Crypto Gloss

Steem

Steem (STEEM) is the native token of the Steem blockchain, a Delegated Proof of Stake social media content platform co-founded by Ned Scott and Daniel Larimer (also the creator of BitShares and EOS) that launched on March 24, 2016, and powered Steemit.com — one of the earliest attempts to build a decentralized, tokenized social media network where users earned cryptocurrency for creating and curating content. In March 2020, Justin Sun’s Tron Foundation effectively took over the Steem network in a controversial governance maneuver, causing the majority of the original witness (validator) and developer community to hard-fork and create Hive blockchain.

Stat Value
Ticker STEEM
Price $0.06
Market Cap $31.48M
24h Change +1.0%
Circulating Supply 544.92M STEEM
All-Time High $8.19
via ChangeNow · T&CsPrice data from CoinGecko as of 2026-04-16. Not financial advice.

How It Works

  1. Delegated Proof of Stake — Steem uses DPoS with 21 elected witnesses (validators) who produce blocks every 3 seconds. Token holders vote for witnesses using “governance power” proportional to their Steem Power holdings.
  2. Three-token system:
    STEEM — Liquid, tradable token.
    Steem Power (SP) — Vested STEEM (powered up, locked for ~13 weeks to unstake). More SP = more governance influence and more curator/author rewards.
    Steem Backed Dollars (SBD) — A soft-pegged stablecoin intended to be worth approximately $1 USD, paid to authors.
  3. Content rewards — Every post and vote on Steemit.com earns rewards from the reward pool, distributed 50% SBD + 50% SP to authors, and a curation reward to voters.
  4. Reward pool funding — New STEEM is minted continuously and flows into the reward pool. This inflationary issuance funds all content rewards.
  5. Witnesses — The 21 active witnesses and buffer witnesses validate transactions, produce blocks, and set key protocol parameters (e.g., SBD interest rates, bandwidth allocations).

Tokenomics

Parameter Value
Ticker STEEM
Max Supply None (inflationary, ~inflation rate decreasing toward ~0.5% long-term floor)
Launch March 24, 2016
Block time 3 seconds
Consensus DPoS — 21 witnesses

Use Cases

  • Content publishing rewards — Earn STEEM/SBD by posting on Steemit.com and other Steem frontends (Busy.org, eSteem).
  • Governance — Steem Power holders vote for witnesses and on-chain proposals.
  • Speculation — STEEM is traded on major exchanges as a cryptocurrency asset.

History

  • 2016-03-24 — Steem blockchain launches. Created by Dan Larimer and Ned Scott. Larimer had previously created BitShares. The Steem whitepaper proposed tokenized social media at scale.
  • 2016-07 — Steemit.com public launch. Explosive early growth due to high content rewards during STEEM price surge. Some early Steemit “whales” (with massive Steem Power) dominated rewards, causing controversy.
  • 2016-12 — Dan Larimer departs Steem/Steemit to begin work on what became EOS. Ned Scott continues as CEO.
  • 2017 — STEEM peaks near $9 during crypto bull run. Steemit gains mainstream press coverage as high-earning content creators emerge.
  • 2018 — Bear market. STEEM collapses. Steemit Inc. (the company) undergoes significant layoffs (70%+ staff reduction in November 2018). Steem’s community-driven development accelerates as a compensating force.
  • 2019 — Continued activity despite bear market. Splinterlands (formerly Steem Monsters) becomes a major blockchain gaming application on Steem. Multiple Steem dapps active.
  • 2020-02-14 — Justin Sun (Tron Foundation founder) announces acquisition of Steemit Inc. from Ned Scott. The acquisition includes a large pre-mined “ninja-mined” STEEM stake (estimated 76 million STEEM) that was understood by the community to be a development fund never to be used for governance.
  • 2020-03-02 — Sun uses Tron Foundation’s exchanges (Binance, Huobi, Poloniex) to temporarily delegate customer STEEM deposits to vote in a set of new “sock puppet” witnesses loyal to Tron, displacing the existing top 20 witnesses. This unilateral governance capture triggers global outrage.
  • 2020-03-20 — A coalition of the original Steem witnesses, developers, and community hard-forks Steem to create Hive. The Hive blockchain excludes the Justin Sun/Steemit ninja-mined stake from the genesis snapshot. Most active developers, dapps (including Splinterlands), and community members migrate to Hive.
  • 2020–present — Steem continues to operate under Justin Sun’s control. The community remains small compared to Hive. Most original dapps have migrated away. Steem trading volumes and ecosystem activity significantly diminished from peak.

Common Misconceptions

“Steem and Hive are the same thing.”

They share the same code origin and pre-fork history, but are entirely separate blockchains since March 2020. STEEM ≠ HIVE. Most of the original active community and dapps (Splinterlands, PeakD, etc.) chose Hive. Steem continued under Justin Sun’s control.

“Early Steemit users owned the platform.”

Steemit Inc. was a private company that owned the majority of the initially-mined STEEM supply (the ninja-mined stake). The blockchain was public, but the company retained significant economic power. The 2020 hostile takeover demonstrated how this centralized stake could be weaponized.

Social Media Sentiment

Steem is largely viewed by the broader crypto community as a casualty of the 2020 Justin Sun governance takeover. The event — where exchange customer funds were temporarily used without consent to influence blockchain governance — remains a canonical example of exchange centralization risk in DPoS systems. The community that cares about the original Steem vision has largely moved to Hive. Steem continues to trade but is no longer considered a hub of innovation.

Last updated: 2026-04

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