Let me share something with you, dear grandchildren of mine. You may be taking blockchain technology and peer-to-peer cryptocurrency economy of 2064 for granted but it was not always like it is right now. In 2016, your favorite cryptocurrency Steem was launched and initially—unlike the thousands of evolutionary uses it has today—it had only one front-end called Steemit.com, which remained its face for a long time before Steem based apps, SMTs, and peer-to-peer economies started flourishing.
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You may not know this but YouTube used to be the biggest online video sharing website and the most profitable one as well. The Dtube happened and things started changing. As if video sharing was not enough, DLive happened too. After seeing @dtube and @dlive succeed, some brilliant people of that time saw an opportunity and started making online video sharing websites on SMT protocol provided by Steem. They became a sensation and everything video-content, from religious content to good old porn, shifted to SMT protocol. Scared of the massive competition and seeing the opportunity at the same time, YouTube launched You Tokens based on SMT protocol of Steem blockchain in 2023.
They had to take a big hit because their centralized servers and the data stored on them remained of no use to the new revolutionary model of operation. But they were smart enough to convert their servers to nodes and RPCs. They requested all their active users to start from zero. Most were pissed and shifted to Dtube permanently until YouTube used their brand name to give their new SMT based interface a new life. It took some years for them to become what they are but their CEO always recalls the migration to SMT protocol as a lifeline for YouTube.
In 2017, Steem blockchain opened up a whole new space for opensource contributions. Utopian.io happened and the world of software development changed forever. Instead of selling their skills for money, developers and coders started sharing their knowledge and expertise openly with the entire community through @utopian-io. "How did they earn then?" , you may ask. Steem blockchain was generous enough to create a reward system for open source contribution. People were handsomely rewarded even for purely nontechnical suggestions.
Your grandpa's first ever contribution concerned user retention on Steemit whereas the second one was a much-appreciated tutorial on Steemit reputation score system.
In 2026, Steem's annual inflation rate was reduced to and fixed at 0.5 % forever. Everybody knew that there wasn't a lot of Steem available for reward pool after that. However, the value of Steem had reached hundreds of dollars (there used to be a thing called dollar) so the fiat evaluation of reward pool was more than ever before.
Another interesting factor in Steem's rise was the bitter realization of people at a point in history. Till 2020, people were investing money here and there in the blockchain space almost randomly. As the activity grew in the blockchain industry, most of the blockchains choked. They could not handle enough number of transactions because their capacity was limited. People started finding the fastest and the most undervalued blockchain out there. And guess what they found? Steem! When Bitcoin—the great-grandpa of all cryptocurrencies and blockchains—was performing 132,331 transactions at 27.85 % capacity in 2018, Steem blockchain used only 0.15 % of its capacity to carry out 1,863,725 transactions. Grandchildren, look at an image I saved from that epic era.
Scores of investors jumped to Steem after this realization and never left. SMTs had created thousands of niche-focused businesses already so the real world usage of Steem blockchain took the price of Steem through the roof. That was the time your grandpa became super rich, despite having a very humble childhood and much of early life.
You owe a lot to the Steem blockchain. Its benevolence helped your grandpa do what could not be done without it. It changed your grand old man's life for good. Let me share with you some of the memories from its benevolence.
I bought my first ever car in April 2018 when I had a chunk of Steem Dollars that I sold for good money (but only after a big crash that had shaken cryptocurrency space in February and March of that year).
Your ancestral home in the village was completed with the help of Steem blockchain rewards in the same year as well. Even your grandmother and I married in the same year and Steem was to the rescue again. I created an immutable record of my 2018 goals on the Steem blockchain as a memory.
Your father and aunt were sent to Finland for education because Finland's education system was revolutionary at that time and was the best one available on the globe. But I could not have afforded it if Steem was not there. Your grandpa's content got rewarded with generous upvotes from amazing people and it created so much financial freedom.
The big school we founded in 2035, that operates mostly on the Steem blockchain, was funded by Steem blockchain itself. We created an educational institute like never before and it has made a huge difference in the community, as you can see.
Most of our businesses were powered and funded due to Steem's gift economy too.
Your education, travels, gadgets are all financed through Steem. Your dad has been a Steemian for a long time now and he taught your mom about it too. They are more into developing things on the blockchain due to their expertise in code. Your grandpa is a total jerk at coding though.
I hope you appreciate what Steem blockchain means to us as a family. All your uncles and aunts have benefitted from it but your grandfather was the first one to discover it. You can be proud of the fact that your grandpa was also the first one to properly introduce Steemit to Pakistan as well.
Financial difficulties were great in those times, my children. Steemit made my financial life easy. Once I was able to fulfill the urgent needs, I was able to start investing in Steem. It had already risen quite a lot in value at that time but not as much as its real-world use cases deserved. The investment, coupled with rewards, became the foundation of a better life. It was the best investment of my life. I still own a lot of Steem which helps me give some significant upvotes to people around the globe. Let me show you its historical market and evaluation from the very early years.
Dear Children,
It all happened in front of my eyes. It was great but it wasn't as easy as it seems. It took great difficulties and challenges for Steem to reach where it has remained for a long time now. In its initial years, it attracted attention of some very greedy people who did a great damage to its main platform Steemit. They abused the reward system and took a lot of money away from it on a daily basis. In 2018, a great battle happened in which some well known abusers were confronted head on by the community. People like @transisto, @fulltimegeek, @whatsup, @anomadsoul, and a lot more were the heroes of this great battle. They all saved the platform from a cave troll.
There used to be so much spammy behavior as well which was also tackled by the community members. Serious attempts to sabotage this internet and online media revolution were carried out in many forms and ways in early years of SMTs. However, the gift economy prevailed over the greedy and centralized competitive economies. It was made possible only through the efforts of our amazing witnesses @jesta, @gtg, @roelandp, @good-karma, @timcliff, @ausbitbank, @someguy23, @blocktrades, @lukestokes.mhth, @teamsteem, and many more.
To summarize, Steem blockchain was one the most revolutionary technologies of 21st century which enabled online content creators and entrepreneurs to create an unprecedented global, decentralized and peer to peer economies. It created massive amounts of wealth, which changed the world for good.
Disclaimer:- This post is a work of fiction based on possible—some even far-fetched—future events. Do you own due diligence before making any investment decisions.