Hello,

I just joined here and I was going through everything and found this SPARTA Coin section.

It seems kind of confusing, but so far from what I have put together it is an ERC20 Token which I am assuming because someone said you can track your balance on Etherscan.

I also found someone saying it was associated with this Website and one if your profile ranks on this website is associated with SPARTA.

I then read the SPARTA Information pinned post, and found there are referral rewards, and a 10,000 person airdrop (someone said it is over).

I also found this.

The Sparta ICO is messy, we are sorry about that, actually the Sparta ICO is not even an ICO,
The plans were to lunch the ICO in August then the SEC made a statement -end of July- that ICO are basically securities,
There was a resistance and some conflict in the leadership team for/against cancelation and we did launch a pre-ICO but eventually we cancelled it less than 24h later and refunded the investors. As a result one cofounder left, and we pivoted into a token distribution to startups instead of ICO. Now the startups have been given the ok to create a mini-style SPARTA token sales instead  -still experimental though.


- How many startups you got under your umbrella?   
300 is the objective, 3 have been announced, several others are in beta or mvp or alpha and this fine forum launched few months ago.

- Do you have any successful results so far in terms of startups marketing their products/services? Ones from WP appendix?
Only 3 have been announced and we are still figuring out how we can fund them with Sparta. One not in the WP though is this forum, which can be honestly be considered a success considering the limited budget invested. But also the forum is a launching pad to any future blockchain startup.

- How large is your team? What happens if suddenly 50+ startups join your project, how would you scale your services?
Our core team is small, we lost a couple of our members after ico cancellation, we are currently actively trying to recruit developers and marketers. We are selective with startups, objective is always: how to have the token integrated and how these startups can compete and bring real solution to real problems rather than solutions to made up problems.

- Are all startups from Poland and close environment or is it global?
We hope it will be global, but to start, we are starting local.

- Do you provide startups with equity & office space except programming, designing, marketing and operations services?
Not for now, we see ourselves at the seed level stage, helping the startups have a product that they pitch VCs with.

- How do you raise capital to support them?
That's the dilemma, we are trying to solve after the ICO cancellation.

- Could you elaborate on gold coins? I presume it is connected to the question above.
Gold coins will be one of the different ways we hope to get some fiat in our bank accounts, we basically will sell an overpriced gold coin, the coin does not contain tokens, it locks them, thus defacto becoming a replacement - we took many scenarios in consideration concerning security etc ...

- What prevents you from stealing their idea and making it your own? Do you sign some kind of a contract?
Yes, our contract is a contract from hell, we have no place for a cult of personality, we tend to favor a cult of team, we expect the product to speak, and we will try to pull together the resources, meaning best pitchers will pitch every-time ...

- What are your day to day duties in terms of supporting these startups? Is it like your 9-17 regular job? How is your team being compensated?
Luckily, for now not much startups, but we expect a lot will become repetitive, and just needs tuning and improving. Team for now volunteers, we will be compensated with 4-20% management fees in form of SPARTA tokens + any revenue we can create from these startups will be used at the beginning to get this circus functional.
 
- What do you need blockchain token for?
It was to be used as a funding vehicule, but now it is to be integrated in each of the startups as a form of utility; for instance in this crypto sharing forum, to get the cryptos we share with them they need 1 sparta token each time /later might be reduced.

- What type of blockchain are you on? Your own, btc, eth, other?
We are on Ethereum for now, we have distant plans to launch our own based on Cardano.

- Do you have any interest in listing on coinmarketcap or any OTC exchanges?
Of course every token and coin issuer are interested in these.

- How do you currently value your token? What is it's price? Where can it be observed? Etherdelta as a benchmark?
It is currently on Etherdelta. Value wise we are no longer putting a value on it, except it's 1 million token per startup.

- You have partnered with NEM? Couldn't find anything on that.
We have, but since nem went over 1$ we feel we are of no value to nem, thus this partnership was defacto dead before it was actually born - we are planning to remove the nem logo soon.

- Any long-term plans?
Of course, we want to be independent in every sense of the term, this forum is just a first step in that direction, but if you understand what i mean, then you would understand what our plans are, ps: we have a couple startups in stealth that will not figure in our whitepaper or portfolio for strategic reasons, one of which is due to be launched very soon.

Pardon my persistence, I am rather inquisitive once I find something worthy of attention.

Of course, no problem,

But I am wondering if anyone can clarify, what exactly is going on?

This is going to be a deep dive into the History of Steemit's emergence in the Crypto world, and the emergence of the Crypto world itself so everyone can understand where Steemit is now.

The Birth of an Economy

I first heard about Cryptocurrency around 2008, when a friend of mine mentioned something called the "Silk Road", and I had no idea what either of these things were and had 0 understanding of what a Cryptocurrency is. That may be where you are now, or you may have some experience with Cryptocurrency. A few years later, maybe 2011, there were now news articles about the Silk Road again. After reading an Article, I went to reddit did the whole Onion Browser thing, and used the URL to get to the Silk Road. Where I saw the Bitcoin symbol for the first time. It was being used like a $ Symbol, so I was confused.

฿ 6.00

So I highlighted the symbol, and copied it into Google. And a bunch of discussion on a Forum called Bitcointalk.org appeared. So I started reading. I learned about Satoshi Nakamoto, and Cryptocurrency, there was a community goal that was an extension of Satoshi's initial release of the code as Open Source, the goal was that everyone would use Cryptocurrency. It would be a Decentralized currency, not issued as Fiat by a Government. When I first got there, Bitcoins were $5.00 each. Soon after they were $30.00, then $100.00. Some people said it was a Bubble and it would "be affordable again", and this was when everyone traded on MtGox, and trading platform which was an Acronym for "Magic the Gathering Online Exchange", and you had to use a Money order to buy them. Some people began to theorize that Bitcoin was going way up, that one day we would no longer trade Bitcoins, but much smaller segments of the Coins, and these smaller pieces were dubbed "Satoshis".

Then there was Butterfly labs, and the mining farms. It no longer became feas ible to mine with a laptop or number of laptops, and the Graphics cards that had been being used for mining were also being overtaken by the ASICs.

Litecoin was created. Then it was overtaken by ASICs, so Feathercoin and DOGE were created. Eventually came the CryptoNite Algorythm, to counter ASICs and weaken them, Monero is a CryptoNote based coin like this.

Steemit Emerges

Then Ethereum. A Blockchain Cloud, with dApps in place of Apps. Ethereum is Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS). Bitshares was maybe created before this, but is more of an Organizational Blockchain to be used like a cloud to run 1 or a few websites, while Ethereum is more Decentralized. Bitshares hosts Assets on OpenLedger, these are Token Currencies, not mined but created and owned by the creator, to then be distributed like stocks, or coupons, or tickets, etc. These are then traded on the OpenLedger platform like Cryptocurrencies.

Bitsharestalk.org is similar to Bicointalk.org and is kind of where the ICO trend incubated, and was where the Steemit Witnesses came from. Bitshares was created by Dan and Ned, on what they named the Graphene Blockchain. Their Public release of this Blockchain is called OpenLedger Fabric. IBM uses it. And they used Graphene to create Steemit.

Steemit is a Graphene Blockchain, which can and should be copied into any website model. Any Forum or City or Charity, etc, could launch a Graphene Blockchain to run their website, have Witnesses and Nodes, a Currency, and Voting. Any website could reward their users with a currency like STEEM.

About 3 years ago, the Anarcho-Capitalists came to Steemit. They are like Libertarians to the extreme, and believe the Sidewalks and Roads around you should be Private property, to be used by you as the owner sees fit and for whatever fee they deem appropriate. No Public Property, just Anarchy and Capitalism. And Dan and Ned seemed to approve of this, creating an environment that switched from the most profitable posts being those about Steemit.com or STEEM or trading Crypto, to Anarchy Podcasts and Philosophy against Taxing anyone at all ever. It was a big change, and it was not for the better. I then left the platform.

Under New Management

Ned then sold Steemit INC to Justin Sun, who founded TRON. And based on what I read from 7 months ago, Ned must have fully and completely implied that Justin had full and complete control of Steemit, without ever having told him about the situation where all the Witnesses, which can be seen as a Board of Directors (BoD), were Bitshares people.

Steemit is a Delegated Proof of Work Staking Chain. I will break this down.

Delegated = Voting, you Upvote posts, you Vote for Witnesses, etc

Proof of Work = Bitcoin itself is a PoW chain, this simply means there is mining. So Delegated Proof of Work means that the Mining is Voted on. So not everyone can Mine STEEM, only Witnesses who are Voted for can mine STEEM.

Staking = This can be equated with Interest. STEEM has Interest associated with Holding it.

So now Delegated Proof of Work Staking Blockchain makes more sense.

So now that Steemit is "Under New Managment" I wanted to explain where it is now. When Ned sold Steemit INC it started a War with the Witnesses and eventually they forked Steemit. This means a new STEEM currency and Blockchain were created, starting from before Justin owned it, and enough people began using it to make it viable. This Platform and Currency are called HIVE. So now there are basically 2 Steemits.

I am going to explain this so everyone can understand how they can earn good money in the Steemit Ecosystem, I do this so that the STEEM Currency and those around it become worth more and we all benefit more in the long run.

First, there are market Trading Bots like Hummingbot, everyone should use these.

Then, you can become a STEEM, HIVE or BLURT Witness to earn lots of Crypto. And if you promise to help others and fulfill those promises, you will get more votes, you will mine more, those voting for you will have more weight, and you will have a community in which to either create your own Crypto or help those involved.

So first, STEEM is the Basic Minable Currency of the Steemit Blockchain, the Witnesses are Voted on and they get the most, maybe a few hundred sometimes thousands of dollars a day depending on the price of STEEM. A good percentage of Coins mined are automatically distributed to fund the voting system.

STEEM Backed Dollars are a Currency roughly pegged at a Dollar, but when SBD go up to $1.50 or $2.00 then the Dollar value of your Posts goes up. You can cash out SBD you earn at the $1.50 or $2.00 rate but the system pays them to you reading them as $1.00, but when the price is up the system inflates SBD and pays out more SBD and less STEEM, to get the price back down. And when SBD is $0.50 everyone hurts because their posts pay out less, so then the system pays out less SBD and more STEEM.

So when you can buy other people's SBD at $0.50 or so, do that, because they will be $1.00 again.

Use STEEM earned as SP. Convert as much as you can.

When SBD is above $1.00 you can sell it and Buy BLURT which is the BLURT Blog version of STEEM, and HIVE, which is the Hive version of STEEM. You can then start earning on those platforms and benefit when the price goes up, and when those do go up you can sell them and use them to buy STEEM.

Then there is Steem-Engine and Hive-Engine, if you go to those platforms and invest your STEEM or HIVE, you can get the Engine Tokens, ENG on Steem-Engine and I think BEE on Hive. You can then create a Token that rewards and community and a Curation Trail or a hashtag and a Curation Trail.

Or you can make a DTube Clone Scot Bot.

So using all of this together, you can get much higher earnings on STEEM and we can all benefit.

The way this raises the price is because if 50,000 people do this and each lock up 100 SP, that is 5,000,000 SP locked up not sitting for sale on the market. The more that gets locked up, the rarer it gets, then this also affects the SBD/STEEM equation where you can buy up cheap SBD, and same with HBD.