WHAT IS STEEMIT?
Steemit is a social news service which runs a blogging and social networking website on top of a blockchain database, known as Steem. The service produces STEEM and Steem Dollars which are tradeable tokens users obtain for posting, discovering, and commenting on interesting content.
HISTORY OF STEEMIT.
The project was founded in 2016 by Ned Scott and Dan Larimer, creator of BitShares. The two are founders of the Steemit Inc. company, which runs the Steemit website and funds ongoing development of the platform. On March 15, 2017, Larimer announced his resignation from the company
MONETARY SYSTEM.
The Steem blockchain has two tokens: STEEM and Steem Dollars. There is also a vested or stored interest known as Steem Power. Steem Power is strictly for internal use in the Steem community, while the tokens are used for stored value and trading.
Steem began with a highly inflationary supply model, doubling roughly every year. However due to community demand, on December 6th, 2016 the inflation rate of Steem was changed to 9.5% per year, reducing by 0.5% per year.
USAGE AND MEDIA.
As of May 2017, there are more than 170,000 Steem accounts. After an initial public beta for which no payments were made, the hard fork on July 4th, 2016, saw $1,300,000 of STEEM and Steem Dollars paid out to Steemit users.
The exchange rate of STEEM compared to Bitcoin rose continuously during July 2016, peaking at a price of over 4 US dollars. In most of July 2016, Steem had the third largest market capitalization of all cryptocurrencies monitored by the website Coinmarketcap.com, reaching a first notable peak at July 20th, with about 405 million US dollars. As of May 25th, 2016, its market cap is 258 million US dollars.
Steemit was described as a novel and "disruptive blockchain-based media community" by Adam Hayes (Investopedia) in July 2016. It got media coverage in cryptocurrency- and business-related media. Author Neil Strauss, a Steemit member, wrote an article for Rolling Stone calling its reward distribution "particularly clever" and echoing the sentiment of its disruptive potential.
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