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It's really exciting to be participating in this week's SteemitCryptoAcademy contest titledUnderstanding The Steem Blockchain by @crypto-academy.

It's important to clearly understand the fundamentals of any blockchain innovation, as well as the benefits it offers. In this article, I will be focusing on a blockchain-based social media network that's built on the Steem blockchain, it's called Steemit.

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Let me start by explaining some terms and concepts in the Steemit blockchain.

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STEEM

STEEM is a public and open-source social media blockchain platform, that is based on a Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS) system. The basic behind STEEM is that it compensates users for content creation as well as curation.

This content creation isn’t limited to text and writing only, as you can also submit images and videos to the system. The native token of the STEEM blockchain is equally called STEEM token, and it's powered by a blockchain technology called SMTs (Steem Magnetics).

There have even been debates and deliberations on whether STEEM is more of a cryptocurrency than a social media platform. However, the major factor that makes STEEM stand out from other cryptocurrencies like Ether and Bitcoin is that "you must use your brain to get these STEEM tokens." This brought the concept of Proof-of-Brain, where users get rewarded with STEEM tokens for writing and posting valuable content.

screenshot from coinmarket

As seen in the screenshot above, according to Coinmarket Cap, steem is ranked #253, and trading at $0.2347 at the time of writing this article. It has a market cap of $92,687,329, and a circulating supply of 394,951,699.00 STEEM

SBD

SBD stands for Steem Backed Dollar, and it was created on July 4th, 2016 to be pegged to a fiat currency (USD 1), and can be used as a potential token reward for content creators in the Steemit community. This allows users of any size to easily participate in STEEM's growth, even if they don't want to buy cryptocurrency.

If we get over 100% inflation, then the STEEM ECOSYSTEM and STEEMIT BACKED DOLLAR will be adjusted, as the value of STEEM will change to represent a dollar worth USD 1.00. With this adjustment, all other prices in the economy would increase by an equivalent amount, as this would create a situation where we are back at 100% deflation but with a stable currency and price index (a dollar is worth what it is).

The value of the STEEM-backed dollar (SBD) has a direct impact on mining rewards, as the mining rewards are determined by calculating mining power and voting power, which is an individual’s stake in the total STEEM supply. This means that with SBD, miners receive more benefits.

screenshot from coinmarket

As seen in the screenshot above, according to Coinmarket Cap, SBD is ranked #503, and trading at $2.33 as at the time of writing this article. It has a market cap of $27,333,910, and a circulating supply of 11,718,289.68 SBD.

SP

SP as regards Steemit refers to STEEM POWER and this is equally a reward token that makes up the Steem cryptocurrency.

It has been observed that users with higher steem power have more influence in the STEEM blockchain, as they could give out greater votes and get better rewards. A user who invests USD 200, would most likely be getting 10 times higher rewards than a person who invests just USD 20.

The most efficient and fastest way to earn more steem power is to buy from an exchange and transfer it to your steemit wallet for power-ups. You can equally set your reward ratio to 100% sp power up, which will automatically convert all your next rewards into steem power.

Steem Power (SP) can even help a user to support and delegate to other communities, thereby increasing your earnings and reward by getting delegation rewards. You delegating your SP to a community will automatically allow them to vote on your behalf and get the rewards.

TRX

TRX, or TRON, has been making waves in the cryptocurrency world since its ICO in September of 2017. Launched as an ERC-20 token on the Ethereum blockchain (much like the majority of new altcoins). TRX was designed to help with the development of distributed applications, essentially giving developers the power to leverage blockchain technology in their own apps and programs

It's forking from the Ethereum blockchain, which means that all of its tokens will be created and distributed accordingly. Justin Sun and Lucien Chen, forked from the original and beloved Steemit blockchain in order to create TRON. Making it an alternative platform for content creators that charge users for access to their material and reward content creators with cryptocurrency (TRX) for their contributions.

Now, Steemit users equally get rewarded with TRX tokens for writing and sharing content on their blogs.

screenshot from coinmarket

As seen in the screenshot above, according to Coinmarket Cap, Tron is ranked #15, and trading at $0.06394 as at the time of writing this article. It has a market cap of $5,897,660,199, and a circulating supply of 92.27B TRX.

The Benefits Of Building One's Steem Power In The Steem Blockchain

Let me focus more on the newbies because I know the old users of the Steemit platform must have observed and seen how important it is to power up their earnings. When you power up, you basically convert some of your liquid STEEM and Steem Dollars into Steem Power, which then gives you greater influence on the platform and also rewards you with more Steem Dollars every time there are new earnings.

Wondering why it's important to have more influence on the platform? The answer is simple, it’s all about sustainability. It has been observed that having large amounts of Steem Power opens up new opportunities for earning more.
Below is a rundown of things to put in mind while powering up.

• Your Vote On Other User's Articles Becomes More Impactful: The strength of your votes becomes even more significantly effective, as you continue to power up your earnings.
  As a Steemit blogger, It's important to note that the more power-ups we do, the more bigger and influential we become in the steem ecosystem.

• You Get Increasingly Higher Curation Rewards: One of the major ways of earning in the Steemit platform is voting on other users' posts and getting back rewards from the posts payouts called Curation Reward. And one very important thing to always be here is that the bigger our Voting/steem powers, the higher our rewards from post-payouts.

• You Would Become More Trusted By The Steemit System: This is a very important aspect I would like to emphasize, as it generally concerns every steemian.

The Steemit platform has become our blogging home and we must work together to make it the best amongst the best. We have a very active and lovely team of steemit supporters who are working tirelessly to curate and sustain the Steemit platform so that every steemian could have enough steem power to vote and support new members in the nearest future.

To achieve this, we all need to work together with the Steemit team to continue powering up and getting bigger, instead of seeking ways to get away with our earnings.

• You Would Have The Opportunity To Delegate And Support Other Users/Communities: If you don't have, then you can't give. The Steemit platform has various communities and groups that control and moderate various activities. If we could individually delegate our steem powers to them, it would go a long way in helping members of the community.

To achieve this we need to power up now, so as to have a better Steemit experience in the nearest future.

The Meaning Of Curation In The Steem Blockchain

To get a clearer picture of what curation is all about in the steem blockchain, you must first understand that the Steemit blockchain produces 1 block in every 3 minutes, which is then stored in a reward pool at the current inflation rate (changes by -0.01% after every 250,000 blocks minting).

A user is to create good contents that convince the reader to upvote (curate) his/her post. A curation process is an act of rewarding other users for creating quality/original content.

So the simple trick here is that when a Steemit user clicks the upvote button to reward a post, depending on his/her steem power, the reward will be distributed from the reward pool. About 65% of the entire rewards on the steem reward pool is equivalently assigned to content creators (32.5% each for both the curator and the author).

The higher your steem Power (SP), the more influential and impactful your voting weight. A user with over 500 Steem Power would be required to select the percentage of votes to be assigned to a post he wishes to curate.

Like in the screenshot above, I have selected 50% of my vote for a post I wish to curate.

Is Self-voting A Good Or Bad Practice On The Steem Blockchain

When it comes to voting on the blockchain, there's one golden rule which states don't self-vote. I know on one occasion or another other you might have come across the word Self-voting in the Steemit platform. it's the practice of using up your voting power to promote your content rather than giving it to someone else who needs it more to get paid for their hard work on Steemit.

You would agree with me that self-voting is a very important and crucial topic in the steem blockchain, given the fact that some wealthy users take advantage of their huge SP to keep getting richer. While others see it as an attack against Steemit’s core values of fairness to quality and original posts.

Self-voting Is an unfair practice which shows disrespect to your followers and the Steemit ecosystem at large. Because when you do it, you're paying yourself in STEEM instead of using the curation system to distribute rewards to others who have voted for your content.

Explanation of Voting Window In Steem Blockchain

In simple words, Voting Window refers to the period of time taken for a post to mature and payout. This process takes exactly 7 days, and after that period, the user would be able to claim his/her reward. Users can vote on any post during this timeframe, but as regards the steem blockchain, the first 5 minutes of the 7 days period is known as Reverse Auction. This refers to the slight decreases in the percentage return of a curation reward within 5 minutes of posting. Below is a table for more clarification.

Minutes	Percentage of Curation Rewards given(%)	Return to Reward Pool (%)
0 minutes	0	100
within 1st minute	20	80
within 2nd minute	40	60
within 3rd minute	60	40
within 4th minute	80	20
within 5th minute	100	0

As seen in the table above, there's always a 20% increase in the percentage of curation rewards distributed within the first 5 minutes of the posting. For instance, the reward given to the curator within the first 1 minute is 20%, while the remaining 80% is directed to the reward pool. But the curator rewards gotten after the first 5 minutes to the 6½ days of the 7 days period will be normal 100%).

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Similarly, the last 12 hours of the 7 days always see a decrease in the voting weight of a curator. A vote weight that could be worth $10 before the 6½ days period, would now be worth $7 after the 6½ days period, and so on. Let me further explain this with the help of a table and an imaginary voter with a 100% voting power worth $10.

hours	Voting weight/percentage	Reward Values received
6 days 12 hours	100%	$10
6 days 15 hours	100%	$7
6 days 18 hours	100%	$5
6 days 21 hours	100%	$3
7 days	100%	$0

As you can see in the table above, the reward values slightly began to reduce after the 6½ days period. And immediately it got to 7 days, the reward value was then $0, which means the steem blockchain voting window has stopped on the 7th day, and votes made after this period would not produce any monetary value.

Voting A Post That Is Less Than 7-Days Old And The Result

For a clearer practical illustration, I Ieft my voting manna to get to 100%, and then I went to steemworld and made a screenshot of it.

screenshot from steemworld

It was currently at 100%, so I decided to vote on a friend's post that is less than 1 hour ago. It was observed that the value of the post went from 0.08 to 0.09, which means my vote counted.

during voting	after voting

I then proceeded to check my current voting manna, and as expected, it has reduced from 100% to 98.00%, (a reduction of 2%).

screenshot from steemworld

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Voting A Post That Is More Than 7-Days Old And The Result

Now for the issues of posts above 7 days, I selected a post that is 8 days old, and my voting manna was still at 98.00%.

screenshot from steemworld

I went ahead to vote on the post to see its outcome after 7 days. But the funny thing here was that my votes weren't counted and no change was seen in my voting manna.

during voting	after voting

As seen in the screenshot below, my voting manna remaineth the same.

screenshot from steemworld

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Advantages of the Steem Blockchain

• There's transparency here, which means every activity and transaction is open and visible to every user.

• Users get rewarded for writing and posting original content on the Steemit blog

• stakeholders in the steem blockchain get rewarded for staking their coins and making profits.

• Joining the platform is made easy and free as no monetary requirement is needed.

• This ecosystem helps to develop users into being good crypto traders, photographers, and content writers.

Disdvantages of the Steem Blockchain

• Not all posts get quality rewards from curators as upvotes ain't guaranteed. This tends to discourage most users, especially newbies.

• Even after voting for a post, you might still not get the curation reward if a bigger curator downvotes the post you curated.

• There are not many jobs for trained programmers on this platform.

Conclusion

The steem blockchain has been a very exciting and beneficial technology, as users have been earning with STEEM, SBD, and TRX for posting, commenting, and voting on content.

We are to support the team in sustaining the platform by continuously powering up and voting for other users.

Generally, this has been an interesting topic and I appreciate the organizers of this contest. Am inviting @syllem, @sarkodieeric1, and @badmus-official to check out this contest.

Note: All Images are screenshots taken by me on the Steemit platform and on Coinmarket Cap.

Thanks for your time here.