I reckon that one of the better ways how to start here on Hive is to understand my own perspective on it, on its community and what I would actually like it to become. @theycallmedan motivated us to do so and do it I shall. This will be an emotional article revealing a lot about myself in general. Without further ado let’s get started.
Steem
Ever since I found out about Steem and its usages I realized my hidden inner libertarian beliefs and that they actually have already been part of our civilization and are about to be cultivated due to decentralized technology. That totally changed my life. I have always been a happy guy that is smiling all the time, but I never truly believed that I would be part of a bigger community than around 5-30 people where we would (more or less) share the same beliefs about how systems and governance should be managed. I always felt and probably always will feel like an alien from different dimension. And I like it. My dimension is nice…be my guest here:).
The point of that paragraph (before I get side-tracked) was that it meant a lot to me in life to realize that big decentralized communities are forming using mathematic cyphers to a) express themselves b) form strong networks c) create value and d) earn money TOGETHER while enjoying the previous points. Man…what a life changer. All it really takes is to speak English and have at least some ICT literacy.
Of course that such a project, testing for the first time such a mechanics, will hit a wall here and there, uncovering its weaknesses. That’s where the community, reputation and strong governance has to kick in. To adapt, to evolve, to continue as something stronger. Nothing has been created flawless. Flaws simply have to be uncovered and solved (be it through mindfulness when tackling “human problems” or patches/forks when tackling digital problems).
It is though hard to do that when the governance lies in incompetent hands right? Whether those hands are part of centralized shenanigans, or decentralized community itself. The latter can though use afore mentioned attributes and aspects (reputation, governance - to state just an example) to improve…in an effort to become a better ecosystem. The former, when fucked up, is simply FUCKED UP - there is nothing that can be done. Mindfulness simply doesn’t exists within some organic borders.
And we all know that the former has always been our haunting shadow. Firstly Ned followed up by literal Chinese occupation of wannabe decentralized system through the arch prophet Sun (that no1 wants to fuck).
Everything seemed in total shit…
Hive
Until what I always felt emerged in full strength. Whoever has spent several years on our former lovely platform that shall not be named anymore has to feel that people truly DO CARE about the system. Those that have been around often times stay around, or they at least do not power down fully and keep eyes on the project (which is kinda proven by revival of old faces when we forked out). And when it started to feel like we will never climb out of that shit and that it may be the time to dump what became a shit coin, the saving grace has finally made its appearance. The saving grace that has been around since the very start. The saving grace being of course the mentally attached community to the ideals that we all came for.
And thus we forked…
But you know what? The hard part starts FUCKING NOW! No more Ned’s arse licking to gain millions of HP for projects – the community has to be persuaded. No more centralized development – people have to do it and platform needs to pay for it. New, rough but pleasant times lay ahead. Everyone needs to contribute however one can.
What I want to see working differently on Hive
There were many problems Steem had that we forked over to Hive. No – downvotes weren’t the thing… So this is my list that I would like to see changed. There are 2 main pressing problems I think should be solved as soon as we have good options or replacements.
Reputation
Reputation represents how trustworthy and valuable a person is to a community. Reputation cannot be bought. The reputation system Hive uses is objectively broken. Reputation is supreme part of any governance model that wants to take in account more than just current financial investment. There aren’t many working reputation systems out in the world yet. We as a community have a power to change that. We can come up with something strong and I believe that in time, we will.
Governence
We have always relied on centralized planning and if we want to get rid of that stigma, we need to work on our governance model. SPS are great, DPOS proved that it can defend itself even against strong enemies (even though we need slight changes to it). But if we want to proclaim ourselves as truly functional decentralized community, we cannot sleep on laurels. We need to keep improving. We NEED TO MAKE SURE we can use the ninja-mined stake (Now HiveDAO stake) more effectively than the predecessors. We got rid of the evils that were haunting us, but as of yet we have limited tools to use in order to put that money to good use. Therefore I hope we can work on that
What can I bring to the table?
I would be a hypocrite if I didn’t ty to solve some of the most pressing problems myself. There are few different paths that I can follow.
The first and easiest thing to do is to donate somehow to the HiveDAO so we continuously have more funds for development and potentially valuable projects. On the other hand though I need to survive during the Corona crisis (due to which I have no income whatsoever). Post income will probably be my only income nowadays, but one got to give back if one has enough. Therefore if my posts will continuously be earning 10-15 bucks+ I will donate 10% of every posts income to HiveDAO which as I saw is possible directly in a post settings so everyone can check that I do not lie as soon as my new posts are published.
My master’s thesis topic is “Utilization of decentralized technology in scholarly communication”. In the thesis I will be tackling existing reputation models that are being tested in scholarly-based decentralized applications and in scholarly communication itself. Even though reputation itself is not a core topic of the thesis I personally would like to come up with something that could add some relevant ideas to the “reputation discussion” anyway. As I think that Hive desperately needs better reputation model, it could benefit from my work provided I don’t fail.
I would also like to actively contribute to our community’s governance discussion. I think that we should all settle first, get our Keychains running, get to know our witnesses, our SPSs, form some new Hive networks and then jump straight into governance discussion.
It is vital for Hive.
And Hive means continuation of my decentralized, free and voluntary way of life.
I aspire to grow as a human being and I hope that the community on the platform that I so love will feel the same way:).
Ps sorry @theycallmedan I don’t have Twitter:D
On the governance front, there was an interesting bitter article on Steem (written in Korean I think) saying how centralised Hive is - pointing out that practically everyone in the top 20 has either a Pumpkin or Dan vote, they have a point!
Long way to go there to sell the platform as decentralised!
How to get those discussions off Discord and into the public domain is something to consider.
Very interesting sounding thesis, you've been doing that for ages, haven't you?
I haven’t really had time to dig into who the most influential user is on Hive yet. Nevertheless the people that currently are in the top 20 spots are those that made hive reality in the first place. I’m happy to have them there (I in fact vote for most of them). In time, when we settle on the platform, we shall see how the witness positions are going to change.
I any case without the pre-mined tokens and without Ned and Justin we are the closest to "decentralized" position than we have been ever before. But as I said we lack some instrumental aspects as of yet in order to function well.
We definitely need the discussions to happen on chain!
Well in fact no. I have just started basically...still got a year and half before it needs to be finished so i just started reading them papers:) I have been trying to get to know this topic for quite some time in that you’re correct:)
Welcome to hive :)
@tipu curate
Upvoted 👌 (Mana: 14/28)
Thanks:) Gotta do some research what @tipu is:P
https://tipu.online/
A curation service.
Works for Steem and Hive as well :)
Here's all the proof you need that it is broken.
Yea pretty much sums it up:D