Technology illustrations by Storyset
Yesterday, I was going through my timeline when I stumbled upon a tweet that talked about how Hive isn't losing users and that historically activities on the chain are low when the price of Hive is down. I find this frustrating because it is not only a half-truth but a general sentiment that most of the core Hivers have about the chain.
The beautiful and tragic thing about the Hive blockchain is that its core stakeholders are stuck in their ways. I was as well for the better part of my time in the ecosystem, which is more than 5 years. During that time, I have seen, read, and experienced things that have informed my knowledge about the Hive ecosystem.
Now, I say that statement is a half-truth because historically, Hive has had its worst activity rate when the price of the token is down. This is because, during this time, it is not worth being on the chain, and we need to understand that people have lives outside of Hive that are far more important than anything we do on-chain. This has led me to conclude that we've been paddling a very delusional narrative.
For instance, I could afford to be on-chain for 5-6 hours daily when my earnings were decent, but it would be suicidal to do so now. In fact, the only reason I can show up a couple of times a week is because I genuinely love to create content. There is nothing about the Hive price that informs my decision to be on-chain because regardless, I have been able to earn decent upvotes. I know the type of content to create and the people/group to pander to.
The only demographic that can afford to be here for more than 2 hours daily are mostly from third-world countries where the living wage is significantly lower. Unfortunately, this category of people is tagged as 'Takers,' which leaves a sore taste in their mouth. Everyone I know from my discography has their exit plan from Hive because they know they are not respected by the 1%. This is a discussion for another day.
Now, going back to the issue of traffic being down during the bear market, it is also important to state that there aren't significant changes during the bull market. The return rate and onboarding rate are significantly low, especially with the drought of Dapps on-chain. Hive hasn't grown above a certain threshold in years, and I believe on-chain data can prove my assertions. Compare the number of Dapps/development on-chain from 2020 to the last 4 years; compare the activity charts of 2020 to the last four years.
95% of the people I met on Hive are no longer active. The same can be said about those who started at the same time as well. From a social standpoint, that's awful. I cannot find my mutuals on-chain anymore. However, when I go on Crypto Twitter, I find them doing extremely well for themselves. These are the issues.
In addition, given the fact that Hive is an old blockchain, we have a lot of old heads who are still stuck in the crypto golden era. The problem with that is that the space has drastically changed, and unfortunately, Hive is not accounting for those changes. There have been 4-5 web3 trends (even a SOCIALFI trend) in the last 6 months, and Hive has not been able to capitalize on one. But how can it when there are very few Dapps and active users?
The solution to Hive's problem is simple: go back to the drawing board, reintroduce Hive to the crypto community, repair and build new bridges. These are the only ways to rebuild the ecosystem. Hive doesn't need to continue the way it is because it is clearly not working. The chain cannot afford to build in isolation, and I cannot overemphasize this enough.
In conclusion, I know there are more recognized voices that are amplified on Hive that do not agree with my viewpoint. Nevertheless, I believe it is important to counter them. The idea that people are solely here for the money is problematic, and it disregards the important issues that need to be fixed, especially for a chain that prides itself as a social network. We trivialize very complex social issues. It goes to show how out of touch we all are with the system and the people that make up this ecosystem.
You are 100% correct that Hive needs to rethink or reinvent its growth strategy.
You are also spot-on in your assessment of the dApp problem.
As I briefly stated during my presentation at HiveFest, a killer developer’s portal and an asynchronous developer’s bootcamp are desperately needed.
Although I’m not a developer per se, I have lots of programming experience. I tried to teach a university class a couple years ago focused on Hive dApp development.
The documentation and tutorials and libraries in the developer section were all dismal and/or broken.
We have nearly $20 million in the DHF. We should be using that to fund (1) development of a stellar developer’s portal / bootcamp and (2) ongoing hackathons or active RFPs aimed at recruiting and funding new dApp developers.
I wish issues like this are discussed in places that matter, where decisions about the chain are made. A lot needs to change and there isn't the will to do so because a few benefit from the current system.
Thanks for stopping by. I appreciate your comment.
Make a DHF proposal. If it's well made I will support it, because I agree with your characterization of the need. However, the only thing that will 'fix' Hive is the cessation of opinion flagging. Hive is massively censored by DV taxation, and this is the reason Hive languishes despite the enormity of the market for free speech.
I have long been a strong advocate of DV reform. I still steadfastly believe some simple straightforward changes are desperately needed, and that Hive’s advancement as a social media platform will be forever hindered until common sense DV reform is instantiated.
However, about 2 to 2.5 years ago, I came to the realization that the future viability of Hive has less to do with the blockchain’s social media features and is much more dependent on the emergence of a handful (or more) dApps that are each able to consistently reach tens of thousands of new users. Those users don’t even need to know they’re using Hive, btw.
Personally, I think @arcange’s HiveAuth could single-handedly catapult Hive to national prominence, if we could simply get a major website to add it as a method of login/authentication.
In any event, the emergence of a handful of highly successful dApps is itself critically dependent on getting lots and lots of dApp developers dabbling and trying out new ideas, solving novel problems in novel ways.
As I mentioned previously, getting up to speed to start developing on Hive is far more challenging and painful than it should be.
I’ll give it some thought.
@arcange would be a great team member for such an effort. @brianoflondon also, or @nathansenn and the dBuzz team, or @vaultec, or @grampo, or any number of others who have created significant value-adding dApps and know what new-to-Hive devs would most need.
I think we fundamentally disagree about social media. When I look at IRL markets, social media is the driver of the largest sector of finance in the world, and it's only existed for about a decade. It is people posting cat pics and whinging about their in-laws that drives the market for phones, hardware of all kinds, all the networks, all of it is driven by social media and people's need to post.
What they need Hive mostly has already. If we could post video clips without using another app that would be ideal, but we can post pics, and that's the majority anyway. However, people complaining about their mother in law will not tolerate being flagged, and that's why they're not complaining here. They'd love to get $.03 for whinging about the burned steaks. That's the actual leg up Steem had, but the flags were intolerable, and everyone that came for the $.03 left feeling like they'd been scammed.
I'm not sure they weren't, tbh.
We don’t fundamentally disagree. I originally had high hopes for the social media potential of Hive. And I still believe there’s a lot of promise there. It’s just not what the ecosystem needs most at this point, imho.
dApps are unique in that they only succeed if they are solving people’s pain points or giving them delight. That means users will pay for the benefits they are receiving.
Social media worldwide is still stuck in the ad-based free-to-use paradigm. Until that paradigm breaks, Hive’s real potential won’t shine through.
Hive has the structure to utterly dispel free to use with get paid to use. It only fails to do that because of DV's. The idea of a rewards pool and UV's from inflation that don't come out of the voter's wallet is genius, but the misapplication of DV's is moronic. Many blatantly and falsely misstated that DV's aren't censorship, despite the explicit demonstration of how well they work to eradicate spam, scams, and plagiarism. Further every authoritative definition of censorship says it's any suppression of speech, and no better demonstration of financial taxation targeting offensive speakers could exist than Canada seizing the bank accounts of supporters of Freedom Convoy truckers. Many continue to maintain that Hive can't be censored because speech is on the blockchain, but that's a ridiculous standard. What speech that was ever censored no longer exists? Every book ever banned continues to be read today. It is literally impossible to utterly eliminate speech even by double tapping the backs of the heads of the censored.
Their ideas always outlive them.
The outrageous censorship of Hive through DV's needs to end, except where it is necessary to prevent spam, scams, and plagiarism. Even the vile plutocratic governance model can be tolerable if we have free speech, and end financial taxation wielded as censorship. Dapps are fine and all, but there are myriad mechanisms that enable people to post and all of them are more or less successful, including Hive. We have had millions of people that took the trouble to onboard and begin using the platform since 2017. The form and mechanism of speaking here isn't the problem.
The censorship drove them away. Fix that censorship problem and demonstrate to the market that it's fixed, and the market will respond. The competition has only gotten worse, censoring ever harder (almost approaching the flag happy on Hive!) and the market for a free speech platform is stronger and larger than ever. The concept of being paid by consumers for posting instead of advertisers surveilling, tracking, and lying to you is compelling. It will draw millions of users, as soon as DV's can't screw the pooch.
Our views on the social media side of things are not all that different.
One issue that I recognized early on with respect to DVs is that if Hive sees some substantial growth as a social media platform before fixing the DV disparities, it could backfire in a major way, making Hive well known but for all the wrong reasons.
I’ve not given up on that fight, but my focus at the moment is more on attracting new Devs than new social media users. That’s mostly an issue with my own limited bandwidth.
Waivio empowers non-tech users to build sophisticated social websites on the Hive blockchain.
Last year at HiveFest, we introduced social shopping projects (https://CleanGirlLook.com, https://CoffeeShop.Gifts, etc.)
This year, we'll be talking about web3 maps on Hive (https://AcceptCryptoMap.com, https://SpendHBD.Social.Gifts, etc.)
Regarding downvotes, they significantly reduce dopamine levels not only for those who receive them but also for everyone else who observe the drama.
Fairness and equity are fundamental in all higher vertebrates. We've all seen the videos of monkeys outraged when they get cucumber bits and their neighbor gets grapes. Dogs will fight to the death over insignificant tidbits, because it's not the tidbit that matters, it's the social approval they signify that does.
Hive is doing that all wrong with DV's.
I've pointed it out before, but DV's aren't the opposite of upvotes. The opposite of an upvote is no vote. DV's are taxes. Nobody likes paying taxes, because taxes are theft. DV's work to prevent spam, scams, and plagiarism because they're onerous. Applying them to opinionated speech is asinine and kills the Hive.
Facts! You put it exactly right. I agree on every point. Especially when it comes to growth
On a separate note.
“ We have nearly $20 million in the DHF. We should be using that to fund (1) development of a stellar developer’s portal / bootcamp and (2) ongoing hackathons or active RFPs aimed at recruiting and funding new dApp developers.“
I’m told the DHF is giving funds to charities? We have no idea where or if there is fraud. Many scams are going on and I know I certainly don’t appreciate DHF founding any charity with little knowledge of exact spending. In this case it’s Ukraine charities I’m told. There is so much fraud in this area. I know many who are against this and scared to discuss off discord DM’s.
Hive this season is not helping matters at all, everything has reduced even the the upvotes. It's not encouraging at all. It's high time, we go back to the drawing board and reintroduce hive to the people just as you have said.
TON has done it and they are doing really well now. I don't think Hive is too far gone. It still has a chance.
Especially with us breaking .25 support in a crypto bull period. It seems many here just focus on delegation for upvote trade. It’s a bad look.
And they will remain so. The core stakeholders are investors, and sound prudence dictates that cash is king, so they treat their stake as ROI generation they will maintain. This isn't going to turn out well for Hive, but investors are prepared to maintain their capital by moving to new investments when the market dictates.
Hive is a plutocracy. Plutocrats will maintain their governance.
Thanks!
Edit: I forgot to mention that I disagree with almost every other point you make in the OP, particularly regarding the demographic that can be on Hive. I do not fit your characterization because I am only here for free speech. The price of Hive only matters to me because it affects the society of people that use Hive. The Hive token is relatively unimportant compared to freedom of speech, and were Hive managed for it's highest and best value rather than financially prudential, we'd not have lost ~2M users since 2017.
Ironically it is prudence that has, and will continue to crater Hive token price, because prudence treats all other values as subsidiary to financial considerations, and it is free speech that has existential value, not money.
I agree and this is what I am appealing to (by extension)--the interest of the plutocrats, which I believe is the sustenance of their cash cow (Hive). We can have a win-win where everyone who is remotely interested and invested in the growth of the blockchain wins. It should not be a zero sum game.
Lastly, there isn't a single solution to Hive. I believe free speech matter, so does the token and the demographics the chain pulls. Everything matters. I will also argue that "money" despite being a man-made construct , has existential value.
We are all here for different reasons and I believe those reasons matter as long as they do not jeopardise the chain (which enables everyone here achieve their goal, whatever it is to make money, build social capital or protect or advance free speech).
Thanks for stopping by.
Not to mention it’s a bull market period with Bitcoin hitting ATH past months and Hive breaks its resistance below .25 which is 20% lower than where we were when the space bottomed in November 2022 and Bitcoin was 16K. Hive is in a deep bear market while much of the space is in a bull. this is a sign of our low growth and unfortunately much of our platform just seems to care about this circle jerk of upvoting through delegation and holding certain tribe tokens for upvotes. It’s been a bad trend how focused on basics buying votes has become. It’s just through delegating & holding tribes instead of flat out buying.
Might not be the most popular suggestion but I think we need a company like STEEMINC (HIVEINC) owned by the community, that is responsible for development. We cannot leave this aspect of the chain to the whims and caprices of a few. The DHF hasn't been effectively used. There is nothing to show for the millions spent over the years.
That’s true about having not much to show indeed. And I’ve been informed the DHF has given funds to charities? Specifically in Ukraine? Which I find is not good use of our community funds. I know there’s massive fraud and frankly I don’t think Hive “Community “ funding should take any side in a war. Why not give to Russian charities as long as it’s for kids only or something. I don’t like that one bit.
But I don’t think a company type model or structure is helpful either. But I understand generally what u mean. I just don’t think that works for a decentralized chain. But I can’t argue ur main point. U are correct