![orca.png](https://images.hive.blog/DQmbdScXTKPQ873qNQnF4KeSnMy3HJbxBduzhPAv3zyMKgg/orca.png)

Some of you may have seen my tweet a couple of days ago that I have finally became a Hive Orca. I thought it is an important milestone and an achievement on Hive, and is appropriate to share the experiences that lead me to this level. @hivebuzz, sometimes annoying but mostly very useful and fun bot that adds gamification to Hive, has left me a comment two days ago that I have reached the Orca level on Hive, as the image above shows.

Hive is a fork of Steem. But most of us consider Hive as the continuation of the original chain and the idea of bringing decentralized solutions to the internet. For this purpose I would like to refer to the chain as Hive from its beginning, and time I started participating in this network. 

When I first joined the network, I was fascinated with the idea of decentralization as an alternative to traditional social media and networks. What lead me to this network was bitcoin that offered and still offers an alternative to traditional financial systems.

My journey on Hive started with a simple motto, which you can still see in my profile - "I just want to put some positive stuff out there. If it works, great. If it doesn't, no problem". I believe not taking things too seriously and not expecting anything from experimenting various ideas and solutions is a better approach, so that we don't get disappointed if things don't work out. The idea of transforming how we interact over the internet for the benefit of ordinary people instead of big tech and big money did resinate with me and still does.

Hive has many features to accomplish the mission of decentralizing the web with ideas like property ownership, data ownership, monetizing content, fast and free value transfers, immutability of data, free of censorship, and many more. But what really stuck me most was the idea of ordinary people building equity by doing ordinary things they already do online without being manipulated by big tech companies and venture capitalists who only care about enriching themselves.

I am not a good author, nor am I good at social media. However, I quickly understood that such effort would need support and such support would come with participation. I did my due diligence to understand the network and the blockchain in its simplest form at first. But later dove into more technical aspects, just because it was interesting and useful.

In my early days on Hive I discovered Curie and people of Curie who were doing amazing work to make this project a success. At the time when I joined Hive, Curie went public as curation project and wanted more people to participate. But also at the same time they experienced a flood of participation and had to take measures to limit to the quality. There was a rule to accept new curators if they submit two quality posts to be reviewed and both were approved.

![Cteam.jpg](https://images.hive.blog/DQmZgAELyY6nJ5MdEoeX9akFmwUt8CYgaBL6uKBWwqY3M6x/Cteam.jpg)

Somehow I was lucky and both of my initial submissions were approved and I became a Curie curator. More I learned about Curie, its mission and people involved more I liked it. Curie was doing what the entire network was suppose to be doing and trying to make this project a success. In a very short period of time I was able to reach the ranks of top curator. I was earning Hive just curating instead of authoring posts. I was so obsessed with this idea there wouldn't be day without me going through at least 500 posts.

Curie is still around and continues in discovering new talented authors and bring them to the forefront so others on the network can also discover them. Back in those days I did get involved in programming to create tools for more efficient ways of curating. I do remember writing a script that showed how high user retentions were by Curie compared to the overall network. 

If it wasn't for Curie I probably would have moved on to other things and not be here. What an amazing project and a community! I was so obsessed with Curie that I remember a time I was sitting in a hospital emergency room waiting lobby and found couple of talented authors and got their posts approved and rewarded handsomely.

After a year and half of active involvement in Curie, I decided to explore other projects on Hive and became active in SteemHunt, where I spent as moderator for about a year. I was also offered to become a community manager for the project, but due to my time limits and other obligations I had to decline the offer. Unfortunately, when the chain split happened the project chose to side with centralized forces and that was the end of it for me.

There is so much that goes on in this network, it is not that easy to keep up with everything that is happening. So many Apps, projects, communities, etc. I always tried to stay up-to-date, but it really is not possible to know everything that goes on in such a decentralized network. It is the best to focus on things that interest one the most and spend time and effort in those matters.

Thanks to @trumpman, I discovered LeoFinance and ever since started posting mainly using Leo frontend. What a great and successful project! Many people who show interest in decentralized solutions are also interested in the crypto world and innovations in this space and finance. Of course, such a project had to happen and Leo has done it the best. 

I was also involved or sort of participated in Neoxian tribe, just because @neoxian has always been one of my favorite whales. Neoxian banking is known for most. Before even DeFi was a thing Neoxian was lending money for those who needed.

I can't leave this post without mentioning the most amazing people of Hive Poker League. I probably spend the most time online chatting on various topics with Lucksacks people of Hive in Tuck's room. Those are the best times. However, they don't earn any Hive. Not cool! Lol. 

All this said, becoming an Orca on Hive is a great honor that did involve a lot of participation in various communities in pushing this great idea of decentralize web forward. It also required investing in Hive with money and time. Hive is a great journey. There are many of us here, while may disagree on many things, still united in making decentralization of the web a reality.

I believe in a free market and everybody should be able to do whatever they like with their property. I am not ready to power down and sell my Hive yet. If I did it would be for two reasons, one that I need money for something more important, two I would like to increase my Hive by trading.

I never took Hive too seriously. Neither should you. I have always regarded is as game. In this game I believe I have achieved the goals I have set. One of my final achievement goals were to get upvotes from @blocktrades and @smooth, which happened recently. I probably should stop playing now. :) But that's only on an individual participant level. 

In a community level there are bigger things we are trying to accomplish here. There are many who are involved with their talents, skills, knowledge and art to bring something amazing to the humanity. Hive can do this. I do believe.

What are your thoughts on Hive Orcas? What do they need to do to continue to push the idea of Hive forward to empower ordinary people doing ordinary things in this extraordinary network?



Posted Using [LeoFinance <sup>Beta</sup>](https://leofinance.io/@geekgirl/road-to-hive-orcahood)