I’ve tied up my loose ends and it took a bit longer than I expected but I was always brought up to believe we should try and leave things in better condition than when we found them. I’m not sure if I’ve succeeded in that here but I’ve given it a good try. Certainly there are a few accomplishments here on STEEM that I can be proud of but there is a part of me that feels guilty – like I’m on the first lifeboat leaving the Titanic….however I’ve always had a cynical side and it’s often pretty safe to ignore. I’m still hopeful that STEEM will lead us all to the "Promised Land", I’m just not confident.
Source
Anyway, I wanted to sign off with a post to just make a short story about my journey here on STEEM. It’s been about a year now and a lot has happened in that time. I’m probably writing this as much for myself to give me some closure and leave a note for my future self, but there are a few people here who might appreciate my story.
Before I came to STEEM I was very focused on exploring the top Cryptocurrencies in the market to see if there was one which really stood out as a candidate for mainstream adoption. Having lived through the DotCom Boom I know that most Crypto projects will fail, but a handful will be spectacularly successful and I was looking for “the one”. For a while there I thought I’d found it.
When I first came to STEEM I was fascinated by the Graphene technology and the totally different way that DPoS worked. As an old Software Developer I was immediately impressed with the technology and design. Scalable, Fast, Cheap Transactions and the Baked in Governance Framework were all so promising. The Stable Coin implementation seemed clever and the Network Effect potential from the Social Media aspect of the platform really got me excited. I Powered Up and began what I called a “Deep Dive” and spent a lot of time trying to learn more. I joined a couple of communities too to help me get started.
I still believe that one of the keys to the platforms success is effective curation of content. Without Value Adding Content this is just another inflationary scheme, so I started focusing on curating content and earning some curation rewards. I was posting sporadically but Authoring wasn’t my focus. I wanted to see if it was possible to make an income as a curator on the platform and for a while I was doing OK. I could see there were some cliques and circle jerks going on, but at this time I still believed that good content could, and would, be rewarded and I tried to be a part of that.
The Crypto market Mania really was in full swing and when the STEEM DOLLAR started pumping to break the USD Peg it was a clear indicator to me that something wasn’t right. On the platform, the incentive to curate almost evaporated overnight and while there were BidBots in existence already, the SBD pump really triggered an explosion in the vote selling business. It was around this time too that the Steemit site had suffered major DDoS attacks that were not well mitigated and I lost confidence in the development team(s) we were counting on to take the platform forward. I became very Risk Averse during this time and I sold a lot of my Cryptos. It took me a while to Power Down my STEEM but I took what I could off the table. I missed some of the price peaks as a result, but at least I wasn't buying the Top.
The STEEM and SBD prices were still going strong as 2018 started and while I was now aware of some flaws and had become ultra-sceptical about the investment potential of the platform going forward, I had made some valuable contacts with good people. I could see there was still potential in the communities I was involved in and the incentive was there for me to step up my Authoring to have a 3rd attempt at starting a professional blog. I have actually always wanted to be a writer but my first 2 attempts (on other platforms) failed to gain traction. I wondered if it might be 3rd time lucky so I stepped up my posting rate to daily, expanded my topic coverage and my followers count nearly tripled in just a few months….but the whales never really came and I still had to buy most of my upvotes in the vain hope of getting seen by them.
I now believe that the greatest asset and the greatest hope for this platforms future is the voluntaryist communities that have started sprouting up. I could see there were people heavily gaming the platform and I felt the only way this was ever going to be addressed was via fostering a culture of higher behavioural standards within the voluntaryist communities. I had been looking to get more involved in helping my communities but I had failed to get any traction with my first attempt. However, when one of my communities started having internal problems I saw there was an opportunity for me to help. I had just the right set of skills and experience so I volunteered a lot of time and effort for that community…and it worked! I believe that together we demonstrated how a Decentralised Autonomous Community (DAC) could operate and thrive on STEEM. Yet, while the support from within the community itself was overwhelming and heartening and I thought we might be leading the way for others….we may as well have been in a bubble because outside of this community – nobody else seemed to notice or care.
I love to explore and innovate, but sustainability has always been an issue for me and I was starting to get burnt out. A lot of my other ventures were starting to look seriously neglected because of the time I was now spending on STEEM and when I started looking at my tax return for Financial Year 17/18 I realised I was staring at my worst year in perhaps a decade. I had achieved what I had set out to do on STEEM. My Deep Dive was long complete and I had given enough of my time and ideas on how things could be better, so it was time for me to take a break and look after myself and my family.
So that’s where I am today as I am stepping out the door. I still believe there is great potential here on STEEM but I have lost confidence that it will ever be realised. I’ve met a lot of good people here and I do hope to be able to stay in touch, even pop in here and there once I’ve freshened up again but there are a few things I really need to see from the STEEM platform for me to ever take it seriously again. Maybe HF20 or SMTs or Hivemind will take us to the “Promised Land” and change things for me, but I’m a sceptic. I’ve been here for about a year and there has barely been any technological or cultural advancement. Most of the change I’ve seen here has not been that encouraging and some of it has been outright demoralising.
It has certainly been fun and a valuable experience though, so despite my tone I don’t really have any regrets. It’s been good meeting you all and thanks to all my Followers for sticking with me!
