In the Steemit community based solely on money there is much friendly cooperation to

create better content for the platform. Steemit is also a social media where news and fun
content is shared throughout the community. There is an element of competition added to
incentivise good content over bad content. The goal of this hopefully is to get good content onto
the platform.
Steemit is a decentralized writing platform. The idea is to distribute money to people who
contribute to the platform. They do this through a currency called Steem. All information is
saved on a blockchain. This means that any computer can connect directly to the network
through any other computer that is connected. The network has no main server and is only
made of up these computers connected to each other. This means it is impossible to delete
information. This is to guarantee freedom of speech. New Steem is made to pay writers and
curators each day. Steem has many built in mechanisms to give reason to buy Steem and ways
to deflate it, as new Steem is made every day. This is all built into a social media platform where
people value, and try to upkeep the community that has been built around Steemit.
During this time period the price of Steem did have a major decline and is about $0.20
as I write this. It was about $1.50 when data collection started. This was followed by a major
decline in activity. The daily users fell by about a third since the start. However, as I write this it
has risen by 20% from its low. As the amount of people decreased, my sub count increased by
the same rate as before. This means that with a stable amount of users my sub count would
have increased exponentially.
Steemit is a platform that allows you to make money based on writing. This raises the
question, why would people upvote other peoples content? The answer is to get money. If you
upvote something and it later gets popular, you gain a reward called a curation reward. The
curation reward can get you up to 25% of the payout on a post. This gives an incentive for
people to upvote content. Also every post that is made pays out to a max of 50% liquid Steem
and a minimum of 50% Steem power. The Steem power is not dependent on the price of
Steem. This makes it a better indicator of post popularity than the Steem dollars paid out.
Steem power cannot be transferred after Steem is made into I, but you can turn it back
into Steem. This has weekly payments over a two year period though. What this does is cause
an increase and deflation in price. The curation reward of a post is paid out in Steem power, for
larger accounts the curation rewards can add up to 50-60 thousand dollars a year (dependent
on the price of Steem). This means that finding smaller accounts and good posts helps the
account that made them and encourages good writing and interesting posts which in turn
attracts more people to that account.
Cryptocurrencies have always had a large flaw with them. They are notoriously unstable
in price. There is no regulation and their price is thus not as stable as controlled currencies.
They had to add something that tied them to a regulated currency for stability. This is because
people are more willing to invest into a stable currency than a non-stable currency.

The United States dollar is one of the most widespread currencies in existence. The
makers of Steem decided to make the Steem dollar, which is equatable to the U.S. dollar. The
Steem dollar is worth about one dollar. It even has a 10% yearly interest to promote the usage
of it over regular Steem. (Recently changed to 15%) This is because if regular steem was only
able to be used to power up and not to trade, people would be less likely to sell it because it
would be locked away.
Steem is inflationary, the new Steem is given to those who upkeep it and writers (in
about equal proportions). The inflation is large and the amount of Steem doubles every year. To
keep the amount of data needed low, and other factors leads it to be reverse split every 3.3
years, 1 to 10. What this does is that large collections of Steem slowly lose value. This makes
people have to continue contributing to the platform otherwise they would lose money.
Steem power is inflates at a rate of 90% of the rate of inflation, which means that keeping
Steem instead of Steem power is a bad idea. In the end it forces people to power up or sell right
away and the ability to sell just half of it gives a short term incentive to write and contribute.
A new update was just announced. They are dropping all forms of inflation down to 10%
a year total. They will not need a reverse split. This major inflation seems to drive away
investors along with being forced to lock it away to avoid it. The plans are to bring the Steem
power power down period to three months. This is to increase the value of the currency, the
price of Steem was unsatisfactory. The inflaton had too much downward pressure and the price
could not stabilize.
The Steemit platform is continually growing with new features being added. For example
recently a promoted section has been added. People can promote a post, the more money they
use the higher up on the list of promoted posts the post gets. You must outbid everybody else to
get to the top of the list and few people scroll down past 20 posts. Five dollars can get you
anywhere from 5-30 posts down depending on the day. This will likely not give you any return.
Many people fight to be 1-5, as those are the ones that show up on the screen without any
scrolling needed. Your post stays in promoted section for an entire day but its position might
change based on new posts being promoted and old ones reaching 24 hours and leaving. You
can add funds to the promotion of a post, this is usually done after somebody promotes theirs,
to keep the top spot. All the money that is put into promotion is burned, which keeps inflation
down. Even though most of the network is working together, each post is a competition. Steem
has a trending section, posts in this section are seen on the front page as you log in.
The rewards from each post are determined by the square of the steem power, so posts
on the front page can make a huge amount of money. (Squared in relation to other posts, there
is a set reward pool each day) Typically posts in this area make 500-2000 dollars. Getting a
post to this section also likely increases your subscription count by a large amount, this means it
is highly desirable. Getting there is a little tricky (the account used for collecting data made it to

the second page a few times), you must secure upvotes from massive accounts early on. This is
the hardest step, large accounts upvote for two reasons only. They think the post will become
popular and net them a large curation reward, or they think that it is extremely valuable for the
platform, for example an event or information on a major update. Many medium and small
accounts earn little curation and are more likely to upvote content they enjoy. This is where the
people make the majority of their money once the post hits trending. Each account is limited to
about 20 votes per day, this means each whale (a large user typically somebody in the top 200
users) must evaluate a post before other whales, and also check other factors about the other.
The other factors include reputation, subscription count, comments on the post and the amount
of upvotes already on it. A lot of posts are made each day, this means that the post must look
extremely good at the first glance. Next they read it and many check the sources and make sure
it is not plagiarized in any way. Each person does this differently, they then decide if it is worth
their upvote. Each major account also wants certain content on the platform and has certain
style tastes. Few accounts have major accounts following them and thus have to appeal to them
in the stream of new posts, or advertising in chat. This is done with a catchy title and picture. To
attract attention.
The Steemit community focuses on good content and cooperation over any type of
fighting. They do this for many reasons. After a coin's initial popularity its price collapses and is
propped up by its community. At this point the community must hold itself together or the coin
will collapse. Steem is unique among coins in that Steem power is a long term investment and
no other major coin has that. In most coins you can sell them right away. Many people made
large Steem power investments when the price was rising, they are now forced to keep the
community alive or lose that investment completely. This is a major incentive, when the Steem
price was over a dollar the biggest accounts had over one million dollars worth of Steem power,
this is more than enough of an incentive.
Over the course of this project we made posts on Steemit and analyzed the data that we
got from them. Things such as the subscriber count and how it changed from day to night. At
the end it was found that the test accounts subscriber count was increasing by about 3.47
during the day, and 2.9 during the night on average. Even though posts were made at night it
got more subscribers during the day. When posts were usually got the account 23.3 steem
power on average.
If we were to make 2 posts in a single day, the reward for both of them would be greater than if
there had only had only made one. This would normally come out to be 26.2 steem power each.
This likely means that their popularity fed off of each other, or that they were just posted at good
times.
How about a graph of the sub-count over days:

As you can see it rises by relatively the same amount throughout the whole 35 days.

Around day 18 there was much variability, this was likely because many people quit and
unsubscribed.
In conclusion we found that good content and friendly competition drove the community into a
stable state. Hopefully the platform will continue to grow and gain support from mainstream
content creators to become more and more popular.The goal of this capitalist system is to
create better content in a better community will making people a profit.