The very first time I heard about steemit, the one thing that tantalized me was the deadly combination of content delivery and blockchain. I was really pleased that content publishing was made possible on a decentralized network. I instantly skimmed through the website, read quite a few articles on the platform and watched several videos about steemit on youtube to gain further knowledge. During this process, I came across several key terminologies that were new to me. I realized that in order to understand the functionality of steemit, I need to first comprehend these keywords. I searched for a few of these words on the internet. I learned about a few of them through posts on the steemit platform, few from the FAQ section and others from the whitepaper. What I realized is that few of these terms and their functionalities are really confusing to the newbies on this platform. On top of that, one needs to search for them in multiple places to understand the gist and trust me I found it very time consuming and laborious.
In order to simplify things for the steemians, especially the rookies, I decided to make a post on the most confusing yet most predominantly used terminologies on the steemit platform. Hope this helps in finding all answers at one place.
STEEM- STEEM DOLLAR - STEEM POWER- DELEGATED STEEM POWER
Steem - Steem is the fundamental unit or token on the steem blockchain. Just like Bitcoin, it is a cryptocurrency token and it forms the base for all transactions on the steem platform. We can buy/sell steem on exchanges and transfer to other users as well.
Steem dollar - Steem Dollar, commonly denoted as SBD, is created with an intention to stabilize the steem network and thereby the crypto world. It was initially pegged at $1 USD and at one stage went as high as 14.18$ USD. Steem Dollars can be exchanged for STEEM and then transferred to other accounts for commerce. Steem Dollars can be used to purchase stuff from online stores and other platforms that accept SBD. You can purchase some really cool t-shirts using SBD from thesteemitshop.
Steem Power - Steem Power, denoted as SP, is steem committed for a 13-week vesting. What this means is that when we convert our steem into steem power, we cannot withdraw it whenever we want. If we send a request for a withdrawal, our request will be processed weekly over a 13-week period. SP is non-transferable and non-divisible and hence cannot be traded easily on exchanges. Keeping that aside, SP is a measurement of how much influence/power we can exert in the Steem network. The more Steem Power we possess, the more value our upvotes and comments have on posts. In short, our influence on the distribution of rewards pool is directly proportional to our SP. It is always an ideal strategy to save most of our earnings in SP and it will help us in the long run.
Delegated Steem Power- The steem power that we delegate/transfer to another steemit account/user is called delegated steem power. Using our SP, that particular user can enjoy the fruits of curations rewards, bandwidth, etc but cannot convert this delegated SP into Steem. Here is a simple guide that will explain in detail about how we can delegate SP by
Miner - Witness
Miner - A miner is the one who mines cryptocurrencies using proof of work mechanism. Miners validate and record transactions on the blockchain network. Miners solve complex mathematical problems and create blocks that are linked together to form the blockchain. They spend a lot of time and resources to achieve this proof of work. They receive rewards in the form of tokens and transaction fees.
Witness - A steem witness is the steem user who creates blocks and governs the steem network. Unlike bitcoin's proof of work, steem uses a delegated proof of stake mechanism to create blocks on the steem blockchain. For this purpose, the community elects users to act as witnesses. Each of us is given 30 votes with which we can nominate some of the users as witnesses. The top 19 witnesses will have the power to create blocks and validate transactions. These witnesses will be rewarded with SP for taking up the responsibility of creating blocks and handling price feeds. More about witnesses will be discussed in detail in the upcoming articles.
Proof of work - Delegated Proof Of Stake
Proof of work - The process by which a set of miners compete with each other to solve intricate and expensive mathematical problems based on cryptographic hashes is called proof of work. It is the consensus algorithm implemented in bitcoin network and is used to validate transactions and create blocks.
Delegated Proof of stake - It is the consensus algorithm used on the steem blockchain network. A set of steem users called witnesses are elected by the steem community and are delegated to validate transactions and maintain the blockchain. DPOS is the fastest, most efficient and decentralized consensus model available. It is often referred to as the technological democracy and is implemented on platforms such as Bitshares, EOS, Lisk, and Steem.
Powerup - Powerdown
Powerup - The process of converting our steem into steem power is called as power up. As we know that users having a greater SP will have a greater influence on the votes and comments, it is always suggested to powerup as much steem as we can. We also get additional rewards from the rewards pool for vesting our steem as steempower.
Powerdown -The process of converting our SP into steem is called powerdown. When we initiate a power down, our steem will be released over a period of 13 weeks in equal installments.
Author- Curator
Author - An author on steemit is the one who contributes quality content by publishing posts on various categories such as cryptocurrency, blockchain, food, travel, photography, life, love, philosophy, etc. Authors play a pivotal role in adding value to this platform and the platform pays them author rewards for their valuable contributions.
Curator - A curator on the steem network is the one who upvotes and comments on the posts. A curator is validating and promoting good, quality content by upvoting on it. The steem network recognizes the importance of curators in taking this platform forward and hence rewards them. This is the reason why we get rewarded when we upvote and comment on posts.
Node - Seed Node
Node - A node in networks is basically any physical device say a computer that is able to send, receive and forward information to other devices in the network. In the crypto world, a node is a computer that participates in the blockchain network. These nodes play vital functions such as maintaining a copy of the blockchain, validating transactions, creating blocks and thereby creating new crypto tokens.
Seed Node- Long running stable nodes in the blockchain network are known as the seed nodes. When new nodes join this network they need not connect with the seed nodes, but they can use them to discover other nodes in the network.
Here is a list of few other terminologies that might help you !!!!
Blockchain - In simple terms, a blockchain is a digital ledger wherein blocks of transactions that are made using cryptocurrencies are linked together in an orderly fashion. All the blocks are identified by a hash value and each block will contain the hash value of the previous block in the blockchain. The first block in this chain is called the genesis block. The beauty about blockchain is that it is decentralized and therefore highly secure.
Steem Blockchain - The steem blockchain contains blocks that records all the posts, voting and rewards information. There is zero transaction fee on the steem blockchain, unlike other networks. Rate-limiting bandwidth is applied to prevent spam attack. A block will be created every 3 seconds on the steem blockchain.
Rewards pool - In the bitcoin blockchain network, all the coins generated from mining will be distributed among miners. In the case of Steem, whenever a block is created, the tokens that are generated will go directly into the rewards pool. From this pool, 75% of the tokens are awarded to the content creators and curators, 15% to the SP holders and only 10% to the witnesses.
Curation rewards - Curation rewards are the rewards given to users who upvote and comment on posts. Out of the payout we get for each post 75% goes to the author and 25% goes to the curators.
Author Rewards - Author rewards are the rewards you get for posting quality content on the steemit platform. It depends on the number of upvotes and comments you get for your post.Voting power - Voting power is the amount of influence our vote carries. If we continuously keep upvoting then our voting power gets decreased. With every upvote that we make, we lose some amount of voting power. For example, in a day if we make 5 upvotes then the 6th upvote will not carry the same influence as the 5th. It is said that our voting power will be recharged by 20% every day.
Cheetah - @cheetah is a very useful bot created by @anyx that scans our posts for copy/paste content. Cheetah will not flag or downvote our posts, but it will alert other users by commenting on our post. It will leave the decision of upvoting/downvoting entirely to the readers.
Steam cleaners - Steemcleaners is a group of Steemians who have taken up the responsibility to clean up steem off plagiarism, spam and any forms of abuse. Read this to understand more about steamcleaners
BlockTrades - Blocktrades is a platform that facilitates transfers and exchanges of steem tokens. We can purchase steem for any other cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, dodgecoin, ETH, etc. We can also convert our steem to steem dollars and vice versa using blocktrades. Purchases can be made very rapidly and securely on this platform.
AnonSteem - AnonSteem is a very useful platform to create a steemit account securely. It accepts BTC,LTH, and steem to create a steemit account. When we create an account through steemit.com, it asks for our email id and phone number, whereas, AnonSteem gives weightage to our privacy as we can create a steemit account anonymously here.
SteemConnect - Steemconnect is an identity layer built on top of the steem blockchain to ensure that our accounts are safe. We can securely manage our wallet, check our activity and access services & apps built on steem without giving up our password.
Tags - Tags are the categories we assign to our posts/articles. We are allowed to give 5 tags to each of our posts. It is important to give tags to our articles as it will ensure that our posts will be listed on the users feed when they search by a category/tag name. For example, when we write a post on bitcoin we must give tags as bitcoin, blockchain, cryptocurrency, decentralization, etc.
Reputation Score - The number we see beside our username is the reputation score. When we create an account, we get a reputation score of 25. Based on our activity and the value we add to the steem community this reputation score will gradually increase. Reputation score is important as it will leave an impression on the community as to how good we are. When users vote on our content it goes up and when users downvote or flag our content, the score drops. Just like SP, reputation score is very crucial for our success on this platform.
Resteem - Resteem is just sharing others content on your feed. Just as we share others posts on Fb, we can resteem others posts on steem. As soon as we resteem a particular post, it will appear in our feed as well as our followers feed.
Please feel free to comment below any more key terms that you think are important to fathom. I hope this post helps you. Gracias!!!