Yesterday was Hive account@eqko's birthday.

He invited us to his house for some nice drinks and a barbeque.

(And before you ask) Yes, Project Steemfat is in full effect but not when there is a party. It just doesn't work.

Steem took up 95% of the conversation.

It's funny because about a year ago I could have mentioned STEEM on the same birthday and nobody would have batted an eye.

How things have changed.

The reason is pretty simple I guess. It has become way more clear what the Steem blockchain is and what can be done with it.

It's more than blogging. It's becoming a social economic platform.

Hive account@eqko, for instance, is a designer. He makes designs for other Steemians and they pay him in SBD or STEEM.

For him, this is a better way of earning crypto than with blogging. But he's earning crypto none the less!

This is one of his latest desgin, pretty awesome right.

But even if you think it's not, the monetization of the Steem blockchain is.

Hive account@eqko for offering his services is facilitating a use case for SBD.

You simply can't pay him with euros or US dollars on here. It has to be SBD.

And you can transfer this without giving up a whole bunch of personal information (like going through a bank). It's also fast. 3 seconds! And it's open, so everyone can see the transaction occurred.

More and more use cases for the SBD are being found and explored. It's a wonderful thing to see and for me, it's the driving force for the further success of the STEEM blockchain.

Talking all night about the Steem blockchain

Earning Steem through blogging is becoming harder and harder. This is not a bad thing, it basically means the Steem blockchain is becoming more and more successful.

But the monetization of the chain through business, services or development is where the next success will come from for the users that want to grab that opportunity.

Sitting together with the 4 of us we realized that we could actually make a good team.

We have a designer ( Hive account@eqko ), a programmer ( Hive account@bennierex ), the idea machine ( Hive account@s3rg3 ), and me (lol).