Welcome to all of STEEMIT users! Like most
people who discover Steemit, you’re
probably wondering about the currency
tokens: STEEM, Steem Dollars, and Steem
Power. Why do we need three of them?
How are they different? When will I get
paid? These questions are understandable,
but they focus on the pieces. What we really
need is a 200-foot view.
Let’s power up the drone
The basics of Steemit are easy to
understand: you make money by posting
and voting on good content. But as you get
hooked on the great articles and
moneymaking potential, you’ll want to
understand how it really works. Steemit and
the Steem economy are a complex system
with lots of moving parts, so you’re in for
quite an education.
If you try to understand the each part of
Steemit, you’ll get there eventually. But I
think there’s an easier way to begin. Turn
on that monitor, please, and I’ll take the
drone over STEEM CENTRAL, our main power
plant. When you see the whole platform
functioning, I think you’ll have a better
understanding of the parts themselves and
the roles they play. It's an imperfect
analogy, to be sure, but a helpful one also!
What Powers Steemit?
What powers Steemit? The blockchain spins
the gears. Witnesses keep it honest.
Developers enable the Steemit social media
platform and the payment systems with
which we interact. Average people like us
provide the content that gives the site its
chief value. And we curate it, too, deciding
which content is rewarded. Everybody tells
their friends about it.
Put that together and what does it give
you?
Holy guacamole! If a holistic whole is what
you want, here is a model for you. We can
compare Steemit to a conventional thermal
steam electric power plant. Steam power,
get it? Wink, wink. Change the ‘a’ to an ‘e’.
But before we go there, I need to explain
how a normal steam power plant works.
By then, our drone should be in position.
Steam Power Plants
Thermal steam power plants are used to
generate power from coal, nuclear,
geothermal, solar thermal, waste
incineration, and many natural gas sources.
Though there are many variations, these
plants basically turn heat energy into
electricity. This basic model forms the bones
for much of the world’s energy generation.
Here is a picture of a geothermal power
plant in Iceland, which uses steam to
convert heat from the earth into electricity.
Don’t worry about pollution; there isn't
much of that. It is just releasing extra steam
into the air. This is a very renewable and
sustainable energy source.
Here is a diagram of how the main parts of
a steam power plant work:
A steam power plant requires water (which
can be recycled and reused) and a heat
source. The heat could come from
geothermal, solar thermal, coal, nuclear,
natural gas, or some other source that is
hot or can be burned. A pump sends the
water to a boiler, which heats it into steam,
and then that steam powers a turbine.
When the turbine spins, it creates electricity
with help from the generator. The
generator is connected to an electrical grid,
and customers who plug into the grid are
able to use that electricity. The steam
condensate is then collected an cooled, and
that water gets pumped back into the
system for reuse.
The Steemit Power Plant
The weather is nice today and they have the
top down. Love that retractable roof,
Steemians! Did one of the witnesses spring
for that? My, it's a sleek machine. STEEM
CENTRAL sure looks so light and airy. Such a
transparent place.
Now the drone is directly overhead. STEEM
CENTRAL sits right below us and we’re
looking down inside. The inner workings
are plainly visible on our monitor. They look
something like this:
Content provides the value to the Steemit
social media platform. It is most similar to
the water that circulates through a
conventional steam power plant. Vaporized
into steam one day, more content appears
instantly. Content is ever present, always
changing, and capable of reuse and
regeneration as content creators contribute
fresh ideas with new written blog posts,
videos, photographs, art, music, and more.
The Blockchain drives everything, like the
great pump at a conventional power plant.
Spinning out new blocks, generating new
data that grows continually, it verifies and
enables transactions and posting
information. Content can be posted, more
currency can be created, and people can get
paid. This beast never sleeps.
Steem Power (SP) operates like a
concentrating force. Like a boiler, it
superheats the content and creates steam.
Oops, I misspelled that; I meant STEEM!
When you earn rewards for posting and
voting, part of this is paid to you in SP.
When you Power Up, you are increasing
your SP also. Congratulations, you are
becoming a virtual Class A shareholder with
your bucketful of shiny tokens. SP gives you
stronger voting influence. It also gives you a
virtual stake in the future growth of Steemit
and the Steem economy, since most of the
new currency tokens created are paid out
to SP holders. Where does the real muscle
come from? From your hard work, of
course. Creating and curating content
makes it all start to bubble happily.
Steem Dollars are the price-stable currency
tokens that represent about $1 each in
value. You will get paid partly in Steem
Dollars (SD or SBD). There are so many
possibilities with SD. You can spend these in
the virtual economy which is soon to come,
you can hold them and accumulate a 10%
return, or you can sell or transfer them into
Steem, Bitcoin, or other currencies. Like the
turbine that’s spun by steam power in a
conventional steam power plant, SD bridge
the raw power of Steemit with the real
world applications of a price stable
currency.
STEEM is the liquid currency, much as
electricity is the final product from a
conventional steam power plant. You can
transfer it, spend it, or Power Up into SP.
Passing through this generator is the final
step before the product of all your hard
work is realized. Through bridges,
gateways, merchants, and exchanges, your
STEEM plugs right into the online economy.
When the market cap of STEEM goes up, you
are paid more for bringing your STEEM to
the market, just as if wholesale electricity
rates had gone up and a conventional
power plant operator cashed in by selling it
back to the customers on the grid.