![725_Ly9jb2ludGVsZWdyYXBoLmNvbS9zdG9yYWdlL3VwbG9hZHMvdmlldy9iNzRmZmY3MGJlNTRlNmJiOGJjODM1MzEzYzdiYWFhMC5qcGc=.jpg](https://steemitimages.com/DQmTR2DxjVyu2Bo5oUZBpHSQbMXMXRswEoWEY5cbTPEKRk4/725_Ly9jb2ludGVsZWdyYXBoLmNvbS9zdG9yYWdlL3VwbG9hZHMvdmlldy9iNzRmZmY3MGJlNTRlNmJiOGJjODM1MzEzYzdiYWFhMC5qcGc%3D.jpg)

Blockchain-based social network, Steemit, recently hit 100K users within its first 5 months of operation. It has also acquired 500K monthly unique visitors from all over the world with its unique blogging platform that rewards contributors.

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<h4>Steemit growth similar to Reddit</h4>
Ever since Steemit launched in summer, 2016, it has gained a lot of popularity by its bloggers and curators while in beta with its goal to “redefine social media.” This is mostly due to Steemit’s popular system of rewarding people for voting and posting content on the platform with its own coin, Steem.


Some are even comparing the Steemit stats to those of Facebook and Reddit which gained a million users and millions of visits within their first year with similar growth patterns despite its competitors preparing to enter the decentralized media network market such as Synereo and Yours.

<h4>Steem’s downtrend</h4>
However, with Steemit’s user base expanding, Steem, the coin behind Steemit has experienced a drop in its value. With over 75% of its $4 peak trading price lost, it is currently valued below $0.20 and yields a $26 mln market cap from its $359 mln high market cap back in July.

Cointelegraph spoke with Ned Scott, CEO and Co-founder of Steemit about turning Steem’s trend around:

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“All we can do is focus on growing a thriving social network, and along with that design, a platform that creates an attention economy, in which STEEM becomes a currency for buying user attention on the social interfaces.”
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Scott plans on continuing Steemit’s development road-map and as Steemit continues to grow and improve, the platform itself will use an “attention economy” to prevent any more devaluation of Steem. He also says that Steemit will be improving profile pages, more ability to modify posts which will be part of establishing Steemit’s attention economy.

“Attention economies, in our view, represents the first opportunity for cryptocurrency to be part of an actual circular economy rather than the strictly speculative economies we see today, and further more, they’re a paradigm in which the value of online contribution can truly be returned to the users doing the work for the community.” Scott added.

<h4>Steemit looks to Steem</h4>

Steemit itself will be continuing with Steem despite low prices due to the fact that it offers free transactions and text storing benefits. On the other hand, Yours, a close rival of Steemit will be using Bitcoin for its vast supported software, APIs and recently announced its Lightning integration for micropayments.

According to Scott, there is still a lot to do on Steemit’s user experience and since they are paying a lot of attention to mainstream users’ needs, they are remaining in beta into 2017 as well.

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