In the early part of 2018, the cryptocurrency world was on fire. We were not far from the all time high and optimism was over the top. It was a sign of times to come since over exuberance usually means a bear market.
Fast forward two years and we all know what happened. Bitcoin went from near $20,000 all the way back down into the $3,000 range. Our beloved STEEM took a 97% hit which was par for the course in the Alt-Coin world. Carnage is everywhere with a FUD campaign that even surprised the biggest conspiracy theorist.
Yet here we sit. On this date in February 2020, Steem is still here. In fact, it is much stronger than it was two years ago.
Yesterday, I came across a post explaining another game that is on Steem. I guess the motto is "another day, another game".
Here is the article about it:
https://steempeak.com/steemquest/@simplegame/steemquest-beta-bucking-mule-part-1
Steem is starting to see some progress on what is rolling out. After a number of years, 
Splinterlands keeps forging ahead while a newer game, HolyBread had over 1,500 players in a week.
This is all good stuff.
It is important to maintain perspective when viewing something like Steem. Using a bit of common sense, one of the main questions to keep asking is "what is being offered"? This is vital since it is what applies to users. What is on this platform?
Here is where I see the major difference between today and two years ago. Back them, Steem was basically a blogging platform. This was functional however, my view, was that it targeted to small a market. Blogging is big yet still only a small part of the Internet.
We did have D.tube which allowed for video content (vlogging) but that was going through some growing pains. Splinterlands was Steemmonsters and was still laying the foundation for the game.
There were two tokens, Steem and SBD, that were distributed. For the most part, it was tied to blog posts with anything outside of that being targeted.
That said, there was nothing wrong with the point we were at. Development was taking place. Things were starting to change and the next couple years, in spite of the bear, proved that.
Source
Today, we are much further along as compared to when the market was at its peak. The Steem ecosystem has a lot more projects that people can utilize. Hence, the offering has expanded. We are seeing the ability to cater to a great deal more interests than before.
We also see a completely new reward system in place. Whereas before the payouts were in two tokens, we now see hundreds. From what I can tell, there are a handful that people are gravitating towards which is giving them value. Of course, the original reward system is still in place since payouts of STEEM do occur each day.
Smart contracts, token creation, NFTs. They are all a part of the Steem platform. Gaming seems to be taking on an added dimension as more appear. With the JSON traffic increasing, it is evident these are making up a bigger share of Steem activity.
As the old saying goes, "Rome was not built in a day". With any new technology, there are always challenges. The fact that cryptocurrency has a market leads people to focus upon that. Nevertheless, as Tesla's stock is showing of late, the market movement is often not reflective of what is going on with the company.
I continue to focus upon the development because that is what is behind all technological success. For a platform like Steem, the key is to keep bringing out new projects while advancing the older ones. This is how things progress. Newer technologies usually lag behind the old in the early stages. Older technologies are usually better whereas the newer ones have the ability to disrupt.
Presently, I believe we are in that window. Most of the DApps cannot compete with the present applications out there. However, the potential they hold, especially in the form of innovation as it comes to a reward system, is tremendous. Over the next couple years, the gap between the two will close, meaning things are heavily favored in the direction of the DApps.
Just the other day we received an update along with a road map for another Steem-based game, CryptoBrewmaster. This is slated to go live in April. What I find interesting about this project is they intend to target the microbrewers of the world. There are well over a million of them. While it is not the biggest market in the world, it most likely is a dedicated group. From some of the plans, it sounds like these could be loyal people to bring on board.
Here is that announcement:
There is a lot going on that can change things. We are still early in 2020 and look at all that took place already. Certainly, a much of this was in the works long before this but that is the point: there is a lot going on behind the scenes right now with projects that will be announced throughout the year.
All this adds up to a platform that is much stronger than it was a couple years ago. Markets go up and down yet steadily development moves things forward.
It is going to be very exciting to see what else rolls out this year.
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Posted via Steemleo