I always remember the anniversary since it matches up with my real life birthday as well. Not that I joined on my birthday but eight years ago it took two weeks for me to get an account on STEEM after signing up, since we had to wait for an account to be set up for us by the steem.inc team and there was a huge backlog since it was pumping so hard in 2017.
If things had worked out differently we could be a top 20 chain right now as we had some of the best minds in blockchain attached to the chain and a big head start on so many other projects. Even at that a lot of what we see in crypto now was thought of or pioneered by the community.
But that won't change where we are now which is still one of the best crypto communities but one that has lost a lot of it's momentum and faded into obscurity somewhat. We still have the people and the tech but we are missing the numbers and the hype.
I'm still hopeful that we break back into the upper tier of blockchains some day in the future but it will take a lot of work for that to happen. Possible, just unlikely as we stand right now.
Anyway, it's not the important part. The important part is survival and community. If we can grow the community and improve the current tokenomics then we stand a serious chance of doing well. If we continue to lose money and users then at some point the chain will become unsustainable but i don't see that happening. We have a lot of people here still working on success and all it will take is a few good apps to make that happen.
As for me, I'm happy to still be active here after all this time when so many others have fallen by the wayside. I love being here. It's my space on the internet, it's my side hustle and it's my creative outlet.
There is nowhere else exactly like hive in crypto or the internet and all other challengers are just poor imitations.
I don't have the same time to dedicate to the space as I did back in the early days but just like the chain itself, life has evolved a lot in eight years. I've bought three houses, got married, two kids, changed jobs and a hell of a lot more to boot but then again, eight years is a hell of a long time.
I guarantee that if hive is still active in another eight years then it will have changed beyond all recognition and that a lot more of the current users will have faded away too. Time makes fools of us all eventually. On the plus side the price might be over a dollar and we will have a big stack in after all that time.
Lets just watch this space and see what happens.