Why am I still on Steem after 2 years?
2 years ago, I successfully got my account created on Steem. Bitcoin just hit a new all-time high of almost $20k and Ethereum was at $720. We were in the middle of a massive alt-cycle, several coins in my portfolio were making insane returns. Everything was awesome.
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STEEM was at $2.31 with a market cap of $569m, it was ranked at 37 just after Binance coin. Ain't too shabby. Of course I was told that during the glorious days in late 2016, STEEM was among the top 10 coins in terms of market cap.
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Fast forward 2 years, STEEM is now $0.13 with a market cap of $47m ranking 82nd. If you just look at price alone, the past 2 years seemed like a disaster. STEEM price lost 94% of its value and the market cap shrunk by 91.7%. An absolute disaster. But why am I still here?
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A Resilient Platform
Despite the price movement over the past 2 years, Steem is still the undisputed leader in blockchain-based content platforms. Recently, I read about the shutting down of a similar platform called Narrative and I asked myself can the same thing happen to Steem. I came to the conclusion that it is unlikely. Key reason is that Steem is much more decentralized and open-sourced as compared to a platform like Narrative.
Over the past 2 years, Steem had been through several hard-forks. Hard-forks are major updates to a blockchain. A successful hard-fork requires a huge deal of planning, coordination and consensus. Even with all the plans and tests, every hard-fork is an incredibly risky event and a lot is at stake. The fact that Steem is able to survive these many hard-forks, it is a remarkable feat displaying high level of technical capabilities within the core developers and the witnesses. It also showed how resilient Steem is as a platform.
Fit-for-Purpose and More
Even though Steem is one of the most used blockchains on Earth, there is still a large amount of unused capacity. Steem is built with the capacity to onboard the masses and it can do so without any further scaling.
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Steem is also a versatile platform and it can be the home to many creative ideas. To be able to commit custom JSON data to the blockchain enables this versatility. Anyone, with sufficient resource credits, can use Steem an open and immutable data store and I do not see any other projects that offer this level of versatility. Unsurprisingly, there are a variety of applications that are already using Steem as a data store. While most of these apps are content platforms and games, Steem can actually be a data store for any kind of applications.
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Misunderstood and Undervalued
Most people who do not understand Steem well enough still thinks that Steem = Steemit. Though many of us know it is not true, the fact is the majority of people outside the Steem community cannot tell the difference. In fact, I dare to say that many people who are on this platform still do not understand the difference. Steemit is merely an application built on Steem and Steem is so much more than Steemit.
Because not many people outside the Steem community understand Steem, the price is not reflecting its true value. Hence, this presents an opportunity for value appreciation. In addition, because many people do not understand Steem, they choose not to use it. Which once again present an opportunity for us to be the early adopters and eventual influencers when Steem starts to gain real traction.
Unstoppable Social Platform
People who live in a well-connected countries, like USA, often fail to understand the importance of censorship-resistance. This is expected when people have the liberty to access any content on the internet without much problem. However, for people who are living in countries with high level of censorship, e.g. China, a censorship-resistant application is very valuable.
In China where Facebook, Google and WhatsApp are banned, Steem offers an outlet for the Chinese to access "alternative" information. It is also a platform where people from different places can interact without obstacles. In an increasingly surveillanced world, Steem offers a platform for freedom of expression, which will be something important in the future.
Conclusion
Being a crypto enthusiast, I have dived into dozens of whitepapers, research on a plethora of crypto projects and read countless articles. Till date, Steem remains one of the few projects which I find having tremendous potential to be something great.
So if you ask me why I am still here after 2 years, I will then ask you how can I not have faith in an unstoppable, decentralized, open, permissionless and underappreciated platform? Steem on :)
10% of post rewards goes to @ph-fund and 5% goes to @steempeak to support these amazing projects.
This article is created on the Steem blockchain. Check this series of posts to learn more about writing on an immutable and censorship-resistant content platform:
- What is Steem? - My Interpretation
- Steem Thoughts - Traditional Apps vs Steem Apps
- Steem Thoughts - A Fat or Thin Protocol?
- Steem Thoughts - There is Inequitable Value Between Users and Apps
- Make my votes count! Use Dustsweeper!
- What caused STEEM to get dumped? Why I think the worst might be over
- Steem 2020 is about having a "SMART U"
I'm also still here during last 2 years. STEEM is my all time favorite blockchain!
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곰돌이가 @joeypark님의 소중한 댓글에 $0.027을 보팅해서 $0.015을 살려드리고 가요. 곰돌이가 지금까지 총 7070번 $86.756을 보팅해서 $95.093을 구했습니다. @gomdory 곰도뤼~
곰돌이가 @gomdory님의 소중한 댓글에 시세변동을 감안하여 $0.012을 보팅해서 $0.030을 지켜드리고 가요. 곰돌이가 지금까지 총 7112번 $87.787을 보팅해서 $95.826을 구했습니다. @gomdory 곰도뤼~
To more 2 years on this platform! 👍
This is so reassuring coming from you. Fingers crossed. Hopefully, Steem will find its way and forge ahead in the years ahead. 😊
Yup, I believe we are on-track 😉
I feel the same about it. While STEEM isn't where I fell it should be in market cap I have yet to see any crypto project to rival it. Since joining 2 years ago I have seen the chain develop and improve into a much better position for when the next bull run happens and people start looking into crypto again.
Yes, there is constant development and quite a cult following 😉. So I believe it has a great future
It's great that you still believe into steem. It's because of people like you that steem will survive and maybe even evolve.
Best regards
Achim
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Thank you! We need all hands on board for Steem to scale greater heights
After seeing the collapse of the market of capitalization and prices, then, it would be reasonable to have doubts about the future, but on the other hand, you are right that this blockchain is much more than just the blog service, it is a whole network destined to accommodate the most varied dApps.
I arrived here less than a year ago, but I think this has potential and that we will see a take off of this blockchain in a short time.
I read what you say about censorship and I have to share it fully, the availability of a network to communicate freely is a treasure that cannot be fully valued without considering how difficult and even dangerous it can be to make your ideas known in places where they can jail you or kill you for that kind of thing.
Thanks! It is all these fundamental features that make Steem stand out from the rest
Very fine thoughts shared here. I remain on Steem for the reasons for which you have stayed too. Steem, we ride together - to the future.
I can only say, great minds think alike? 😂
@culgin, Yes, let's Steem On. I agree with you on one point specially and that is, Steem is undervalued and underappreciated. But this space travelled without falling and everytime it evolved and gave perfect reply to Critics.
Promotion is lacking otherwise there is no question of Mass Adoption. Keep enjoying your journey and my good wishes are with you. Stay blessed.
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Yup! Fully agree that the marketing aspect is lacking. But if we each do our part to onboard one friend to this platform, perhaps there is chance Steem will spread like wildfire one day 😅
That's true and definitely it's a Collective effort. Stay blessed.
@tipu curate 2 :)
Upvoted 👌 (Mana: 0/20 - need recharge?)
Thanks for the tipu vote!
STEEM is such a revolutionary technology because we can reward content creators with the reward pool a.k.a inflation. On top of that, we can curate the creators and get rewarded also unlike the giants of social media. I believe STEEM will be huge in the time to come and I will dollar averaging my money into STEEM. Upvoted!
Thanks! We share the same sentiments! 👍
Dear @culgin
I wonder how many people who started around same time (2 years ago) are still around, and how many gaved up. Within 2 years on this platform we've witnesses many users coming and leaving and very few seem to be still active the way they used to.
I'm personally very glad to get to know you. It seem that we both started our adventure with crypto around the same time. right before latest crash on this market. Just like you said: the past 2 years seemed like a disaster.
About Narrative and Steem/steemit. I think that steem blockchain won't shit down the way Narrative did - however I wouldn't be surprissed if STINC one day would shut down. Blockchain would survive, but steemit as a social media platform may be closed one day. And that's a real threat.
Kind of. Again: if STINC would fire all developers and would stop their work, then steem as a blockchain would also rather die. slowly. Without any progress I cannot see it any other way. Anyway that's just my own impression.
Practically - does it really matter? Steem is a blockchain (database) and steemit is front-end.
For regular user it simply doesn't matter.
It's like trying to explain that 'facebook.com' is just a frond-end but their engine and data-base is called differently. One won't exist without the other. Steem in current form would have pretty much no value without Steemit. Trying to separate those 2 make only sense on paper.
And what really is "true value"? Price is reflecting always relation between demand and supply. Even best apps in the world have no value if there is no demand for them and utility of this app is very limited. I would say that currently steem is still overvalued. It simply doesn't provide any utility at all (except of instant transfers) for majority of users.
But again: this is just my own opinion. I wish to be as optimistic as you are. Personally I believe that this place is great to get to know valuable people, but I just don't see many reasons why would price of steem go up anytime soon (not even SMTs or communities can help much, since those tools are almost free so it will be very easy and cheap to fully satisfy demand for it).
Upvote on the way :)
Piotr
Well, the comparison with Facebook is precisely the most telling difference between Steem and any centralized social media. Steem can technically exist without steemit.com, but a Facebook database has no use with out Facebook.com. Separating the data store and the front-end makes a lot of sense if your objective is to have a censorship-resistant, open and permissionless platform.
Value comes when there is adoption. Remember that you need Resource credit to perform actions on this platform and RC will only be available if you have Steem power. Hence, by inference, when there are more activities on the platform, more RC will be required and as a result more SP is required. When there are more people holding SP, naturally price will appreciate.
The utility Steem brings is a censorship-resistance, openness and permissionless. None of the content platform out there can say the same. The value of Steem might take a long time to realize, but from what I see, with technologies such as AI making surveillance and censorship much more prevalent, Steem will be able to earn its place in the future.