Steemit Community Completes Successful Hardfork

Steemit, the world’s fastest growing decentralized social media platform, has completed a successful hardfork to modify the economic model and enhance investor accessibility. The hardfork, which drew unanimous community approval, saw the inflation rate of the Steem token reduced and the Steem Power holding requirements curtailed from an average of one year to an average of one and a half months. The move was applauded by the community and the network rallied to adopt the software. In a matter of days the trading value of the token rose in parallel with increased demand from short and mid term investors of Steem. When the impending hardfork proposal was announced by the Steemit executive, the total market cap valuation of Steem rested at $22 million USD. The price quickly rose thereafter and kept climbing. In the hours following the hard fork, the market cap valuation of Steem jumped to over $50 million USD, an over 200% increase in less than three weeks.

CEO of Steemit Ned Scott said, “Steem has hard forked successfully and now makes for an even greater blockchain currency. It is best in speed, scale and network growth, with a low and narrowing inflation over the next 20 years. Congratulations to the Steem community; all 19 of the top 19 witnesses and the majority of backups were upgraded well in advance.”

The top 19 Steemit witnesses all upgraded to Steemit version 16.0, meaning the hardfork was unanimously accepted and executed on time. The platform is tested, verified, and functioning without issue, with more and more users creating and curating original content with the possibility of earning cryptocurrency rewards.

“Since day one, the Steemit team has been on a mission to create the best possible social media platform, one that embraces everyone’s contributions and censors nothing. The feedback we’ve been receiving from our growing total of users and unique monthly visitors continues to be excellent. We’ve also aimed to continuously improve our blockchain currency, improving its network effect, usability, reducing the inflation rate, one that is now trending towards less than 1%,” said Scott.

Steemit’s recent rise has come in the same period in which privatized social media giants like Facebook and Reddit came under fire for censoring and editing certain content, including the hiding of specific advertising demographics and the alteration of user comments. Because Steemit is blockchain-based, blogs, comments, and posts can not be edited by power-hungry moderators or censored by an administration with an agenda.

Since the hardfork, all Steem holders will have increased liquidity, but the allocation of new Steem tokens to witnesses, content producers, and creators won’t change; that figure still sits at 9.5%. Of the annual instantaneous inflation, Steem Power holders will receive 15%, with 10% allocated to witnesses and miners, and 75% to be given to authors and content creators. The hardfork did not impact the functionality of Steemit.com, Steem Backed Dollars, or Steem Power, nor was there a change in the general powering down schedule or the powering down rate of the Steemit founders and developers.

“The only way to properly grow a business that leverages cutting edge technology is to be open, honest, and transparent with the community. We have always made ourselves available to answer any questions, and constantly evolved with community feedback, suggestions and advice to ensure we keep refining the best forum for bloggers, artists, photographers, writers, comedians, foodies, travel bugs, sports fans and anything in between,” added Scott.