Your history teacher hasn't really lived what he teaches you about, right?
Sure, it would be exciting if he would have been there and able to bring in the details as he lived them. Or horrifying, maybe...
Here on Steem we have people who have been here since the beginnings. Few post constantly anymore, and the stories they'd have to tell wouldn't horrify anyone, instead they would make us appreciate even more what we have today.
I added up some information I found by reading through some old posts of @timcliff and @pfunk and on the all-knowing Wikipedia, and it seemed like I've been teleported to a different world.
How do you think Steem started?
I believed, as many of you probably do, Steemit.com has been around since the beginning of the Steem blockchain.
Well, no, it hasn't. At first it was the blockchain and all the interactions with it, every operation and transaction was made using a command-line interface (CLI).
Can you imagine that time? Would you have joined Steem back then?
Can you imagine yourself posting via command line? By the way, this CLI still exists and it's called cli_wallet.
Then... a prettier interface came up. No, it wasn't Steemit.com! It was Steemd.com (announced in April 2016 by its developer @roadscape)!
And finally, Steemit.com was launched on June 4th, 2016, says Wikipedia, which also tells us that "On July 14, 2016, Steemit announced on their website that they were hacked. The attack, according to them, has compromised about 260 accounts. A little less than US$ 85,000 worth of Steem Dollars and Steem are reported to have been taken by the attackers."
Those were some rough beginnings, weren't they?
A few more things we should know about the early Steemit.com:
- there were no followers
- there were no resteems
- there were no delegations
- there were no notification services
- there were no alternative dapps yet
Common, there's no way to build a presence without all of these features! Well, early adopters did, and it was probably more personal back then, meaning you probably had to engage one-on-one a lot more if you wanted exposure!
We are only two years after those times, and we're now expecting a few major waves of changes coming upon us. The difference is we are also here now, so we will be in the middle of the events ourselves!
Hopefully I've got the facts straight. Every once in a while, it helps if one of the O.G.'s reminds us of the path we've traveled so far, from their unique perspective.