From 0 to 100, real quick! It's STEEM's third birthday today - Reflection on the past and a vision of a bright future

The likes of Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, Reddit and others, have for the longest time abused their dominance to leverage a huge userbase to make incredible wealth for the select few. Not taking into account the consequences of their actions, focusing exclusively on profit, they began a self-destructive path to the abyss. Countless remarks of data breaches, selling user data to other corporations and government agencies, spreading fake news, manipulating political views and now more recently, banning everyone they disagree with and anyone who is not following the mainstream narrative of any given thing or event.

The absurdity and arrogance of their actions is only matched by the lack of intellect of those who still use mentioned platforms after everything they did so far.

If leeching on your time spent using their platforms to make a profit, spying and collecting your data to sell it afterwards wasn't enough to deter you from using them, how come this obvious censorship of freedom of speech and thought wasn't enough to drive most of its users away?

I guess they just don't have a sense of self-worth or an idea about what freedom is nor do they care about the obvious invasion of privacy as long as they can use mentioned platforms to create a fake and misleading picture of their life, in order to attempt to impress a bunch of people they don't care about.

The titan grip these corporations are holding on our perception of reality is tightening by the day and there is no sign of it ever loosening again. They will do whatever it takes to stay on the top of the attention market and will do even more to make the most profit out of it.

For the longest time, there was no end this tyranny on the horizon, but even though most are still not aware, a solution has been made.

It was on this day, exactly three years ago, when the freedom genesis block was mined and the STEEM blockchain went live. In a split second, a new era of the internet age has begun. Shortly thereafter first accounts were made, the very first articles were posted and the rest is history.

From being used and abused by big corporations mining their data which they later sell to the highest bidder, users of social media platforms have received a new, exciting, and never before possible, opportunity to own and earn from their publications. A censorship resistant, community-driven blockchain was born. One that will forever change the course of history by enabling uncensored freedom of speech and power of thought to prevail over the ever-increasing oppression and censorship.

That, and so much more is what STEEM is offering for its users.

This forever evolving chain of blocks is pushing the limits of human creativity and capability. It is at the forefront of the cutting edge blockchain technology and goes to show how much growth and change can be achieved when the incentives are aligned and when many smart people from all over the world are working towards the shared goal of making this place better every day.

First, STEEM blockchain had just one application called Steemit.

It is a blogging platform where users can earn for posting and curating "quality" content. Close to a year, this was the only thing one could do on STEEM. Write posts, mingle with others, establish communities, connections and friendships and enjoy your time spent on here. Time spent doing something you usually do elsewhere for free, just this time, you have a chance to earn a couple of bucks for it, but more importantly, that is time spent not making a profit for the greedy corps.

Time went by and witty developers have recognized the opportunity to embed STEEM's tipping economy into other kinds of DApplications.

Then we got DTube.

A solution to the oppressive hand of YouTube and the overwhelming, neverending censorship that's going on there. Suppression of freedom of speech so severe, that the free market was bound to make a way to circumvent it and thankfully, it was made on STEEM by @heimindanger. Now Steemians can vlog and create videos about whatever they want, without the fear of being censored. Many freethinkers, alternative media channels and others who were shadowbanned or censored on YouTube have jumped ship and started using DTube as a channel of communication with their audience.

Soon after we got Utopian, a platform for crowdsourcing development of open-source projects.

Project owners got an opportunity to utilize a thriving community of developers, designers, data analysts, bug hunters, reviewers, video content creators and translators, FOR FREE! While project owners get free help with their project, individuals that contribute their time, intellect and skills, get paid in STEEM in form of upvotes by @utopian-io.

What a perfect symbiotic system!

One that would be possible without the revolutionary STEEM tipping economy which allows users to tip others without having to give out any money, just by utilizing their Steem Power.

Two and a half years in its journey, the STEEM blockchain became flooded by DApps utilizing its economy in creative ways to reward its userbase for doing specific tasks.

@musing is the Quora of STEEM
@steepshot and @appics are the Instagram of STEEM
@dsound is the Soundcloud of STEEM
@tasteem is a restaurant review on STEEM
@steemhunt is hunting for cool, new products on STEEM
@actifit is a fitness monitoring DApp on STEEM
@fundition is the Kickstarter of STEEM
@vimm is the Twitch of STEEM
@steemmonsters is a collectible card game on STEEM
@magicdice was one of the first to bring gambling on STEEM
@dtube is the Youtube of STEEM
@steempress-io gave us the ability to convert our blogs into STEEM posts
@esteem, @busy, @steempeak and @wherein are some alternative ways of browsing the STEEM blockchain

And the list goes on and on and on and it's only getting longer by the day.

This place went from being just a blogging platform to becoming a decentralized beast, home to hundreds of DApps and projects which selflessly reward their userbase for their time spent interacting with their DApps and contributing content.

Devs are working hard to make STEEM the best, most used blockchain out there and they have been pretty successful so far which is present and verifiable by the state of StateofTheDApps ranking where STEEM is dominating other, older and more well-known blockchains.

What STEEM is today, is definitely not what it will be in a year, two or ten years.

I've been here for almost two years and it has been an interesting and exciting journey so far. Seeing this place grow and evolve from just blogging, to now being able to do so much that I just don't know where to start my day on STEEM, infused me with contagious positivity about the prosperous future of this place.

No one has the crystal ball to see what STEEM will become in the future, but I'm quite sure it will be one of the most successful, widely adopted and respected blockchains.

Why?

Because this is the blockchain of opportunity. Blockchain of go-getters, doers, and achievers!