I remember I was lifting at LA Fitness and saw STEEM suddenly was #3 on CoinMarketCap and didn't know what it was so I looked into it real fast in July of 2016. I was super excited and signed up and it was like an all out party on there. We had to host our own images when I first got on there and the voting power didn't have a slider bar so it was all or nothing. If you got a vote from a whale you were on cloud 9. That pump burned off and things got rough for awhile but then mid 2017 things picked up again and the masses were coming to Steemit. It was so cool. Those of us that joined in 2016 had some street credit at the very least and were able to explain the system to newer users.
In a lot of ways there aren't very many people still on here from that area which is really bittersweet. @papa-pepper was a legend from that era and unfortunately he hasn't been posting on here recently. I saw he was still posting some on YouTube. He was one of the guys I met in real life after becoming friends with him on Steem / HIVE.
We jumped off cliffs in Arkansas in 2018.
A couple other people I met in real life were @happymoneyman and @dantheman
Most of the people left for various reasons. There are a few that stick out in this moment from the early days. @daveks @ace108 @builderofcastles
I probably missed some people but it is 5:18 am so don't feel bad if I didn't list you.
The Fracture Points
I don't want to focus on the negative because what was tested and built was really cool and taught me a lot about centralized vs decentralized governance and the various advantages and disadvantages of that. There were fracture points with these platforms but we see it all over crypto. Projects need funding and if they have to launch a new project to get funding they might have to go that route. Once the funding runs dry it is tough for them to keep building which also proves the point that the system needs to have more revenue streams than just the speculation and game theory of the token. The bear markets for crypto have been far too brutal and the competition of other projects is ever increasing.
I always equated the fracturing to people starting up new churches in these small towns. It will be a 1000 person town and there will be 4 or 5 churches. Seems unnecessary but everyone is jockeying for control.
Going Forward
I really hope all the projects can find their stride through this coming alt season. In my opinion we are pretty much here and ready for alt season. I see easy doubles with XRP, SUI, SOL, ICP, DOGE ....etc and as that stuff starts to fly there will be a lot of trickle down.
I found it interesting that the Pump.Fun ICO is basically being labeled that they are going to build a social media platform.
The company said PUMP is the “official native token” of the pump.fun protocol and is part of a broader effort to build a decentralized alternative to Facebook, TikTok, and Twitch.
Pump.fun said it reached $100 million, $300 million, and $500 million in revenue faster than any company in history, derived mainly from rapid issuances of memecoins on attention-driven topics every day, of which the platform took a cut on each issuance and volumes.
Those numbers left me shook. 😲
We lost most of our characters overtime. Last August I proposed launching a set of characters with associated memes on Solana to harvest funds for HIVE. We had enough members to coordinate this effort and organically get waves of new users. I already had the guy lined up who was going to be Jimmy Sandfield. It would have worked and anyone reading this knows it would have because after that the meme storm REALLY RAMPED UP. The community didn't act. We could have all watched these sleeper agents of HIVE wild'N out on the Pump Fun live stream and all thrown 1 or 2 SOL at it and blown past the bonding curve. We had the numbers to mobilize.
https://peakd.com/hive/@brianphobos/how-to-save-hive-meet-jimmy-sandfield-our-new-pitchman
Jimmmmyyyy Sandfieeeeldddd (Raspy Evil Voice)
What's Next?
Hive is the most well formed Web 3 ecosystem. I have said this before but it really has never been marketed besides when Jerry Banfield pushed traffic to STEEM on Facebook and YouTube. That campaign worked but he ultimately crashed out like he does with every crypto community. He recently deleted his YouTube channels and dropped out of society again. LEGENDARY MOVE right in the middle of a bull run. 🤠
All these chains have grown old even with the advancements. I really hate to say that but our average age of our members was always higher but the situation has somewhat gotten worse.
There would have to be more stuff that taps into the TikTok brain set of crossfaded tweak jobs coming up through the ranks.
The ecosystems need to be reunified.
We lost a lot of the momentum that should have been gained while other platforms were censoring their users during the Scamdemic.
I have a clear vision of what I feel needs to be done.
We have an insane amount of competition at this point and I was just looking at the chart for Digibyte. Flatlined after getting love the last two cycles. How many projects aren't going to get any love this cycle?
We have to get in front of people and tap into their gamble game brain that's high on THC.
Why I Stayed For 9 Years?
I could see the promise of the ecosystem and I felt that it was needed. We saw the AdPocalypse on YouTube and saw people get deplatformed from Twitter and Facebook. In result of all that we saw other groups like Truth Social and Rumble gain massive marketcaps.
The fact is taking HIVE down is almost impossible. It would be a Wack-A-Mole scenario but the edgy content creators mainly left and aren't even using the platform as an additional place to give their content further reach.
Also through Hive Engine and services like StealthEX I could always keep movement in and out of other chains especially the Binance Smart Chain or I could get to DOGE or LTC if I needed to send funds to Coinbase.
I do think services that help move in the crypto world made a lot of sense as a revenue generator.
The Attention Is On SOL and SUI
We have a lot of competition or do we? HIVE can still be that base platform with these other applications from these other chains can dock to. We have entries and exits through the HIVE Engine, VSC, LeoDex, StealthEX.
So how does this increase HIVE's Price and not drain it?
Mainly through gamification, utilization of the reputation system, and Ad Revenue reinjection to buy HIVE. I have came up with a dozen concepts where someone has to build their reputation up to progress in the game but it is like an arcade where they are playing with a little bit of SOL or SUI to go after a jackpot. They can get additional free attempts by watching ads. On the back end it is buying some HIVE and powering that up and posting game results which can further get the word out about the game.
Why even use HIVE for that? A lot of the stuff is built on the protocol level and there are payment rails already built. Also the ability to get funding to build it. Let's be honest the DAO was set up to fund the build out of the ecosystem. We aren't even close to using all the budget and this bull market is going to last another 6 months to 8 months. If we don't sprint now and unload all resources on various projects HIVE, STEEM, and Blurt will struggle to make it to the next bull market. I don't say that to be mean but it's the unfortunate truth. Everyone is after the brand new VC Chain that is marketed with different colors and has a NEW sticker on it.
It has to be built out and marketed or everyone's time and money will erode away. It will longtail into oblivion like BitShares.
Conclusion
I miss Steemit 2017. From @surfermarly , to @craig-grant , to @trevonjames , to @steembirds to @stackin ...... Those were wild times. We can recapture that energy with the right moves. I felt that energy on The Arena but the ecosystem was still trying to find the right tokenomics and figuring out how to tie everything together. HIVE could certainly be the glue to be truely decentralized. We have to move now because Pump Fun's valuation is at over $4 Billion at this point. Right now HIVE is the crypto social media platform with the biggest market cap. Pump Fun is looking to take over.