Journey Through the Blockchain and Finding Community

On August 5, 2016 I stumbled across a website called ‘steemit.com’. My attention was drawn to the value their posts were supposedly earning. I spent some time exploring.

I’d heard about bitcoin. Didn’t really see the sense of it. What I had encountered was people wanting me to buy bitcoin on the premise that it would somehow rise in value and I’d make a profit.

This Steemit site was different.

People posted content on the site and earned a token called STEEM when people upvoted them. I eventually learned that the voting period was only 24 hours and then the post wouldn’t earn anymore.

I’d never heard of anything like this. But, I like to write, so why not, eh? I signed up.

During the signup I learned I was being given four ‘keys’, really long alphanumberic strings. I was warned repeatedly to keep those keys safe as they were my access to my account. If I lost them, my account would be lost as well.

Okay, got that through my noggin.

Exploring my account I learned I was going to need to use something called Markdown to post. I vaguely remembered someone I followed online talking about markdown.

Okay, I’ll search out some help on that.

Then I discovered that I couldn’t directly upload images to a post. I would have to use another site and then share the link, in markdown, to the image. Then it would display in the post.

This was different, I found a site to upload images.

It took me awhile to work out how to create a post on the site and then write the content. I chose to write a post about a local WW1 hero I knew personally. I posted it and went off to do some errands.

Returned two hours later to discover I had earned $80 on the post. I was shocked with a level of disbelief. After some exploration I learned I’d received an upvote from someone called a ‘whale’, a large stakeholder.

That was when I learned the more stake — locked in STEEM — a person had, the more their vote was worth. The person who upvoted me would earn what is called ‘curation rewards’.

It was like finding a strange new world, but I was going to continue exploring.

Over the months and years to come it was an interesting exploration. I learned a lot about what being part of a decentralized community was about and even more about how crypto worked.

Along the way I continued to earn STEEM. I treated the earnings as an investment, leaving them locked in to build up my own stake on the chain.

A strong sense of community both on the chain and on places like Discord where groups would meet to get to know each other and build connection.

In October 2017 I created a Discord server and soon decided to try a voice chat where members of the community were welcome to attend and share content. The trial show was successful and I was encouraged to continue doing them.

Pimp Your Post Thursday (PYPT) was born. It still runs every Thursday at 12pm in the DreemPort Discord server. I welcome anyone who creates content, no matter where they post it, to come and share.

In February 2020 the company that developed the STEEM blockchain was sold to Jason Sun. He had the mistaken idea he was also now the owner of the STEEM community.

The community disagreed. Strongly and loudly letting him know he’d bought a development company, not us. People came together in Discord townhalls every day being updated on developments and discussing how we felt about what was going on.

Another group of people were working behind the scenes preparing Plan B should Sun continue to keep his feet dug in and trying to gain control of the chain and the community.

In March the move was made and Hive was hardforked away from STEEM and into existence. Everyone had an account on both chains and could choose where they stood on the situation.

Initially I was going to remain on both chains creating content. Then I heard that Sun had retaliated against those who had created the hardfork by stealing their accounts on STEEM.

That was a bridge too far for me I powered down over there and became Hivian only. The other chain became known as ‘the legacy chain’.

I undertook in January 2023 to publish on the blockchain every day. Nineteen months later I am still publishing every day. I’ve not been publishing as many articles as I have in the past. My posts are on d.buzz which is the Twitter like d’app on Hive.

I’m working on some personal projects offchain and need to manage my time. One of the projects, the Daily Echo is posted to d.buzz every morning.

The Echo takes about 2-3 hours to create the image for which I’ll then write a quote that is relevant to the image and the word it was created from. Lately I’ve started adding a comment that helps to extend the quote.

Taking the project to the next level is part of what I’m working on.

It’s now eight years since I joined the blockchain.

It’s been, and continues to be an interesting journey. I’ve learned a lot, made a lot of friends and tried things I doubt I would ever have tried without the people I’ve met on the chain.

We try new things and support each other doing so. We’re early adopters. We get that everything has to start some where and nothing is created perfectly formed.

It’s a good example and encouragement to try to learn new skills.

While it’s always nice to earn a profit on the HIVE token, one important lesson I’ve learned on the HIVE chain.

Profits are nice but a strong supportive commmunity, now that’s priceless.

Keep on creating. I know I am.

Shadowspub writes on various subjects as she pursues her passion for learning. She also writes on other platforms and enjoys creating books you use, like journals, notebooks, colouring books, etc. Her Nicheless Narrative podcast airs on Thursdays each week.

NOTE: unless otherwise stated, all images are the author’s. AI generated images were in Midjourney, for which I hold a licence to use the images commercially.

How to Connect With ShadowsPub:

Visit me at Shadows Central to find out what I’m up to.

Pimp Your Post Thursday (PYPT):
join us on the DreemPort Discord12pm EST Thursdays

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