My July '22 on Hive

Prelude

Oh, this rabbit hole I fell into, I could not imagine before. Taking the step from Splinterlands to blogging started a journey for me that feels like a rocket ride to the moon.

A lot has happened this month for me on Hive. Here is an update of a newbie that started engaging exactly 2 months ago.

What happened so far

In June (funnily enough exactly on the first) I decided to start blogging on Hive. I used PeakD as a front-end since that's where all the Splinterlands updates where posted. I knew nothing about how it all connects to Hive or what was happening in the background.

Since then I started discovering what Hive truly is. How there are different front-ends for blogging and different d-apps to do all kinds of stuff on the blockchain. I was so astonished of what I found that I wrote a post about it.

Let's get into overdrive

That is when fate decided to kick it up a notch. I have no other word than fate for it. Hey, what are the odds of some other community outside of hive running a contest at that very moment with the goal "Find a newbie on Hive and boost them" and some one participating in that contest actually picking my post?

Dreemport

So I learned about Dreemport. A very welcoming and engaging community of curators and I decided to join them. This opened a new world for me. My horizon was broadened during the curation phases: There is so much to discover on Hive, it will most likely never end. And that is a good thing. Every day there is something new to discover, even for the Hive veterans as I would read in a lot of comments I encountered.

Ecency

Also through Dreemport I started to engage more with an alternative to PeakD, namely ecency. For the first 6 weeks on Hive I exclusively used PeakD to post, comment and vote and I got used to it. It is where I took my first steps and I got so used to it that switching to ecency was not that easy. It is different, of course. No sense in building an exact replica.

It took me a while to figure out where and how to find information on the ecency front-end that I knew too well from PeakD. I had to learn how to walk all over again with the bonus of a little deeper understanding of what was happening. The information was there, it is stored on the blockchain as I now knew. Just takes a few more tries to figure out how to retrieve it.

So after a while I decided to use both simultaneously. There is a saying I learned a few years ago in the Linux world:

The right tool for the right job

I will at some point (maybe after a month or so), when I have enough experience with both front-ends write a post about it.

Tokens

I also started to learn more about second layer tokens and how to use those bot commands to show my appreciation for good content. Up until the research to that post I wrote about it, the only tokens I knew where the Splinterlands currencies.

And still I am learning. Every few days I discover a new token with a unique purpose and most of them with a community build around them. Did I do these tokens injustice by not including them in my post?

It was definitely not my intention. On one hand I had to make a cut somewhere as not to write a post as big as a book and on the other hand I didn't (consciously) come across them until that point.

So please do not be offended if I left a token out that you might consider very dear to yourself.

Contests

All the while I am of course still playing Splinterlands and this month they had another Share your battle challenge that intrigued me. There are a lot of contests out there in all the communities. One can not participate in all of them. And even though the array of topics I am generally interested in is very wide, I only engage into a contest if the theme really tickles my fancy. Otherwise I can not put all my energy into the content I am creating and that is the big picture about Hive after all. To produce quality content and not only quantity.

And funnily enough, a few days later another contest triggered me, the 5-Minute-Freewrite Challenge to the word unnecessary. Sometimes (more often than we realize) life is just strange enough to give us these coincidences and so I submitted to that challenge as well.

The contest-month found its final moment for me in the Dreemport challenge to the word Sanctuary. After some thinking I decided it is time to come out of my shell and open up a little bit to the world. This was a huge step for me since I always avoided that on any centralized network but as often mentioned: Hive is different. So why not be different myself? I embrace the encouraging comments I got on that post with a thank you.

Tell a friend

At some point I got asked by a coworker "So, what are you up to these days?" and I answered "Getting familiar with Hive". He drove the conversation along by asking about details. "And what's that?" he asked.

I decided not to get technical, after all it was still very new to me and I might explain stuff wrong. But I was in a funny mood so I replied "The future of social networks and user interaction". Ah, the look on his face told me he was not sure if I was sarcastic so I added "I'll send you a few links".

And out of the blue the idea for another article plopped into my head.

Rising Star

The Dreemport curation process brought my attention to a newbie FAQ about the Game Rising Star. I already knew there are other games on Hive besides Splinterlands and Rising Star was mentioned every now and then in a few comments or banners here and there but I never really took the time to read more about it until now.

So after some reading I decided to log in to it because I was glad to discover you can start playing it without any initial investment. As far as I can tell it is possible to play and rise in it without any investment at all. The ingame currency starbit is earned with every mission and can be traded as a second layer token.

After a few days I invested a few hive into some packs and got fairly good cards I think. It's another wild ride but the plus side of the game is: It doesn't take up much time. So I will keep playing it on the side.

Hive Power

🎉After only 2 months on Hive I broke the 100 HP barrier. 😊

To reach that point I converted the HBD rewards into Hive and powered them up as well. On 1st of July I participated in Power Up Day and powered up 10 additional Hive. Tomorrow I will do that as well.

Glimpse into the future

Considering I only spent 2 months on Hive so far I am very excited to keep going. I get replies from people being on Hive since the split from Steem and even they still discover new things every now and then. So hopefully the journey never ends.

I am looking forward to next months Dreemport challenge in the scholar&scribe community and the new developments in Splinterlands.

All in all it is an exciting time to be on Hive and I cannot wait to see what tomorrow brings.

_{Header image created with Canva
Logos used from Dreemport, Splinterlands, PeakD and Ecency}