Foreword
As some of you may know, I am currently struggling to remain active due to hectic work schedules and my initial idea was to change my approach a bit and focus more on engagement rather than creating new content, but it hasn't been easy at all.. In fact, it has been literally impossible for me to spend a single minute on Hive or LeoFinance the past week and that affects me negatively in various ways.
Unfortunately, it doesn't seem like I'm having much luck going forward either... But I guess that is what happens when you work at a hospital during this tragic Covid-19 times.
However, even though I haven't been active and I've had both Hive- and LeoPower idling at 100% multiple times over the last days... I just couldn't allow myself to be on the sidelines without participating in the 'LEOFINANCE Challenge' by @josediccus.
As I value LeoFinance greatly and don't hesitate to talk about it openly, this challenge was basically a perfect fit for me. Not only for this specific challenge though, but for future content as well. You see, even though I might be inactive, I am still coming up with new ideas and stuff to put in motion once I am able (or allowed) to catch a break.
I admit it though, it's extremely frustrating to be practically forced to not spend time on LeoFinance.. And that takes us to the start of this story. This will be split into parts as I want to include as much information as possible but still make it easy to read and follow.
My LeoFinance Story
I have talked about my passion for LeoFinance several times before and for anyone that has been following me, most of these things won't be new... - But they are important nonetheless.
Some of my previous articles:
Strong Classes = Sturdy Foundation To Build On.
Holy Sh#.. Lion! - Top 20 Author During My FIRST Month On LEO!
How To Earn Crypto From Blogging In 2021
Lion For A Month - Greatest Adventure Ever!
How Crypto & Blockchain Technology Has Changed My Life.
I have been an active Lion for more than a month and my results have been amazing. I have produced content, been actively curating and engaging and I was even on the leaderboards for most comments three weeks in a row. It took me 23 days to see my name in the top 20 LEO authors as well, so what I have done works. The time I have spent and the things I have done have paid off. It's undeniable.
The success I've had didn't come easy though, and it was definitely not something I took for granted or actually believed would be possible... And I will tell you why, but I will take you through my entire story before you'll be able to understand more about what LeoFinance actually means to me.
I joined Steem in July 2016 and I have witnessed and/or been a part of literally everything that has taken place since that day. In one way or another. While many things was amazing and felt encouraging during the early days, things started to go downhill rather quickly. Despite some cool all time highs in terms of price every now and then, the overall feeling and more specifically, my personal feeling was that Steem was slowly but steadily dying. I won't even mention Ned, Justin or what followed, but I can tell you that I was on the brink of giving up more than a handful of times.. Even when we saw Hive.
Hive was nothing like I had imagined. Truth to be told, I was expecting something entirely different with Hive. I was looking for an improved version of Steem, with new and better leadership. I was certain of the fact that we would see tremendous hype and that literally everything would be different. I mean, we've seen Steem for years.. We have experience now.
- I was wrong.
Hive was, to me, identical to what we had seen on Steem for a very long time. The same authors on trending, boring circle-jerks, selfishness and greed to mention some of those things.
One thing I quickly questioned was why so many users continued to use steem while they did nothing but talking shit about Justin, Ned or Steem, but people's actions are often steered by money. I honestly find that behaviour rather disgusting, but I've never liked greed or endorsed selfishness..
I have always, since my first days on Steem talked about the importance of having a sturdy foundation, how vital a strong middle class is and that greed and selfishness is like the plague..
I launched and co-launched multiple initiatives and projects to push people to new heights, to support, encourage and motivate people to grind regardless of the rewards and I convinced dozens of people to stay when they were about to give up and leave. I did all of that as a small user, because the size of my wallet wasn't what spoke to people.
- I did.
I can honestly say that I never really felt like anyone cared much about what I said or the things I did, except for other small users.. With a few exceptions:
Dan Larimer on Steem was one of the few people who seemed to care about a nobody like me. I was amazed over the incredible support he gave me in terms of upvotes during my early days on Steem, and he seemed to understand- and support my ideas.
I am not a crypto- or blockchain genius and even though I have more experience nowadays compared to my early days on Steem, I am far from an expert. I still consider myself to be a nobody with slim to none knowledge, but that is also because I have always wanted to identify myself with the average user.
I have never liked the idea of all the in-depth descriptions and clarifications about how everything works and the tedious tech-talks that doesn't interest anyone but the few real crypto/Hive-fanatics. I never liked the idea of how people tried to promote Steem (or Hive) as a personal cash cow but more importantly, I never, ever liked that so many important users focused on educating the 'average user' about blockchain-technology, because truth is that most people does not care..
Many of the 'leaders' we've seen since the days of Steem seems to have missed that part entirely though, and that is something that I personally believe is hurting us immensely.
That being said, I appreciate every single piece of content that has been published and shared in attempts to educate others, because I think that is a vital ingredient to get more 'nerds' to participate and that is how we will eventually see a better leadership as well..
I just don't like that most of those articles was never laid out in an easy to understand format, and that they were never written and explained in a way that the average user would understand. These leaders and blockchain-geniuses we've seen seemed to be only focused on like-minded users, and that is just a fraction of the users we have seen since the days of Steem. I have always wanted more focused on the masses, which is the average Bob and Jane, who are using Facebook or Instagram on a daily basis.
They don't need to understand exactly why they earn tokens or how the tokens are created, they just need to understand that they can earn, how they can earn more and how to use the money in real life..
- Where it actually matters.
Seriously speaking, we know how cool it is to grow our accounts, to stake tokens and have more influence, but that doesn't attract the average users. The Facebook, Instagram or Twitter-users doesn't care about staking tokens, because most of them doesn't even understand what tokens are. They understand money and that is the biggest selling point, regardless of what some people might think.
That is some of the things I did in the past. I was acting like a support-pillar for newcomers and small accounts. I tried to help them out and we had a discord channel of more than 300 users when we where active. We accomplished that with the use of my personal account with 1000 Steem at the time.
We worked hard and spent countless hours to push people into minnowhood while we saw others having hefty delegations doing far less for the community.. We believed in what we did and we put up a good fight doing that for several months, but for various reasons we eventually shut down the project.
At this point, most of us involved in these projects had gone through feelings of being overlooked, despair and anxiety in various forms. We felt meaningless, despite the growth of our discord channel and the success we had because we didn't get help or attention from larger- or wealthier accounts that could've helped us with our goals.
One thing to add here is that none of us were looking to earn a single token for ourselves for our efforts. We did this solely to strenghten the community and in an attempt to strenghten the platform. So we were unique in that way, as all the other initiatives out there at that point filled their own pockets in various ways for doing literally the same thing..
I have come across a few people thinking in the same lines as me over the years though, and @fulltimegeek is one of my absolute favorites. He was a firm believer in the pay-it-forward approach and he used all his power to spread the tokens far and wide across the platform with his Stewards of Gondor initiative.
Instead of talking, he put his money where his mouth was and did the opposite of what the majority of the other stakeholders did. He stopped earning rewards for himself. We managed to spread tokens to several thousands of accounts per week and this encouraged people to participate, contribute and engage..
That is a great leader. A great leader posses a clear vision, is courageous, has integrity, honesty, humility and clear focus. Great leaders help people reach their goals, and that is what FTG did. At the expense of his own returns. He paved the way for others by being selfless and a good role model.
Unfortunately, that initiative never reached its full potential. It didn't inspire and convince other stakeholders to do something similar with their stakes, because truth is, that people are not willing to let go off short term gains.
It's actually rather funny, the people who are most vocal about being long-term holders are often the ones who are most focused on short term gains. They want more tokens, regardless of the value. Quantity is the focus because they are crossing their fingers hoping for a miracle...
And that is the reality and overall feeling I've felt and experienced ever since the early days on Steem, with some exceptions here and there. Some exceptions better than others.
LeoFinance is very different in many aspects though, but you will have to wait for the next part to find out why and to hear more about my LeoFinance story.
Last but not least, I will also tell you that LeoFinance has changed my previous mindset and that I look at Hive with different eyes today, all because of LeoFinance.