RE: Steem Fact Sheet - Let’s Make One by markkujantunen

View this thread on steempeak.com

Viewing a response to: @justineh/steem-fact-sheet-let-s-make-one

· @markkujantunen · (edited)
$1.36
Here are my answers:

>What is Steem? Is the tech superior to say EOS, ETH or bitcoin? If so, how? If it’s not.. why is it needed? 

Steem is a blockchain built for content delivery and social media applications that has Delegated-Proof-of-Stake as its consensus mechanism. It can store text. Text content can stored as JSON objects or as posts, in which case they can be upvoted (or downvoted) by users with their vote weighed by their stake. 65% of the chain's native token inflation goes to authors and curators of posts. Steem is a so-called application specific chain, which means it is not built for running smart contracts or to do computation in general like EOS. Steem is cheaper to run than EOS because computations require RAM, which is expensive. Unlike, EOS or Steem, Bitcoin and Ethereum have Proof-of-Work as the consensus mechanism. In theory, both Bitcoin and Ethereum should be more secure than EOS or Ethereum but they're much more expensive to transact on. The tech is different, not necessarily superior. Superiority depends on the purpose for which it is used.

> Does the chain actually need its own currency?

Yes, it does. Otherwise, all the monetary transactions would have to take place on another chain. If Bitcoin were used, that is, if the rewards were paid in BTC that would be both expensive, slow and cumbersome.

>What are the “fast and free” transactions? Will transactions be free forever? How does that work?

Steem has a three-second block processing target time. There are no direct transaction fees. One needs Resource Credits to transact on the chain. At present, they're tied to the amount of Steem Power one has in one's account. Because Steem Power has monetary value, you could say that you pay for your ability to transact on chain up front but there are no charges for individual transactions. I don't think there will ever be direct transaction fees. This type of model is much more suitable for social media applications than direct fees, which require that the user maintain an adequate balance of liquid funds at all times.

>Is it centralized? 

By cryptocurrency standards, not particularly. Bitcoin is also quite centralized in terms of token distribution.

>What is the distribution look like compared to in the beginning? What makes it “decentralized”?

Steem has a relatively high inflation rate, about 8.5% per year at present. The newly minted tokens tend to end up in the hands of the smaller users because they're distributed mainly to authors and curators.

>What makes it unique? 

The reward pool for authors and curators.

>What are the use cases it offers that are not found elsewhere?

It is best suited for social media and content delivery applications.

>How is “tokenizing the internet” even beneficial? What value does that add? Who does it empower or help?

Tokenization allows for much greater flexibility for the users to take on different roles in the ecosystem. By purchasing or earning STEEM and powering up, a user becomes a curator and an owner and will be able to take part in the governance of the platform. This is much easier to accomplish than through formal agreements in non-blockchain ecosystems. For content creators, this model provides taking ownership of and control over their activities. On legacy platforms, the roles are inflexible. 

>What has changed since its inception? What improvements have been made? (If any).

Steem nodes used to use Chainbase, which was a RAM intensive database and thus expensive to run. That wasn't a problem in the beginning but as Steem is one of the most high-traffic blockchains in existence, something had to be done about the cost to enable scaling. Steemit, Inc, the company that develops the blockchain code, developed a way to move the chain from Chainbase to RocksDB, the latter of which uses cheap hardware (solid state drives) to store the chain but is fast enough at the same time. For this, they had to create an interface called MIRA (Multi-Index RocksDB Adapter) that allows for the transition to RocksDB without rewriting other existing Steem codebase.

Steemit, Inc also developed Hivemind, a database that is not tightly synchronized with the blockchain itself but that is very useful for queries which can be done in SQL. There is no need to query Steem nodes for non-consensus critical information, which can significantly reduce load on Steem nodes by applications.  

Steemit, Inc has gone through many hard forks since its inception where features have been gradually added. In the last hard fork, an improvement on the token distribution model was implemented. It has improved content discovery and rewarding and had a positive impact on the culture of the platform. Higher curation rewards and a separate downvote pool have caused the vote selling industry to practically die off and powerful new curation projects to emerge, many of which are former vote selling bot accounts. 

>How is it scalable? 

Because Steem has DPoS consensus protocol, it is inherently much more scalable than any PoW chain. For its intended use cases, this is a must.

>Will it run into the same issues as we are seeing on other chains if traffic was the same?

Very few other chains have the same volume of traffic.

>DPoS- pros and cons?

The pros have been discussed above. The cons are that DPoS isn't theoretically as secure as PoW but for its use cases, Steem has proven to be secure enough. It has never been hacked and no funds have ever been lost owing to hacking the core blockchain code. User have been careless and had their keys stolen but Steem is prepared for even that. Steem has an account recovery procedure whereby presenting an old master key to a trusted account recovery partner, the master key of an account can be changed and new the key be given to the original owner if the procedure is initiated not longer than 30 days have passed after the thief has changed the master key.

>Inflation- inflation is seen universally as “bad” when it’s too high. STEEM inflation is thought to be “high”.. what benefit does the inflation add (if any)?

Because of the relatively high inflation, STEEM has potential to be put into the hands of a large number of new users thus helping the token distribution decentralize.

>Is it high in comparison? Does that inflation also add value? How?

Bitcoin's rate of inflation is about 4% per annum at present. Steem's rate of inflation is about 8.5%. Some variation to that is caused by the use of a stable coin called Steem Backed Dollar that can be converted to one USD worth of STEEM.

>Rewards pool - good or bad? Why? Would Steem exist without it? How?

The reward pool is quite necessary for Steem to fulfill its value proposition. If it were ever removed, it would have to be replaced with user-defined tokens created that implement the Smart Media Token protocol.
👍  , , , , , , , , , ,
properties (23)
post_id82,110,701
authormarkkujantunen
permlinkre-justineh-q1p9fl
categorysteem
json_metadata{"tags":["steem"],"app":"steempeak\/2.2.3"}
created2019-11-28 22:07:03
last_update2019-12-02 16:01:42
depth1
children0
net_rshares5,957,230,277,281
last_payout2019-12-05 22:07:03
cashout_time1969-12-31 23:59:59
total_payout_value0.680 SBD
curator_payout_value0.679 SBD
pending_payout_value0.000 SBD
promoted0.000 SBD
body_length6,854
author_reputation340,582,416,232,499
root_title"Steem Fact Sheet - Let’s Make One"
beneficiaries[]
max_accepted_payout1,000,000.000 SBD
percent_steem_dollars10,000
author_curate_reward""
vote details (11)