Hive Newbees Digest 003 - Investing in the Blockchain

The Hive Newbee Digest is a weekly update post focusing on onboarding new members to the Hive Community. While my personal focus is on onboarding Surinamese creatives and creators to the platform, this digest is available to everyone on the platform and will be writing in English so everyone has easy access to the information. This is part 3. Read Part 1 here and Part 2 here.

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The Ultimate Hive Guide

A lot of ground breaking work has already been done to explain the Hive blockchain. Probably the most extensive guide I’ve come across (thanks to @donald.porter and @leofinance pointing me in the right direction) is @khaleelkazi’s Ultimate Guide on How to Create, Earn and Build on Hive. He called it the most comprehensive tutorial on Hive, which indeed, it is.

In an episode on the Leo Show, @khaleelkazi explains the guide for anyone who is interested to learn more about the blockchain, ranging from the basic idea of Hive and getting an account, to Communities and Hive Witnesses, to Tools and Resources that you can use to help you out.

You can check out the full page on the Leofinance website >>> here <<< or watch his video on @threespeak >>> here <<<.

Hive Rewards

In his video @khaleelkazi goes into the Hive Rewards Pool, explaining the basic idea on how big the reward pool is and that upvotes by members with more Hive Power will distribute more rewards.

For example, if I have 10,000 HIVE POWER and you have 5,000 HIVE POWER and we vote the same piece of content, my vote will distribute 2x as many rewards as your vote will (all other things remaining equal).

So, how do Hive rewards actually work?

Once you post on the Hive blockchain, whether it is straight to the Hive Blog or on of the different Hive dApps, all upvotes are worth a certain amount of rewards. After 7 days, the post pays out the amount of rewards accumulated throughout those 7 days.

Another important thing to understand, it once you get upvotes, not all rewards will go directly to you. There are several other elements you should take into account, being:

Curation
Author Reward Distribution
Beneficiaries
Tips

Curation

If you want to learn a little bit more about curation, check out @beckie96830’s post on how does curation work on Hive? She taps into the concept behind it and also adds some good rules on posting ethics on Hive.

As for your rewards, the author of the post gets paid out around 50% of the actual rewards on the post. The first 50% of the post rewards actually go to the curators, the people/accounts that actually upvoted your content. You might think this is a little unfair at first, until you realize why this is important. The first reason is it rewards those who take the time to curate and upvote your content. Without readers of your posts, every on the Hive blockchain would be creating content and no-one would be consuming it. This leads to the second part, it becomes more interesting to invest in the platform and boost your Hive Power, so you can earn from your curation as well. Lastly, the curation reward used to be 25% and I was skeptical when it was moved up to 50%, but making it more interesting to earn with upvoting as well has actually created a much more engaged community.

Author Reward Distribution

When you are posting on the Hive Blockchain, there are several options:

50% HBD / 50% HP
The 50/50% is the most common one, meaning that of the author rewards (the rewards after curation), 50% will be paid to the author in Hive Backed Dollars and 50% will be paid in Hive Power.

100% HP (Power Up)
The full power up option, in which cases all the rewards get converted into Hive Power and is paid out the wallet of the author.

Decline Payout
In this case, the author decides to declines payout. In most cases these are general announcements by witnesses or other key figure that feel obliged to not receive any rewards for that specific post.

@peakd also adds two additional options, burning the payout and donating to the Hive fund.

Beneficiaries

A great feature that the Hive Blockchain offers is to set beneficiaries to your post. That means that part of the payout (or even all of it) goes to someone else than the author. You can set this up if you feel someone deserves part of the earnings of your post for whatever reason. This of course also makes it easier to have collaborations between two or more creators.

Tips

Another feature which is available on @peakd is the Tipping option. This allows you to give the author a tip, either because you feel the post is worth more than the up vote you have given or because the post is over 7 days old and you can no longer upvote it.

Hive Rewards example

Let's explain the Hive Rewards with an actual post, last week's Newbee Digest.

Last week Newbee Digest shows a total of 1.78 in Hive Rewards.

If we zoom in on the earnings, as author, I actually get 0.868 of the total 1.779 Hive Rewards, as the rest goes to curation.

5% of the actual earnings of the post go to my daughter @Elynn, whose account I made because she showed interest into creating, but which will only be used if she feels she is ready to post.

In the end, the 0.868 Hive Rewards translated into 0.434 Hive Backed Dollars and 1.986 Hive Power.

If you look at the screenshot of the post, you will see a small gift icon, meaning someone gave a tip.

Thanks @abh12345!

I hope this gives a little more insight into how Hive Rewards actually work.

The importance of reinvesting

It’s an unwritten rule that the best way too succeed on the Hive Blockchain in the long term is built up a good reputations and gain more Hive Power. The good reputation means that you are in good standing with the community, but is also somewhat tied the amount of rewards you have earned since you have been on the platform. However, even more important to built up some Hive Power, so your vote is worth enough to also reward good content. This is one of the reasons why the author reward distribution doesn’t allow a full Hive Back Dollar (HBD) payout, which would allow you to take all your earnings straight out of your Hive Wallet and into an external wallet or exchange, to cash out. It would most likely also lead to people no longer upvoting your content due to this selfish act of constantly cashing out, without building up enough Hive Power to properly reward others.

The 50/50% reward structure however does give some leeway for those that actually use Hive as an source of active income. Some people on the Hive Blockchain actually do use their monthly earnings as a source of income and taking some Hive out every month is reasonable (as long as you don’t immediately power down as well [we’ll leave that for another Hive Newbee Digest]). If your not planning to cash out anytime soon, the 100% Hive Power is a great option to get your Hive Power to grow quicker, as your giving a clear signal that you are reinvesting your earning straight into Hive Power.

Powering Up

In case you are using the 50/50% reward structure, that could mean that you are left with some Hive by the end of the month. A great way to get rewarded for reinvesting in the Hive Blockchain is by joining the Hive Power Up Day, which is every first of the month. So yes, Today!

As @traciyork explains in last week’s announcement post, on Hive Power Up Day, the first day of each month:

• We ask that everyone who can do so, power up any amount of HIVE they are holding on the first of the month.
• We ask accounts that are currently powering down to please pause the powerdown during the hours of the first of the month.
• We ask that those who are trading and/or selling Hive, not to do so during the hours of the first of the month (and if possible, cancel any type of sell order on any exchanges for the same hours).

A couple of main reasons to power up, courtesy of @sndbox (I translated them from St**m to Hive):

Your votes become stronger (more Hive Power, the stronger and more profitable your vote becomes)
You earn more curation rewards (The more Hive Power you have, the higher your curations rewards are)
You earn interest on your Hive holdings (There is a passive income benefit to powering up Hive to Hive Power instead of leaving it as Hive on an exchange or external wallet)
You can help new accounts start up (New Hive accounts need some fuel to get started and you can help by delegating them a small amount of Hive Power)
You can delegate your Hive Power (You can borrow other members any amount of Hive Power who will put it to good use, which you will also benefit from)
You become a trusted member of the Hive community (Yes, there is street cred for powering up and reinvesting your earnings in Hive Power)

Hive Power Up example

I started off the day with 12.053 Hive in my Hive Wallet

On @peakd, you can just press the dropdown button to Power Up

Since it is not a lot, we are powering it all up

As with every online transaction, you will have to confirm with one of your keys, or one of the Hive sign/log in tools, like Hivesigner

When you have powered up, the liquid Hive will instantly be converted into Hive Power

To join with the Hive Power Up Day, don't forget to power up on the 1st of the month, add the tag HivePUD to your post and read the official guidelines for participating in the announcement post by either @streetstyle, @traciyork or @brittandjosie.

Hive Onboarding

For those who know people that want to join Hive, but are worried about onboarding, @hivepeople has a great Hiveonboard.com tutorial for if people encounter the Hive Blockchain for the first time.

I've also committed to a small HP prize for the person that onboards the most people to Hive every month.

Hive contests: New Updates!

I haven’t done any shoutouts to new contests yet, so I first of want to let you all know that @qurator runs a weekly contest called Hive Top Chef!

So, if you are into cooking and you want to share your cooking skills on the Hive Blockchain, make sure to check out there weekly contest. Every week they have a new ingredient you have to incorporate. This week’s ingredient? Garlic.

Also make sure to check out @zord189’s Hive Creative Contest. Every week he has a different contest available to participate in and this week theme is Movies.

Previously listed contests

@jaynie's Track of the week contest
@detlev’s Beer Saturday
@old-guy-photos’s monochromemonday
@tattoodjay’s Wednesday Walk
@flaxz's IAmAliveChallenge
@dswigle's Market Friday
@yourtop3

Hive Twitter Update: We are starting a Hive TweetChat

Are you on Hive and also on Twitter? We'll be starting a Hive TweetChat this month. A TweetChat is an hourlong public chat on Twitter, in this case about Hive. You can now vote on @dpoll.xyz for your preferred day of the week (click here).

I've also restarted my efforts with a #HiveIsAlive Twitter List, feel free to drop your Twitter handle here in a comment to be added.

#lobi
@jeanlucsr