The blockchain-based social media platform that pays its users with Steem cryptocurrency for posts and votes has made a considerable progress over the last month. The market cap of Steem has risen from 7 to 17 million USD.

The online Steemit community has been doubling in membership every week, reads the company’s press release. According to CEO Ned Scott, he did not expect such a quick development.

“We have worked so hard to perfect Steemit and give anyone an opportunity to make money by creating and curating good content. Based on reactions from experts and testing from our consumers, we knew that the reception would be strong, but Steemit is so much further along than where we thought it would be. In about a month, the market cap of Steem has increased two and a half times, page sessions have jumped by nearly six times, and the Steemit blockchain is now seeing twelve transfers, posts or votes every minute on average. These are phenomenal numbers and we are excited that our growing community is engaging in a fun and potentially lucrative social medium.”

Seeing the popularity of the platform, its creators are open-sourcing Steemit web wallet code. There is growing demand from innovators that would like to bring the Steemit technology to other social platforms such as Twitter, Reddit and Wordpress, noted Scott.

The project’s website makes it possible to upload blog posts and to vote for the posts of others. Popular materials get a reward. Early voters for popular materials get a reward as well. Thus, claims the white paper, “Steem is the first cryptocurrency that attempts to accurately and transparently reward an unbounded number of individuals who make subjective contributions to its community.”

Steemit contributors publish posts on a variety of topics, mainly on politics, technology, cryptocurrency, art, comedy and current news. Many users write about themselves. The range of subjects is really wide, including, for example, philosophy, cannabis, economics, health and Ethereum.

Participants receive their reward in two parts: Steem Power enhances voting abilities, while the Steem Dollar is a cryptocurrency roughly equal in price to US dollar and already accepted by such exchanges as Bittrex and OpenLedger. The reward ideally comes within 24 hours after posting or voting. The first and largest reward is due on 4 July when 10% of all the Steem in stock will be spent.

Andrew Levich