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Two years of Hive: Lessons, Rivalry and Moving forward

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Belemo
@belemo
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Hold on, Hive is only two years old? I could have sworn that I've been around these parts for at least four years.

It's crazy how much development a project can experience when you cut off the ties that are holding you back. I guess what all those motivational speakers say is true, sometimes, you just have to shed unnecessary baggage to grow in life.

When Hive forked away from Steem, I must admit I was apprehensive about the decision because of how much I had riding on it. However, that didn't stop me from throwing my full weight behind it.

I like money and all that but how I see it, there's nothing more important than the community. When Hive forked, the soul of the Steem community moved away and all that's left is an empty shell.

I'm not going to stand here and bash Steem because that would be totally unfair of me. Yes things didn't go well because of the Justin Sun thing but it is still where my journey began, so for that I will always be grateful.

The competition

Anyway, Hive is two years old and it is in a much better place than it use to be. The community that it was cut out from has inevitably become competition, and so, comparisons are only natural.

To stay ahead of the game, you have to keep tabs on your competition. At the time of writing, the margin between Hive and Steem is so large that I can hardly even call them competition.

At the time of writing, Hive's total market cap is over double the market cap of Steem. In fact, the dollar value of each token pretty much describes the difference between both coins.

According to Coinmarketcap, 1 Steem is valued at $0.333 while 1 Hive is valued at around $0.92. Steem has a total circulating supply of 394,951,699.00 coins and Hive has 403,072,390.62 in circulation.

Despite Hive's larger supply, it still has a much better dollar valuation and latent potential than Steem. At the time of writing, Hive's total market cap stands at $370,937,528 while Steem lags all the way back with $138,257,835.

Simply dwelling on market capitalisation doesn't tell the whole story of how dominant Hive is in this battle. Other metrics that includes onchain activities also highlights how the network effect might also be contributing to Hive's dominance.

The only hope that Steem would have had in this rivalry would have been Splinterlands, but the project migrated to Hive and that's all she wrote. At the time of writing, Dappradar still ranks Splinterlands as the top blockchain project, in terms of userbase in the entire crypto space. The project has more users than projects like Pancakeswap, Opensea, Alienworlds and many other popular names in cryptospace.

Eclipsing your master

In two years of existence, Hive has not only eclipsed its parent blockchaing but in the process, it has established itself in the history books. There's literally no other fork of a parent blockchain that has been able to achieve this feat.

Hive's popularity has grown over the years, starting from the voting wars against Justin Sun. I participated in the battle and while I don't like the idea of bashing Steem because, as I said, that's my origin, I did my fair share of battling on social media.

It is one of those events that you had to have been there to understand. At the end of the day, everyone followed their interest, some stayed back in Steem and others moved to Hive.

At the end of the day, I'll summarise that it all came down to preference and the choices we make. Those that decided to stick with Steem stayed and those that chose Hive, moved. We'll let posterity decide who made the better choice in the future but right now, the answer is pretty obvious.

Lessons learned

Hive is two years and while we celebrate our growth, there's so much we can also learn from the experience. There are also life lessons subtly embedded inside all the crypto mumbo-jumbo in the debacle.

I learnt the importance of shedding unnecessary weight. I learnt that while that baggage might seem important at the moment, if you strive for greatness and focus on development, you'll be fine in the future.

I learnt the importance of the community and being part of the right crowd, no matter how "crazy" they may sound. I supported what seemed like the right cause, even though I was worried about the negative ramifications it could have had on my portfolio.

In Summary

We're here now and the sky is our limit. We're a constantly growing community, yet it seems like we're closer than we've ever been.

As our population continues to grow, so will the project and the network as a whole. With so many projects and builders in the community, coupled with all the diamond hands that support numerous causes, I feel confident that being here was
he right decision.

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