You can think of Steemit as one front-end for the blockchain Steem.
To make my life easy, I think of Steem as a 'decentralized reddit' where 'karma points' are transferable and posts (and even comments, like this one) are permanently encoded into the blockchain, a la the interface that Steemit is providing.
I could (conceivably and have done so) write this comment via the cli_wallet, but this process is too cumbersome for the non-techie and, as such, an interface to the blockchain API, via Steemit or any other front-end to the blockchain, is necessary.
So within this conceptual space wherein we think of Steemot as the frontend for the Steem Blockchain, how exactly does the mining work? Is it that providing relatively valuable content (as determined by upvotes) is the mining? I've been going through the whitepaper and trying to figure out how any of this would actually work. Thanks so much for the help by the way!
As I understand it, it is the votes themselves that are the 'mining' part of the equation, as you vote (mine) you acquire Steem Power, some of which you leave behind on the post, some of which you take with you to spread on other posts..... I think.
CG
I think mining is still mining and when you vote, the steem you acquire is distributed to you by the network, steem that has already been mined.
You think wrong. While CPU-mining is still possible, the major part of new steem is created through voting
There are 21 blocks that are signed in a round with 3 seconds per block. 19 out of those 21 blocks are signed by the voted witnesses. 1 other block comes from a randomly selected witness. The final block is the proof of work block coming from a miner. The mining is done to cryptographically secure the database, i.e. posts, comments, votes, etc. on the blockchain.
From what I understand, the blockchain produces 2 additional STEEM every block for content creators and curators (upvoters) with the rewards distributed as per the algorithm described in the whitepaper.
Content creation and upvoting distributes STEEM to those who mainly create quality content and then followed by those who upvote the content the earliest.