Hello Steemians!
 
May has been a HUGE month for Steem and Steemit.com, but June will be an even bigger one! So many things are finally coming together all at once. The Steemit marketing plan is going forward as hoped, with some great new developments.
 
First, Steem is finally breaking into the public consciousness. We’re experiencing explosive growth. 
 
Second, after a great deal of work, onboarding is finally coming together. We get closer to a globally scalable solution every day.
 
Third, after a great deal of due diligence, we can confirm that the first crowdsourced project will be publicly backed this month.
 
<h1>Let’s Talk About Growth</h1>
 
We have been experiencing a massive increase in user growth with over 10,000 new accounts last week alone.

<h1>http://i.imgur.com/JHVPRyo.png</h1>
 
We’ve also been excited to welcome new influencers… LOTS of them. Here’s just a few new influencers we hope you will all welcome to the Steemit community:
@theywillkillyou (843k subscribers)
@rerez (124k subs)
@jerrybanfield (168k subs)
 
And this is just the beginning, more have been joining steemit.com in ever increasing numbers. Word is certainly getting out!
 
<h1>Another Steem Milestone: Most Transactions in the WORLD!</h1>
 
We’re also excited to announce that, due to this spectacular growth, the Steem Blockchain has now processed 450,000 transactions in the last 24 hours -- **more transactions than any other blockchain on Earth!** 
<h2>We are officially number 1!</h2>
 
https://media.giphy.com/media/3oKIPpFhwsMNrRIjN6/giphy.gif

<h1>Onboarding Improvements: Becoming More Scalable</h1>
 
One of our biggest priorities for Steemit marketing has been making the onboarding scaleable. We are happy to share that the onboarding process has improved by leaps and bounds thanks to the unceasing and spectacular efforts of our industry-leading team of developers.
 
Thanks to their hard work we have been able to mitigate one of the bottlenecks in the sign up process: the initial Steem Power required for new users to post to the Steem Blockchain. Previously, Steemit Inc had to give Steem Power to all new users. This was getting really expensive. That system created an additional financial burden for developers that limited their ability to onboard new users and encouraged bad actors to attempt to game the system in order to receive free Steem Power.
 
<h2>Account Creation With Delegated Steem Power</h2>

To tackle this challenge, we’ve added the ability to create accounts using delegated Steem Power. Now any developer can effectively *loan* Steem Power to new users instead of giving it to them permanently. This lets **all developers** create new accounts on the Steem blockchain at a much lower cost, while cutting the incentives for people to make fake accounts. And this is just the beginning. We are currently working on improvements to further reduce the cost of onboarding new users and will be sharing those with you in the coming weeks.
 
These changes don’t just benefit Steemit Inc; they benefit all current *and future* Steem developers. Anyone with a product on the Steem blockchain will be able to handle and scale their own account creation. It’s a huge step forward for Steem scalability.
 
<h1>The 1st Crowdsourced Project</h1>
 
We’re keeping it quiet for now, but we can confirm that the first crowdsourced proposal will be backed and funded publicly *this month*. We spent a lot of time doing due diligence, so we’re happy to set the tone and launch support for this trailblazer of a proposal!
 
<h1>Conclusion</h1>
 
We are very happy with how the platform is progressing and have many more exciting announcements coming in the future, so stay tuned.
 
*Team Steemit*