The original Steem whitepaper outlined a vision for a blockchain database that supports community building and social interaction with cryptocurrency rewards. Over time, this vision has evolved, and the protocol to support that vision has evolved as well. The original whitepaper is no longer an ideal description of the Steem we see today.
We are therefore happy to announce that a new version of the whitepaper has been published, which is now technically accurate based on the current version of the blockchain. The new whitepaper can be downloaded here.
Some of the main changes made were:
Updated information regarding the new economic rules and drastically lower inflation rate implemented by Hardfork 16.
Changed the two year power down cycle to 13 weeks.
Removed references to liquidity rewards.
Removed references to mining/POW.
Updated economics with new inflation rules.
Changed SMD to SBD.
Changed SBD to STEEM conversion from 7 days to 3.5.
Added info on the 10% SBD debt ratio cap.
Added clarity to witness policy for price feeds and APR based on the SBD debt level.
Updated expected trading range for SBD peg under normal market conditions.
Changed voting from n^2 to linear.
Removed information on rate limited voting.
Added information on voting power.
Removed information on delayed payouts.
Removed information on the rewarding of parent posts.
Added info for 100% SP payout option.
Changed from 19 to 20 top witnesses.
Added witness who miss a block and haven’t produced in the last 24 hours will be disabled until they update their block signing key.
Updated information on bandwidth limitations.
Added information on SP delegation.
Used old inflation rules to create an "Initial Allocation & Supply" section.
Removed information on 10:1 reverse split.
Clarified Value is in the Links section.
Other miscellaneous wording and concept clarifications.
These changes are just the beginning. The main intention of this update was to bring the WP up to date, so that it did not contain inaccurate information. We will be releasing a new “Blue Paper” soon, which will be an entirely new document describing the Steem vision as we see it today.
There are many more updates soon to come, so stay tuned!
