Cover Image – Made by the author using free vectors

“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth”
- Robert Frost in The Road Not Taken

I joined Steemit in the beginning of 2018. A decentralized publishing platform completely driven by the community and censorship resistant contents! Yes that's what I wanted. I started to post actively only from 2019 and it was indeed a happy journey. Then Justin Sun did the takeover of Steemit. I wasn’t sure what was going on initially but I saw a plethora of incidents - starting from Steem witnesses freezing ninza mined stake of Justin Sun, hostile takeover of Steem by Sun and finally the Steem hard fork to generate HIVE blockchain. Oh quite a few!

“I am Justin Sun and I bought 70 million STEEM with my hard earned money. When I hodl them, I want to vote for witnesses with good hearts who truly care about our community.”
- Justin Sun in his deleted post to Steem community (the post still exists in immutable blockchain)

How does decentralization works? You needn’t be a polymath to understand that. A decision making which is fairly distributed and delegated away from a central authority is decentralization basically. Steemit was formed to be a decentralized platform. Was it really decentralized? Yes, Steemit INC owned huge ninza mined Steem but never voted for governance of the Steem blockchain. After Justin Sun’s acquisition of Steemit INC, Justin became owner of 70 million company owned Steem, representing approximate 20% of supply. Oh that was huge! And he interfered with blockchain governance along with some exchanges. Sock puppet witnesses replaced all real Steem witnesses. It was a hostile takeover of the blockchain. Steemit was only an interface of Steem blockchain. Justin behaved as if he owned the blockchain.

Meme created by the author – Yes, memes are for fun only

In Schelling point of game theory, community coordinates effectively without explicit coordination and that’s how a decentralized platform works. You can imagine two cycles heading towards each other and going to crash. Now avoiding collision becomes a big coordination game. One cyclist can go right or left but he doesn’t know what the other cyclist will do. Avoid crashing becomes the only aim. Ultimately one player decides to go to the right direction, which serves as a Schelling point and leads to right-right outcome. A natural Schelling point occurs in a right-hand traffic system. In the Steem battle, we got only crashing scenarios as the piled up centralized power destroyed the virtue of decentralization of the system. So, hard fork basically saved the system to crash. The Steem community moved to a new home. It’s HIVE now.

Image Source – Collision game example

Yes, I keep on posting in my regular blog. Not in Steemit but in HIVE nowadays. Steem was close to me. But sometimes, we call it a day and move on. HIVE stands for freedom! It provides enhanced expression of creativity and original thought. HIVE is output of a struggle, so the community should understand the value of freedom more. We saw Steem and realized the shortcomings. I see HIVE as a more idealistic version of Steem. True decentralization, censorship resistance, originality, creativity, harmony and honesty. This is the vision we’ve opted for.

Moving forward, I want to see HIVE to stick to the original motto of creation. The whales have responsibility to not abuse their power. Down vote battles are not desired here. We need to keep the platform clean and harmonious. We should believe in competitive altruism, which tells about raising power level by cooperation and generosity. It is extremely unconditional and awesome. We should nurture and spread love. Achievable! Isn’t it? We’ve neither a CEO nor a company to run the platform. We are a community which is supposed to evolve along with time. We should evolve but only to bring positivity.

The ninza mined stake of Steemit INC provided much needed steem power to the dapp eco system of Steem. Yes, they used the steem power for increasing popularity of the dapps. Steemit basically acted as an angel investor for many dapps and projects. In absence of the huge ninza mined stake in HIVE blockchain, we should definitely form a large decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) and generate funding to support the dapp eco system and future growth of the platform. Running a platform is not easy. It is good that we already have different kind of interfaces to blog over HIVE blockchain but a large funded DAO can surely manage balance of the eco system. The technological space is ever changing. We must focus on future HIVE development also.

There will be challenges in the future. The road to the dream will be long, challenging and often unexpected. Can it be the reason to quit? No, it does not mean that the pursuit is not worthy! The experience of pursuing our dream is often enlightening. Let us believe that we can do and every hurdle will crumble. We’re building something good, something new, something to be remembered historic in the future. Vitalik was right! A community can never be bought. HIVE is trading at 1.5-2(X) price of Steem and has established itself at 60 position of Coinmarketcap. But price isn't everything. Stay connected for the decentralized dream.

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