I woke up today morning and visited Steemit and Hive as I do pretty much every single morning and couldn’t help but to be curious – what another day will bring on those 2 platforms. Will we encounter another little drama or perhaps there are some good news awaiting me. Being a PH community leader has its ups and downs and you never really know what day is awaiting ahead of you.
Imagine my own surprise when I discovered that yesterday @project.hope had celebrated exactly 365 days since it’s official creation. I wasn’t even aware that it has been ONE YEAR since we launched this project and decided to go public.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO US :))
RECENT 1 YEAR WASN’T EASY ….
For many of us, it has been a rough and difficult year. We’ve witnesses a so called “STEEM takeover” by Justin Sun, causing our favourite blockchain to split in two. We’ve witnessed the creation of HIVE, which divided the steem community even further. That in itself brought many new challenges and we went through some difficult times – especially since we’ve been trying to stay neutral during the unfolding conflict between these two chains.
Initially, this attempt to stay neutral has been obviously seen by some hostile users as a reason to be targeted and attacked. Many of us experienced personal attacks. I was even personally warned, that if we will continue our work on steem, then we will be considered to be traitors and our entire community will be “destroyed”. We’ve also witnessed some attacks towards @fucho80, @juanmolina, @gbenga and recently @adityajainxds – the level of aggression towards some of us has been insane.
Luckily, those events only made us stronger and united. It also allowed our project to get extra exposure and attract attention of a few large users. Fortunately, some of them decided to support our efforts – either by delegating their stake to PH or by following our curation trail.
Also, I’ve learned, who I can count on in case of trouble and which users simply … suddenly “disappeared” - valuable lessons for many of us. It has surely been a bumpy ride so far.
PERSONAL CHALLENGE
Some of you may remember my trip to Switzerland, which took place at the end of 2019. I managed to secure a contract with an existing business planning to launch their own STO (security token offering). As a future project manager, my goal was to build a network of bloggers and influencers which would help promote this STO.
I’ve focused my efforts on building a community around project.hope – assuming that it will help me reach that goal. Right at that time I’ve seen PH as a “recruiting ground”. Place where I could get to know valuable authors and learn to work with some of them. Initially I had a vision, in which I would bring this particular existing business (with yearly revenue counted in millions usd) to STEEM and secure a number of part-time jobs for many of our community members.
Unfortunately, it’s all a thing of the past. The spread of Covid-19 had a very negative impact on that particular company and my entire STO project was cancelled. My contract was also terminated – promoting me to wonder about my own personal future as well as the future of our project.hope.
Those questions are still hanging in the air and future (especially since Covid-19 became a real thing) is quite unknown. However, it’s hard not to have the impression that our project is moving in the right direction and I’m excited to see what another year will bring.
LOOKING AHEAD INTO THE FUTURE
Despite all those challenges, we’ve already managed to grow bigger than I expected that we ever would. I personally consider our community to be one of the most engaging out there. Supporting many active and valuable members on both blockchains.
Bringing extra value into both blockchains
My goal for the second half of 2020 is to establish few partnerships with teams developing their own tools/software build on top of STEEM / HIVE blockchain. And to “use” our strong network to help promote some of their products. To help them reach a wider audience, get more users or simply spread the word about tools which they deliver.
I strongly believe, that there are some solid programmers and developers – often creating promising tools. However, they tend to give up because of lack of exposure to their work. We want to change that and we already gain some experience, recently promoting holybread.io and steemscan.com.
Supporting some of those developers is our attempt to bring more value into both blockchains.
I will personally welcome everyone and explain our community goals and introduce you to our project economy. You could then decide if this is something worth your participation.
RESTEEM PLEASE
I would appreciate each resteem. It would help me reach out to our PH community members.
