Exciting contests lined up next from our vibrant communities. Enter the fray, engage—vote & comment on your peers' entries.

We're on to Season 19 Week 6 of the #SteemitEngagementChallenge👏

Exciting contests lined up next from our vibrant communities. Enter the fray, engage—vote & comment on your peers' entries.

Stand a chance to win big! 

Good luck! 👇
https://steemit.com/steemit/@steemitblog/steemit-update-august-12th-2024-steemit-engagement-challenge-season-19-week-6

We're on to Season 19 Week 5 of the #SteemitEngagementChallenge👏

Exciting contests lined up next from our vibrant communities. Enter the fray, engage—vote & comment on your peers' entries.

Stand a chance to win big! 

Good luck! 👇
https://steemit.com/steemit/@steemitblog/steemit-update-august-5th-2024-steemit-engagement-challenge-season-19-week-5

What Is Steemit and How Does It Work?

## What Is Steem (STEEM)?

Steem is a community-focused [blockchain](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/blockchain) that creates an instant earning opportunity for the network’s users. The protocol is designed to provide an earning opportunity for customers based on their value to the network. It is designed to provide users with a platform where they can post curated content online, and get paid in cryptocurrency.

The protocol is a publicly available, incentivized blockchain database that allows users to interact with each other and earn in return. It leverages technologies from both social media and cryptocurrency to provide users with value. The network ensures the fair treatment of contributors by running a reward structure that reflects each user’s contribution.

[Steemit](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/steem/social/) is the first app that was built on the Steem blockchain, and it launched on July 4, 2016. The protocol aims to provide value for its community of users in the following ways:



*   To provide thoughtfully chosen news and commentaries.
*   Creating an opportunity to earn.
*   As a source that offers answers to users’ inquiries.
*   Offering a stable cryptocurrency pegged to the USD.


## Who Are the Founders of Steem?

Ned Scott, together with a blockchain developer Dan Larimer, launched the first app on Steem blockchain in January, called Steemit. The app is similar to other social network apps except that it is based on blockchain technology, hence making it a decentralized and non-custodial app. The network is without the common data-related problems faced by traditional social platforms. 

**Ned Scott** worked as a business operation and financial analyst at an American Food importing company, Gellert Global Group, from 2012 to 2015. He met Dan, his partner, in 2015 where he found out they shared similar interests.

**Dan Larimer** is a software engineer and serial entrepreneur who is captivated by blockchain technology, DEXs, cryptocurrency and other technologies. Dan co-founded Steem alongside Ned Scott and was the CTO until he left the company in 2017.


## What Makes Steem Unique?         

Many traditional social media companies have made lots of money through the content produced by their users. However, what sets Steem apart is the support it offers to its users by rewarding them for their valuable input to the platform. 

One unique feature of [the network](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/steem/social/) is that it is based on blockchain technology —making it the first of its kind. As a result, it is non-custodial and decentralized, with no downtime or data abuse, and the platform’s data are perfectly secured too. Also, users are paid in cryptocurrencies for participating on the platform.

Steem is guided by one key principle: that those who contribute to a venture should be paid by the owners, just like startups do by allocating shares during funding rounds. Another core belief is to serve its community members by rendering various financial services and opportunities.  


## How Many Steem (STEEM) Coins Are There in Circulation?

Token Economics

Unlike other blockchains where new coins are created through mining, Steem distributes the bulk of its coins (STEEM) to the rewards pool. STEEM is the primary coin of the protocol. The pool distributes tokens to users on the platform based on their input.

Witnesses (block-creating accounts) add new blocks to the Steem blockchain every three seconds. Therefore, STEEM is produced by the network daily and the new coins are distributed in this manner:



*   Content curators and authors receive 75% of the new coins created.
*   Users with Steem Power holdings (another Steem cryptocurrency) are allocated 15% of the coins.
*   The remaining 10% is awarded to witnesses.

The other two cryptocurrencies apart from STEEM are the [Steem Dollars (SBD)](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/steem-dollars/) and Steem Power (SP).


### How Is The Steem Network Secured?

After the company was bought by Justin Sun, founder of Tron platform, there was a restructuring of Steem’s operations. Therefore, new blocks are no longer created through mining and the network does not use proof-of-work.

The protocol does not rely on [proof-of-work](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/article/proof-of-work-vs-proof-of-stake) to create new blocks but schedules witnesses to create a block every three seconds. However, the Steem blockchain uses delegated proof-of-stake to increase transaction speed on the platform and make it more scalable. Witnesses are rewarded with Steem Power for every block created.


## Where Can You Buy Steem (STEEM)?

There are several cryptocurrency exchanges where users can purchase Steem tokens, SteemPower, or Steem Dollars (SBD), or even convert them to local currencies. A user without an account can buy through crypto exchanges, for instance, [Binance](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/binance/). In addition, STEEM and Steem Dollars can easily be traded for bitcoin, which can then be converted to fiat currencies. [Click here](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/categories/blog) to get more information about crypto on the CMC blog.


Binance

Steem

Hive (HIVE) is a blockchain running on a delegated proof-of-stake (DPoS) consensus mechanism. It launched in March 2020 as a hard fork of the centralized Steem blockchain and as a gateway from Web 2.0 to Web 3.0. The blockchain claims to offer “lightning-fast processing times and fee-less transactions.” Examples of use cases include social media with monetized rewards for content creators, interactive blockchain games, identity management, micro-loans and more. The platform powers decentralized applications (dApps) like Splinterlands, PeakD and HiveBlog.

Hive is a social network of apps and services, where users discover the capacity of blockchain technology, connect to the platform and securely share content through equitable redistribution of value. Thus, the users are the proprietors of the network, and sponsors can contact communities and artists directly without intermediaries.

Hive is an open source blockchain that focuses on scaling through layer-2 sidechains, while still benefiting from a common layer-1 blockchain backbone to ensure distributed data integrity. The Hive ecosystem runs on two cryptocurrencies — the native governance token, HIVE and the USD-pegged HBD stablecoin.

Hive

Ardor

Lisk and the LSK token are widely accessible on the most popular exchanges on the market.
The top exchanges to buy the Lisk token are:

Binance

Kraken

Upbit

Huobi

Zonda

Bitflyer

It is important to consider the fact that investing in crypto carries risk, just like any other investment.

If you’re struggling to find a LSK trading pair with your local currency, check out this guide on how to convert fiat into Bitcoin - giving you a gateway to buying LSK.

Lisk

Status is categorized as a mobile and desktop operating system and decentralized browser that incorporates a messaging system. As such, Status allows you to interact with a network at any time, from anywhere. It was originally released in June in 2017.

It is a light client Ethereum node, and has the ability to give you access to all Ethereum decentralized applications (otherwise known as DApps) from an app that is installed on your mobile phone or tablet. This means that users can send encrypted messages as well as access decentralized applications, including a cryptocurrency wallet.

Status

ARK is a cryptocurrency- and blockchain- based development platform allowing anyone to create their own fully customizable and interoperable blockchain. Reducing the industries need for Smart Contracts by using custom transactions, logic and multiple programming languages. ARK was founded in mid 2016, running a Toekn Exchange Campain(TEC) later that year which raised $800K in bitcoin and other exchanged cryptos. Sound financial planning has allowed the team to become a well-funded entity since its inception. On March 21, 2017, the ARK Public Network went live, hosting the native ARK crypto asset. The ARK business entity formed shortly after, called ARK ECOSYSTEM SCIC. The business entity is commonly referred to as 'ARK.io' which is part of the teams branding as well as the teams website.

The ARK Ecosystem consists of an open-source blockchain technology stack authored in TypeScript programming language. ARK’s public network acts as a live implementation of ARK technology, node operators acting as delegates on the network, standalone blockchains running on ARK technology with independent node operators, business entities that develop products powered by ARK as well as assist in maintaining the code base, an enterprise division driving adoption as well as a community of users, developers and service providers.

The ARK Public Network supports special transaction types such as multi-payment, multisignature, many various registration transactions, and IPFS hash transactions. ARK’s Launcher product, allows fully customizable interoperable blockchain creation using a graphical user interface. This plug and play creation method allows developers to fully utilize ARK’s consensus model, technology stack, product line and custom transactions.

Ontology is a project designed to bring trust, privacy, and security to Web3 through decentralized identity and data solutions. It is building the infrastructure to provide trusted access to Web3, allowing individuals and enterprises to rest assured that through regulatory compliant digital identity solutions, users and their privacy come first.

The Ontology blockchain is a high speed, low cost public blockchain. It is designed to bring decentralized identity and data solutions to Web3, with the goal of increasing privacy, transparency, and trust. To achieve this, users and enterprises are provided with the flexibility to build blockchain-based solutions that suit their needs, while also ensuring regulatory compliance. Through Ontology’s Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), Ontology ensures frictionless compatibility with Ethereum, the first step in the creation of the Ontology Multi-Virtual Machine and further interoperability for the chain.

At its launch, Ontology chose to forego the popular initial coin offering (ICO) model in favor of a series of community distributions and airdrops of its ONT cryptocurrency.

This helped to quickly establish both organic price discovery and a passionate community and helped the project to avoid subsequent regulatory scrutiny.

For example, for a brief period any person who signed up for the Ontology newsletter received an airdrop of free 1,000 ONT, which reached a value of $10 per token soon after the token became listed on major exchanges like Binance.

Ontology launched its own MainNet on June 30, 2018 and has been up and running smoothly since.

Ontology

Ontology Gas

BitShares Blockchain is a decentralized “Blockchain as Organization” (BaO); an industrial-grade decentralized open source platform built to run high-performance financial technology operations. It represents the first decentralized autonomous decentralized community that enables its core utility token (BTS) holders to decide the Blockchain future direction in order to develop and maintain a wide range of decentralized financial technology products, features and functions. BitShares Blockchain is a Blockchain that permanently records financial technology operations between different Blockchain accounts and facilitates a wide range of access controls across BitShares Blockchain user financial means.

BitShares Blockchain is a technology that supports the digital generation entrepreneurs, investors, and developers with a common interest in building and participating in free market solutions by leveraging the power of globally decentralized consensus and decision making. Consensus technology has the power to do for economics what the internet did for information. It can harness the combined power of all humanity to coordinate the discovery and aggregation of real-time knowledge, previously unobtainable. This knowledge can be used to more effectively coordinate the allocation of resources toward their most productive and valuable use.

BitShares looks to extend the innovation of the Blockchain to all industries that rely upon the internet to provide their services. Whether its banking, stock exchanges, lotteries, voting, music, auctions or many others, a digital public ledger allows for the creation of distributed autonomous companies (or BaO) that provide better quality services at a fraction of the cost incurred by their more traditional, centralized counterparts. The advent of (BaO) ushers in a new paradigm in organizational structure in which companies can run without any human management and under the control of an incorruptible set of business rules. These rules are encoded in publicly auditable open source software distributed across the computers of the companies’ shareholders, who effortlessly secure the company from arbitrary control. BitShares does for business what bitcoin did for money by utilizing distributed consensus technology to create companies that are inherently global, transparent, trustworthy, efficient and most importantly profitable.

BitShares has went through many changes and has done its best to stay on top of Blockchain technology. BitShares is using Consensus as the mechanism by which organized people decide upon unitary rational action. While not considered technology in the traditional since, consensus “technology” is the basis of democratic governance and the coordination of free market activity first coined by Adam Smith as the “Invisible Hand.” The process of consensus decision-making allows for all participants to consent upon a resolution of action even if not the favored course of action for each individual participant. Bitcoin was the first system to integrate a fully decentralized consensus method with the modern technology of the internet and peer-to-peer networks in order to more efficiently facilitate the transfer of value through electronic communication. The proof-of-work structure that secures and maintains the Bitcoin network is one manner of organizing individuals who do not necessarily trust one another to act in the best interest of all participants of the network. The BitShares ecosystem employs Delegated Proof of Stake in order to find efficient solutions to distributed consensus decision making.

BitShares

Metal DAO

Civic is a blockchain-based identity management solution that gives individuals and businesses the tools they need to control and protect personal identity information.

The platform is designed to change the way we think about identity verification by giving users more control over their personal data, while allowing them to access a wide range of services without needing to fork over excessive amounts of personal information.

Civic's identity verification solution uses distributed ledger technology to authorize identity usage in real time, and is used to sparingly share information with Civic partners after authorization by the user.

Unlike some other identity management services, Civic users store all their sensitive data on their mobile device. Users are able to authorize the sharing of specific personal data by providing a biometric signature through the Civic app.

The Civic ecosystem is enabled by a unique utility token known as the Civic token (CVC), which is used for the settlement of identity-related transactions between Civic participants — such as between a customer and service provider.

Users can earn CVC tokens for completing a variety of tasks, such as signing up for a service through the platform or introducing new users, while validators can earn CVCs for validating documents for service providers.

Civic was launched in 2018, following a sell-out initial coin offering (ICO) the year prior.

Civic

Apps use ICON to operate cross-chain seamlessly, build momentum and gain reputation. ICON's Cross-Chain Framework simplifies cross-chain development with its easy-to-use xCall messaging standard and connections to secure bridging protocols.

ICON

aelf

Powerledger (POWR) is a technology company that builds software for distributed and decentralised energy markets for a sustainable future. It has developed a blockchain-based platform that enables the tracking and trading of energy, flexibility services and environmental commodities. Its goal is to provide the platform for a fully modernised, market-driven grid that offers consumers a choice in their energy while driving the democratisation of power.
Headquartered in Zug, Switzerland, Powerledger operates in more than 10 countries. Powerledger operates on two blockchain layers; the POWR token is issued on Ethereum as an ERC-20 token, and the Powerledger blockchain - a native Solana based blockchain to process energy transactions on a more scalable network.

The POWR token is an ERC-20 token that acts as a licence required for businesses such as; utilities, renewable energy operators, microgrids, companies committed to 100% renewable energy and property developers to access Powerledger’s platform, and will be able to be used to pay for transactions on the Powerledger blockchain in future. In 2015, 30 countries had reached grid parity, meaning that the price of solar-generated energy was equal to or less than the cost of local retail electricity. Powerledger combines renewable energy and blockchain technology to offer energy solutions that are cheaper and more sustainable than traditional energy alternatives.

Powerledger

Bancor is an ecosystem of decentralized, open-source protocols that promote on-chain trading and liquidity.

Its main protocol, Carbon, is a decentralized trading protocol allowing users to perform automated trading strategies using custom on-chain limit orders and range orders, with the option of combining orders together to create automated buy low, sell high strategies.

By design, Carbon orders are irreversible on execution, easily adjustable directly on-chain, and resistant to MEV sandwich attacks. These capabilities give users an unprecedented level of control and automation to perform novel trading strategies on-chain.

Fast Lane, a separate open-source arbitrage protocol, allows any user to perform arbitrage between Bancor ecosystem protocols and external on-chain exchanges and redirect arbitrage profits back to the Bancor ecosystem.

All Bancor ecosystem protocols are governed by the BancorDAO via staked BNT.

Bancor

Komodo

Aragon

Orchid (OXT) is the native token of Orchid, a cryptocurrency-powered virtual private network (VPN).

Launched in December 2019, Orchid describes itself as the world’s first incentivized, peer-to-peer privacy network.

Its aim is to overcome internet freedom limitations by using cryptocurrency payments to allow anyone to purchase bandwidth from any participating provider. This is done using so-called probabilistic nanopayments, which occur using OXT, an ERC-20 standard token on Ethereum.

Regular payments to providers occur off-chain, allowing Orchid to avoid problems with congestion and gas fees on the Ethereum network.

The service is pay-per-use, meaning that users only have to contribute funds when they actually connect, instead of paying monthly or annual fees.

Orchid

NEM is a blockchain platform that was launched in March of 2015. It was one of the pioneers of the cryptocurrency industry, and sought to improve on the imperfections found on other chains at the time. It was one of the first non-turing complete chains to feature user-defined tokens (called mosaics), namespaces, multisignature accounts, and a P2P reputation system based on EigenTrust++. Its most notable contribution to the space is the proof-of-importance consensus mechanism, which sought to reward on-chain activity and deter the concentration of wealth commonly associated with proof-of-stake. Its client, NIS, is written in Java.

NEM has a global community. It sees the most utility as an alternative form of payment for businesses and vendors, and has a variety of social media apps built on top of it in Japan, such as nemgraph, a community-driven owned and operated alternative to Instagram.

In December 2021, NEM was hard forked by a pseudonymous team of cryptocurrency experts and enthusiasts alike. Titled Harlock, this hard fork signaled the community’s intent to take NEM from a shadow of its former self into the world’s leading payments platform for on-chain and off-chain media content.

Qtum (pronounced ‘“quantum”)  is a proof-of-stake (PoS) smart contract open-source blockchain platform and value transfer protocol. It aims to bring together the strengths of Bitcoinand Ethereumin one chain. Qtum is built on Bitcoin's UTXO transaction model, with the added functionality of smart contract execution and DApps. Recently, the platform added support for DeFi applications. As of March 2021, there are more than 20 tokens created on the Qtum blockchain.

To learn more about this project, check out our deep dive of Qtum.

The project was announced in March 2016 and held an ICO a year after, in March 2017, which brought its founders $15 million USD. The Qtum main chain was released on Sept.13, 2017. Initially, the Qtum coin was issued as a ETH-20 token, but with the launch of the mainnet, it was converted to native blockchain.