Do you feel like 
The Alpha Phase
Last summer, in the midst of the crypto winter, the moral on Steem was pretty low. There were a few apps but they were all struggling to survive, after the price of Steem continued to plummet. And then there was this weird project from 
Below you see the very early design:
I started to buy some cards, then more and more and when the amount of Alpha booster packs started to shrink faster and faster, I decided to get myself a full set of all cards. I swapped much of my Steem for it and it should become the best investment of my life. When the Alpha packs hit 100k, an insane rush on the remaining packs begun and the Alpha sold out on the same day. This was huge.
Kickstarter Campaign
The next part of the story was the Kickstarter campaign of Steem Monsters. For the first time in my life I inherited a little bit of money, from which I bought the Boss Monster perk. I am now impatiently patiently waiting, to become one of the three heroic boss monsters for the guild system. It was a lot of money for me but I am now looking back and feel very fortunate to have followed that call.
The Battles Begun
On October 16 last year the game finally started: On the first day we saw already 17,730 battles and the revolution for the gaming industry has started. A tradable card game on the Steem blockchain, with free and fast transactions. That was clever and so much more convenient than Crypto Kitties on Ethereum.
Steem Monsters used JSON inputs, a technology that wasn't very common back then, and allows to write information to the Steem blockchain and assigning ownership of secondary level assets, the Steem Monsters cards. They basically created the first Non-Fungible Token on the Steem blockchain and opened the way for Steem Engine, which should change everything.
After Steem Fest 3 in Krakow, the motivation was at an all-time high, just to get crushed by Steemit announcement, to lay down 70% of their staff. It came at the most ridiculous moment and was a huge disappointment. Without Steem Monsters, many people would have left back then. It was the only thing that kept me here.
Steem Keychain
To make the game more accessible and further pave the way for Steem Engine, the team ordered the development of the first browser extension wallet for Steem: Keychain came out just like that and surprised us all with a tool we never knew we were missing. But oh boy, after using it we never wanted to go back to the clumsy Steem Connect. Very quickly, other apps starting to integrate Keychain and even Steemit itself eventually did so. Having an app now that doesn't allow us accessing Steem with Keychain is kind of weird.
If you haven't installed Keychain yet, you are missing out big time: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/steem-keychain/lkcjlnjfpbikmcmbachjpdbijejflpcm
Steem Engine
Finally, Steem Engine was coming to the light of the day. My memories get blurry, as things happened so insanely fast. Seemingly every day another news came out, that increased the pace even further. At some point, it felt like reality is speeding up and following all the new announcements of communities, tokens, frontends and developments became harder and harder. ENG token, ScotBot, Steemit condenser, TokenBB, ScotTube, delegating, airdrops - we have entered the age of abundance.
As we speak, Steem Engine is exploding and I trying to keep up as best as I can. But we are seeing a glimpse of the exponential growth that, Splinterlands has initiated. It basically gave birth to #palnet, #splintertalk, #battle, #steemace, #steemleo and all the other new tribes, that are leading the way of the new token economies. Steem Engine brought us Smart Media Tokens, in a time of desperation.
Conclusion
In one year, Steem Monsters aka Splinterlands has taken the dusty Steem blockchain and put some fresh sparkling pixie dust upon it. Wondrous creatures are popping up left and right and show us new ways of curation and niche content. At the same time, the cards of Splinterlands are getting rarer and rarer and people start making a living from playing the game and monetizing the content on Steem and Splintertalk. Complimentary tribes like #battle and #steemace make it easier, to find a gaming audience and earn better rewards, while communities like #palnet enrich the power of active community supporters, inspiring #steemleo to airdrop only on PAL holders. Amazing stuff and I am grateful for all these new opportunities. Splinterlands was by far the best investment of my life.
So from the bottom of my heart: Thank you,
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