Steem
URL = https://steemit.com/
Description
1.
"Steem is an aggregate social networking site where users, or "Steemians", post original content, links from the Internet and questions. Steem users upvote or downvote this content to promote interesting post and reward the author. As a post's popularity increases, it gains more visibility and the author is likely to receive even more rewards for their effort.
Posts that are downvoted or fail to garner many upvotes quickly vanish from view as higher quality content rises to the top of the "Hot" and "Active" list on the Steemit front page. Steem users receive rewards for upvotes on their original content, links and comments, but they can also lose rewards for unpopular post by being downvoted, especially by large stakeholders in the Steem platform called "whales" -- giving an incentive not to just post, but to post high-quality or especially interesting and relevant content. Any Steemian can comment on posts, and their comments can generate interesting debate or give further details on the topic at hand." (https://steemit.com/steem/@tuck-fheman/what-is-steem)
2.
"HyperSpace, a dApp in beta mode since February 2019, brands itself as protocol layer of a ‘New Content Economy’ powered by an “attention economy model (...) designed to remove the middlemen involved in content creation, distribution, and curation while enabling all value-creating parties involved directly to benefit financially” (HyperSpace 2019). The platform organizes content in spaces equivalent to groups on Facebook. Most of its decentralization efforts focus on providing flexible governance tools to these spaces, thus supporting competitive differentiation and adaptation to community needs in terms of self-administration and rewards structures. (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/347390602_The_Common_Factory_Governance_and_Incentive_Systems_of_Blockchain-based_Social_Networks)
In difference to other CSNs, Steem (*2016) is an own blockchain specifically designed for social network applications. As a unified backend accessible through different, competing frontends it constitutes a technological antidote to the lock-in effects users face vis-a-vis data silos of big social media platforms, upon which much of their monopoly power rests. Steem allows to build frontends, applications and supporting infrastructure without permission and thus potentially unleashes creative forces beyond the scale of any dedicated start-up entity. The Steem company currently develops a Smart Media Tokens template that shall allow easy customization and integration of all kinds of digital community interaction with the Steem blockchain. (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/347390602_The_Common_Factory_Governance_and_Incentive_Systems_of_Blockchain-based_Social_Networks)
History
Fabian Schuh:
"In early 2016, Dan Larimer and Ned Scott teamed up to create STEEM, a social media platform on a blockchain based upon the Graphene technology. They agreed that Ned would be appointed CEO and Dan would focus on his strength, the technology. Steemit, Inc. ("Steemit") took an initial investment of $220K and then built and delivered a functioning blockchain in just a few months. It created a working website and began mining a cryptographic token called STEEM using a new CPU-only proof-of-work mining algorithm.
Mining for STEEM was made available to everyone at the same time with several days' notice via a post on bitcointalk.org. As the concept was new and there were less people interested in mining STEEM at the time, Steemit mined 80% of all STEEM the first week; however, this percentage decreased materially as new miners began mining STEEM. The initial mining distribution made it possible to pay voters, posters and other users thereby bootstrapping the STEEM community during its infancy. STEEM also tackled the issue of transaction costs for new users by giving them $5 in STEEM so they could read, vote and post immediately; thus providing a means by which users could interact with the application without incurring any startup fees. As of today, except for a single transaction type, no transactions on STEEM costs any network fee. This is due to the innovative introduction of rate-limited transactions that prevents spam by limiting bandwidth instead of asking for a fee.
Within 6 months, Steemit held less than 50% of STEEM due to inflation paid to miners, block producers, voters and posters but has maintained a large minority stake in the cryptocurrency which has given it the ability to pay for development. Some argue that STEEM is unsustainable but today, says Dan, "Steemit is well funded and can sell its STEEM to fund development of the platform." (https://steemit.com/eosio/@xeroc/historical-facts-about-daniel-larimer-and-his-contributions-to-the-blockchain-industry)
Discussion
Ian Grigg:
"At the moment, there are not many real use cases on the blockchain. BitShares is a successful business on a blockchain. Steem is the first successful distributed application for end-users – it's on the blockchain but it does not feel like you are on the blockchain. The users just don't need to know or care. Steem opens up the entire field of social media as potential DApps. What Steem says is that you can do anything like a social media network on a blockchain - you can do Facebook, you can do Twitter. What Steem says is that we now have validated use cases in crypto – that's extraordinary." (https://steemit.com/eosio/@xeroc/historical-facts-about-daniel-larimer-and-his-contributions-to-the-blockchain-industry)