I was on my way to my grandmother birthday today and while driving I was thinking about Steemit. In my mind, I just tried to form a mental picture of the history of Steemit so far and I enjoyed that very much. I decided to put it to paper. None, of this, happened or maybe it did. Who knows.
It's how I remember it.
Because I didn't want to kill myself while driving I choose a picture where it looks like I know what I'm talking about, lol
I was not here for the birth of Steemit but I just envision that the first posts would have been crypto related with a bunch of nerds like myself feeling all cozy and posting these technical posts about blockchain and feeling happy about it. It must have been an amazing place for them at the time.
And then something terrible happened. Something so awful that it must have meant the end of the platform for some of them at the time.
Girls came to Steemit.
This makes me laugh because women on Steemit is such a normal thing now (and it should) but at the time it was major. Even at Steemfest, in December, it was agreed upon that Steemit is a magical place because women use it.
I’m not joking this is true.
And with the girls came new content. Resulting in the most famous post of all. The makeup tutorial that earned one girl around $30,000. Not $30, no, thirty thousand dollars!! WOW!
Huge payouts and the decline in price
It was a magical time back then. Posts were earning thousands of dollars on a regular basis. Even comments could earn you thousands. Some people did very well at that time. But of course, the Steemprice couldn’t hold and pay-outs slowly declined.
Pay-outs slowly went from thousands to only a couple hundred for the top trending posts. Many successful users that were making a fortune before, left. They must have thought it would be the end of Steemit at the time.
Then a new era started where essays were considered the top material. But not everyone could produce an essay. Let alone three per day. So, these gifted writers would, therefore, be at the top of the trending page every day.
Some of them could write an essay on the health benefits of broccoli on an overactive brain state, Nuclear fusion on Mars, and the Benefits of intellectual societies in a subconscious world. All on the same day!
The high-quality content they produced must have scared the normal users and the newcomers. These normal users must have thought this would be the end (or not even the beginning) of their Steemit adventure at the time.
Because the price of Steem had declined so much none of the normal users could add value to the post of other users. The end result was that every user ended up fishing for a whale to upvote their content just to earn some income.
Our current Era.
And now we arrived at the current phase. Two whales decided that Steemit was going in the wrong direction and they decided (without really communicating it well to all the users) to downvote other whales upvotes.
This resulted in power being given back to the normal users. All of the sudden a user with a small amount of Steempower had a voice. But this came with a price. To succeed in their plans they had to downvote normal users that had just received an upvote from a whale.
If you are fishing for whales as a normal user and you finally catch one, it gives a mighty good feeling. To have this feeling taken away again not much later didn’t go too well with some of them.
Also, the high-quality content creators saw their $100+ pay-outs rapidly decline because also they would receive these massive downvotes.
A war broke out. Some people went on strike and some high-quality content creators left. For them, this war must have meant the end of Steemit.
Then the price of Steem started rising rapidly and more users joined the platform and this is where we are today.
Future outlook: currently unknown. (but if you read my blogs you know I'm positive)
Steemit changes all the time
This is what I thought about in the car. I realized that in one year time Steemit has gone through so many changes already. It’s impossible to think this will stop anytime soon. It’s 100% sure in my mind that in two months from now this place will be entirely different once again and also in 4 months and in 6 months.
Some of these times I will like, some of them I will like less. It’s what I love about this place. It’s incredibly engaging and exciting. And while we are looking for all these new directions more and more users are earning Steempower and getting a stake in the platform.
This is probably the most exciting thing I can think of about Steemit. The delegation of influence to more users. It is amazing to see it all happen and evolve and it is truly is a privileged to be here and be a part of it.
Whether you are a new user or an existing user make sure you have an ability to adjust and go with the flow because it’s going to be a wild ride.
Steem on!