Crypto Academy Contest / S5W3 - Understanding The Steem Blockchain

Hey 👋 dear friends

Today I want to officialy welcome you to my lovely and educative post about our dearest Blockchain technology known as Steem Blockchain, just as usual I love this topic which was selected by the crypto academy because it has opened my eyes to see and know more about the steem blockchain. I want to use this medium to tell the team that I am grateful and I would love more related topics in the future thank you, I believe you would love and learn new facts as you go through the post.

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Explain The following terms, STEEM, SBD, SP, and TRX

Steem

It may amaze you to know that the word Steem also means flame, that is amazing, right? Yea that's why the Blockchain steem shines brighter than its competitors, just as flames are very powerful elements steem is a very powerful social and open-sourced Blockchain that always supports only good quality content from creative content creators. With the help of the powerful consensus mechanism known as DELEGATED-PROOF-OF-PARTICIPATION and the awesome mechanism PROOF-OF-BRAIN, Steem working capacity and capabilities have put the whole world in an amazing state because it has so many attributes lacking behind in other Blockchain technology whether new and old for example last we learned that steem blockchain process transaction as fast a 3sec.

Steem is an open-source social Blockchain protocol where communities thrive, an ecosystem of social blogging empowered with immutable content, and a platform that allows users to monetize content using Proof-of-Brain. With the introduction of dApp Steemit Inc (the first-ever dApp) on top of the Steem Blockchain in 2016, federated peer-to-peer interaction became a reality. Steem is an open-source social Blockchain protocol where communities thrive, an ecosystem of social blogging empowered with immutable content, and a platform that allows users to monetize content using Proof-of-Brain. With the introduction of dApp Steemit Inc (the first-ever dApp) on top of the Steem Blockchain in 2016, federated peer-to-peer interaction became a reality.

_{Source from coinsmarketcap}

Steem also happens to be the primary coin used in the Steem blockchain, new steem coins are generated every time a witness creates a new block on the Blockchain, these generated steem coins are then shared in percentage to all active parties on the Blockchain. Do you also know that only 10% percent of the generated steem is shared among the witness, which is unlike most Blockchain where their witness bags most of the Blockchain rewards? While 15% of the generated rewards are shared among all steem holders as interest for stalking their asset, then the remaining 75% of rewards are then shared among the Curators and Authors who curate quality posts and create awesome content respectively.

Steem Backed Dollar (SBD)

Just as the name implies SBD is steem pegged to a dollar asset that is gotten when upvoted by another author or account on the Steem blockchain, to give steem a reasonable real-life value SBD was created. Steem Backed Dollar is more like a link that bridges or connects the famously known traditional fiat world with that of Steem Blockchain and its Cryptocurrencies.

_{Source from coinsmarketcap}

Steem Backed Dollar was purposely created so it would be pegged closely or equal to the price of the United State Dollar so that users who have them can compare it to the price of steem, also steem Backed Dollar can be said to be a stablecoin just as USDT and it's hardly affected by inflation when compared to steem coin or Tron coin. SBD main value or use is just to help maintain stability in Steem blockchain technology. If the debt eventually grows more than 10%, just like now the printing of SBD would be stopped or reduced until the price of steem normalizes.

Steem Power

I also called Steem Power, a powered-up Steem. This is frozen or stalked Steem asset that could help an account generate income from the 15% rewards gotten after a new block is created, this reward comes as an interest to attract more investors or steem holders. Just like every company including the banks that needs committed long-term holder to succeed, steem also need long-term investors that would hold share and stalks to help it grow. As we all know every currency especially cryptocurrencies grows when they are more buyers or a large number of buys in the market than the total amount of selling made with the asset in the crypto market.

Also as we all know that the Steem Blockchain uses the DELEGATED-PROOF-OF-PARTICIPATION which means every election made on the Blockchain Is affected by the amount of steempower the voters have, that is said that the witness with more support from more whales on the Blockchain, tends to win the top 20 spots as a top witness.

When users vote on content, their influence over the distribution of the rewards pool is proportional to their SP balance. Users with more SP have a greater say in how rewards are distributed. This means that SP is an access token that confers exclusive powers on its holders on the Steem platform

TRX

Tron is an entirely different blockchain on its own but since its great CEO Justin Sun bought steemit, Tron Blockchain was then integrated with that of steemit. This integration didn't stop both blockchains from achieving their sole goal, because both blockchains still focus on and act as different blockchains. The integration program was held basically to also reward with Tron coins which is the official native coin of the Tron Blockchain, initially when the integration was first worked on authors were rewarded with the ratio of 1Tron: 1Steem power but recently this has changed to 1 Tron: 1 Steem power for the betterment of both blockchain.

_{Source from coinsmarketcap}

Because the Tron network supports a wide range of decentralized applications, the interaction of TRX with these apps is central to the ecosystem. TRX can be staked on apps like Tron link to earn rewards and also for voting on your favorite representative on the Tron Blockchain

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Explain The Benefits Of Building Ones SP in Steem Blockchain

There are so many benefits to holding steem but I will just list the most vital of them and I hope you also start holding some steem by powering it up into steempower.

The Growth Of The Blockchain And Its Asset

One awesome thing you all need to know is that the more investors on any platform, organization or exchange the better for the platform, that's why it's a nice act to hold our steem if not for anything for the love and support they have shown. I would boldly tell you that you shouldn't be scared because all your stalked assets would be safe from threat or theft. As I have said before the price of steem and other crypto assets is affected by the percentage of buyers and sellers, the commitment of this buyer and holder also how long the price of the asset grows in the Crypto market.

For Government Reasons

Because steem blockchain uses the Delegated-proof-of-participation consensus mechanism that gives voting rights and power to stalk-holders in the company based on how the value of their asset. A witness with many votes is expected to become one of the top witnesses unlike a user with fewer amount of whale support.

More rewards

You don't only get rewards by writing quality articles but you can also get rewards from upvoting on quality articles because every reward made by them is shared equally with the curators of the post, these curation rewards are shared according to the Value of your upvote and amount steem power the account holds.

Encouragement of good authors

The upvoting power has to do with how much steem you half as a user, that's to say a user with more steempower has much more reward to off when upvoting a post. To make steemit great it's advised to support the author and the only way to do this is to become a steem based Curator who has a large steempower your vote would generate some more engagement and confidence because the author relies on this post as a source of feeding.

Commitment

This proves how committed you are to the platform, this is another way of saying I am grateful and I wish the platform to succeed because this is the only means you can help the platform grow fast into a better one. The team would always favor and love anyone who supports them by holding on to the steem coin, instead of constant sell.

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Explain The Meaning Of Curation in steem Blockchain and also explain if self-voting is a good or bad practice on the steem Blockchain

If we go through so many dictionaries we understand that curation has to do with the organization and selection of quality content online, while on Steem blockchain whenever you hear the word curation, it means voting ( upvoting and downvoting)on quality articles or quality comments. In a more organized manner, I would define curation on Steemit as the organizer's way of carefully selecting and sorting articles by voting on the post, I would justify this term by remaining us that the appearance of a post on any community is based on how the trend on the community, although it could be charged its remains the basic format on Steemit. Everyone in the ecosystem is free to decide how to distribute and redistribute resources based on their influence power, this curation activity is also capable of generating large rewards if you have large steem power.

Curation on steemit is a means for selecting and grading how quality and beneficiary it's on the Blockchain technology and how important it's to you, the voting on the post whether by upvoting and downvoting

When you use your stake-weighted influence power known as steempower, you will notice two buttons in each post: Upvote and Downvote.

Upvote

If you click the upvote button, the reward will be distributed and a certain amount will appear in the post payout based on the stake weight (SP) and voting weight. As a result, the reward will be distributed from the reward pool to the post being upvoted.

Downvote

If you click the downvote button, the reward will be returned to the pool; the amount of the reward from the post payout returned to the bool is determined by the downvoter's influence power (stake weight (SP) & voting weight).

When a user votes on another user's post with 100% power, the user's voting mana is reduced by 2%, that's why users above 500steempowers can control the percentage of their votes using their voting bar, also when curating on steemit please ensure you don't go lower than 80% of your voting manna because it's would take more than a day to refill. So therefore the voting manna refills within 24 hours if you don't use less than 80% of your voting manna. When an account upvotes another account the curator gets a percentage of the reward but if an account downvotes another account, the curator does not get any rewards instead the rewards go back to the reward pool.

Self voting

Self-voting is a terrible crime on Steemit. In its most basic form, self-voting is defined as the act of voting for oneself; that is, self-voting occurs when an author votes on his or her post or articles. Self-voting is not a good idea because:

✅ It completely contradicts the main goal and objectives for developing steemit. In case you have forgotten, Steemit was created to encourage good and hardworking authors by rewarding them with an awesome cryptocurrency we all know as steemit. As a result, self-voting rewards posts that aren't worth voting on, implying that self-voting encourages voting on low or poor-quality posts on steemit.

✅ Just consider this: if everyone votes on his or her post, platform growth will be impossible because only the rich get richer, even if their post is of very low quality. This would result in poor newbies receiving no or inadequate rewards, discouraging newbies from joining the platform.

✅ Self-voting is bad because an author is perceived as a bad and insincere author after voting on his or her post. Because he or she voted on his or her post, the post's quality has suffered. This could lead to a bad reputation.

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Explain what you understand by the voting window In steem Blockchain. Vote for two posts( one that is older than 7-days and one that is less than 7-days ) and explain to us what happened between the two posts. Does all the two voted post produce monetary value and do they consume your voting manna? Before carrying out this task please go to steemworld and screenshot your present voting manna

My Initial Voting manner.

As you can see below I voted on a post on steemit but this post is 10 days old, So, therefore, the post is considered an ln expired post. After voting for the post with 100% vote, my voting Manna didn't reduce instead it was still filled up, without any influence from me voting on an expired post. From the practice we have learned that voting on an expired post is a waste of time because it has no positive or negative effect on the post and it won't reduce your voting manna, this will let you know that we are not expected to stop voting on expired posts.

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Voting for a post that's 10 days old

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A post that has not stayed up to 7 days on Steemit is considered a live post and such a post can still accept rewards from any author on the Steem blockchain, jus as required I voted a 4-hour-old post on steem blockchain with 100% voting power, and the good news the post was rewarded with 0.03 dollar worth of reward, so, therefore, I went to check out my voting manna on steemworld and I found out that the voting manner reduced by 2%. This is to tell you that as long as a post has not grown older than 7 days it can be rewarded.

Voting a 4 hours post

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Steem Blockchain rewards content creators and curators after 7 days. To put it another way, the post-payout matures after 7 days. During these 7 days, the post receives upvotes (or downvotes, if any), and the net amount of a posted payout is then split 50/50 between the author and curator(s).

So it's advised that if you want to vote on a post on Steemit you should ensure,

• The post is younger than 7 days old on the steem blockchain

• The post is older than 5 minutes old on the steem blockchain

• The post is younger than 6 days 12 old on the steem blockchain.

You might wonder why but below are some reasons which even most steemians weren't aware of, The first 5 minutes of a post from the time it is published in Steem Blockchain are known as Reverse Auction, and a linear discount of curation reward applies. Do know that before it used to be 30 min then later it was reduced to 15 minutes but after so much consideration it is now 5 min after the post was made on Steemit. So, if you vote within the first five minutes of a post's age, you lose a certain percentage of the curation reward (linear discount from 0 to 5 minutes, with 100% discount at (0 secs) and 0% discount at 5 minutes (300 secs)). The curation reward that was lost is returned to the reward pool.

Similarly, if you vote after 6 Days 12 Hours, your voting worth begins to deplete at a linear rate, with 0% depletion at 6 Days 12 Hours and 100% depletion at 7 Days the age of a post. If you vote on a post after 6 days and 12 hours, the upvote value depletes.

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Advantages and disadvantages of STEEM Blockchain

☑️ Steem blockchain is a social media platform that promotes quality content to all part of the world, which therefore help increase the publicity of any content creator post. This has made so many poor authors spread their articles all over the world.

☑️, Unlike most social media platforms that are similar to steemit, steem is an open-source and free-to-register platform, that doesn't charge any funds from it, users this has made steemit outstanding. Even if they were funds to be paid for the creation of accounts, the team in the lovely heart has paid for it without disturbing the new users.

☑️ Unlike most social media platforms steem rewards content creators, curators, and investors who create and support quality content. This is awesome because most social media platforms just take the money generated from the traffic caused by the authors without giving them any share.

☑️ For some time now I have not seen a platform that supports I'll users or Disasters affected communities, steemit has built so many great structures on different occasions in different parts of the world through their representatives.

☑️ Just like most social media platforms, steemit has made steemians from all over the world meet and relate as one, because steemit is really against any sort of racism on any rave of people.

Disadvantages

• For example on a platform like Steemit where rewards are gotten in cryptocurrencies such as Steem, SBD, and Tron, these rewards do suffer from the volatility of the crypto market.

• Because steemit rewards its content creators, they have rising issues because some get rewarded while some don't and issues like this make authors who are only after the rewards leave and paint the name of steemit black. This rewards stuff has corrupted so many minds on the platform and this is bad for the growth of steemit and it's bad for the reputation of other authors close to them selfish users.

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Conclusion

Steemit and Tron are lovely Blockchain technologies that's are really awesome, steem is so powerful and important that I think steem Blockchain is not going to get a replacement anytime soon. Steem curation is quite technical but easy if you carefully go through the post.

Thank you very much for going through, starrchris care's ❤️

_{I am inviting @sarkodieeric1 @alee75 @temitopef @lavanyalakshman @kawsar @yousafharoonkhan @simonnwigwe @alee75}