Hive is an open-source blockchain-based ecosystem hosting a social media platform, tens of Dapps and hundreds of L2 tokens. Launched as a community-governed Hard Fork of the STEEM blockchain in 2020, HIVE shares fundamental principles with its predecessor: a novel approach to content creation, curation , and monetization.|Reference: (2020) HIVE Whitepaper https://hive.io/whitepaper.pdf Participants are incentivized with HIVE tokens for their contributions, including posting, commenting, and voting on content. The platform employs a Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS) consensus mechanism for transaction validation and block creation. The ecosystem is purely meritocratic, with HIVE vested in HIVE Power (HP) representing the token of merit. Besides of HIVE and HIVE Power, the ecosystem hosts HIVE Backed Dollars as its native token.
Hive Team
Hive is a blockchain used and run by a community of individuals. Anyone claiming to be part of "the" team, or speaking in the name of Hive is most probably an impostor or a Scammer.
There are a few different groups that take leading roles in different parts of the community though. The following table tries to list them with their respective tasks.
| Usernames | Short description | Task explanation |
|---|---|---|
| @blocktrades, @gtg, @howo, @thebeedevs, @andablackwidow, @mickiewicz | Main core developers | Implement Hard forks, Improve API nodes |
| witnesses | Top20 witnesses | Ensure stability and conformity of blockchain, set dynamic parameters |
| @crimsonclad | core operations | Business and technical development; exchange, integration and community liaison |
| @roelandp | HiveFest founder | Connecting the Hive community in real life |
| everyone else | Community | Whatever you do, it is important! |
Features
Transactions
Thanks to the DPoS consensus, Hive has 3-second block times with transactions confirmed within seconds due to one-block irreversibility.|Reference: Hive.io https://hive.io/about/ Transactions on Hive are free of any monetary fees, but since Hard Fork 20, each of them consumes rechargeable Resource Credits (RC) though. Similarly to other blockchains, RC fees vary depending on the current network usage. The RC available to individual accounts is directly proportional to their Hive Power.|Reference: Hive Developer Portal https://developers.hive.io/tutorials-recipes/calculate_rc_recipe.html As of May 2024, around 10-20 HP is usually sufficient for any user to participate on the blockchain with no limitations experienced.
Governance Model
Hive is not governed by a central authority, there is no enterprise, foundation or other legal entity representing Hive. Every account is eligible to participate in the community governance based on its Hive Power stake. The common governance-related acts are:
- Voting for Witnesses
- Supporting DHF proposals
Most governance actions are merely parametric adjustments (such as setting the current price of HIVE, new account creation fee, or the HBD savings interest rate) and are taken care of by Witnesses. However, the community may agree on a major shift that requires changes in the core protocol of the blockchain, which is called a Hard Fork.
Immutable blogosphere
Steem, the direct predecessor of Hive, was launched in April 2016 as a pioneering attempt to diminish the role of conventional social media and transfer ownership of the data and content to the users, an approach now referred to as web3. Steem aimed to provide a decentralized censorship-resistant platform for users to express themselves freely, and reward the contributors with STEEM tokens and Steem Backed Dollars.|Reference: Steem Bluepaper https://steem.com/steem-bluepaper.pdf|Reference: Steem Whitepaper https://steem.com/SteemWhitePaper.pdf
However, there are proven attempts to censor content on Steem’s primary front-end steemit.com upon the takeover of Steemit, Inc. by TRON-Foundation Ltd.|Reference: Samuel Haig (2020) Cointelegraph https://cointelegraph.com/news/justin-suns-steemit-accused-of-censoring-hive-related-content Censorship and centralized control were the key concerns which eventually led to launching Hive in 2020.
Unlike Steem with a single dominant front-end, Hive offers a wide scale of independent interfaces to interact with the blockchain. The most frequently used ones as of April 2024 are:|Reference: @dalz (2024) A Look at the Top Hive Frontends https://hive.blog/hive-133987/@dalz/a-look-at-the-top-hive-frontends-or-april-2024
Reward System
Hive accommodates a wide range of content formats from microblogging to vlogging. One of the core features of Hive is the reward system, which incentivizes content creation and curation through cryptocurrency rewards. Users who contribute content perceived as valuable by other users receive rewards in proportion to the upvotes the content receives within 7 days of publication.|Reference: (2020) HIVE Whitepaper https://hive.io/whitepaper.pdf The rewards vary from an equivalent of $0.02 (the Dust Threshold)|Reference: https://developers.hive.io/tutorials-recipes/understanding-configuration-values.html to several dozens of dollars per post or comment. The authors receive 50% of the total payout their content generates.
An author can also define beneficiaries at the creation of a post, who then will receive a portion of the author's reward.
The other half of the payout is distributed proportionally among the upvoters, commonly called curators. This measure rewards HP holders and incentivizes active participation. Since opinions on what constitutes quality content are very individual, thematic communities and curation initiatives have emerged to support and promote content that their members find interesting and of high quality.
There are also downvotes (sometimes called "flags") which reduce the rewards for a post (even to 0). They are mainly used for spam, identity theft, promoting scams or plagiarism. By community consensus they are not appropriate to use for disagreement with the content or expressed opinion in a post, because free and uncensored speech are core principles of Hive.
7 days after creation of the post the rewards are finalized and ready to be claimed. The author receives half of his share as HP and the other half as HBD (see below). Curators receive all of their rewards as HP.
Voting Power
Voting Power is the value of a user´s upvote, it is higher the more Hive ones has staked and shrinks when used, but regenerates to 100% after 5 days.
Reputation System
Hive provides a reputation score for each user, which can be used to estimate the legitimity of the account. It is by no means a reliable system, a high score does not mean that the account can definitely be trusted and vice versa.
Basically, the more upvotes a user gets the higher their reputation score. It starts at 25 and can go up to 80 and beyond. The score is not linear but for climbing each point the amount of upvotes required is doubled. Upvotes by users with a higher reputation have a bigger impact.
Downvotes on the other hand cause the reputation to drop (depending on the amount of downvotes). The score can also turn negative in case more downvote value has hit the account than upvote value. In such case some frontends limit the visibility of such accounts.
Tokenomics
Hive exists in several forms, as liquid Hive, in "savings" and staked HP. In addition there are Hive Dollars (HBD).
HP stands for Hive Power, where each HP represents one staked Hive. There Hive is a 13 week vesting period. To turn HP back into liquid Hive one has to start a process called "power down", after which 1/13th of the HP will become available as Hive each week.
Powering up Hive has several advantages:
- For simply holding HP the user gets an interest rate of currently 3.29% per year. This rate depends on the total amount of Hive powered up, as a certain part of Hive's inflation is allocated to this.
- For upvoting posts or comments above a certain "dust" threshold (currently 0,02 Hive) a user receives Hive (as HP) and therefore these "curation rewards" are all the greater, the more HP one has accumulated. 50% of the total upvote value goes back to the curator. The idea behind is to be an incentive to accumulate HP and award good content.
Converting liquid Hive into HP is called "powering up", the reverse process is called "powerdown". One can do this at any time, and one can also cancel (or edit) powerdowns that have already begun.
The curation rewards create a return for staked Hive of approx. 7-8% annually. Together with the >3% interest rate, Hive in its powered-up form therefore yields around 10-11%/a.
Hive Dollars (HBD) are backed by an amount of Hive worth exactly 1$ for each HBD, and are also displayed in a user´s wallet. HBD is practical as a currency for payments in the Hive ecosystem, as it is easier to calculate and one doesn't have to check how much Hive is worth at any given moment. HBD is a "stable coin". HBD has been successfully pegged to the dollar for years (by an algorithmic, autonomously working scheme), and there is an internal market that allows to exchange Hive for HBD and vice versa conveniently and free of charge.
HBD can be transferred to "savings", which binds them for 3 days (i.e. it takes 3 days for HBD to become freely available again). As long as HBD are in savings, they currently generate an annual return of 15%, which is paid out every 30 days (in form of HBD in savings). The APR is governed by the Hive witnesses and may change.
Summary:
Hive: a freely transferable and tradable (e.g. on crypto exchanges such as Binance) cryptocurrency.
Hive Power (HP): staked Hive (13 weeks bind period) for more curation rewards, automatically earns interest at >3%/year
HBD: as many Hives as 1 USD is worth. Can generate 15% interest.
Hive-based Dapps
The fast feeless transactions in combination with a simple address system (instead of a long random string, a Hive wallet address is a common username), and the ability to host L2 tokens including NFTs, also make Hive attractive for non-content-related dapps, mainly games. Most Hive dapps rely on Keychain, a mobile-friendly Hive wallet browser extension that reports over 100,000 users as of May 2024. L2 tokens are commonly minted and traded on a smart contract side-chain platform, Hive Engine.
Disputes
When the Hive blockchain forked from Steem in March 2020, an airdrop was conducted to distribute HIVE tokens to existing Steem users. However, not all Steem users received this airdrop. Users who were associated with TRON-Foundation Ltd., which had acquired Steem and gained control of a significant portion of the total STEEM supply, were blacklisted and did not receive the HIVE token airdrop.|Reference: Stephen O'Neil (2020) Cointelegraph https://cointelegraph.com/news/steem-community-resists-takeover-hard-fork-launches-hive-network
The blacklist was presented as a community decision that had been discussed.|Reference: @lukestokes (2020) How Steem Became Hive https://hive.blog/steem/@lukestokes/how-steem-became-hive Several users were later removed from the blacklist and airdropped additionally.|Reference: @hiveio (2020) Community Discussion and Updates: Hive Airdrop Exclusion List and Code Corrections, Core Developer Meetings https://hive.blog/hiveblockchain/@hiveio/community-discussion-updates-hive-airdrop-exclusion-core-developer-meetings