Happy Birthday! - You are on the Steem blockchain for 3 years!

Oh, that was a surprise, kinda sucky in one way that I’m not at @steemfest this year because I could have celebrated that in style getting plastered in Bangkok but hey you take what you are given in life and be thankful for that anyway.
This morning I had trouble getting going for exercise, pulling myself away from the steem livestreams day two and a weird pain in my foot nearly made me not want to do any but once I got into it and had the headphones in and my music blaring everything was perfect to get through it, nothing like pushing yourself to gain some clarity.
It’s kinda weird looking back over the last three years of being here on the platform, the highs and most certainly the lows, the fact that communities are just around the corner and I’m wondering if that will be a supported feature across the board or just a steemit frontend thing.
Photo by Marty Southwell on Unsplash
It’s kinda obvious to me that really the chain is the distribution layer to whatever you want to build here, sure you could wait for some whales and people to get behind you but really you gotta fund it and get it going yourself, that’s good too because it brings business and money to the chain.
After watching the last two days of live streams from Bangkok, 125/150 people made it across (half of last year, it’s a long way to fly after all but I guess you can get around everyone!) I’ve realised a number of things and I was quite sad to see only 28-33 people watching the stream.
I heard a lot of people on their own personal quests and missions to make something they see in the world, become different to what it is, to have some kind of control or governance over the control over it. I think this is great if it works for you — being a ground sign I need something a bit more real physical life instead of abstract and virtual, while I see the desire to transact, verify and valid assets on the chain I also like the real world too.
I think a lot of ‘normals’ like the real world tangible too, in fact, you could argue without power you’d never have access to them too to prove ownership too, maybe ownership in the cloud is a thing we want because we are ahead but is it was other people want? Is it was the normals want?
Maybe the gaming side will be, maybe they won’t need to know about the abstraction layer of steem underneath, maybe they will just invest or buy the token because they need to play — if the 300k splinter lands crowdfunding is anything to go by their is an audience out there that wants this thing and that’s great for that faction of steem.
I’m happy to have heard all of the great stuff coming out of steemfest again this year and I’m looking for at least another few more years on the steem blockchain, onwards and upwards ;)
_humble x