Welcome everybody!
I've been promoting STEEM Blockchain and our community to 30k people on FB and since I started to get questions in my inbox about STEEM and those posts that make money, I decided to create this post to answer everybody and try to bring them closer to blockchain technology and STEEM.
I believe encountering STEEM Blockchain for the first time if you're not a person of technology, it could confuse you a lot. You are wondering why those posts have rewards and how does this all work. I've been there in January this year and I had a crazy journey until now, still learning and growing. But, once you get to know how this works and what's the idea behind it, you just fall in love.
I believe a lot of us are a bit tired of this World's system, especially banks and their monetary system. If you're not tired of it, at least you can see the consequences when you go out of your home. People are screwed by numerous banks and trying to survive, while we're in the year 2018. Shouldn't we be more developed than that? I believe we should and this is our chance.
Source
I know that it's hard to change your routines and research a bit about new things. But, don't worry at all, I was there and now I'm here. It only takes a bit of love and time, and everything will fall into place. I believe that what we got here is something that can really change the world. Yes, I dare to say it.
So, let me tell you more about STEEM Blockchain and projects and platforms build on it. I am writing this from my own experience and I will not be able to describe everything in a good professional way. But, I believe that's even better, you will get to know what it really is from my perspective.
If you see what I see and if you feel what I feel, let's continue... :)
What is STEEM Blockchain?
STEEM Blockchain is not like others, it is designed to be a social media platform. It gives a chance to the people to build their own communities and projects as well as to create their own content that could be rewarded. It is decentralized, meaning that you can't get banned here. There are no Zuckenbergs and others to tell you what to say. Still, there are some rules you will need to learn to be respected here. We'll talk about that later.
What is also great in a rewarding system of STEEM Blockchain is that there is no middleman. If I want to send you 1 STEEM, you will receive exactly 1 STEEM. No fees or anything like it is on twitch, PayPal,... It seems crazy, and it is, crazy good!
Since, I'm promoting this to FB people, I will now turn my attention to a social aspect of STEEM. Even though this blockchain is for developers, entrepreneurs and social users, I'm not gonna talk about developers and entrepreneurs a lot. I am not that good at it so I cannot describe it well.
The big difference, which is still confusing to a lot of users, is that STEEM is not Steemit. STEEM is the blockchain and Steemit (or any other platform like Steempeak or eSteem) is a social platform built on that blockchain. I don't want to confuse you a lot so just think that Steemit is like Facebook. But better :D
These are the platforms where you can post your content and get rewarded from a rewarding pool. When you create a post, you can get upvotes (likes) and get rewarded in cryptocurrency after 7 days. Also, you can get downvotes that will minimize your reward but I will talk about the rewarding system later.
Now, let's see some differences between Facebook and Steemit.
The first BIG difference is that you can earn from your posts. It's STEEM rewarding system that allows it. The best thing is that you don't even have to post to get rewarded, but you're gonna need a lot of STEEM for that.
I've been on Facebook for quite some time and I didn't earn anything. Here, your time has value. You know how they say that Time is money? And, it is. We are not told about it much but here you can truly understand that you carry some value in yourself. With the right guidance and approach, you can build your community and more!
Another difference is that you can't get censored here. I know a lot of people don't have that problem on Facebook. But, you all see what is happening lately on Facebook with a lot of big pages disappearing. Just a thought that somebody can censor you is not good at al.
Since you can get rewarded here, that gives this whole platform and blockchain huge potential. There are a lot of big projects already going full speed here, developers are realizing that this is the future of social networking.
You don't like taxes? You don't have them here. Nobody will come and say that you need to pay them for something you created. This can lead to a taxless future, who knows, maybe.
Anyway, there are a lot of differences between those two but now, let's talk about posting and commenting.
Posting/Commenting
Since you're getting rewarded for your posts and comments, you are expected to provide original good quality content. That means that plagiarism is not accepted here, not at all. To get recognized by the community, your posts should bring some value to it. Simply, if you write a great post, which means a lot of text and some pictures, you will surely be more rewarded than if you create a post with one picture.
That's the difference between Facebook and Steemit/Steempeak/eSteem. If you don't own the photo you're having in your post, you need to source it. That way you're telling us that this is not yours, also you're providing a link to see where did you get that photo. It's simple and fair for everyone. Check out how I sourced that photo with a guy who wears a vest that says buy bitcoin.
When you're done posting, it's good to check out your followers and others to see their content. Since you can get rewards on your comments, it's good to read a post and give meaningful comments. That way the person will get to know you more and surely appreciate your time you invested to read the post and leave a comment. Follow4follow and upvote4upvote will just get your reputation down in this community and believe me, it's hard to get it up.
So, create your own image, build your own community, help others and other communities. It's up to you. See what you're best at and give it a go. I'm not saying it's easy but it's worth it.
Rewards
Finally, we're here, huh? :)
On STEEM Blockchain, you can be rewarded but also, you can give rewards. The beautiful circle. Your post and comments will have 7 days to be upvoted. After 7 days, your rewards of that post/comment will be displayed in your wallet to collect it. WARNING, after 7 days, you will not be able to reward that post.
Depending on the price of STEEM and probably other things that I'm not familiar with since I'm not a tech guy, you will be rewarded in a few ways but always in STEEM, STEEM POWER (SP) and STEEM DOLLARS (SBD).
STEEM is a cryptocurrency which you can trade for Bitcoin or other cryptos and eventually to Fiat money. My advice is to HODL, or not to sell it because STEEM price is now undervalued and in a few years that STEEM will be valued much more, much more. You can also power up to have more influence on the platform.
STEEM POWER is simply that STEEM you powered up that makes your upvote bigger. The more Steem Power, bigger the upvote and your rewards. You can also delegate Steem Power to other people or projects making their upvote bigger. It's like borrowing it to him but you can take it back whenever you want to.
STEEM DOLLARS are also part of STEEM ecosystem. You can exchange them through an internal market to STEEM and then power up or exchange that to almost whatever you want.
There's an algorithm to prevent you to spam your upvotes so when you cast an upvote on someone's post/comment, you will lose 2% of you upvote value. You can check my data here, this is an app that gives you a lot of info about your profile, rewards and many more.
Imagine you're at 100% of your value. When you give 1 upvote with 100% value, your ''bandwith'' will go down by 2% so you will go to 98% of your value. To get back to 100% you would need a bit more than 2 hours. That means that you can upvote 10 times a day with 100% value of your upvote.
In the beginning, you can only give 100% upvote until you have 500 SP (Steem Power). After that, you get a slider to choose how big of an upvote you want to give.
But, your posts will not get 100% rewards. And that's a good thing.
As you can see here, this is one of my posts that earned 42.96$ but the rewards were given to Author (me) and Curators. I think the split is 80% - 20%, but I'm not sure.
Curators are people that liked your post. They also get a share for rewarding a good quality post. The more rewardings that post gets, the more curation rewards the upvoters will get. This is a good system because it pushes you to find good quality content so that it can be appreciated more.
Communities/Projects
Now, we're finally on the best part about this blockchain - The community and projects! I am here from almost a year ago and I can't say that I know nearly half of projects and apps that are enriching our blockchain. This is the biggest motivating factor for me to invest my time here and do my part in promoting and helping STEEM Blockchain.
There are so many communities here, great ones, that I can't even describe it. I would probably need 2 new posts. But, I will try to scratch the surface and list a few of them that I find are really interesting and that are showing how big this community is.
If you like science, all branches included, then this is the community for you. You can join their Discord server and be part of their community. Also, check out their website to see what kind of content they are promoting.
Utopian is an initiative that originated on the Steem blockchain with the goal of empowering innovative open source projects, and connecting open source contributors and projects across the world. In addition to unique services offered to original and inspiring open source projects, Utopian operates a one-of-a-kind incentive program to encourage contributors to collaborate and work together to create amazing open source initiatives
If you have an open source project, be sure to join their community on this Discord server and check out their website
Fundition is a next-generation, decentralized, peer-to-peer crowdfunding and collaboration platform. You probably heard of KICKSTARTER. Well, this is something like it but based on STEEM Blockchain. If you have a project you need help with, try to post it here and get rewarded! You can check out their website and you can join their Discord server.
As the name suggests, this is decentralized Youtube. No more censoring and banning of people. You can talk freely here and get rewarded by the way! Check out their Discord server and make sure to see their platform here!
If you're a gamer and love to stream, why not stream on VIMM and get rewarded? The platform is still in alpha but that doesn't stop us streaming. If you want to see what's this community all about, check out theitDiscord server!
Want to be healthy and be rewarded for that? You're lucky because there's Actifit for you! Post your results every day, show your support and get rewarded. Check out what they are all about on their Discord server and their website!
Ever saw a product that is so cool and you want to share it with others? Now, you can do that and guess what? Yes, you can get rewarded for that. Check out their website and show the world what you found.
dStors stands for Distributed Shopping Through Open Rewards Systems. This project is totally new but once UP, you will be able to build your own shop and participate in eMarket and even get rewarded for that! WHOA! It just shows how this community is looking forward to future.
OCD is a Curation Guild for undervalued, quality posts by newcomers. It means that they have a team that is trying to find good quality posts that are undervalued. If they find it, they will reward it. There are a lot of projects like this one but this one stands out for me because of its bid bot (that I'm going to write about in next posts) and its standpoint on the community and how it's supposed to be built.
Anyway, I could write about the communities and projects for 2 days but I will stop here. I'm sure I didn't mention a lot of them but if whatever you're interested in something, you can contact me on Discord Mr. Spacely [whack.science] #7598.
I will also give you a few names to check out to help you on your STEEM journey:
This will be enough for the start. There are lots of good quality people on this Blockchain and I hope your journey to find them will be amazing!
I will post this on Facebook so if anybody have any question, feel free to send me PM on Facebook or DM me on Discord. I will be available and very lucky if I can help you!
As you can see, STEEM Blockchain seems complicated but if you invest a bit of your time, you will be part of one of the best communities that is really trying to bring future closer.
We value our time, we build communities up, we support good quality content. We're simply trying to bring back power to the people.
I will dare to say again, we are changing the world!
LIVE AS IF YOU WERE TO DIE TOMORROW and LEARN AS YOU WERE TO LIVE FOREVER.
