Moguls like Mark Zuckerberg got rich whilst the content creators who fueled networks like Facebook got nothing. 

STEEMIT, a nascent social media platform, has change all that by rewarding its users with cold, hard cash in the form of a cryptocurrency. Everything that you do on Steemit including post, comment, and likes or upvotes translates to a fraction of a digital currency called Steem. Over time, as Steem accumulates, it can be cashed out for normal currency.

Steem is the first cryptocurrency that attempts to accurately and transparently reward the individuals who make subjective contributions to its community on steemit.com.

A minuscule but dedicated audience rallied around Steemit, posting stories and experimenting with the form to discover what posts attracted the most votes and comments. When Steemit released its first payouts that July, three months after launch, things got serious. Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are only worth whatever value people ascribe to them, so there was no guarantee that the tokens dropping into Steemit accounts would ever be worth anything. Yet the Steem that rolled out to users translated to more than 💰$1.2 million in American dollars. Overnight, the little-known currency spiked to a 💰350 million market capitalization momentarily rocketing it into the rare company of Bitcoin and Ethereum, the world’s highest-valued cryptocurrencies.

At first, they were intrigued by the idea of using the hivemind trust of blockchain to create an insurance network. They wondered if they could incentivize a group of people to pool money, which could then be drawn upon by an individual in the event of an accident or emergency (a kind of libertarian backup plan).

But in order to make it work, they needed a way to hold people accountable. Their plan hinged on building a robust communications forum. By linking people’s accounts to their discussions, each individual’s claims and communications would be both able to be audited and unable to be censored. The community would have to evaluate each claim, voting the best posts towards the top. That’s when the wider scope of their project took shape. “We realized that this is going to look a lot like Reddit,” says Scott, “but people are going to get paid for participating.”

Today, Scott supports the software development of the platform and currency from the company headquarters in Austin, Texas, alongside a distributed team of 30 staff worldwide. Larimer resigned from his role as chief technology officer in March, but continues to post on Steemit; the pair published a joint statement announcing the separation, emphasizing that they “parted on amicable terms without dispute.”

At its core, Steemit looks a lot like any other social network. The most popular tags include things like photography, life, travel, art, and, perhaps unsurprisingly, Steemit itself. Scott’s favorite success stories involve people who use the site to both document and fund their explorations like a travel blogger and photographer (@heiditravels; 8,529 followers) who has funded her trips around the world with Steem, and a young man in West Africa (@infovore; 4,403 followers) who started a popular “Steem magazine” about the currency and its pop-up community. @infovore’s regular posts earned him a global audience, as well as the equivalent of 💰$41,000 in virtual currency during his first few months on the site.

The Uniquness of STEEMIT

Steem is designed differently. Its tokens are generated at a fixed rate of one block every three seconds, which are then distributed to various parties in the system based on the blockchain’s rules. These parties are incentivized to compete in ways that add value to the network: 75 percent of new tokens are distributed to the “rewards pool” for content creators and curators, while smaller fractions are awarded to vested token holders.

Steemit’s function is rooted in transparency. Every action a user makes on the site is logged on the blockchain meaning every vote, currency transfer, and even the amount of Steem sitting in someone’s digital wallet, is public and viewable. There are two ways of earning Steem. The first is the “rewards pool” of digital tokens, which incentivize content creation and curation—in other words, quality posts that are upvoted by other users. The second is a voting system which assigns a value to each post and comment on the platform, and then distributes Steem tokens to the creators based on the wisdom of the crowd. The more users that upvote your posts on Steemit, the more Steem you’ll earn, which can then be cashed out of your wallet using an online currency exchange.

Much like Reddit, Steemit is an experiment in group psychology, where the human hivemind (as tallied by individual votes) determines the most popular—and lucrative—content. In contrast, invisible but immensely powerful algorithms control what each Facebook and Instagram user sees in their feeds. “On Reddit, there are people who put up links and posts, and are then accused of ‘karma whoring' or basically, selling out to get these worthless internet points,” says Scott. “On Steemit, people show up to earn Steem. They’re posting and linking stuff, and they’re earning something that’s worth real money.”

A weighted voting system places greater value on votes placed by the older accounts of early Steemit adopters, who appear to be in it for the long haul. While a vote from a brand-new user may be worth a fraction of a cent, a vote from someone who has gained a reputation for posting quality content each day might be worth several dollars. In turn, the valuable votes of these “power users” attract votes from a crowd of less powerful users seeking to cash in on the action, like ants jostling for crumbs.

Under this weighted model, individuals who have contributed the most to the platform have greater influence over how other contributions are scored—which creates a snowballing effect. Some have argued that this system unfairly benefits the founders and those in their network who were attracted early to Steemit. My own 13 days-old Steemit account (@oneday1) is worth approximately 💰USD $16.46. As of early October Ned Scott’s account (@ned) has an estimated account value of 💰USD $5.08 million.

The most innovative aspect of Steem is its lack of friction: New users can join Steemit and begin earning tiny fractions of the currency immediately, without even understanding how it works. It is designed as cryptocurrency for the masses, as the barriers to entry are almost nonexistent. Unlike Bitcoin, there’s no messing around with coin traders or triple-checking long, fiddly strings of letters and numbers to make sure you’re not accidentally sending your money to a Nigerian prince.

On Steemit, you simply create an account, start browsing the site, upvote posts you like, and search for the gaps you might fill by posting something of your own. If you’re not creative, no problem: You can curate by spotting high-quality posts soon after they’re published and voting for them as a kind of early investor, before the rest of the crowd arrives.

The gamification is by design. “It’s as though all the users are playing a social media game, and they’re earning points based on how well they participate,” says Scott. Years ago, he loved playing the action role-playing computer game Diablo II. “All of the characters in the game had the ability to cast spells, and they had ‘mana’ they could use,” he says. “As they cast spells, the mana was used up; over time, it regenerated, so they could cast more spells later. Voting power here works similarly: Users come back every day to try and vote better, and level up.”

With about 40 votes per day at their disposal, regular Steemit users are playing a lottery, where the outcome is turning internet points into real-world dollars. It’s not a get-rich-quick scheme; it requires significant time investment before you start to see more than a few cents per day.

👑STEEMIT👑 is has been the best for far and Steemians will 🎂🍷✨celebrate🎂✨🍷 it's ➁ anniversary this year.

Article credit https://www.wired.com/story/the-social-network-doling-out-millions-in-ephemeral-money/

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