My late 3 years anniversary post on Steemit and why am i still here ?

I'm getting old for steemit or just getting started ?

Photo by: me
"This world wasn't built in one day"
CCBYSA license

I wasn't going to post my (late for 24 november) third year celebration / anniversary post on steemit, but i stumbled upon some responses to @theycallmedan initiative https://steempeak.com/posh/@theycallmedan/why-am-i-still-here-initiative on twitter and all this hostile takeover thing is worth a few words of appreciation for what this community has acomplished, altough i dont have twitter its an interesting campaign.

After the tribes have emerged with their tokens https://steempeak.com/steemit/@zedikaredirect/a-good-day-to-all-and-welcome-to-the-tribes now emerges the functionality of communities or "hives" https://steempeak.com/communities a way of gathering posts and users in a more curated feed.
If you want to know more about what features were added checkout @eco-alex post on it.
https://steempeak.com/hive-175001/@eco-alex/in-s-and-outs-of-communities-what-s-changed-what-the-least-you-need-to-know

Photography

It's something that keeps me alive as little as i do it, it's apart of my expression, my memories. It is has been one of the most well payed and it still is (not for me at the moment but makes sense with low participation and overall steemit usage).

People love photography, they do it while they cook, travel, with mobile or DSLR there certainly is an infinite amount of interesting photography that we all can share, choose wisely. 😄

I think in this steemit is already competing with Instagram and those social networks, altough not in the same scale, eSteem app and one or two other allow for instant upload, and some people like that way better, for me is still oldschool DSLR.

Still low on equipment but it doesn't matter, all i need is a good moment or a beatifull landscape and 📷 after that usually i let them "cook" for a while before touching them and the best end up here and on my portfolio.

Writing

It became part of me in the last years, it works as a therapy and a look back into life in my own special way of ranting about it.
Parts of fiction might be part of real life, forever in the blockchain as a pile of pages of our lives.
I still apreciate the good reads in steemit, there is always good content in #writing #freewrite #philosophy among many others.

Steemit funded Eco-Village(s) A dream of many coming true ?

I heard about this through @eco-alex and after following the story of @orlev and his wife coming to Portugal.
Orlev and his wife, along with Alex and a first group of people will see how it's possible (if at all) to build such a thing in that particular location, even if it doesn't grow as it was intended, it's intended to be a model that others might replicate.
More info here: https://www.ecovillages.io/
@orlev is also present at mspwaves.com program "The disconfort zone" a podcast of his own hosted in the Peace, Abundance and Liberty discord sharing concepts of permaculture and interesting social questions.
If you want to help fund or support with some votes, drop by some of their latest posts or you can also get some ECO tokens on the steem-engine or just send them a donation directly 😋

Crypto history in the making

In case you were sleeping under a rock (understandable), there was a recent aquisition of steemit.com or Steem Inc the company / website.
https://www.coindesk.com/steemit-sets-up-shop-on-tron-network

We (users) heard the news after the fact and it quickly became aparent that this was a "hostile takeover" envolving even exchanges holding users steem "hostage" by staking them, the witness comunity quickly reacting by discussing (see if it's valid, etc) a fork (update) on the chain that most witnesses are running, in order to backup what is already made, also they temporarly added to the code that the Steem that the major accounts hold be freezed, as they were to be used for development of steemit and with the takeover it may seem that they werent going to be or might have been compromised.

The comunity witnesses agreed in majority and we are now writing on a different fork than the other new unknown witnesses appear trying to takeover the voting power of the "rules of DPOS" of steem itself (the blockchain).

https://www.coindesk.com/steem-community-mobilizes-popular-vote-in-battle-with-justin-sun
https://www.coindesk.com/trons-takeover-of-steemit-is-internet-history-repeating-itself
https://steempeak.com/tron/@steemitblog/an-open-letter-to-the-community-hf22-5

It will be what will be.

You as a user ...

...As of today can have an influence in the governance of the community by voting in witnesses (miners) that you think are doing a good job mantaining or developing the blockchain network.
I usually use steempeak front-end so i voted mine there. https://steempeak.com/witnesses

Also by voting in the "SPS proposals": https://steempeak.com/proposals which show current projects to receive funding by steem and SBD.

I encourage to use these both tools.

Your SteemPower (any amount) will add a bit of "trust" to the witness getting them more probability to get some block rewards (i might be wrong there), and / or to the user that made a proposal made, helping the user or group getting the required funding.

You can also contribute to your favorite tribes going into steem-engine.com and buying and staking your favorite tribe tokens so you can have some voting power to distribute those tokens.

Why am i still here ?

The monetary incentive is one of the reasons why i keep coming here but it is available for all, that is the beauty of it.

The stake (Steem Power, Steem / SBD) that you might want to buy will pratically free if you have something to post, specially art would be well received.
I also speculate on the potential value that steem holds for our future, wether it will correspond to the technical details of the platform itself ? It has been keeping up, but the next weeks will tell the rest of the story.

It's free technology (free as in freedom).

Image found on quotefancy.com

Up until now, steem is being extremely sucessfull in gathering groups of people (large or not) in discussions and projects, colaborations, contests, giveaways, all born from within steemit, and that is memorable and also why i am still here, community building.

Sure it, it wasnt suitable for a portfolio when i got here but hey, i would give it a try at least.

For me it was photography that gave me most of my Steem / SP because that is one of the areas that i like most to invest my time, but it is really cool to be able to choose what you want to contribute with here, knowledge, art, specially art is something truly inspiring in steemit, the sense of freedomseekers, i could go on and on, in general steemit is an inspiration.

I already experienced how it can work in distributing the votes through posts and can deliver very well with "waves" of users coming and going along the years, so you might get a year with low participation and the speculation value of steem varies, but i have seen it work very well and i would not want something completely different before changing.

And hey, steempeak.com delivers the "portfolio" feature which i really like:
https://steempeak.com/@zedikaredirect/portfolio

Imagine running a witness node, that's weird ! 😂

If you read up to here...Imagine if i would run a witness node ?
I think about doing it since day one but life hasn't allowed enough time to dedicate, i would like to try setting up my own, although i could have spent the money renting a server, and it's becoming easier with the diferent guides and tools to quickly setup a Steemit full node but i guess with all the takeover taking place would be a little overwhelming to follow up but not from another world.
https://steempeak.com/witness-update/@someguy123/announcement-soft-fork-0-22-2-released-steem-in-a-box-update

"Holy satoshi all that RAM ! Why would you do that ?" That's what i tought on day one.
I have contributed before to other crypto nodes, not to one that requires that much ram (16gb recomended), so i am thinking that i can always rent, still a bit more expensive than mantaining a small website or radio but an interesting experience and a great contribution for sure.

Thanks to all the witnesses that helped mantain this blockchain up till now and hopefully continuing in the future.(Reminder that if it weren't for them we might not have the blockchain steem right now as we know it)

But why would they do it ? Wouldn't be easier to trust a centralized organization or person and rent servers.

Well yes but this is the pratice of "crypto decentralization", individuals or small organizations running nodes spreading the "trust" of the application, making it more secure, and in some cases getting rewarded. (DPOS, POS), in bitcoin for example it's used POW (proof of work) which requires alot more resources (you've seen the farms?) than proof of stake (POS) that doesnt require aditional computing power (GPUS, ASICS, etc) other than the application running.

Conclusion

Special thanks to the PAL (Peace, Abundance and Liberty) tribe for hosting these and many discussions on their discord and mspwaves.com (broadcasting steemians original music everyday).

Also take a look into a project implementing the Universal Basic Income concept at least as best as possible, here on steemit:
https://steemit.com/steembasicincome/@steembasicincome/frequently-asked-questions

Hopefully writing the next anniversary post in an eco-village not far from here 😋 🌷

Be well, peace and steem on ! (or don't)
Note to self: make some templates

Photo by: me
"Earth as private property"
CCBYSA license