Steemit

Steemit is one of the earliest examples of a blockchain based social network, launched in 2016 by Ned Scott and Dan Larimer on the Steem blockchain. Instead of relying on advertising, it pays users directly in cryptocurrency for posting, commenting and curating content, turning everyday social interactions like upvoting into an on chain reward mechanism rather than the pure reputation points used by platforms such as Reddit.

The platform runs on a delegated proof of stake consensus, where a set of elected "witnesses" validate transactions and produce blocks roughly every three seconds. Rewards are split between STEEM, a liquid token that can be traded, and Steem Power, a staked form that increases a user's voting weight and payout influence, alongside Steem Dollars, a token historically pegged near one US dollar.

Steemit's history is marked by a major governance dispute. In February 2020, Tron founder Justin Sun acquired Steemit Inc., gaining a large token stake that the community feared could dominate voting. After a contested attempt to use exchange held tokens to override the network's witnesses, a group of developers and community members hard forked the chain in March 2020 to create Hive, a fully independent network that excluded Sun's holdings and continued the platform's original community driven model.

Steem and Steemit have continued to operate since the split, though with a smaller, less active community than Hive. The episode remains a widely cited case study in blockchain governance and an early precursor to today's broader SocialFi movement, which extends the idea of paying users for social content across many newer platforms.