In Appreciation…

The improvement in prices of our tokens and the general cryptocurrency market has continue to encourage me in a positive way. Given the prospect of blockchain technology being a revolution for society, I think that we all benefit from these improvements. I have recently been thinking more of what I can give rather than what I can receive in this process. I believe that the best way to win in the long term is to give to others so that we can foster a community and ecosystem of growth and engagement. These thoughts have kept me thinking of ways to add value across the ecosystem without taking too much. I had not thought of one aspect until I came across a great post by Hive account@galenkp yesterday. In this post, he highlights the importance of appreciation. While I have become very grateful for all I have and those that surround me, I have never thought truly about those in the ecosystem that do so much for it.

Hive account@galenkp’s post challenged us to write a post about a user that we most appreciate in the ecosystem with reasons why. When I started brainstorming about my focus for this post, I had a number of great Steemians come to mind. While I will not name them all, I have come to appreciate many in the community for various reasons whether it be engagement, developing, supporting, or just great posts to read and consume. I ultimately decided to cheat a little bit as I chose Hive account@steemcommunity to appreciate.

Hive account@steemcommunity is a witness that runs a project to track and encourage engagement in the ecosystem. It is run by two great people, Hive account@paulag and Hive account@abh12345. While they independently run some great content on the platform for the benefit of the community, they also came together to form a witness to support both the protocol and the community. The account provides weekly posts to track the progress of upcoming users on the platform and how they have grown their Steem Power from week to week. I have always believed that recognition is an easy and cheap form of motivation which is why taking the time to run such leagues is great around the ecosystem. I, myself, have benefited from participating in many of these leagues that have monitored my progress and provided me with the metrics to make adjustments and engage accordingly.

I feel that they are providing long-term, sustainable value to our community and ecosystem and while I don’t do it very often, I would promote giving them your witness vote. They have recently also joined the latest Minnow initiative that promotes reaching 10,000 individual Minnows on the protocol. They have worked with a group of individuals that will be engaging purposely and directly with these accounts to help them achieve those goals. I think this initiative of Minnows is another example of how we can create value over time for the community. I have even, for the first time, joined the correction trail that they have created to support these users that sign up for the challenge during this month of March. Please read about it in their latest post.

My pivotal point here in the ecosystem came from a similar initiative last summer called #minnowuprising led by Hive account@taskmaster4450. The original thought of the initiative was to foster and increase engagement among the community for Plankton and Minnows to actively post new content and for all of the community to support with upvotes in an effort to build their accounts into Minnowhood. It was the moment when I decided that I wanted to be a Dolphin in the community. It made me realize the importance of active engagement not only from a reward perspective but also from a community perspective as I got to meet a number of great people that share great content across the ecosystem. I hope that this initiative can do the same for others and at the same time improve the metrics of our growing community. Distributing more Steem Power to these users will ultimately lead to more value and more interest to participate in the future building and expansion of the blockchain.