@sircork made a meme. It's been in my head since I saw it. Steemit is without a doubt an awesome platform, but there's also a rather steep learning curve to climb in order to figure this place out. I thought I'd take a quick stab at putting this stuff all in one place. It's like your steemit vocab list.
Functional Vocabulary
Blockchain: A type of digital ledger. It keeps track of all transactions. Think of making an excel sheet and every 3 seconds you hit save and it adds the snap shot of changes as a new block to the chain. The chain contains all information that's ever happened. Steemit.com and websites like it are able to view and retrieve information from the chain in an easily digestible format.
Witness: Technically it's a server that helps assemble the blockchain. It's also a person. The witnesses are elected members of the community. The server settings effect things like average blocksize, percent interest on SBDs, and the witnesses publish prices used to calculate values and earnings by backend of the blockchain. Many witnesses focus on the technical end of the blockchain. They may add new features and sister websites to use the blockchain in novel ways. Many witnesses also think of themselves having a social purpose helping new members, advocating for the community, or explaining what all this stuff is.
Steemit. Steemit is a company that runs the steemit.com website. It was founded by @ned and @dan. @dan has since left and is now managed by @ned. There are a fairly large number of developers that work to keep the website improving and adding new features to the steemit.com interface. Steemit is currently working on their next set of goals, which is to increase the rate at which this ecosystem can onboard new members.
Steem: Steem is a unit of currency. It's created by the Steemit Blockchain. The value fluctuates so, it's hard to compare it to something. It's like owning a volatile stock that goes up and down in vale, but as of right now hovers between $1-2/steem.
Steem Power: If you own steem you can convert it into Steem Power. This is like owning and activating a stock in a company. You now own X% of the output of the blockchain and can exert some control over it. If you have high steem power your upvotes are worth more.
Steem Backed Dollars (SBDs): This is a measurement of debt to be paid by the blockchain. The percent interest fluctuates, but is set by the witnesses, which they use to ensure it stays worth at least $1.
Crypto Currency- These come in many fashions, but largely they are digital currency alternatives to government issued debt based notes. The crypto is in reference to many of them using cryptography as a method to secure interactions and transfer of digital currencies.
Exchange: Much like a stock exchange you can exchange crypto currencies for one another. Just like you can sell apple stocks to purchase IBM you can buy and trade bitcoins for litecoins or steem. Exchanges are marketplaces where people buy and sell the difference currencies for one another. A very common exchange is bittrex.
Coin: The crypto currencies usually refer to themselves as coins. Bitcoin is an example. There is also Litecoin and Dogecoin. These are not printed metal coins, but digital currency that use the term coin to loosely describe it's association to money.
Token: Token is another commenly used term for a digital currency or thing of value. You can think of them like poker chips representing value.
Wallet: A wallet is a program that stores the value of one or more cryptocurrencies. You typically have an address that is either a name in the case of Steemit or a long string of numbers and letters in the case of Bitcoin. If you want to buy, sell, or transfer your currency it likely is going into and out of one or more wallets. You can think of these as the cryptocurrency equivalent of a bank account.
Transfer: Just like handing you a $5 dollar bill I can transfer value digitally too. This can be like wiring money in the banking world where you send it from one account to another. A transfer is how you bring digital currency from one wallet to another.
Fiat Currency: Fiat generally means backed by nothing. Government currencies used to be backed by gold, but in the 1970s Nixon took america off of the gold standard. Now the common understanding is that US Dollars are backed by nothing. Thus they are called fiat currencies. People are often concerned about infinite inflation when currencies can be printed without any limit like the amount of physical gold in the world.
Distribution: People referencing this are generally speaking about the percent ownership of steem by it's members. Currently steemit has a rather slanted distribution with the top 1% of steem holders owning 93% of the steem.
Upvote: If you like a story you can upvote it. This not only shows the author that you like their content, but it also put some rewards towards their posts
Resteem: This is similar to the share function on facebook. You are able to share stories from authors you have enjoyed reading to your follower list when you click the resteem option.
voting power: You have a maximum voting power of 100%. Every time you vote it slowly drains. Every day it comes back by 20%. A typical maximum vote drains 2% of your remaining voting power. So, a max vote at 100% voting power will remove 2% of your voting power. A max vote at 50% of your voting power will only remove 1% of your voting power because it's removing the power based on what you have left.
The steemit anology is a pool that's constantly being filled by rain and you are manually draining it by removing bucket loads at a time. The rain is teh 20% that refills teh pool every day. Your votes are teh bucketloads coming out of the remaining water.
Followers: People that like your stories have the option to click the follow button and subscribe to your articles. Every time you publish your followers will automatically receive the story.
Slang
Steemes: The combination of the word Steem and meme. These can be memes about steem or simply memes created and posted to steemit.
Whales, Dolphins, Minnows, Redfish: These fish analogies typically reference the amount of wealth someone has. While the terms are used broadly across the cryptocurrency space on Steemit the ranges go like this:
Redfish: 0-1000SP
Minnow: 0-5000 SP
Dolphin: 5000-50000
Whale: 50000+ SP
Whale balz: a vulgar reference to the amount of steem an account holder posses.
How to profit on Steemit
The fastest advice I have for you is that different activities will represent a larger portion of your income depending on how much SP you have. I generally encourage folks to get 300 followers before starting to concentrate more heavily on authoring if their intent is simply growth. In general the advice goes like this-
Minnows comment, dolphins author, whales curate
Commenting: You can add feedback on every article. These are called comments.
Author: When you write a new post and publish that to the world that's considered authoring
Curate: When you spend a lot of time upvoting posts and comments that's consider commenting. People whale accounts can make money curating it's effectively the fastest wealth generator for them.
This is a great article. I am very new to the community and have been overwhelmed and confused by a lot of the terminology. This article does a great job of summarizing everything.
its almost like I've been an educator for 20 years ;)
It does make you wonder, doesn't it? LOL
Thanks for this @aggroed! It's my first time to learn about "redfish" though. 😅 Something new everyday.
As for me, I try to put at least 1 post a day (or 2 days), without really expecting huge payouts. I see this platform as my way to express myself and it has been a great experience so far. Comment - yes! Comment as much as I could. Curate - my curation rewards vary from 0.001 to 0.01SP so there's nothing much to expect from there right now. 😊
Ditto. I like this article's points about the importance of commenting (for us minnows/redfish). I didn't realize this until now. I've been focusing on creating original content, but I'll shift gears and see if I can get the ball rolling faster through comments. In my experience, the content creation has been massively time-consuming (and practically invisible on Steemit, unfortunately). It turned me away from Steemit for awhile. Commenting sounds like a solid way to explore and contribute.
Amazing job @aggroed for bringing all that's needed for a newbie to steemit. I can also call it a steemit guide for the dummies. I have e been on the platform for close to 3 weeks now, but even for me some of the terms were absolutely new. Thank you for your efforts and keep up the good work. ✌️✌️Peace.!!
Incredibly grateful for your article @aggroed, you really broke it down in an easy to understand way. I especially liked your bit on 'what users should do' based on their wealth. I'm excited to get involved with the community here. This platform has a lot of promise. Thanks again!
The best take away:
"Minnows comment, dolphins author, whales curate"
As a minnow, it is of most importance to understand the impact commenting has. Not saying there is no need to author, but for growth, 2-4 post per week max should be enough, then spend the majority of the time commenting like crazy, commenting like a god. :)
ps. Not voted for a witness?? Give aggroed your vote. https://steemit.com/~witnesses
One of these years I am going to figure this place out and Do or get it right!
:-)
I appreciate all the help,and advice!
Namaste!
Just keep on keeping on. You know that old saying, "fake it until you make it". :-)
Thx for this info. It is much clearer than other articles I have read. There are a number of folks who write articles about SteemIT and associated terms/features/sites that tend to be more confusing than helpful even though that was not their intent. I guess I am forever a redfish - I did not even know I was one - I thought I was a minnow - oh well.
The whole blockchain encyclopedia here in a nutshell. Great work and articles.
This is an excellent post. Thanks so much for the good explanation. 🐓🐓
nice use of chicks!
Thanks. Glad you stopped by. 🐓🐓
All this time thinking I'm a minnow. Get demoted in one post! Damn!
In a sea of Whales, Dolphins and Minnows.......I remain a Trout.
I thought I was a Minnow. But now I know I am a Redfish. :(
@pijushmitra At least you are not a dead fish 😉
Better to know than walk in to a bar boasting "I'm a whale on Steemit don't you know!"
Thank you for posting this, it makes sense and the information is actually very useful. In my opinion, what turns off a majority of new users is that they spend 2-3 hours putting a thoughtful informative post with great content, and it gets completely ignored and maybe makes .75 cents. Do that about 10 times and give up.... I mean who wouldn't? Your advice here is the opposite of that. Start by just commenting and upvoting and gradually begin authoring as you develop yourself within the community. Should help minnows save time and achieve greater chance of success. Thank you - I have upvoted and resteemed.
Thanks Ted. Good luck. I saw a newb snag 300 followers in a week just commenting. It took me months authoring. Trying to save my followers some headaches.
yep I figured that out - now I am just commenting, upvoting, and resteeming and hitting my favorites with bonuses from bots like @randowhale and @treeplanter. Going to do that for a while and start doing my own posts later on when I have more followers and Steem-weight, it is frusterating to do great posts and get literally nothing and completely ignored. It's a strange environment, but I think I see the path. Take care
I completely understand the frustration as I'm a relatively new author myself. I would add that we've really got to take the time to make friends in "higher" places up the Steemit chain than where we are since all it takes is a dolphin or whale's vote to shoot up a post into major recognition. I do respect that Steemit is trying to create a system where blatant spam is penalized quickly though, like when someone comments on a whale's post with "OMG I love you Follow ME NOW for great deals on blah blah xyz!!!" You've gotta be real with people and treat people in a genuine way, and Steemit has built a great environment for that. I've met several really interesting people here, and I discover cool things we have in common all the time. Steem on!
Ha, I'd be happy if I could make at least 75 cents from each of my posts! Some to a lot better, some do a lot worse...
good job ;)
Hello ! Very interesting blog, on which interesting information! I'll sign up for you and appreciate your recording! Good luck and prosperity is a friend! I'll put money on you, try to justify it)
Good information, thanks
Thanks sharing @aggroed ! I love idea of Steemit, but it can be hard to learn of of the phrases and do's/don'ts you've outlined.
Cheers
Yes! I always need clarification on terminology. I remember you mentioning in a previous post that you are a witness. Do you still need more votes to make sure you stay in the spot, or are you all set?
Because, if you do need more votes, I would love to vote for you. Please just let me know how, as I have never tried to do something like that. :)
I'm going to add a link to my post The Top 7 Tools You Can't Live WIthout if you are new to steemit. Thank you. This is the most comprehensive list yet.
Nice post. Resteemed
I resteemed this to my page. Thanks!
Thank you. It cleared up some of the mystery for me! I appreciate you putting it all in one spot!
Upped and Steemed
Great post thanks resteemed :)
Helpful information about Steemit platform is always appreciated. I'm a gadamn Redfish shitting bricks who's got a long way to go... Hahaha 😂.... Cheers man👍
Quite a comprehensive vocabulary list. Answers a number of questions! Thanks @aggroed.
Like @sircork's meme too... wondering if there's a video.
No video from me. I tend to skip them.
Thank you for that succinct terminology recap. I've started to actively recruit some people in my sphere of influence to start migrating to Steemit, and I'm going to resteem so I can find it easily as a way to help with that intro. Thx again.
Sharing so others can learn! Thank You @aggroed for breaking this down!
Very good and helpful advice, aggroed. Thank you for sharing this. I like what you did to show quantitatively where someone is and then you add very useful info on what to do (comment, author, curate).
Keep up the good work. It is very helpful!
This is very helpful and you put everything in a way that's easy to understand! I now have a better idea of a few things I was confused about. Thanks for writing this up!
I am a small fish in a huge pond! But that is ok I will grow...Thanks!
I just helped you earn a lot of money by upvoting, resteeming, commenting and following you. Jk
This is must read post for all the noobs here in our community. Very well written. Now can you write another post, actually a step by step guide about the right payment steps inside steemit and then outside of it until the payment is received in one's PayPal account. I read a lot of negative things about Poloniex. I also read negative reviews about Bittrex. So a person who is new to this crypto/blockchain side, can easily get confused. There are issues but then there are people making a lot of money from the same industry.
Is being 'seamless' a must part of this industry?
@aggroed, This is perfect for exposing minnows to crypto, specifically Steemit, vocabulary terms!
I love the meme, @sircork!
It's a osam post ...
Follow me @adilmaher
Very helpful indeed. I wasn't aware of the 'whale balz'
You're kiddin' right? It's top witness Kyle's catch phrase :)
Balls yes, Balz no.
Great post
This my friend is valuable information and definitely worth a resteem. The way you broke down the vocabulary is awesome because it allows a complete novice to grasp the concept just by knowing the definitions or terminology used in the cryptocurrency world. Keep on steeming my fellow steemiteer
@slickhustler007
#minnowtowhale
#minnowsupport
Great post dear thank you for sharing :)
Thank you so much! This is amazing - all you need to steem in one text.. upvote!
Very informative post, learned some stuff about how steemit works...
And I'm not saying that just because I'm a Minnow, lol
Thanks @aggroed for posting this information, I was very helpful.
you were?
Ahaha, sorry, couldnt resist
O.o Regards.
Well, this is brilliant, as are you, and I wish you wrote is sooner.
Hand to read this one twice, The crypto is in reference to many of them using cryptography as a method to secure interactions and transfer of digital currencies. I get it now and feel a little more well versed on the topic.
Lost me a little toward the end explaining steem power; but I think I got your over all point.
I didn't know there was a fish below a minnow. I feel so small.
I do have a question, your recommendation to build a following is to comment most and write less.
If I read correctly, you believe this will increase the quantity of followers. Will it however bring quality followers? I want readers to follow me not just followers. However, if all I do is comment without writing I don't think they will follow me. So how does commenting solely bring people to follow you?
You gotta comment on the right people. As a minnow posting just a funny meme on a whale post can help you catch a $20 vote. I've seen that plenty. If you're commenting on minnows and dolphins you're likely to catch followers through the comments. Just find the posts and authors you like and stick around and comment on a few of them. You'll catch followers. Like today, where your thoughtful comments led me to follow you. That and I know you. So, you make friends with peeps in the comments and on Discord so it becomes much more natural to interact. Once you have some followers, 300, you'll have enough to start catching votes and resteems. Before then it's actually faster to get money and folowers commenting because you're reach so little at first.
A single meme made$20, and I'm over here making hundreds of thoughtful comments and making friends in discord hustling for my post to make it just over $1!
I've been working too hard. :D people may follow me like you do because of my comments, but how do I get them to read. I am honored by your follow and maybe you will be interested to read my post.
Someone should have told me to work on my meme game instead.... living and learning I guess. I need to find a whale interesting enough to charm them with my kubby ❤️. I find my minnow friends a lot more entertaining then the big wigs.
There was a time I said "Thank you so much" and got 7$ from it.
Define quality followers?
By the way, do you make art?
Wow, that must have been an am amazing thank you, lol.
Quality followers are readers that engage with you. Not F4F, just passing through people.
BTW: I do not make art, but depending on which one you are talking about I can let you know who made it for me.
Most of my followers are zombies. Haha. I like the art from this post. I thought you drew it.
That is from my artist friend in Brazil. He drew that for me a while back. I will find his link for you.
If I have get this information before starting steemit, I would have go far far from where I am now. I have introduce newbies, i am going to resteem it for them to learn more about this site and dont end up like me. Thanks for this info
Very informative, especially the minnows comment, I have been focusing on authoring, perhaps I should see if I am making a mistake (I am a minnow).
This is a very use full post for new members in Steemit. I got a lot of information from this post. Thanks for sharing . good luck.
Thanks for this helpful information.
Interesting stuff you posted!
So, since I'm completely new, I should first gain followers and then focus on authoring new posts
Thanks for the information
Nice is nice article
Great read i have a lot to learn but this will help me greatly
Thank you this helped but I still do not understand the workings of the wallet and passwords. Take care.