So, the Netcoins contest has drawn to a close and the final votes are in. As an unexpected turn of events during the last few hours, INS coin shifted past Verge to then blast into the heavens there after. Thousands upon thousands of INS votes poured in until by some hideous miracle, they caught up to and surpassed Steem. Therefore alas, we lost out at the penultimate hour. Well, superficially anyways...
IT WAS A FIX! You trying to tell me that some steel-clad knights in shining armour came galloping to the rescue of INS at the eleventh hour? I mean, in a period of 50 minutes, 3,000 votes were inexplicably cast out of nowhere! It smells worse than a month old tuna sandwich and reeks to the heavens of pure bullshit. Sure, I see some people skirting around telling it like it really is, but I think I'll just point out the glaring elephant in the room wearing a pink leotard and bow tie. Whereas the stream of votes coming in support of Steem had a consistent flow throughout, Verge and INS were an amalgamation of scattered "block votes", plain and simple. It remains to be seen how the final tally will be counted and verified, but the actual victor is clear as day to me. Call me biased (which I obviously am) but there's a tonne of evidence to back up what I say.
Another thing that I'd like to mention (which I lightly touched upon in my previous post) was the surprise of some at how little the community actually bandied together in support of this contest. Given the sheer amount of accounts floating around out there, surely we should have been way ahead from the get go. Whilst I understand that statement to some degree, did anyone else notice how the other contenders were doing? I believe there were over one hundred other applicants, but feel free to correct me on that. Dash was one of them, receiving a poultry few hundred votes. Yes, "that" Dash! Electroneum (which I'm also currently invested in) only managed to garner a few hundred too. In fact, it was only Verge, INS and Steem that gained any real traction and given the dubious nature of proceedings mentioned in the last paragraph, I reckon we all ought to be pretty proud of our overall final placings.
I guess it's just human nature to see the negative before the positive. I'm like that too, to some extent. But in regards to the run we just had in this contest, it's a huge success in the context of comparison to the competition we were up against. In addition, bear in mind that the whole Steem blockchain is still a work-in-progress. When general sentiment in the crypto space turns around and we got SMT's up and running, the picture will change overnight. I've seen it before in December 2017 going into January 2018 and I'm sure I'll be see it again.
Stay optimistic, try and consider the "good" in these landmark achievements for Steem and wait for the inevitable unlocking of an unbelievably awesome future for this blockchain. :)