Writing, Curating, and Building. A Bit of My Story on Hive

I first came to this blockchain in 2018. A bit late, since 2016 was apparently its golden era, haha. I don’t remember exactly how it happened, but after some random Googling here and there, I discovered that this blockchain was a blogging platform where you could earn money. Naturally, that caught my interest.

For a long time, I also couldn’t remember what my very first post was. I assumed it was probably some kind of self-introduction. But recently I managed to find it again. It turned out to be a travel post about the mysterious megaliths of Lore Lindu in Central Sulawesi. And the funny thing is, it received almost no rewards at all. Looking back, that actually makes the memory even better. Like many newcomers, I probably arrived with the assumption that every post might earn something, only to discover that things don’t really work that way.

What I do remember very clearly, however, is the first time one of my short stories (a flash fiction piece) was upvoted by @curie. I was completely surprised. Suddenly, so many upvotes started coming in.

(Pardon the self-upvote, 😂)

After that first discovery by @curie, things started to get better. My posts began receiving more attention, and I became more motivated to write. At that time, I wrote a lot about things I genuinely enjoyed; culture, movies, music, and anime.

Some of those posts did quite well. For example, I once wrote an analysis about a memorable episode of Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, specifically the famous Hinokami episode. I also wrote a small series about movies that left a strong emotional impact on me. Those posts were not really reviews or critiques, more like personal reflections on films that stayed with me long after watching them. I do think the best post on Hive should reflect on personal touch, hence, no AI please.

It took me quite a while before I understood that Curie was a curation guild, similar to OCD, Curangel, and others. It also took me some time to realize that many communities on this blockchain used Discord.

Through Discord, I eventually joined Curie and became a curator there. I even became a Long-Term Top Curator, and I reached that status relatively quickly. Maybe I just had an excess of energy back then. Hehe.

Ah yes, I’ve even forgotten what the frontend looked like at that time. As far as I remember, there wasn’t a community concept like the one we have now. I recall there was once a company managing this blockchain. They promised many things, including community features. Another one was SMTs. I’m not really sure how SMTs developed afterward, because what happened in the following years was chaos. And long story short, the community won, and Hive was born as we know it today.

Like many people in this ecosystem, however, my journey wasn’t perfectly continuous. There was a period when I went on hiatus for several years. Life simply became busy, and Hive slowly faded into the background for me.

But in 2024, I returned.

Interestingly, one of the posts that marked my return was about something completely different: cycling. I wrote about my folding bike and why I enjoy riding it. To my surprise, the post received very good upvotes.

You could say I’ve really enjoyed everything that has happened here, especially as a curator. I love reading about almost anything, as long as the writing format is good and the grammar isn’t confusing. On this blockchain, there are always interesting people sharing fascinating things that I simply can’t find on other social media platforms.

And it can’t be denied that one of the appealing things about this blockchain, besides the community and the content, is the rewards. After it became Hive, many communities started to appear, along with tribes and their tokens. Honestly, this adds more color and makes the ecosystem even more fun.

Speaking of rewards, one of the ways I funded my trip to Japan last year was through earnings from Hive and HBD. Well, not entirely, of course. But it helped quite a bit. Enough to buy books too :D

Recently on Hive, I’ve been very interested in the HiveDev community. Basically, I’m a frontend developer. I usually work with TypeScript, React, and similar technologies. So I’m really excited to learn that on Hive we can build all sorts of things. Although I haven’t explored it deeply yet, and I’m still not sure whether it’s possible to build everything fully on L1, on-chain. For now, I’m still developing things in a hybrid way, not fully Web3 yet. More like semi-Web2. You could call it Web 2.5, hehe.

To conclude, I truly enjoy being on Hive. Despite all its noise and chaos, this blockchain is genuinely fun. Here I write, curate, earn rewards, build networks, and learn a lot. On a very practical level, I’ve also improved my English here, which has been incredibly helpful.

Anyway, that’s a bit of my story on Hive. From writing and curating to learning and building small things, it has been a fun ride so far. Let’s see what the next chapters of this blockchain will bring.