Exactly a year ago today, I set a goal to write 66 articles in 2023 in order to reach POW#200 by the end of this year...

I knew it wouldn't be easy, but I didn't think it would be that hard. But as of June 30, 2023, with half the year already gone, I'd only managed to write 22 of the 66 articles I needed, and I began thinking I wasn't going to make it.

Then I got a much needed boost with the launch of Pay Button. For the first time, it gave people a way to directly pay me for my writing right here on my site. You might even say that it enabled people to pay to encourage me and keep going. Each time I received a payment, no matter the amount, it let me know that someone out there had read my words and found them valuable enough to send me an eCash tip. It's what pushed me to continue as I raced to write the remaining 44 articles in the final 26 weeks of the year.

Now as we finish out the last few days of 2023, I'm happy to be able to submit POW#200 for your reading pleasure. I want to personally thank everyone who has taken the time to read my work over the past year and given me a few minutes of your attention each week. And if you took the extra step of actually sending me an eCash tip, I can say without a doubt that without you, I would not have been able to achieve the goal I'd set for myself a year earlier.

The thing I like about publicly stating a goal is that it holds you accountable. If I hadn't tweeted about reaching POW#200 by the end of 2023, I might have just been happy to settle for whatever number I ended up on. But I pushed myself to finish because I said I would, and I'm someone who always tries to keep his word.

In a way, this is also one of the biggest reasons I support the eCash project itself. Because I know it is led by a team of professionals who have demonstrated time and time again that they stand by their word. No matter how difficult their circumstances, they have proven to me over the past three years that they are not the type to ever give up, and I can be confident that they will keep working to achieve their goals, which are as follows:

Enable eCash to scale from ~100 tx/s to over 5,000,000 tx/s.
Improve the eCash payment experience to ensure that it is instant and reliable. Transactions must be received instantly and be completely secure within seconds.
Make eCash extensible. An extensible protocol makes future improvements less disruptive, providing a solid base for businesses and developers to build on.

The goal of eCash is to be the best money in the world, and my goal is to help eCash succeed in any way that I can. Here I want to send a special shout out to eCash community member Nate Novosel, whose book "The Meaning of Life: A Guide to Finding Your Life's Purpose" states that the meaning of life is to grow, because I believe that's exactly what the eCash project is all about: to help humanity grow to new heights we never thought possible before.

Now that my goal for 2023 is done, I have decided on a new goal for 2024, and that is to grow as a content creator so I can do a better job of reaching more people and to increase awareness about the eCash project. With that in mind, in addition to continuing to write my articles here, I'm going to try to host a Twitter space each week to talk about eCash, interview people, and grow the community.

If you're reading this, I invite you to make 2024 a year of personal growth. Pick a goal, and make it one that is outside your comfort zone, because as a wise man once told me, growth happens when you're out of your comfort zone.

For some of you, I hope you even think about making that goal about the eCash project. It can be as small as telling 10 people about eCash and having them create a Cashtab.com wallet and sending them a bit of XEC to try. Maybe you want to host a local eCash meet-up in your town to introduce people to this new technology. If you're a developer, try and build an application or website that leverages eCash in some way and you may even be able to get funded by the GNC. If you're so inclined, I further challenge you to announce your goal publicly. Tag me on Twitter and let me know what your goal is so I can blast it to the rest of the eCash community to help push you to the finish line.

We're not always going to succeed, there are no guarantees in life, but the only way we can make progress and learn from our experiences is if we keep trying. I believe in the eCash project, and I believe in the eCash community, because I believe in the eCash spirit of never giving up and planning for success. I don't know about you, but I'm looking forward to an amazing 2024 and wishing you all a healthy and happy new year!

Your fellow eCash supporter,

Cain