What Could Have Been…

Despite my lower amounts of engagement over the last couple of months, I continue to engage with the community often at least to read what is going on around the ecosystem. While that has not been as exciting as it once was, it provides great perspective and keeps me up to date about things that continue to develop (or not) around the community. My main tool to do this has been Hive account@partiko since discovering it last year. I think that their quick deployment of a simple and very mobile tool was probably what allowed me to engaged as much as I used to. In fact, it could be said that the development team's active engagement with the community was what increased engagement around the ecosystem,

Unfortunately, it seems that it is becoming to be on of the latest Dapps or projects on the list of inactive. I refuse to say dead because I continue to engage with it on a daily basis and see many others doing the same. It continues to be the first place I go to get my Steem feed fix on a daily basis when I have some down time. While the notification system seems to be no longer working, the other notifications I get help me notice when I want to read something or engage immediately. My real fear is that it will ultimately die and leave a great community that was built unmotivated to continue engaging in the ecosystem because of the lack of tools to do so.

They did a great job motivating the community with challenges and contest which sometimes resulted in great opportunities for many users to build community and remain in the ecosystem. I feel that they fostered behaviors that were key to retaining users and keeping them active. They were also the first to monetize as well as they introduced optional advertising which I did not even mind watching. In fact, they were able to integrate it with a points system that although they were not tokenized, provided with gamification to entertain those in the community with a competitive sense (like me).

Now that I still have so many points (always the hoarder in me), I have thought about what could have been or could still be. I am not sad about never having the opportunity to turn in the points for upvotes nor do I really miss the upvotes for participating in the first round of delegation; I am sad that my favorite way to engage with the community could be in danger of dissapearing. I do not look forward to going back to the days of using a mobile browser to get on Steemit or other front end although I believe eSteem could be a good replacement (need to catch up on that project). It is disappointing as well as I could see how this sudden stop of development has also attributed to the decline in engagement given how popular the Dapp had become.

The last couple of weeks I have been watching the main account to see any signs of activity and have not seen any. It seems like the voting has stopped when looking at Steem World and their Discord is pretty muted. While it is unfortunate to see it this way and surprising that it happened without notice, I still believe that possibilities remain to move it forward. It really only takes the passion and interest of a few community members to bring interest back. I believe that this could still be a great business venture as well considering the progress they had already reached in their development.

Instead of just disappearing, why not sell the project? I, for one, would be interested in being a part of a group to support it whether it be with capital, Steem Power or engagement. However, given the time that has passed, I am not sure if it is still a possibility given my lack of technical know-how. My passion for Steem would like to revive this project and I would imagine others would as well. It is one of the few delegations I have that I am holding on to in the hope that it can make a comeback.

Am I missing anything? I wonder if this could be a great project to try to bring back successfully given the amount of users I believe it still has. The technology is pretty good considering that it still works with what seemingly is little to no support. I hope this can be the little spark that can start the conversation and possibilities of what can still be!