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Steemit

From BitcoinWiki
Steemit
Steemit.

Steemit is a blogging and social networking website on top of the Steem blockchain database. The Steem blockchain produces STEEM and Steem Dollars which are tradeable tokens users obtain for posting, discovering, and commenting on interesting content.

Steemit, Inc, the company behind the website, was founded by Ned Scott and Dan Larimer, creator of BitShares.[1]

Steemit is an application on Steem; the website, the blockchain and the company are distinct. STEEM is the liquid token, while Steem Power represents vested STEEM and Steem Dollars (SBD) are a separate blockchain asset.[2026 1]

History

In 2016, Steemit operated as a social-media website with virtual currency rewards on the Steem blockchain. On March 15, 2017 Dan resigned as a head of technology and a marketing team was announced with Mitchel Loureiro (@zuvarnic) and @andrachy. Frank Rimalovski, Andrew Haines and William Mougayar (@wmougayar) were listed as advisory board members in the 2017 account, while @cass, Jeffrey Paul (@sneak), James Calfee (@jamesc) and Valentine Zavgorodnev (@val-a) were listed among the staff at that time.

TRON agreement and the Hive split

On 14 February 2020, Steemit and the TRON Foundation announced an agreement. Co-founder Ned Scott said that he had sold Steemit to Justin Sun; Steemit’s own 19 February announcement described the arrangement as a strategic partnership.[2026 2][2026 3]

A subsequent dispute over Steem governance was followed by the launch of Hive on 20 March 2020. Hive was a separate blockchain forked from Steem. It was not a new name for Steemit or an automatic move of the Steemit website to Hive.[2026 4][2026 5]

Description

YouTubeSteemit - The Billion Dollar Social Media Giant Replacing Reddit & Facebook

The idea was described in a whitepaper released in March 2016.

The general concept is similar to other blogging websites or social news websites like Reddit, but the text content is saved in a blockchain. Using a blockchain enables rewarding comments and posts with secure tokens of value. Images can be uploaded and hosted on Steemit. Other multimedia content must be embedded from other web hosts. For formatting, there is a WYSIWYG editor. Users can also opt to use Markdown formatting with HTML elements.

User accounts can upvote posts and comments, and the authors who get upvoted can receive a monetary reward in a cryptocurrency token named STEEM and Steem Dollars, a token designed to reference the US dollar rather than guarantee a dollar market price. People are also rewarded for curating (discovering) popular content. Curating involves voting comments and post submissions. Vote strength and curation rewards are influenced by the amount of STEEM Power held by the voter.

Steemit has a reputation system, where new accounts start with a reputation of 25. An account's received votes can influence its reputation up and down, incentivizing online etiquette and interaction with the community.

Monetary system

STEEM is a liquid asset that can be transferred or traded. Steem Power (SP) is the vested form of STEEM, used to weight influence over reward distribution and witness voting; it is not a third independently transferable currency. Converting STEEM into SP is called powering up, and scheduled conversion back into liquid STEEM is called powering down. SBD uses conversion rules and price feeds intended to support a dollar reference; this design does not guarantee a market price of US$1.[2026 1]

Steem began with a highly inflationary supply model, doubling roughly every year. However, due to community demand, on December 6, 2016 Steem introduced an annual inflation schedule starting at 9.5%. The schedule reduces the annual rate by 0.01 percentage point every 250,000 blocks until a floor of 0.95% is reached. The 9.5% starting rate is historical; it is not today’s rate.[2026 1][2]

The July 2025 whitepaper describes rewards for authors, curators and vested stakeholders. Reward allocation is determined by votes, stake and protocol rules; posting or voting alone does not establish a fixed payment.[2026 1]

Usage and media coverage

In November 2017, more than 450,000 Steem accounts were reported. 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.[3]

The exchange rate of STEEM compared to Bitcoin rose continuously during July 2016, peaking at a price of over 4 US dollars. 20th of July 2016, Steem had a first notable peak of market capitalization with about 405 million US dollars.[4] As of December 16th, 2017, its reported market cap was 525 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.

Andrew McMillen explained in Wired Steemit's function being rooted in transparency with every vote and transfer being viewable to the public from upvotes on posts to wallet transfers. Unlike most digital currencies which are difficult to access for the majority of the world without any money to invest, Steem removes the friction for the average person to join in the cryptocurrency world by allowing earnings via posting without needing to buy in first. [5]

As of November, 2017, YouTuber and syndicated radio and television talk show host David Pakman started publishing content from The David Pakman Show to Steemit.

Criticism

Joe Lee, co-founder and CIO of digital currency trading platform Magnr, told CoinDesk. "Whether Steem succeeds as a digital currency will be more a reflection of Steemit’s success as a platform as opposed to the economics of the coin itself. This is a good example of a digital currency whose value will be closely affiliated to its utilitarian value as a social networking and sharing platform."

“I’m skeptical about 'appcoins'/'appchains,' and Steem is very much one,” stated algorithmic trader Jacob Eliosoff.

See Also on BitcoinWiki

References

  1. ↑ Steemit Social Media Platform Pays Its Users, Sees Massive Growth; bitcoin.com; June 9, 2016
  2. ↑ Final Review of Steem Economic Changes
  3. ↑ Social Media Blockchain Steem Issues $1.3MM Payout To Steemit Users
  4. ↑ Steem, coinmarketcap.com.
  5. ↑ The Social Network Doling Out Millions in Ephemeral Money Backchannel
  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Steem whitepaper, July 2025, checked 26 October 2026.
  2. ↑ The Block, Steemit and TRON announcement, 14 February 2020, checked 26 October 2026.
  3. ↑ Steemit team, Tron and Steemit Join Forces, 19 February 2020, checked 26 October 2026.
  4. ↑ Hive roadmap: launch on 20 March 2020, checked 26 October 2026.
  5. ↑ Cointelegraph, Hive hard fork is successful, 20 March 2020, checked 26 October 2026.
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