newly minted is sent to the reward pool where both content creator's and curators get their reward from.

Yes, I know the first application to run on the steem blockchain and this application is called steemit. Steemit is a decentralized social media platform that rewards its, users, for creating quality and original content.

The idea behind steemit as the first decentralized social media platform in the steem blockchain was to create an avenue where content creators will share and engage with others and then get rewarded instead of sharing the content for free. You are paid using the blockchain native token called steem.

In addition, the tokens you earn as a content creator on the steemit platform are steem, SBD and TRX. The steem can be in form of steem power which gives you influence on the platform to earn curation rewards when you vote on other people's posts. We have talked about stakeholders and delegates, these are people with high steem power that influence the platform.

On the steemit platform, a post must last for 7 days before a payout will occur. In the posting, you may decide to set your reward to 100% power up which means all rewards should be only in SP and TRX, reward can be 50% SBD/50 SP which means that 50% of the reward should be in SBD in cases where there is no SBD like now the 50% comes in form of liquid steem then the other 50% comes in form of SP. Alternatively, you can decline your payment, meaning all rewards to @null.

Steem power (SP) which gives you influence can not be transferred out to exchange at any point in time like in the case of liquid steem. If you need to transfer SP, you must initiate a power down which will take about a month for all the tokens in SP to be converted to liquid steem for you to transfer it.

Proof of Brain (PoB) is a consensus mechanism used by many decentralized social media platforms which enables them to reward users who are content creators for their intellectual contributions towards the growth of the platform.

For PoB to be complete, it must comprise of reward pool, weighting mechanism and users' intellectual knowledge. This is the model that is adopted by many blockchains which are content-based and the steem blockchain is not left out.

So on the steemit platform, to get a reward, you have to produce a quality post that is free from every form of abuse and is also educative or informative to the readers. This means your content must add value to those reading it.

Sharing a quality post that adds value to your readers will move them to vote on it. Ideally, to fulfil PoB correctly, you must read and find value in the article before you will determines the % upvote it should get as well.

Steem blockchain is one of the most outstanding blockchain we are having in the world today. I have said earlier that a lot of lapses was seen bitcoin blockchain due to the consensus algorithm of PoW which made new blockchain with new consensus mechanism to come up. The steem blockchain is the first to come up with a decentralized social media platform such as steemit that rewards content creator for their effort in contributing their quarter to the growth and development of the platform.