A few days ago, exactly on the 11th of November - I added another year and a lot of my online friends and acquaintances came around (albeit online) to celebrate with me using a wide variety of wishes and prayers. I am really not a birthday person, hence I did virtually nothing differently in the real world. It was just another day and only the very few people that know my birthday called to wish me a happy day.

Before I continue, let me wish someone I love so much on the steem blockchain a happy birthday. Though it will be a bit late by the time I release this post, it is the least I can do for a virtual friend that has become a real family. Funny enough, we are just a few hours older than each other (can't remember if I am older or she's older).

Happy belated birthday to you @abigail-dantes !

Even though I am not a birthday celebration enthusiast (I tried but could not see the fun in getting old), I cannot but make this free-writing post in the celebration of my one year anniversary on steemit and the steem blockchain in general. It was exactly a year ago I joined this platform. So many waters have passed under the bridge but here I am today, 364 days after.

What has the experience been like in the last 364 days on the steem blockchain?

I will probably have to write a whole long ass epistle (like my new steemhunt friend @fknmayhem) and still not be able to completely write about my experience on the blockchain. However, I hope I can at least justify the resources spent on my education by making a summary of it in as few words as possible.

The moment I could have quit

Will I quit the steem blockchain? Difficult to envisage what tomorrow holds but I guess no would be my answer. If someone had asked me this question a few days after joining steemit, my answer would have been a straight and direct yes. I joined the platform on the 14 of November 2017 and was super excited to have finally found a platform that would be rewarding me for what I like doing - writing.

I was brought on board through steeminvite developed by @pharesim (a cool steem witness by the way) but for the reason best known to him, the person that brought me on board undelegated the steem power few days after and left me utterly powerless and unable to do anything on the blockchain. Thank goodness for @acidyo who I got to know in steemit.chat in those early days. The @ocd curation project and @ocbb founder magnanimously delegated 500 steem power to my account which was not undelegated for about six months (or even more, I can't remember). In short, I could have just abandoned the platform dejectedly if not for his quick intervention.

The moment @steemstem struck and called

The early days of my steemit journey were characterized with freestyle and diversified writing without any particular subject being dominant (well, maybe stem did). There were several freelance/organic curators on the platform then (unlike now, they ruined everything). At least, I was getting about 3STU rewards on my post on the average without having to beg anyone for upvotes.

Even though my upvote was worth virtually nothing then (oh! it was worth something, acidyo delegated), I benefited a lot from reading and curating good contents. Being a person of science-related background, I tilted towards STEM-related contents and it was this disposition that made me discover the steemstem tag. I started making more STEM contents and kept on using the steemstem tag. To think that I was super contented with getting an average of 3STU on my post, my joy had no bounds when I got my first steemstem vote. Right there and then, I knew where I belong.

I took a break from writing on other subjects and concentrated on writing stem contents, improving myself along the way through reading and curation of good steemstem contents (people like @suesa, @ertwro, @mobbs, @greenrun, @pearlumie, @samminator, @dber, @justtryme90, @amavi and @abigail-dantes just to mention a few). During this period, the population of Nigerian steemian writing steemstem contents was also bulging almost every second.

This made the management of the steemstem community to reach out to myself and @greenrun to assist with curation of contents in the tag, especially those created by Nigerians. They explained in details what the long-term goal of the project is and I never needed a second convincing. That was how I became a sub-group/nationality curator in the steemstem project up till today. A move that I will never regret!

The steemstem project has continued to grow in leaps and bounds ever since then and recently, the steemstem decentralized application was released in further credence to the success of the project. This is in addition to the floating of @stem.witness steem witness server. I encourage everyone that has witness votes left to consider voting for the @stem.witness for the overall development of the steem ecosystem.

Time to give back and @promo-mentors came calling

The bull run that started towards the ending of November 2017 and peaked around early January of this year will live long in the memory of a lot of steemians that are lucky enough to have pitched their tents here around then. There is no doubt that I also benefited immensely from the financial windfall and was able to attend to my dad's lingering health issue, the financial implication I might not have been able to curtail without the windfall.

I strongly believe that steem has done a lot for a lot of people from different countries all over the world probably much more than any other crypto project or centralized government would ever do for them. I felt indebted at some point and was constantly looking means to give back to the community. If steem could benefit from content creation on the blockchain, I started putting newbies through on ways to create good contents that could propel steem to the world via search engine optimization.

It was also a no-brainer when @futurethinker approached and briefed me about a project on the blockchain that seeks to mentor people to be a good content creator and all. He then asked if I would not mind volunteering as a mentor in the project - the promo-mentors. Knowing that I now blog mainly about STEM, we both agreed that I will be mentoring newbies that are interested in crafting STEM contents on the blockchain. Despite the generally low enthusiasm about cryptos, the promo-mentor project is still quite active - up and running.

Crowdfunding on the steem blockchain - @fundition

Like I said earlier, I felt (still feel) indebted to the steem blockchain and was constantly seeking a way to give back to people or the community at large. It was during this process I got introduced to a project that is charity related on the steem blockchain - crowdfunding. Fundition is a decentralized, peer to peer crowdfunding platform built on the steem blockchain. Founders can upload their projects seeking funding on the platform and they can directly receive donations from backers or receive supports in terms of upvotes from supporters.

_{gentleshaid | Nigerian Ambassador
Email :}

_{Join a community with heart based giving at its core}

Fundition itself, backed by a million steem power delegation can also support projects directly if such project directly impacts humanity, changes the lives of a lot of people positively or promotes the steem blockchain in a significant way. Since its inception, a lot of founders have pitched their crowdfunding campaign on the platform with several success stories.

Immediately I got to know about the platform and how they are seeking to positively affect lives, I showed interest and fortunately, there existed an opening to apply as a country ambassador which I promptly did. After a rigorous interview, I was eventually selected to be one of the Nigerian ambassadors to Fundition.

I am using this medium to call on anyone that has a worthy cause and requires funding to put up such project on fundition. The project would pass through auditing stage after which it would either be approved or disapproved depending on a host of factors. A disapproved project however does not mean much except that such project would not be getting @fundition support from the delegated steem power. Feel free to message me directly on discord or join fundition discord server if you require further clarifications.

So far so good

My one year experience on the steem blockchain has been a roller coaster ride with so many ups and extremely few downs with the latter mostly related to the bear market :). Aside from the projects I mentioned above, I have seen several other interesting dapps and projects on the blockchain which I cannot but mention.

One of such is steemhunt which has been doing her utmost to bring attention to steem through thousands of properly moderated and approved product hunts. Musing - a question and answer application has also been playing its part and will definitely be giving quora a good chase if the current contribution rate on the platform continues. Stemq is the question and answer version of steemstem while dlike is also another project that has got my attention recently. Prices might be low but the future definitely looks exciting with the launch of smart media token in the horizon.

Happy one year anniversary to me!