I've been sharing my experience as an African in Web3 for the last two weeks. The first edition of this article can be found HERE and the second edition can also be found in THIS EMBEDDED LINK. Now, let's get into the third part of my experience as an African in Web3.


My Web3 journey led me to Hive Blockchain.

After being in Cryptocurrency for longer than a while and digging around to see where I can find something that genuinely suits my taste, I came across Hive Blockchain. I was told about Hive by a friend who's in California. I worked with her at an Online Content Creation University and we established a very good relationship while working together.

She told me about Hive and helped to walk me through the things I need to understand as a Content Creator on the Blockchain. Back then, everything looked strange. Hive was different from every other platform I've ever been in. It wasn't easy to get started, but I already know from experience that a lot of good things do not come easy. I signed into Hive on 31st December 2020 and I made my first post a day later, on 1st January 2021.

Getting into Hive turned out to be the game changer for me in my Web3 adventure. They have a vibrant community over there and it felt like a one-stop-arena where I could publish my written content, make video content, and earn their native tokens in addition to earning their second layer tokens. It was easier to move my funds across wallets because their transaction speed runs in 3-5 seconds and all transactions are feeless. I didn't have to deal with any gas fee whatsoever for any transaction. I was also able to stake their tokens and earn curation rewards for those.

It always feels too good to be true, but the more I performed activities on Hive Blockchain, the more I got to see the inspiring qualities that define true Blockchain and Web3.

Some of those things are;

1. Immutability and Censorship Resistance: For someone like myself who knows how it feels to experience censorship and to be stopped from saying things I want to say because some other person finds it offensive or because it isn't something those in power want to be made public, being in a place where my content cannot get muted or censored is a whole new experience.

That's one of the key things we enjoy in Blockchain and Web3 as a whole and I know some Web3 platforms still mute accounts or censor content. However, that's something I've never experienced ever since I started writing on Hive.

2. High Level of Decentralization: The first SocioFi Crypto-based platform I got into was milked by the founder until he and his team crashed the price of the tokens and sold out the website. Ever since then, I've been quite careful about getting into any centralized project. I do the same with my crypto portfolio. I try as much as possible to limit the number of minutes I spend on centralized exchanges because things always go wrong when the founder decides to get sneaky.
As I spent time on Hive and got to realize that their Blockchain is truly Decentralized, it made it easier for me to be at ease while using the Blockchain resources on each of their fronts. Of course, they have witnesses all over the world who run and validate nodes on the Blockchain. This function isn't limited to any specific set of people. Anyone can basically set up a witness profile and also become a node validator. However, we won't be getting into the technical side of things.


My Attempt To Know More About Web3

All these while, I've been focused on Hive so I didn't allow myself to explore other Web3 platforms out there. To be fair, I was feeling quite comfortable with everything that was happening on Hive. However, a couple of things happened to me personally that made me start exploring additional Web3 platforms that are out there. It was already in the 4th quarter of 2023 when I felt the need to look outside Hive.
The X platform (previously known as Twitter) played a big role in opening my eyes to other Web3-related projects out there. I attended a lot of Web3 X Spaces and I paid good attention to the trends, buzzwords, and communities in Web3 space. I came across some really good communities although I didn't hang around for too long in any of those places.
One of the things I noticed while paying attention to Web3 communities that are using the X platform is that there seems to still be a very vague understanding of what truly counts as Web3. This seems to be a reason for concern because some of the influencers who were shilling some projects as "Web3 Project" didn't exactly know what Web3 is about. Aside from that, it was also obvious that a lot of people in different parts of the world are still unreceptive to Web3.
I dug a little further to see if there would be any Web3 project that would catch my fancy. However, just when it felt like I wouldn't be getting anywhere with my research, a friend informed me about t2.world and the FWW (Friends Who Write) event. That's how I got into this platform.


I'm Fairly New On T2.

For what it's worth, I genuinely didn't know anything about the existence of this platform until the last week of February when a friend informed me about the FWW writing challenge which will be held for the whole of this month. I'm so glad she told me about this and my experience has been fairly inspiring since the moment I decided to sign up for a t2 account.

She played a big role in helping me understand how things work here and it's quite interesting because she's also a newbie. However, being a newbie in a place like this doesn't have any hindrance to our chance of success. The community has been very receptive and they have been very helpful in answering any question I have about the platform.

That genuine willingness to offer guidance and assistance to newbies is one of the things I genuinely like about a lot of Web3 communities. I'm taking consistent steps towards growing in this community and I look forward to adding my content to the pool of contents generated by authors in this platform.

Be on the lookout for the final piece of my experience as an African in Web3. I will have that published a week from now.

Thanks For Not Missing Any Full-stop or Commas.