One of the issues people have is that the reputation score, as it stands now, can be manipulated.  The currency system designed by Steemit counts upvotes as the means which increases one's score.  This can be gamed by purchased upvoted from voting bots.  While this operates within the confines of what was established, this is starting to be a problem since some applications are using reputation score in their voter worth.

Like many things on the STEEM blockchain, if there is a problem, someone will figure out a solution.  

@holger80 and @scipio created a solution.  Now we have @steem-ua and UserAuthority.

<center>![](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmSREN1kFXbXoF4LesEBygzHfTEvuYByvwyPP5KPfHvnE8/image.png)</center>

Here is how they put it what UserAuthority is:

> In essence, UA can be seen as a new Reputation metric: it looks at the entire Steemit Follower Graph and carefully tracks who follows who. It doesn't directly care about how "rich" an account is, or how old it is, or how much an account has posted, but please keep in mind that those factors do indeed indirectly influence any account's UA score.

There was a post that provided a more basic, detailed explanation written at the end of last year.

https://steemit.com/utopian-io/@scipio/how-to-solve-spam-on-steem-introducing-userauthority

Everyone can check their own UA scores.  The site is https://steem-ua.com/

![parley.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmbhhg8MDvQLVfQ95LUQACB2BxFJ6qQ9vG254wgatE3p9k/parley.png)

The site opens to the list of the top 100 UA scores.  Using steemconnect, you can access the site to find out what your own personal score is.

So how are these determined?  From their post, this is what they wrote:

>All UA scores are computed daily by first updating the Follower Matrix; we do that by continuously tracking every "follow operation" (= an account following or unfollowing another account) using @holger80's own Beem API for the Steem blockchain. With every new block produced (every 3 seconds), so is the UA Follower Matrix. And all those "follow operations" (~ 150 million currently) for all accounts on the Steem blockchain form a gigantic data cluster of ~ 1.2 trillion EigenValues. We then look at Trusted Accounts to initiate our sub-algorithm "WitnessRank" with: each day, we check all witnesses for being -a- active and -b- up to date, and -c- their Witness Stake; we use that Witness Stake to propagate "Trust" from each witness to the accounts it follows, and who they follow, and who they follow, etc. etc. etc. And after heavy-heavy HEAVY number crunching, as a result, the UA score for each account comes out.

https://steemit.com/ua/@steem-ua/introducing-userauthority-ua-steem-ua-and-ua-api

This is really big news.  We now are looking at a new way to use the reputation score that is not simply based upon upvotes.  As was cited in the first article, this is also a way to combat spam.  Only those accounts which are actually adding something to the blockchain are going to score higher.  Those that seek to take from here are going to have a lower reputation score.

One of the biggest challenges with the present system is that since it can be gamed, dapps could be affected.  There are a couple that are implementing user reputation to try and determine the value of upvotes.  Since many are using the account based system, they seek different ways to weigh each vote.  Reputation makes a  great deal of sense, if it is a true score.

It seems that UA is going to provide that for the blockchain.  They even ask dapp developers to contact them on discord if they are interested in implementing this into their applications.  This could be something that could spread to many of the newer applications that are built upon here.

I find it interesting how they decided to award the upvotes.  By submitting quality content through their app, there is an upvote from the @steem-ua account.  This is based upon delegation and some other things they are willing to work out with individuals.  To me, this, once again, shows the creativity of some of the people on here.  

<center>![parley.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmVuRGmbuvzph5YPqUcZ9sV1Es5vWnnjPDwyffPYnGhUJ2/parley.png)</center>

Which brings me to a bigger issue.  Many complain about certain things which are not right about STEEM and how Steemit needs to fix this or that.  This project is showing exactly what the STEEM blockchain is all about.  We do NOT need Steemit to fix stuff like this.  There are plenty of talented people on here who have the ability to create a solution to most of the problems we discuss.  This is a prime example of two people who took matters into their own hands and created a different system.

This is the beauty of blockchain.  It is ours.  Everyone one here can take a situation and look to resolve it.  Of course, that requires some technical expertise but if the idea is there, the technical ones can be found.  Nevertheless, there are many (who are unfairly attacked by the way) who are working behind the scenes to develop solutions to problems they see.  

2018 is shaping up to be a sensational year for the STEEM blockchain.  The development that was are seeing is absolutely amazing.  The Steemit team is upgrading the system.  Applications are appearing on almost a daily basis.  Existing apps are receiving updates regularly which are providing more features and functions for the users.

Overall, STEEM is looking to be in very  good shape.

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If you found this article to be informative, please give it an upvote and resteem.

Images from the introduction post that is linked.