Introduction To STEEMIT!
-can also see here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steemit
Steemit is a social news service which combines a blogging site/social networking website, and a cryptocurrency, known as Steem.
The project was founded in 2016 by Ned Scott and Dan Larimer, creator of BitShares.
Concept of STEEMIT
The idea was described in a whitepaper in March 2016.
The general concept is similar to other blogging websites or social news websites like Reddit, but the text content is saved in a blockchain. Images and other multimedia content must be embedded from other websites.
Members can upvote good content, and the authors who get upvoted can receive a monetary reward in a cryptocurrency named Steem and two other tokens named Steem Dollars and Steem Power. People are also rewarded for curating popular content. Curating involves upvoting submissions and comments.
Steem
Steemit is based on a cryptocurrency named Steem. This currency is similar to Bitcoin, using Proof of work as a consensus mechanism. However, it does only reward miners with a small part of the rewards created in each block; the rest is paid to authors and curators.
Steem has a inflationary supply model: every year the monetary base doubles, but all three-and-a-half years the Steem reward per block is lowered at a rate of 1:10.
Steem's blockchain is the base for two more tokens: an asset called Steem Dollars, which is intended to be pegged at the United States dollar and is used for a part of the payout to authors and curators, and Steem Power. Steem and Steem dollars can be freely traded on cryptocurrency exchanges.
Steem Power
Steem Power is an influence token and roughly represents the percentage of influence a certain user has compared to the rest of the community, measured in Steem. It cannot be traded directly, but can be converted to Steem in 104 weekly payments. This method is called Powering down.
Members at the start are awarded a small amount of Steem Power. They have the option of buying more Steem Power for Steem tokens, using an option called powering up.
In order to reward members, 9 units of Steem Power are distributed pro rata over all Steem Power holders, per unit of Steem which is created, thereby maintaining the monetary value of Steem Power. This discourages long term holding of Steem.
The more Steem Power a member has, the higher the impact of his votes on other content is. If a person has enough Steem Power, his votes will result in the author of the upvoted content being rewarded in additional Steem Power, and additionally in Steem dollars.
Steem dollars
The Steem dollar is an asset intended to be pegged to the US dollar. Steem dollars can be traded at cryptocurrency exchanges and used for payments of goods and services.
There is an exchange integrated in the Steemit website, where Steem can be traded to Steem Dollars. An user owning Steem dollars also can convert Steem Dollars directly into Steem in a process that lasts approximately a week, or he can keep them in his web wallet.
Steem dollars which are held receive an interest rate. Initially it is set at 10% annually, but if Steem dollars become worth more than US dollars, this interest rate drops.
If a person chooses to convert his Steem dollars to Steem he can do two things with this Steem: Sell or use the Steem as a cryptocurrency, or convert them into Steem Power.
The Signature Campaign: What, How & When?
So, what is a signature campaign? Look at it as a form of advertisement without the need to create a fancy image. By advertising a certain coin, service or platform in your forum signature, that message will be visible to anyone browsing the same topics as the ones you posted in. This is also why all forum signatures require you to post a minimum number of posts on a weekly/monthly basis.
On some forums like the Bitcointalk.org is allowing this signature campaigns. They even offer any other campaigns like Facebook and Twitter Campaign. Depending on your user rank on the BitcoinTalk forums (Junior member, member, Senior member or Hero member) you are entitled to a different payout structure compared to other users. The higher your forum rank, the higher your payment will be. Increasing your rank can be achieved by being active on the BitcoinTalk forum without spamming too much.
Why Offer a Signature Campaign?
Signature campaigns “force” you to participate in conversations in order to meet your post count criteria.
And as you engage is more conversations, you will also learn more about Bitcoin, the technology, exchanges, mining, and all of the platforms about Steem. After all, it is important to post constructive things which add to the conversation, instead of posting random messages such as “I agree” or “LOL” or “bump”, as those will not count towards your signature goal. Plus, they might get you banned for spamming as well.
I hope that Steemit will soon offer signature campaigns.
