Happy forkday Hive!

Can it really be a year since Hive was created? In some ways it feels longer as so much has happened.

Sorry, but I ate the cake already

In Febrary last year Ned Scott sold the Steemit brand to Justin Sun for an undisclosed amount. Others have written up that story. Basically the community witnesses took action to prevent the massive Steemit stake being abused as it had not generally been used for voting before. Sun reacted by setting up a load of puppet witnesses with support from some exchanges. There was then a real battle by both sides to get their witnesses into the top twenty. The community effectlve lost and went their own way by creating Hive. Unfortunately the funds of some big accounts were illegally seized. There was some fun when someone managed to intercept that and temporarily divert it, but I believe the original holders have not been compensated. Please correct me if I am wrong.

I was pretty angry about what had been done and expressed that in comments on posts by Steemit and Sun. That got me censored there, but I was able to withdraw my $Steem and sell it for $Hive. There was no point in me sticking around if nobody would see my posts or comments. There is now a clause in their terms of service that says users will not:

14.1.7. Use our services to promote third-party platforms or to promote each other without our written permission.

So much for freedom and decentralisation. I do not generally go there any more, but I just saw that some accounts are really milking the rewards with hardly any interaction. I have not heard of any real developments there, but then I do not go looking for such news. I suspect that those with an interest are managing to prop up the $Steem price. It really ought to be worth much less given that it is not decentralised.

Anyway I have marked this significant day with another power up. I bought some extra $Hive for this.

I want to be able to give bigger votes to deserving people. My delegation is mainly to @tenkminnows which supports small accounts. They need support to grow.

There has been lots of great development since the fork, but we still have much to do. Hundreds of users either did not move to Hive or dropped out since the fork. We have yet to re-attain the numbers of dolphins, orcas and whales we had before. We need a core of large accounts to get a better distribution of rewards.

Despite that I still have confidence in the potential of Hive. We have lots of new dapps including games and there are more ways to get involved with investing. We need a combination of investors, creators and general users to make this platform a success. There is still nothing else quite like it, but others are bound to come along to capture the public attention. Hive has been a little lacking in press coverage since the excitement of the fork. Stories can be hard to find due to the generic name. I wish something more unique could have been chosen as there even other blockchain projects called Hive. That may cause some confusion.

Given the lack of a figurehead leader and controlling company it is up to the community to make Hive great and get the world talking about it. Some are already doing plenty of that on other platforms, but more is always good. We have to bring in the early adopters who will make it more attractive. A few big 'influencers' or musicians or artists who bring in thousands of fans could make a massive difference. We cannot rely just on those who get deplatformed elsewhere.

I hope others will mark this important #ForkDay and post about it.

Hive five!