Hello everyone, and welcome to this week's edition of Steem Saturday! I missed last week due to some of the controversies going on here on Steem. A lot has happened in that time, and I will discuss some of it here.

Growing the #SteemExclusive Community

Pixabay.com: Licensed in the Public Domain

First, I would like to talk about all of the new users I found this week. The biggest news of all is that All of the users I found this week were #STEEMEXCLUSIVE (as far as I could tell). Please note that an equal share (about 16 percent) of this post's rewards will be given to each of these new users, with the remaining rewards (about 4 percent) going to @steemit.

Welcome to Steem!

While there were a lot of introduction posts this week, I only read so many, and I could only include so many. These users had some of my favorite introductions this week.

User	Date	Description
@jellyott85	5/29/2020	Jackson has an incredible gift for art! Right of the bat, he demonstrates his passion! His introduction post displays a step-by-step record of how he came to make a painting. I would highly recommend viewing the post!
@johnademola	5/25/2020	John's passion is in trying to help the children at a remote village in his country get an education. His introduction post discusses how he has coped with the death of his father, and how he has become who he is today thanks to his mother's love! Please welcome John to Steem!
@frekie	5/27/2020	Miss Mfreke Sunday Ntuk is new from Nigeria! Her brother introduced her to the platform! She described her interests in cooking and nutrition. I hope she will find success here posting about them!
@soyunagalleta	5/28/2020	María is a petroleum engineer from Venezuela. She is 23 years old, and hopes to one day make tutorials on how to decorate nails. First she needs to save up the money to buy the right equipment. She is also a talented artist! I look forward to seeing what she can accomplish here on Steem!
@terrel	5/28/2020	James is a senior in High School living in the Philippines. He is passionate about Basketball and writing essays. I look forward to reading some of those essays!
@syncfusion	5/27/2020	Dickson Okafor is a professional photographer based in Nigeria. In his introduction, he discusses how interesting Nigerian weddings are due to the diversity of cultures in Nigeria. He intends to post here about these weddings, and give insight into the different Nigerian cultures!

Please help make all of these new users feel welcome!

What's Happening on Steem?

7 Days of Steem

Sunday 5/24/2020
This day of Steem was the weekly roundup. These weekly roundups summarize a lot of what happened over the course of the week in the community! Learn more about this day of Steem.

Monday 5/25/2020
This day of Steem marked the writing challenge for the week. This week, users are encouraged to write about their favorite birthday for a potential upvote from the Steemit team. Learn more about this day of Steem.

Tuesday 5/26/2020
Tuesday discussed the Steem curators for the month of May. I would like to officially congratulate everyone who was accepted to be a curator; especially @ciska and @cryptokannon for the Steeming Curators project's acceptance! They will be running an account with 500,000 Steem power to curate the community! Learn more about this day of Steem.

Wednesday 5/27/2020
This week's Wednesday challenge was to discuss your favorite local media. Participate in this challenge to earn upvotes from the Steemit team! Learn more about this day of Steem.

Thursday 5/28/2020
Thursday marked an announcement that was truly special! The decision to support certain charities on Steem! The two projects being supported are @littledisciples and @thegreens. Learn more about this day of Steem.

Friday 5/29/2020
Yesterday's day of Steem was another challenge. This challenge was to write about the biggest day of your life. Again, you can participate in this challenge to potentially earn an upvote from the Steemit Team! Learn more about this day of Steem.

Saturday 5/30/2020
Today's day of Steem announced the prizes for the Steem Diary game. As it stands, I am currently in second place. Congratulations to all of the other Steemians who have been participating! I hope that this challenge will bring value to the Steem ecosystem! Learn more about this day of Steem.

I would encourage new users to follow the account @steemitblog. There is currently a 100 day project going on in which something new is announced each day. Some of these announcements are challenges that you could submit to! Make sure to stay informed!

Hardfork 23

I think it is important to discuss this huge change to Steem. It is part of the reason why I did not greet last week. I was fearful of all of the repercussions going on, and was worried that new users might be exposed to some of the grotesque media being shared if I commented. So I refrained from commenting.

Hardfork 23 had several distinct changes for the chain. The first was shortening to a four week power down. The second was to update the Seed Nodes, and ensure stability for the blockchain. The third change was to forcibly remove the stake of accounts that were alleged to be acting in a hostile manner towards the blockchain. In regards to the third point, I feel it should be stated that (to my knowledge) the manner in which these individual accounts each acted that was harmful was not clearly stated.

The big surprise came after the hardfork when the account setup to retrieve the funds transferred the funds to @bittrex. What should be done with the funds is now being sorted out behind closed doors. Bittrex released a statement, but has not done anything yet (to my knowledge).

It is important to know the facts of what is going on. If you wish to read the post by the witnesses about each fork, here is the announcement of Hardfork 23.0, and the announcement of Softfork 23.1.

Steeming Curators

In addition to their community curator approval, the Steeming Curators have also started up a voting trail. If you need a trail to join, here is a link to an article about joining their trail. If you want to encourage good, Steem Exclusive content, this community is a good place to get started. I would highly recommend checking out their showcase (in this week's addition, you may notice a few of the authors featured in this post were also featured in their showcase)! The future of Steem looks bright partially thanks to this project!

Discussion Posts

As always, I am still running a weekly discussion post in which the liquid rewards go towards rewarding engaging comments. This week, the discussion is about ghost stories. Please come and join the discussion! I am also looking for sponsors for those posts. If you wish to become one, check out this post!

Conclusion

Thanks for reading this! I hope that this next week of Steem is great for us all. We truly have something special in this community! Thank you to all of the new users who have taken the leap of faith. I hope you succeed here!