*This post is written on behalf of the "Project Curie" team members: @donkeypong @the-alien @liberosist @kevinwong @anwenbaumeister @infovore @gavvet @steemship and @cryptogee.
One thing that sets steem apart from the rest of crypto-currencies is that it has its very own the social aspect, because lets we forget, steemit is a social media platform after all.
What’s brilliant about the whole thing is that mass adoption just happens to be the number one goal for any currency that aims to compete with fiat. And if you have the social part covered and you nurture it well enough, then you’ll have half the battle won.
Bitcoin was the first of its kind and it paved the way to the rest. So it’s easy to forget how hard it was to explain Bitcoin to our friends just a few years ago. The most immediate reaction was certainly fear and mistrust, because at the end of the day, anything unfamiliar can be scary as far as the public is concerned. Part of it at least.
But suppose that you are a supporter of Bitcoin, you would want more people to start using the currency, would you not?
The very same thing applies here with steemit, many of us steemians (I’ll even adventure myself and say most of us) want the same thing for steemit, we want more people to join, more amazing content to keep coming in, more brilliant personalities joining us, more coverage and media exposure and if needed, more investors.
And that’s why we do what we do.
Some of us were here in the early days and we have been lucky enough watch steemit grow, and like any other ecosystem, when the platform grows, the market expands and offers new opportunities.
Those needs were then filled by people who designed all kinds of apps and tools that were needed to assist in the organic expansion of steemit. Which exactly how societies grow.
Even today as I write this, there are people who are working hard trying to open online stores operating within the steemit sphere thus allowing the currency to stay within the system, which as you can expect, is a fantastic idea.
The truth is, we’re waiting for the steemit market place.
Meanwhile as the community kept growing, other needs started to appeared the platform, in this case it was that the number of daily users was growing faster than some ‘whales’ could catch up to it.
All of the sudden, increasing numbers of new users that were finally starting to make their way to steemit, and it became harder for those who have higher voting power to read everything, after all they probably have a lot of important things to do.
Matter of a fact I have no doubt that steemit whales were and still are trying hard to find and reward good content.
The problem however, is that Math doesn’t negotiate.
There are roughly 35,000 active users on steemit at the moment. So as you might expect, it’s very hard that a small number of whales will be able to keep up with ever increasing popularity of our great platform.
How many posts can one person read per day? Then analyze them, check them for plagiarism...etc.
As we said, you can’t argue with math.
By then the number of new users just kept increasing, and many people started complaining, And when these things happen, you can either sharpen the wood stakes and pitch forks and blame the whales for failing the omnipresence test.
Or you can take a deep breath, put yourself in their situation, and even offer your help if necessary.
Part of the Solution or Part of the Problem?
In the end, it was all down to one question:
What if we were able to solve part of the problem by allocating some whales voting power into the hands of several people as opposed to only one account?
That way, a team of highly dedicated steemians can cover much more ground than a single person ever would, right?
And that’s how the voluntary agreement came in:
Mostly thanks to @nextgencrypto’s kindness to allocate his voting power for a good purpose in coordination with a group of individuals that would be able to offer more due diligence and get more work done.
And that’s how it all started.
One month later, we found ourselves curating over two thousand posts, rewarding 763 unique authors in the process.
Now we’re starting using the numbers to our advantage.
And for that we wish to thank @pharesim, @val, @silversteem and @clayop along with @berniesanders and obviously @nextgencrypto.
Thank you for helping us reward more deserving posts!
After all, how many daily posts can a single person cover? A group of dedicated people however, this is starting to have more potential, right?
Sharing the load and working together around the clock in search of fresh content, new authors and valuable additions is now done on a much more efficient way.
The idea was very simple, forming a team of enthusiastic steemians who believe in the future of steemit and were willing to sacrifice some good time and energy to land a helping hand, because in the end we all want the same.
By then, steemit was growing faster than ever and the more help these guys can get, the better. Right?
This is Just The Beginning
Now a new wave of artists, writers are arriving to steemit, many of them creating some quality content. All of them have discovered the potential of this disruptive platform, they realized its future impact, and how it can help them improve their situation.
And steemit could use the extra audience and their work to grow and expand.
So found ourselves in the middle of a two mutually beneficial factors, we had the opportunity to help those who create quality content and add to the community.
And at the same time we could assist the whales since there’s still that math problem lingering around, and maybe sometimes, you offer your help instead of expecting them to do it all on their own.
The truth is, we were given a great chance to help, and we didn’t look behind ever since.
As time passed by, we learned to organize better. We started to make group decisions and asking for a second opinions on each post that we find. Before long, we became a type of fully functional machine whose only purpose is to help struggling content creators, and if possible, assisting steemit to continue being the beautiful game changer that it is by changing a few lives.
One post at a time.
After all, steemit has been a godsend to many of us, and sometimes when good things come your way, you give back. So that’s what we are doing today, we are trying to pass it forward.
Finally we started to make some difference.
We don’t mind putting in the hours, the attention and the support because what we discovered is that helping other people is one of the most gratifying emotions that one can ever experience.
This may sound strange to you, but some of the comments may very well remain engraved in our memories, people being thankful that their work is finally paying off.
Can you imagine how it feels when you find yourself behind the scenes, landing an invisible helping hand while no one knows that you’re there?
Even more rewarding is watching the surprise and happiness in struggling writers as they realize that they made the right choice by not giving up.
For us there is no doubt, we made the right decision forming this group.
After all, some of us have already written our own stories to try encourage people to stay strong and persist and not give up on steemit yet. So when given the opportunity to make a small difference as we have given, there is only one question that crosses your mind:
How can you possibly turn that down?
How will this story will end? Or what plans does the future hold for steemit? We don’t know the answers, and that’s just a journey we don’t have a map for. All that we know is that we are grateful to be invited to this beautiful ride and to be among you.
We hope that we can continue helping each other, inspiring each other and learning from one another.
Because at the end of the day, if there is anything that defines a social media platform, is its human quality.
“If she's amazing, she won't be easy. If she's easy, she won't be amazing. If she's worth it, you won’t give up. If you give up, you're not worthy. ... Truth is, everybody is going to hurt you; you just gotta find the ones worth suffering for.” ― Bob Marley.
Why we do what we do? Because she's amazing.
From Curie with love
Sources:
Special thanks to @royaltiffany for her amazing and dedicated work in the chat channel