Steemit Week in Review #1: Challenges, Curation, Community
Sunday is a good day to look back. This is the first edition of a new weekly series: a short digest of what actually mattered on Steemit this week, drawn from the trending page and the official @steemitblog announcements — plus my own take on what it all means. Week of October 12–18, 2026.
Season 34, Week 8: two big questions
The week's headline event was the official Season 34 Week 8 announcement from the Steemit Team. Two challenge questions this time:
Question 1 — "Let's Go Shopping…" Participants document one big grocery shopping trip: one weekly shop versus smaller trips, where they shop, who they go with, what they buy and what it costs in local currency (and the STEEM equivalent). It also revives the classic "Shopping Game" — and a few of the best posts earn an extra-large vote prize.
Question 2 — "Improving Steemit.com" Propose one new feature for steemit.com: how it would work, who would build it, and whether it would attract new users or improve the experience.
Entries close at 11:59pm UTC tonight, Sunday October 18 — so if you are reading this before bed, there is still a window. Full disclosure: I entered the second question myself this week with a proposal for in-post polls, so I have skin in the game. Season 34 continues for at least another four weeks, and the Weekly Choice format now asks curators to pick four posts: one Diary Game, one Contest, and one of each Challenge Question.
My take: the two questions pair beautifully. One is pure everyday life — the most relatable content on the platform — and the other is a genuine product-feedback channel aimed straight at the people who use the site daily. That balance of "show us your world" and "help us build" is exactly what keeps a community challenge alive into its 34th season.
The curation reports are everywhere
Scroll the trending page and you will notice something: daily curation reports. The Steem Alliance, ABB-Curation, Beauty of Creativity and the Tron Fan Club all publish daily transparency reports on who they rewarded and why — and those reports themselves trend.
This matters more than it looks. On a platform where rewards are public but attention is scarce, a community that documents its curation in the open is telling every small author: the rules are written down, the rewards are real, and good work gets noticed. New users deciding where to post their first article should look for exactly this signal. Communities that report, reward.
The long grinds pay off
Two very different trending stories share one lesson this week.
First, the Bengali community's @rme just published installment 570 of 1000 in an ongoing series of logos, memes and banners for the community's $PUSS token. Let that number sink in: 570 installments of original community artwork, on the way to a thousand. That is not a post — it is an institution. Serialization on this scale turns casual readers into followers who come back to see installment 571.
Second, over in STEEM CN, a popular-science piece on the smartest non-mammals — octopuses, corvids, parrots — trended across language lines. Quality niche writing still travels. You do not need the biggest community; you need the most interesting idea in your corner of it.
My take for new authors: pick a lane and stay in it. The accounts winning this week are not the ones chasing every trend — they are the ones 500 posts deep into their own format. Consistency compounds.
Looking ahead
Week 8 entries close tonight. The Week 9 announcement should land early next week, and with at least four more weeks of Season 34 promised, there is plenty of runway left. If you sat this week out, read the two questions above and start drafting — the Shopping Game revival means the prizes this week are unusually generous.
See you next Sunday.
This is original writing for the Steemit community. Illustrations are original digital artwork created for this post.