Happy New Year! Well, bad Things and a brighter Future? Let's hit up 2025!

My new year 2025 has just begun... since 1h and 30 minutes as I write this article! Looking back, it was a great year for me! What I just remember right now is that I consider myself lucky to have met so many new people - people I've never met before in my life here on Hive. There are so many people on Hive e.g. from HiveFest in Split like @yabapmatt, @lordbutterfly and many more! But also strengthening existing relationships was a big part of my existence in 2024 like friendships / partnerships with @detlev, @arcange and @pharesim. I also won't get bored of putting your frontends through their paces, which is possible for me as an outsider - for security vulnerabilities, exploits or other bugs in the system, so that Hive is and remains a safe place in 2025. Also at the end of the year I would like to say that since I was in Split in September with the founder of Hivewatchers I have learned a lot and discovered new spams/scams attacks on Hive...

I don't want to spoil the New Year mood here but there's a war going on out there on the internet - yes, even here at Hive we deal with attacks on a daily basis and for my own part I'm trying to fend off attacks - improve our system and actually make everything better. Many of our apps, or rather their developers like @ecency @peakd @keychain @splinterlands @stoodkev @actifit @blocktrades @theycallmedan @inleo @leofinance @khaleelkazi hopefully appreciate that. I am an individual working day in and day out to make your apps more secure. I can't and shouldn't go into details here but one thing is for sure, if at least those mentioned write a thumbs up in the comments, they should realize that my work in the background of the blockchain is a really essential one. In most cases I have not even received bounty for my time and work invested in making Hive a more secure place for the community. In one case, unfortunately, not even a thank you. This unfortunately hits me a bit hard and makes me wonder if my work here on the blockchain is really appreciated in some situations - or even understood.

All I can say is - projects get DHF funding and don't even have risk money on the side to pay any security researchers who uncover vulnerabilities in their applications a bounty that is common in the market. I've been on the Hive Watchers team for weeks now - undercover - simply because I met the founder in Split and my activities on the chain were noticed. So now my question to you - you the people who have projects running here - should I start my own proposal and get it funded or should I continue to work through the Hivewatchers team and get paid via a proposal for my daily work for you, the community. The Hivewatchers team would have to increase their proposal to pay me for one hour of work a day - to make your blockchain more secure...

This is not meant to be a gun to your chest, but perhaps to make you think. Thank you at this point. I don't know if I will be able to continue my work in 2025 as I simply don't have the time, but also the commitment, if you report serious security vulnerabilities over months and unfortunately no answer - then all users in a thread are automatically rickrolled and don't even receive a thank you or bounty... I'm happy to keep testing your frontends... but I have a life and sometimes you have to see where you've invested your time at the end of the day. Just food for thought. Sorry for making this such a big topic here but it's really important to me and I really realized that in 2024.

Now to the nice things in hopefully 2025 - I would like to see and experience more and more interactivity on the blockchain - I will continue to take part in larger events and also try to participate in smaller events. Meeting and getting to know people is still my biggest goal - that means getting to know people, building connections & trust and offering new users on our chain a new home in Web3.

At the end of the year 2024, I have nothing else to say but thank you - thank you for all the interactions with me - thank you for the real-life meetings, thank you for all the positive comments - thank you for your support - thank you for simply being there - be it in short bad moments - stupid actions or simply thank you for being a human being, a real person behind an account.

Let's make 2025 a year for the Hive Blockchain like never before!
Thanks to you, the community, my followers, those who support my Witnesss @louis.witness and thanks to all those who make this chain the best social media blockchain 2025!