Why Hive matters: Embedding files directly in the blockchain

Hello Hivers!

Hive as most of you know, utilizes blockchain to store and aggregate all of its articles, posts, buzzes, generally any text-based content.

While this unique property increases network's resilience immensely it comes at a certain cost, which means many projects might opt for centralized storage instead. Therefore it's not a property we should take for granted. For example, it's entirely possible to create a social network that uses blockchain only as a financial backend but all of its content is stored on centralized servers. Or one that uses blockchain for indexing but still keeps all its articles and posts stored directly.

Even in the case of seemingly fully decentralized projects like Bitclout (also known as Deso) or Alchemy AWS there's still a lot of question marks. On the surface, Alchemy is all about Web3 and decentralization. In reality though it fully relies on its own infrastructure, namely things like traditional web servers. As a result "blockchain developers are running their decentralized apps through (you guessed it) a centralized platform."

Thenewstack reports that Bitclout similarly relies on many centralized elements. Profile identification, verification and storage and done centrally, website bitclout.com is run on servers managed by BitClout and so on. And while posts are indeed written into the blockchain, the chain itself is not as open as one would want. Bitclout "nodes" were for example exposed as nothing more than jumbled dockers with some potentially malicious code. There was no way to fork these 'nodes' or do anything remotely independent. Same with the alleged Bitclout mining tool which turned out to be another "heavily guarded docker". Barnacules speculated this docker might simply mine other coins and award users their equivalent in $deso (then $clout).

Why companies might want to conceal their dependence on centralized resources is not hard to understand. Centralized systems are generally snappy, responsive and easier to control so the idea of making something only appear like it's decentralized can be quite tempting. To make matters worse users apparently do not seem to notice or care. Alchemy recently boosted its valuation to $3.5 billion, and Deso simply admitted that what they are aiming for is "progressive decentralization".

As far as I'm aware Hive is the most decentralized social network currently available. It not only indexes content but also stores posts and articles directly within its blocks. Nodes and ownership are scattered across many entities and its community proved its resilience many times, most notably during Justin's Sun takeover attempt.

For now, everything on the blockchain is text-based, but we can already build on top of that with Base64 encoding.

You can copy the text in the column above and paste it to a converter (for example this one: https://www.ipvoid.com/base64-to-mp3/) to quickly pull up encoded audio of Assange from 2014. Let me emphasise that this audio is pulled directly from the blockchain! How cool is that!

This would not be possible on centralized platforms, that's obvious, but it's also not possible on platforms that are seemingly crypto focused: Platforms like Read.cash or Bitclout are useful and I like them for a variety of reasons but they're not fully decentralized. Hive is.

I feel it's important to remind everyone of this valuable property, especially in the face of various inconveniences and shortcomings which often make users feel discouraged. There's indeed a lot of things that could be improved or done better but at the same time, it's vital to see the big picture.

Wishing everyone all the best and have a happy 2022!
Mat