In March 2020 - almost a year ago now - I created my account on Hive. This was shortly after the fork of Steem, which was discussed in the media. After I had an eye on this platform from time to time, I finally made the decision to register here. Although I don't like to talk about my experiences, goals and developments on this platform every week, I think that a rough summary of my experience of the last 12 months and related thoughts have their place.
That's why you're now reading this post where I document my thoughts. Here's what I'm going to cover:
- My original expectations
- The experiences of the first months
- Why I expanded my stake after all
- General feedback & criticism
- The outlook
- Summary of my experience
My original expectations - back to the beginning
I didn't have any real expectations for this platform. For me, the whole thing was an experiment that I wanted to get involved with. Initially, I purchased 500 Hive and loaded it onto the account to play along a bit. In doing so, I only stayed on Hive.Blog in the beginning until someone pointed me to Leofinance.io at some point. Before that, I thought I could declare my Hive experiment a failure. The experience of the first months was not really exhilarating. The content that was flushed down my timeline was anything but interesting, plus I saw the same names over and over again. It became clear to me relatively quickly that these authors are long-time members of this platform, who automatically (through bot activity of the voters) end up in the charts with every blog. My impression was that the content of a blog doesn't matter at all and in the end what matters is who publishes it.
But well, so as mentioned I found my way on LeoFinance and was - at least to some extent - positively surprised. The content was more in line with my interests, I liked the UI better and the performance was much more pleasant. This led me not to stop my experiment prematurely, but on the contrary - to become more active. I have written over 700 posts and comments in this last year, which is a lot for me and shows that I gave it a true chance.
The experience of the first months
As touched on above, I spent my first few months mostly on Hive. I didn't know exactly how these Tribes worked, and I hadn't heard of LeoFinance either. At the time, I was playing around with animation programs and shared some insights on that. However, I realized that there was no appropriate audience here. The posts that flushed into my timeline weren't really interesting for the most part. Very much classic nonsense social media. It's not meant as harshly as it might sound, but I've never really been receptive to all this lifestyle, Instagram and hasn't-seen stuff. I had the impression that I received a kind of "welcome gift" at the beginning, as my first posts recorded above-average interaction and rewards. That was surprising at first and made me happy.
However, I did get one or two votes on the following posts, but the actual interaction I had hoped for did not take place at all. This led to some disappointment, especially since it was not easy for me to find good posts that interested me so that I could start this interaction.
It got significantly better after I came across LeoFinance. Sure, my graphic activities don't really have a place here. Unless of course you could use some help with your digital presence - I'm happy to offer my help there [You could check out an example at 
But well, back to the matter at hand. Even after my first contact with LeoFinance I was not convinced to be on this platform much longer. It is simply due to the popularity that on other platforms such as Reddit (admittedly, especially r/cc is getting worse here) tend to find more and sometimes more interesting content. I have also noticed that some people here act as news outlets and try to sell slightly modified contributions from Reddit or established news sites as their own outpouring - even though the source is mentioned. I prefer the simple link to the original article to get a picture, if the author has no special additions or a corresponding own opinion on the respective topic to offer. I noticed this so strongly at the beginning because I mainly kept an eye on the trends on LeoFinance. Here, too, a few top authors appear increasingly, but the ratio seems less critical to me than on Hive. There are also constantly times completely new names that provide good input.
After these first months, my perspective was rather not to lose sight of this project, but neither to increase my stake, nor to invest much time here. I had by now a bit more than the first 500 hive, guess it was 2-3 thousand and also got tempted to buy a small share of Leo.
I bought 500 Leo tokens and that was a bit of a taboo break for me. Let me explain why. After taking satisfactory profits during the 2017/2018 peak, I still had some open shitcoin "positions" that I still hold to this day. As you can imagine, most of these Shitcoins made decent losses and lost 99% of their value in some cases. For me, the real cost here is felt to be zero, because I picked the money absolutely undeservedly from the Cryptotree in 2017, but still, after this experience I decided to be less diversified position and convert profits to BTC.
Now I was definitely interested in the Leo token, however I was put off by the fact that you could buy it solely through Hive Engine. Also the fact that I can't know my Hive or my Leo tokens (unless I convert them to wLeo) are safe on my ledger. Add to that the low volume and the associated high spread. In the end, however, I got my way, bought the aforementioned 500 Leo and decided to look further first. Possibly I also let myself be influenced a bit here, but good. It is what it is.
Why I expanded my Stake after all.
I like stonks. I like steaks. Joking aside - I've definitely spent a lot of time here the last weeks and months and can well imagine that this project - Leofinance in particular - will get a lot more attention in the long run than it currently does. The frequency of noteworthy updates on the part of the founder is really amazing for me and I believe that he really puts his heart into this project. That's a very important pro for me for now. After hearing about the planned release of ProjectBlank and LeoFi, this frankly filled me with a bit of fomo. I've been testing D.Buzz for the last few weeks and could well imagine ProjectBlank taking the whole microblogging theme to a new level. That's why I've been practicing a bit - I never tweeted before and only registered on Twitter after Hive - but these short posts are already saying a lot to me. In some cases I even get more interaction there than under my regular blogs. LeoFi could also be launched at the right time and attract some Defi disciples who have not yet made first contact with the platform. Since I have now taken various updates that several airdrops on LeoHolder coming I have so another Shitcoin position (So real Shitcoin, namely EOS - have been allowed to realize when selling again how crappy this EOS actually is.) liquidated and:
Increased my stake to 2800 LP.
Initially I started with 500 Hive, I have also expanded this over the last few months piece by piece, so that I now at least:
10,000 HP.
Sure, all are not huge sums, but now my vote on both platforms is at least a rudimentary real vote and my articles are more interesting for potential readers (since my readers know that I upvote almost every comment and am too lazy to use that slider that lets you set the percentages.
I'm considering liquidating another Shitcoin position in the coming week, but it might be worth holding, which is why I'm still mulling it over here. I guess we'll see how that turns out in the end.
So in summary, my opinion has changed in that I want to get more involved in this experiment and take the risk of falling back into older Shitcoin patterns. I'm excited to see how LeoFi and ProjectBlank go live in the foreseeable future and just want to be there. Yes - see what you made me do - you fomo preachers!
General feedback and criticism
Yes, the experience of the first months is already described in detail above. Here is a clean list of things that I find good and things that can be improved in my opinion:
Pros:
- Good communication from the LeoFinance team
- Partly unique and very instructive content
- Web3.0 application - but in terms of performance like Web2.0 (very big plus compared to other hive front ends)
- Less centered distribution of reward pool than on Hive (rough estimate, but should be true)
- Looking beyond - building bridges with bLeo and wLeo
- Long term expansion of intrinsic value of LP tokens through "follow-on projects".
Cons:
- Lots of content without real added value - challenges, daily updates on blockchain games, news outlets (e.g. at Tesla, one out of two users made a post about it) and off-topic blogs.
- Comparatively small community (which will hopefully change over time without bringing disadvantages to the platform).
- Cult of personality - partly I have the impression that posts get a certain reach not because of the quality, but because of the author. This probably also has something in common with autovotes. At least, this impression has partially arisen in me.
- LeoDex is not usable due to lack of liquidity.
- Partly there is too much content on the platform, that says "come on Leofinance". The crux is that this content outside LeoFinance could provide for new users, but inside LeoFinance can give the impression that you are dealing with a "religion". I have this impression with many cryptocurrencies when I look at the individual subs on Reddit. Find times should avoid this or at least reduce.
- Graphics of Leofinance - also the logo of LeoDex - are based on freely available vector graphics, which are probably massively represented in similar modifications on the net. This means that recognition value is lost and, from my perspective, it's not really professional either. Just as a hint.
- People on this platform sometimes seem to be interested exclusively in the rewards. (Otherwise I can't explain some reactions to some of my downvotes) But here LeoFinance directly can't do anything for it. I just think that in the long run there is a possibility to counteract this.
Outlook
I plan to stay active on this platform. I even "recruited" a colleague of mine yesterday and created an account for him. This was possible thanks to my 10k HP by using the resource credits. I remain excited about the new projects and will see to it that I also keep the airdrops and do not sell them, so that I really get involved in a longer-term experiment. I am also constantly trying to increase the quality of my posts. So I created a blog design specifically for this platform, which I am constantly expanding. I am also trying to get better in terms of frequency. I had briefly thought about writing a post here every day - but this doesn't seem possible in terms of time. At least not if I want to write something more than a means to an end - and that is definitely my ambition. With the release of ProjectBlank, I will continue to practice my MicroBlogging techniques and hereby invite you to follow me now to not miss any of the fun. If I will expand my stake further I don't know at the moment. Here comes time - comes advice.
Summary
In the last year my stake here has increased by 10k Hive and 2,8k LP. After some initial uncertainty I decided to keep an eye on this project in the long run and to become a more solid part of this community. However, I remain critical, both in terms of development, but also in terms of user activity on this platform. However, I am willing to put up with this uncertainty and see how things develop. If I will expand my stake again I can't say at the moment, let me surprise you. And leave a follow at this point, because - as you understood when you read this far - you might not get rid of me that fast.