I remember being in work back in February and sneaking a look at pre-Hive, and feeling a bit ill having caught sight of the sudden change in T20 witnesses, following the then recent hijacking by Justin Evil. All I could do while at work was push it to the back of my mind, but as soon as I was back in my hotel room, I was on Discord for that long and not particularly encouraging Hive Townhall hosted by @aggroed, and then again the next night, and several other evenings in early spring.
Thankfully, since those dark, dark days, and the hard work of a number of people (which may or not be worth $30K a head), we've now got a brand new chain, and now that the Steem PowerDowns are done, things seem to be pretty stable, which is much better for my peace of mind than all that volatility back in Spring.
Summer on Hive has been relatively calm, things just seem to be bimbling/ bumbling along: I make some posts, I get some decent pay, people comment, I reply. Other people make some posts, I read some shit, I do some voting, I don't read some other shit, I do/ don't (?) do some autovoting anyway. I play some games, I win I lose, I trade a few Hive-Engine tokens, I occasionally buy a little more Hive.
The HIVE-USD trend: nice and stable for the past few months!
Yes, things are bumbling along nicely, but they are just a little, well, like the price, just a little flat!
I believe (note the faith element there) that the infrastructure is pretty well set up here on Hive for us to scale and moon, but I also know that since the last fork and new people effectively having to take on responsibility for the core development, that it's slow progress to stabilize the chain and bring on board new core features (like SMTs, whatever they are, and if they ever happen).
I'm kind of ready to see some real growth here on Hive, rather than flat-lining, but I'm kind of wondering what indicators are the most valid for measuring Hive's success.
So what are the mos valid indicators of Hive's progress?
Obviously the price is important to me - $5 Hive and I never have to work again.
But price depends on people buying Hive and powering it up, and in turn that depends on what users or investors think about the usability of the blockchain/ frontends.
The growth of Hive also depends what people use it for, and I guess because I'm a believer of strength through diversity, I want to see more of a diversity of applications being developed on Hive for people to use.
But I do not believe that every type of use is equal - what we don't need is thousands and thousands of people posting relentless photos or videos and then cashing out their rewards, fine doing the former and not the later, but what's more valuable is surely quality content creation, and people keeping their stake in Hive.
And then there's the whole issue of decentralization - which is fundamentally a function of distribution - the more evenly distributed stake is, the more decentralized we can say Hive is, and that counts for stake voting on both witnesses and DAO funding.
And all of the above depends on the stability of chain, which depends on the quality of the core development going on!
I've come up with at least the following possible indicators of success/ progress:
- The Hive price - lets face it, while it may not be 'all about the money', $5 Hive is nicer than $0.025 cent Hive. TBH I'm quite happy with the stable price ATM, given how young we are.
- Staked Hive compared to Liquid Hive/ HBD - the ratio is currently 137 to 227 million (plus around 4M HBD). TBH I'm not comfortable with seeing so much Hive Liquid, a lot of which is on the exchanges, it just suggests to me scope for future volatility.
- Core development - Everything depends on this, but it's extremely hard to monitor, we're essentially dependent on weekly updates from people like @blocktrades and @howo, very hard to quantify this for the lay person.
- DAO funding distribution - there was a real breakthrough just today as @dapplr has got funding, now that an 'outsider' can get funding, I think this is a great sign. I was quite uncomfortable with seeing the same old faces getting funding.
- Distribution of Hive Power - I'm a bit obsessed with this, as it's fundamental to evidencing our claims of decentralisation. With around 36% of Hive Power in the top 30 or so Whale accounts, and now stable around there, I think we're not doing too badly in the grand scheme of things.
- D'App rankings - I've started to take this a bit more seriously recently, since I've got a bit more into @splinterlands, which is a huge economic success in its own right. This could be crucial to success - the development of D'apps that get people using Hive without really knowing they're using it!
- Price of (which?) Hive-Engine tokens - Many of us are into our Hive-Engine tokens, and some of us have built up huge stake in the tribes. This is worth keeping an eye on - both LEO and DEC, and a whole load of other tokens, have more than doubled in price relative to Hive over the months, so there is room for them to grow independently.
- Daily accounts transacting - I say accounts, so it's not just all about blogging. This could well be the key, the more users, I guess the more potential for people buying Hive, either as users, or as investors.
- User Retention - probably our biggest weakness? Actually keeping people here?
- Numbers of transactions and types of transactions - are all transactions equal? What's better for Hive? Posts and comments, or more gaming custom Json style transactions?
- Social engagement (comments/ votes etc.) - A few of us think this is important, and I guess there's two elements - internally, in terms of engagement, and externally, in terms of outward 'marketing' - I think @abh12345's efforts with the engagement league are about as good as you can get to track the internals, but measuring the 'quality' of external engagement? That's a tough one.
- Number of communities - @leofinance, @splinterlands and also the art communities on Hive (I'm not part of them, but I 'get it', have convinced me that there's a future in Tribes, side-tokenised, so I guess keeping an eye on this is important.
- Number of new users coming to Hive - this is pretty basic, we need basic growth for the price to moon.
- Alexa rankings - I've never really paid too much attention to this, but I guess if we are to remain a social platform, which I think we should, this matters!
Hive Dpps ranked, from 'State of the Dapps'. Not too shabby.
Tracking Progress
There's a number of tools available to track 'progress', I keep an eye on all of the following:
- I like @coincgecko's charts for tracking the Hive Price - I like the way it just displays Hive against dollar, rather than CMC's display which seems to insist on showing me the Hive to USD and BTC prices simultaneously.
- @penguinpablo produces some useful posts a week - the weekly Hive and DAO stats posts especially
- @dalz produces some great stuff, typically monthly, tracking various aspects of stats on the chain.
- @arcange's stats of course - the distribution stats are my fave!
- @abh12345's League Tables, for engagement.
- ATW it can be quite gratifying to head over to State of the DApps and look at how well Hive is doing, for such a young chain.
Are any of these more fundamental to success than the others?
Probably 'core development' and even if you're one of the noble few who isn't interested in money, the price of Hive is crucial for ensuring that continues.
Maybe some of the above are functions of others? Maybe better Alexa rankings is a predictor of new users coming in, maybe number of new users predicts the future price of Hive (maybe that's why it's flatlining atm!)
And maybe some of the above just aren't that important - perhaps the Engine tokens are all doomed to just broadly follow the Hive price, and perhaps low user retention doesn't matter because they'll be back when the other indicators tick back up?!?
Or maybe there are more valid indicators still, and on that note, time to go slaughter my daily chicken and read the entrails.
Posted Using LeoFinance
There are indicators for hive being a success?
Why didn't someone tell me?
A fair list, many of which will just follow HIVE price, if and or when!
I'd like to see some marketing, and also have an eye on the bold JPliberty case which i think is nearing court after 2.5 years work.
I save this event for Friday also :)
I haven't been following that case tbh, and please do share what the entrails reveal!
Will do, I may stick a post out today on it actually as the sign up for a potential monster payout ends in a week.
How do you mean? Potential monster payout?
https://www.jpbliberty.com/crypto-ad-ban-case
I can't see the figure but last i heard they were going in for 300 million!
Ah cheers, I had no idea what you were talking about, I'm going to sign up now!
Thanks for the shout out.
The 227M liquid HIVE is actually around 144M, because of the 83M ish, HIVE in the DAO that soon will be converted to HBD. Out of the 144M liquid, around 100M are on exchanges... this numbers has been the case for Steem a long time as well.
For me one of the most important metric will be creating successful apps on top of the chain, like Splinterlands. These apps should onboard, market and drive the demand for HIVE.
Thanks for the clarification, I still regard that 83 million as 'liquid', it is designed to pay people after all!
Agree with you about the Dapps.
On that noted, the wolf doesn't have a case for getting rid of the social aspect of Hive, most of our successful Dapps are just that - blogging platforms!
The relative size of the vesting fund is not important. A large chunk of all HIVE will always be liquid an on exchanges. That's the only way price discovery happens for HIVE. If too much HIVE is powered up, then it will be easy for even small holders to produce large swings in the price.
Fair point, well maybe it is still important, what we need is some sort of balance between the two, whatever that may be!
I do think that for such a young eco system we are right on track. Also with the value of the coin....same thing...and it is growing as the market is growing as well, but maybe not in BTC value but that will follow
It was turbulent times and that isnt always something people want to step into. I think the effort of @theycallmedan is a good on trying to bridge with other chains..even if it is only to get the word out there. And it is cool to put it some funding himself. those things always help gaining trust.
It shouldnt be about the blogging anymore. Yes we are a social chain and this part will always be there, but the pressure should start coming on the other project which are more background. Those however are not the parts that I am familiar with so the commenting on that is for the others.
For now...not to worry I guess, and keep positive and hive on. Share in a positive daylight and lets get those investers and big boys
(ps money on exchanges not necessarily bad. Binance put the margin trading on hive earlier in the week. Can create some good volumes to get us back in the top 100 in CMC)
It is early days, you're right.
I don't really understand margin trading TBH - if it's to do with financialisation/ derivatives I'm sceptical, all of that has no real value if you ask me, even if it does lead to price increases.
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STOPGreat Post! I think I am personally gonna be paying more close attention to the Alexa Rankings as it seems to be a good metric to see how Hive is doing compared to other similar platforms and how the user base is growing.
If you believe Hive is primarily a social platform, then it's an important metric for sure!
What are hive-engine tokens? Is there a way to be stacking coins other than Hive I should know about? Thanks!
Hive-Engine is where you can trade all the tribe and game tokens - DEC is probably the best known. There's many more.
https://hive-engine.com/?p=balances&a=revisesociology
If you use Peakd as a front-end, the wallet page has an option to easily allow you see your HE tokens.
One my favourite tribes is leo - https://leofinance.io/
If you post about finance related stuff on that platform it posts to leo and hive, and you have the potential to get rewarded in both HIVE and LEO.
Besides being interested in finance stuff (I mean, who on here isn't!) I get a 30% curation return with LEO, which is about 2.5 times better than on Hive, which is why I'm stacking this particular token.
You can also trade with their exchange - leodex.
Awesome, thanks for that!