This last week I was lucky enough to attend steemfest3 in Krakov/Poland.

The whole event was put together with @roelandp, the @firepower team, @detlev, @arcange and @gandalf /@gtg (as the local guide and photographer) and I really wanted to thank them all for the amazing job they did. Cannot wait to see where we go next year

Last year I watched most of the event through the livestream and for me it was really focused on the bloggers and the personalities that were present and influential.

This year was different.

The focus has shifted from the characters to the businesses.
There were some cool projects present like

• @steemmonsters run by @yabapmatt and @aggroed
• @steemhunt run by @project7 (whom I met on the bus and asked what happened to the other 6 projects)
• the team from @appics who are moving to the Crypto Valley soon (we will have to go eat cheese fondue together)
• the @dstors concept presented by @derangedvisions
• @oracle-d c0 founded by @starkerz
• @utopian with the team lead by @elear

There are many more not listed here but in my eyes these were the most important and that for one big reason

Most of them are bringing in one of two things from outside into the Steem ecosystem.

• users

• money

Up till these small businesses appeared on the scene the focus was on taking as much from the rewards pool on an individual basis as possible, either by blogging, vlogging or bots (running them or using them)
So basically we were passing around the inflation of the whole ecosystem while adding nothing. This has worked for a while and we were dangling around place 30 in the coinmarketcap for a long time.

Now we are on place 42 in this ranking and we are slipping down a bit every day. This means that even in this bear market there are less people investing in Steem then they are in other coins/tokens/projects
And so long as this keeps on going the more we will keep dropping down.

But there is reason for optimism.

• @steemmonsters have taken roughly 60000 in investments in their only young existence
• @steemhunt are through their hunts creating 60 new real users per day and are striking deals with external companies
• @dstors will allow for external currencies to be used when buying things on steem
• @appics are running a successful ico on steem with external investments in steem
• @oracle-d are striking deals with governments to fund projects on steem and are looking at other ways to get liquidity poured into the system

These are just a few examples that make me optimistic. This is the way to turn the tide. The more people power up and the more people invest the more value the leftover liquid steem will achieve.

I also listened to the @ned and @andrarchy interview and my take there was that Steemit inc is pulling back a but and that is perfectly fine, it is not their blockchain

It is ours

and if we do not take care of it then no one will.

Personally I try to do this by running a community here in the Crypto Valley in Switzerland which I have co founded. We hold regular meetups to support the inflow into crypto as a whole and steem comes from that as well.
Tonight we have some lawyers working for the crypto department of Baker McKenzie from explaining the move to STO's from ICO's last year.
I can tell you for a fact that serious capital is looking to come into the whole blockchain space. Now it is up to us as a community to prepare for that and prove that we are a sustainable and profitable investment option and alternative, either in Steem directly or in the future in SMT's.
If you want more info then feel free to follow @cryptoworldzug or check out cryptoworldzug.io
Next week we are having Trezor over for a presentation so if you are in the neighbourhood stop on by.

My other way of trying to support the Steem blockchain is through the small witness that we are running called @swisswitness. We are for the moment running 2 servers and this is costing us roughly 200dollars per month and we are getting about 1 steem per day in return. With my 2 partners we have made a commitment to keep up this service for at least a year. We purposely chose to put our main server here in Switzerland due to the fact that this is a definite decentralisation of servers as we are the only ones. This was not the cheapest option but was taken into account and deemed worth it.
So if you have any spare witness votes we would appreciate a vote, just click the link below because we are not in the top 100 (yet)
https://steemconnect.com/sign/account-witness-vote?witness=swisswitness&approve=1

So what are you doing to grow the steem ecosystem??

are you investing?
are you powering up instead of taking out?
are you running or setting up a project?

If you are willing then please share with the rest of us...