<center>https://i.imgur.com/EIzWiO2.png</center>

Today marks 3 years on Steem and by extension Hive.  As I have said before, I joined July 1st but I didn't actually do anything until the 22nd when I followed quickfingersluc who has long since left.

https://i.imgur.com/WNsgkah.png

It has been a long journey and quite an adventure.

# How did I get here?

When I first heard of Steem, I was mining Ethereum, and as far as I can remember one of my friends on the Space Station Discord told me about Steem.

Shortly later I stopped mining Ethereum and sold all my rigs and transferred my Ethereum to Steem.  I kept a few rigs behind to continue to mine but for the most part I was done.

Once I discovered Steem, I was hooked.  It was exciting, challenging, and unique.  There hasn't been a day since then I haven't interacted with the blockchain and community in some way.

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# Blogging

My first post on July 22nd was about boosting your reading speed.

![image.png](https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/themarkymark/fTvMRyAT-image.png)
[How to boost your reading speed](https://peakd.com/productivity/@themarkymark/how-to-boost-your-reading-speed)

I tried a few different things early on, posting about goals and productivity, memes, and technology.  I never was much of a blogger, and I always hated writing.  But I made a promise to myself, I will write something every day.  I did this for the first year almost perfectly, even on days it was hard.  To this day I still post most days.

I find the most difficult part is finding what to write about for the day.  Over three years I had to do this over a thousand times and I still don’t know how I manage to find something each day. 

When I post, I have three goals in mind.

* Don't be **me me me me**
* Respect my readers time and attention
* Offer something valuable

As I said before, I hate writing and I am not a good blogger, but I always try to stay true to those three guidelines.  I feel that allows me to offer something decent that is worth reading.

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# Witness 

I started a witness on August 13th, 2017.  
I didn't sign my first block until almost a month later on September 5th.
On January 18th, 2019, I became a top 20 witness.

**I am active, present, and passionate.**

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# Birth of Hive

I worked with many users and witnesses and on March 20th, 2020 Hive was born.  I was already at this point powering down as fast as I could on Steem and putting all my attention to Hive.  I saw no future where Steem would be successful and I was (and still am) excited about the future of Hive.

I suggest reading some of @blocktrades recent posts to see what the future has to offer.  Very soon Hive will show itself to be more than a fork of Steem.

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# Theft of Property

On May 20th, 2020 Justin Sun and illegitimate Steem witnesses stole over $5M USD worth of Steem from stakeholders, 170,000 Steem (~$40,000 at the time) of that was from my wallet.

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# Hive Hackathon

![image.png](https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/themarkymark/Za2lYhZ2-image.png)

On May 1st, 2020 I announced the first STEMGeek's Hackathon which raised over 12,000 Hive (around $4,000 at the time) as prize money for the largest contest to ever be run on Hive or Steem.

14 developers created apps in the two weeks allowed by the contest and three winners were announced.

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### First Place - 6,311.685 Hive

@roomservice - [Hive Onboard](https://peakd.com/hackathon/@roomservice/entry-for-stemgeek-s-first-hackathon-hiveonboard-com)

### Second Place - 3,787.011 Hive

@emrebeyler - [Anonramblings](https://hive.blog/hive-139531/@emrebeyler/introducing-anonramblings-https-github-com-emre-anonramblings)

### Third Place - 2,524.674‬ Hive

@mahdiyari - [Hive Notifications](https://peakd.com/hive-139531/@mahdiyari/announcement-hive-notifications)

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Three amazing new dapps were awarded a share of the prize pool generously donated by 15 contributors.

You can read more about the Hackathon at https://hivehackathon.com/.

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# Abuse Fighting

As many know, I spent a lot of time behind the scenes fighting abuse and minimizing the impact of spam and abuse.  This is has been a very time consuming and frustrating job and has made me the target of a lot of angry people.  Every day I question why I bother when so few seem to care and it has brought nothing but frustration and drama.  Every time I ask myself that, the answer is simple, if no one does this Hive will quickly degrade into what Steem has become.

https://i.imgur.com/oOzPq1M.png

I continue to devote countless hours to minimizing spam, plagiarism, and fraud on Hive using my own resources.

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# Engagement

Engagement remains one of my number one interests on Hive.  I believe engagement is one of the secrets to create a thriving community. I am actively looking at and promoting ways to increase engagement on Hive.  Along with engagement, I firmly believe the solution to most of the problems we have is increasing our user base and it remains my number one interest right now.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHMoeH2xtxI

<center>**I look forward to many more cake days!**</center>


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<center>Securely chat with me on [Keybase](https://keybase.io/officialmarky)
<center>https://images.hive.blog/0x0/https://steemitimages.com/DQmcWxV1dpA1eAtw2ipwZiWZkydyVNU5LaLa2Ak1GUnbGmS/The-Marky-Mark.png </center>
# <center>  [Why you should vote me as witness](https://peakd.com/witness-category/@themarkymark/why-you-should-vote-for-themarkymark-as-witness)  </center> #

[![](https://steemitimages.com/DQmPkQhAQceC7aHr4Gy5GKv7LMoiy47P7PyaNCeZBHMpFke/white-bg-with-drop-shadow.gif)](https://hivesigner.com/sign/account-witness-vote?witness=themarkymark&approve=1)