We need a strong mid- to long-term vision for the Hive blockchain.
I was recently asked to share some of my thoughts about the direction of Hive and how we can make this blockchain attractive to a wider pool of developers, investors, and users. I have mentioned these ideas in different places over the past several months/years. This will be for community contemplation and discussion.
My vision for Hive
This is a list of changes I’d like to see with some rationale to follow:
- Remove social rewards from Hive’s base layer.
- Reduce overall token inflation by 50%.
- Adjust inflation/reward percentages distributed to witnesses, stakeholders, and the Hive development fund.
- Send 50% of current Hive development fund to @null.
- Improve HIVE Dollar pegging tools and incentives or remove the token altogether.
- Increase/Improve other decentralized financial products on Hive.
- Create world-class documentation and developer tools for Hive to facilitate adoption and second-layer application development.
- Use condenser and hivemind as a showcase for social media applications and content rewarding.
Why should we make these changes and improvements?
Some of the ideas above are self-explanatory or are largely accepted as needed for growth. Some may not be as clear-cut or they’re unpopular with certain groups of users. I’ll explain some of these ideas and my reasoning for them here.
1 - Remove Social Rewards
The primary reason for removing social rewards from Hive’s base layer is to provide more versatility and less load on the chain’s base layer. It will also remove the single largest point of contention between users, developers, and investors of HIVE.
Investors of a token/blockchain shouldn’t need to scour pages of social content just to protect themselves from dilution. As Hive grows, the blockchain continues pushing into other interests outside of social media, yet investors and developers can be hamstrung by Hive’s social media reward protocols.
If social rewards can be moved to second layer apps (#7 and #8 above), then the playing field for bloggers, gamers, artists, and any other group of investors can be more leveled. There’s no reason for investors in a gaming community to be forced to vote on or police content just to collect rewards for staking...or else have their investment continually diluted.
2 - Reduce Inflation
With social rewards removed from Hive’s base layer, inflation can be reduced. Currently, social rewards comprise 65% of annual HIVE inflation. Reducing inflation by 50% will actually provide an increase in tokens for the purposes of stakeholder incentives, which is where I believe the extra tokens should go.
3 - Token Distribution
As mentioned, once social rewards are removed and inflation is reduced, the distribution of tokens can be adjusted. I would like to see 40% go to stakeholder “interest” and the remaining 60% percent divided evenly between witness rewards and the Hive development fund.
4 - Burn Tokens
As a result of the creation of Hive as a fork/split from Steem, the Hive development fund received a windfall of 75-80 million HIVE tokens. Since a portion of inflation - and an increased portion at that - will still go to the fund, there is a rather large pile of tokens sitting in reserve to be released at a later date...and contributing to downward pressures on HIVE/HBD prices.
There are no short- to mid-term needs for this surplus of tokens. It can be argued that, in some distant future, those tokens may be needed for development. I don’t believe this is true and if we improve the Hive blockchain now, there will be far superior incentives and enticements to build on/with this chain.
5 - HIVE Dollar Tools
The history of HBDs is a sloppy one. The tools are largely inadequate and the demand/use for HBDs is still quite small and limited even after four years. The current “pegging” essentially relies on printing HBD via the Hive fund and then selling or burning them afterwards. It’s a convoluted scheme meant to do a job that may be able to be accomplished via better protocols.
One such option through Hive code is a two-way conversion that has been discussed for a few years. If that is a viable option, then we should try it and test its robustness. If there are other ideas out there, then we should discuss them.
If HBDs cannot be reasonably pegged and if the interest in or use of them continues to be essentially non-existent, then we should consider scrapping the token altogether.
6 - Other Financial Products
Hive currently has three fairly good financial products baked into its code: Savings accounts, escrow, and a (somewhat) pegged stablecoin. We should explore improving these products (as in #5 and through better incentives for using savings accounts) and adding to them.
Products like loans and insurance can be created. With zero fees, fast transaction times, and unique named accounts, those seeking decentralized finance (DeFi) solutions can find them and actually use them without the pain of exorbitant fees, transaction delays/cancellations, and confusing wallet addresses.
Second layer options can be expanded/improved with the data still being entered into Hive’s immutable ledger. The use of custom JSON transactions - such as how Hive Engine uses them for token creation and trading - allows for nearly limitless options for financial product implementation.
7 - Documentation and Tools
More than anything else, if we want world-class app development and big investors, we need world-class documentation and developer tools. This should be our main focus whether the ideas here are implemented or not. Hive development funding should be directed to achieve these ends as soon as possible.
8 - Social Media App Showcase
Removing rewards from the base layer of Hive is not meant to disregard content creators and social media in general. We should have content platforms...as apps on Hive.
The open-source interface should be improved until it is an enterprise-level interface that showcases the main features of the underlying Hive blockchain and the second-layer social features that have been in development for years. Along with interfaces such as Peakd, Dapplr, and Innerhive, it should highlight these second-layer solutions for censorship resistance, content tokenization, and integration with other third-party Hive apps - such as dCity, NFT Showroom, and Hive Engine.
The complete package for complete domination!
A little hype or hyperbole never hurt anyone, right? But in all honesty...
Why can’t we have it all on Hive?
We have a great blockchain in terms of the underlying technology. We have a relatively large and fairly loyal community for blockchains/crypto.
We just need to focus our energy and resources on what the market wants instead of forcing something that we don’t even excel at, which is social media products.
Hive can be the home for world-class developers. Hive can be the home for world-class decentralized finance. Hive can be the home for world-class gaming, blogging, and digital art galleries. It should be our job (particularly for witnesses and core developers) to provide the incentives and tools to make it all possible.
We can’t do that while arguing about content rewards and trying to maximize token accumulation through various voting schemes and backroom deals.
Let’s open up Hive’s potential and show the world how great blockchains and cryptocurrencies can be.
These are my own ideas and opinions and should not be construed to represent the ideas and opinions of other Hive stakeholders or witnesses.
If you like what you’ve read and want to support these ideas, then consider approving @ats-witness as one of your Hive witnesses.
Dear @ats-david
Interesting suggestions. Obviously one that would impact everyone the most if "Remove Social Rewards".
I fully understand concept behind it (reducing inflation), however if we do that - then what insentives would content creators have to continue using HIVE?
Wouldn't you expect, that this change would result with all communities turning into little ghost-towns? Also wouldn't you be afraid, that many curators supporting quality content would simply power down, seeing that there isn't enough content to support. And knowing, that their upvotes actually are having no value for anyone but them?
After all: if we remove rewards - then what in return would content creators receive? More traffic? More visibility to their publications? Anything which would help with content discovery and attract more viewers to their posts?
At the end of the day content creators need to have a reason to put an effort into their work.
Another challenge I see: how not to create wave of panic if authors would realize that all they have worked for is going to be done and gone?
Yours, Piotr
The concept isn’t to reduce inflation - it’s to move the most contentious part of Hive and the part that we simply do not excel at to the second layer. This is where other apps reside and where industry experts can create their own interface for social media and tokenize that system.
We clearly don’t have experienced social media devs and marketers. Our number of social media users is in the single-digit thousands after four years. But our chain is based on this primary value proposition...and it’s not working. Waiting for spikes in interest and FOMO purchasing of cryptocurrencies isn’t a successful strategy for the main product we have to offer.
There are existing communities that have their own tokens and are distributing these tokens to content creators and curators on Hive’s second layer. There’s no reason to not be able to have a general community and interface/website that does exactly what Hive does regarding content rewards, but have it on layer two instead.
With the growing ecosystem on Hive and on top of Hive, including gaming and art, there should be plenty of incentives for users to stick around the ecosystem and use it how they see fit.
What keeps people coming back to Ethereum and using that blockchain? The games they have on their base layer? The art tokens they have on their base layer? Oh, right...those are on layer two...and they get new users, developers, and investors daily. And Ethereum is a horrible solution in most cases.
We can do better and can certainly retain the community we have - and even grow it. But as long as we’re tied down with one primary value proposition and a large portion of blockchain rewards that everyone publicly fights over, we’re not going to get anywhere, as the numbers continually prove.
This is very true.
Thank you for your mature and polite reply @ats-david
One more question:
If concept is not to reduce inflation, then where would this inflation end up? From my understanding your idea is that content creators shouldn't be rewarded.
Yours, Piotr
Dear @ats-david
It's me again.
I've been thinking a lot lately about idea of moving rewards to 2nd layer and I'm wondering: if neither Steem or HIVE managed (with all it's resources) to create enough value and demand - then how can we expect that those who would launch their tokens (2nd layer) will succeed?
Steem-engine and hive-engine are great example. Literally hardly any token have a value. I'm afraid that most would fail (failure is to be expected in my opinion).
Aren't you afraid, that moving rewards to 2nd layer would be complete failure? Just like most SE and HE tokens turned out to be?
Yours, Piotr
!ENGAGE 50
This was an experiment and let's be totally honest, despite active userbase, the experiment failed. No investor in a traditional internet setup would be satisfied with 10-15k daily users on a "social media platform" after 4 years (of which many automated as well).
Our blockchain is faster, cheaper, can scale better, and was smart even before "smart contracts". Hive has all potential to be a "fat protocol/thin applications” showcase.
Imagine Uniswap without GAS. Imagine games who can actually store every operation on the chain. Imagine being able to tell founders of a platform which is about to shut down due to operational costs “you know not every blockchain has ETH’s friction and would not be cheaper to build upon, there’s one which can reduce your cost by 1/3 and offers free transactions. And users will actually remember their username and wallet address.”
Hive’s key assets are NOT the social rewards.
The “incentive” was an experiment and has become more often than not a pure downpressure factor. By moving the “social aspects” to layer2, these will have much better growth opportunity due to their smaller but more focused nature. Social rewards on layer2 will also be much healthier than the current ecosystem where suddenly every fart is about finance or the previous thinking of “following the stake” (read: delegations). A lot of content had never been created if not for “those incentives” and newsflash... because most of that content is “fake”, and often of abysmal quality, it dilutes the actual value of the token since it was rewarded.
We have one of the most attractive platforms and here we are, four years later, still continuously wanking over “but my rewards!?!?” totally obliviously to the fact that we are failing, failing hard. Only the chain’s technology and promise — compared to others — keeps this joint going. Promise which, of course, includes the potential for tokenized social media.
ENGAGEtokens.Great plan, fully agree!
These are all just my own opinions.
The question is, what you want to build?
Steem was/is a competitor for facebook and medium and I believe it designed to be such. We, in the past, compared Hive with other social media platforms like medium, youtube, twitter, etc.
Hive is a social media blockchain in the base layer and it is known for that. It requires super marketing efforts to change people's minds and re-introduce it in another way. We advertised Hive as permanent storage for content.
HBD needs improvements and I believe it can attract more people by introducing some sort of light accounts. A decentralized stable coin with zero fees.
Considering millions of users, inflation is not that much compared to the already distributed tokens. IMO we should improve the reward distribution to make it more decentralized and fair enough.
I think instead of removing social rewards, we can introduce another token which is interchangeable with HIVE, as the investment token. So, you buy HIVE, invest it by converting to the Invest token, then you earn interest or any other benefits, or at least you don't lose coin value by inflation.
And good documentation is necessary.
I think there are many ways to improve Hive over time. We need more and more discussion.
when SMTs?
I dont think it's a good time to play around with base layer economic mechanics like that... better release SMT and if you still want to better economics, then fix HBD, make loans able and peg HBD to it..
@woelfchen said it good.
I think the rewards pool built in on a base layer is something that gave us our initial wings and growth. To remove this would be to alienate a wide percentage of our users. Yes I understand moving rewards to a second layer, however then you're saying these people will have to exchange these rewards to HIVE and then trade HIVE to another token, I think it would just be shooting ourselves in the foot.
I do understand your motivations and thought behind this process but the people is what makes this block chain good. Without a community what do we have? if we want just a solid block chain the build things upon, could always just hard fork and make one just for that. But HIVE is about the people. We must embrace them not alienate them.
Also we are now starting to gather some momentum, you go ahead and kill the First layer rewards, that momentum is going to stop.
I am 100% behind fixing HBD or just getting rid of it in favor of 100% HIVE token.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts though.
Do we have a community that wants to see this ecosystem improve and develop in order to attract more users, commerce, and investors? Or do we have a community that’s content with stagnation and collecting scraps?
I’d rather have a community that wants to live up to the potential of this blockchain than have a community that looks only at one small aspect of it and panics at any sign that their scraps may be slightly more difficult to cash out.
There can be plenty of ways to monetize content for the creators. Nobody is saying to get rid of the concept. The idea is to make the base layer more application-neutral so that developers who want nothing to do with social media content and bickering can still invest in Hive, create their product on this amazing blockchain, and bring their users/customers here to reap the rewards...and contribute to the flourishing ecosystem.
If we aren’t able to attract developers that are willing to create “killer” social media apps, then the base layer isn’t going to succeed anyway. If we can attract these kind of developers, then they can certainly make it work on the application layer. And their success will be shared by all of us.
Now THAT is a GREAT answer !
@utopiaeducators
🌜💐🌛
Here's my EIP2 proposal:
-remove penalties for low post payouts,
-remove curation curves,
these are anti social features on a social network, it makes no sense, it just makes current whales richer, autovoting and delegation market should be gone
-anonymous downvotes and upvotes - no reason to start a drama after every dv or lick whales ass after upvote
-increase dv pool to 100% of upvote pool, so in theory we can burn daily inflation
This seems more like a new EIP + Feature Requests that is focused on improving the native token fundamentals, as well as boosting adoption. Fair enough.
While, I agree with the vision, for these particular action items, I have no strong feelings one way or the other. I know that seems like a joke/meme statement on my part, but I really could go with these proposed ideas or just skip them. Or cherry-pick them, doesn't matter.
I don't think fiddling with the economics will make any difference to the price or adoption. I also don't think leaving it the way it is will really matter either.
I also don't have a better idea, but that doesn't mean we should or shouldn't do this.
Having said that, I do think we have plenty of tools already. I think it's possible to have a vision without changing much consensus at all. But what that vision looks like, I don't know.
If I seem like I'm contradicting myself in the same reply, I apologize.
This right here.
I do agree that removing social rewards is a good idea. Blogging was a dumb idea to start with for inflation distribution and it's only gotten dumber.
It's possible that removing the social stuff to the second layer will at least prevent new users/investors/developers/whatever from being scared off.
I am not convinced that anyone worth keeping has been scared off due to the economics enforced by social consensus. Having said that, I do think certain levels of toxicity has driven worthwhile people off. And if that's the case, and the price is low as result, maybe it should go lower so that strong hands come in and clean up the toxicity. Adding a "snowflake mode" to condenser would also help, a little.
I think the blogging rewards being part of the base layer are a large part of the awful people being awful to others.
Nah, it’s fine. I think there are a lot more people like you than there are like me. No judgement there, but there’s just a lot of apathy when it comes to this stuff. With a primarily social media user base (assuming here), the technical/economic discussions glaze some eyes.
I don’t think it’s really “fiddling with the economics” though. The point is to simplify the economics and leave all of the “fiddling” to app developers that tokenize their apps (or not tokenize them).
In all honesty - I don’t think my ideas will be implemented as I’ve laid them out. As much as people recognize that something just isn’t “right,” we don’t really have leaders who are willing to try something of this scale, and the general community is still fixated on the “shitpost” faucet aspect of Hive. And I can’t even blame them because that’s just how this thing has been marketed (if you can even call it marketing) for the past 4+ years.
Still, it would be nice to reverse the stagnation trend outside of general crypto FOMO for once.
I like guerrilla-marketing:
E.g.:
"Jimmy Scrambles" is an "I'm a real fan" dogwhistle for her and her SJW fans.
You write exactly what I also think and feel @inertia.
Meanwhile, the main architect of the world's biggest dapp, Splinterlands, also hive-engine and nftshowroom, is languishing in 23rd position.
How do we expect entrepreneurs to take us seriously when @aggroed doesn't have a seat at the big boy table?
Well...let’s just say that his (lack of) people skills and poor decision-making is likely what led to him falling out of the top 20. He also doesn’t even bother coming to the open table most of the time, so if he feels like he doesn’t have a voice at it, it’s due to his own choice to be largely absent.
I'm not entirely against the idea of getting rid of the social reward pool, but it is what Hive's known for, so resetting from a marketing perspective is going to be tough.
Also, investors can just delegate their stake and not have to anything to gain a return on people's content.
Personally I quite like the redistributive function of the inflation tokens. Getting rid of the reward pool would just lead to more centralised control of stake over time, and we do like to bang on about decentralisation!
As to burning a portion of hat Hive sloshing about in the DAO, that's not a bad idea.
I think there's a proposal for documentation that's unfunded, so that's a way to do that, plenty of cash around.
Long story short, if other daps really take off, getting rid of the social rewards pool becomes more attractive.
To think, 2 years ago people would have comment farming this like crazy, for the upvotes. NOT returning to that by at least limiting the social reward pool is appealing!
We totally agree.
I'd wait until we have something to replace that, mainly SMTs. Once that happens, calling for that is probably favorable, but not right now. We are already seeing how HE tribes are doing great, and something like that baked right into Hive would be amazing. We can see how removing the rewards has affected other chains, and its not too good.
That’s why I said this is a mid- to long-term vision. I agree that a replacement on layer two should be ready to go before removing the social rewards on the base layer.
I also believe that community leaders and developers can take the initiative to get things done right now and have systems set up and operating for when the time comes.
Did Leo Finance wait for SMTs? They seem to be doing fairly well with their second-layer solutions.
But I agree that having that kind of tokenization system on Hive’s base layer would be great, in theory. I’m just not sure that it’s practical or preferable.
agree with all items and wish to add: change witness voting rules to improve chain governance. and while I agree with removing social rewards from base layer, I think moving current setting to an ad hoc 2nd layer with same voting rules can be considered, since it's a waste to just let this 'global blog' vanish. My two cents.
Agreed on both points. We should see some improved governance in the next HF but I do think more can be done with voting, particularly vote decay.
I really appreciate this post, broguydude. I dunno. Sometimes I guess it just feels good to see what's on your mind, and that your long term plan resonates with mine. And that you would go to so much trouble to type up something so well thought out.
Oh, and the artwork.
An interesting set of ideas, though I'm not sure if hive as it is would be the place for them, or that it could survive such a dramatic shift in philosophy and structure. Removing rewards from the base layer could seen as a huge power grab I'd reckon.
On-chain posts and comments are an essential part of governance. Maybe "blog" was a weird way to implement that communication, but the people holding governance tokens and participating in politics should be able to communicate on-chain with reactions measured by stake
If you want "safe" blog rewards or whatever, put that in L2, but do not get rid of on-chain communication among governance token holders and the body politic
I think there can still be on-chain communication and staked voting. But that doesn’t mean we need to give out base-layer rewards for that communication and voting. Just make it like a “decline payout” post.
Thus removing the incentive to participate and devaluing HIVE because of it
So witnesses, devs, and other large stakeholders won’t participate if they can’t get HIVE tokens for nerd talk?
If that’s the case, then this will be doomed no matter what.
Anyway...if they want tokens for that, they can use the second-layer NERD token and community. If their discussions are so valuable, then surely that community and token will thrive. Right?
If it’s not valued, then why should we be paying them with HIVE inflation?
If you can't get HIVE for participation in governance/politics, there won't be many large stakeholders. Once the purpose of holding HIVE has been removed, why would anyone want to be a large stakeholder? In hopes that someone makes a cool L2 someday?
Ask all of those Ethereum investors. Their staking will yield around 4-10%. Yet all I see is hype about ETH 2.0 and investors getting really excited about it.
If you think crypto investors and holders scoff at staking rewards, then I think you’re reading the tea leaves incorrectly.
With what I laid out in my “vision,” we could easily compete with that 4-10% figure...and still have a fast and scalable network with free transactions.
Also, it should be noted that staking affects governance, development fund dustribution, and interest. And we can add other incentives/rewards for base-layer financial products that may rely on stake as well.
ETH is going to PoS, not DPoS
If you want an example of DPoS with ETH features, that's exactly what Tron is.... of course Tron's governance is as broken as steem's
You wouldn't know that looking at the Tron blockchain though.... no way to communicate tied to TRX, so no communication about TRX governance unless it's off-chain. That's also unsigned, not stake-backed, and disregarded. If Tron users gained TRX by speaking out on chain, they would likely do so and Tron could be doing much better despite having a benevolent dictator
Yes, in your model staking affects governance, but only stake. In our current model, people mix and mingle ideas in an open market of ideas. What you're taking out isn't the advantages of holding stake. You're taking out the incentive for lesser stake holders to promote their ideas to stake holders and gain more stake themselves. The competition is what creates the value. That isn't always the type of governance conversation people might expect - often the competition is over something like bot usage. Sometimes it is directly the reward distribution. Either way, this stake-rewarded competition gives HIVE its value. If you want it to get it's value from L2 solutions and staking, there are shorter paths to get there than HIVE
Awesome, I agree with everything. DeFi would be cool but seems a bit too ambitious. We are already far from the competition and Hive taps into another use-case. Let's focus on second layer and dapps and leave DeFi to chains with better security.
Also, rewards should be removed off the main chain only after SMTs are created. It would be too much of a disruption not to create another token that works in the same way a the current model.
#Resteem
Great idea and plan. Hive will have good future.
If eliminating rewards on the base layer will allow dapps and communities to use tokens to access resource credits and get people in faster and easier with sign up I'm all for it. I would love for the account and wallet creation to not be so tied together and users can come in check it out play around and if they like it latch on a wallet and get going on layer 2 without having to worry or get delgations and all that
hi @chekohler
wouldn't that mean an exodus of most users and turning most communities into little ghost-towns?
just wondering
I could be wrong but I’m also willing to piss off 15k daily active users if it means opening up the site to hundreds of thousands of users in the process
What I think would happen is HIVE would become the utility token and base pair for all interactions on HIVE!
Then communities could use SMTs to distribute their token or tribes so people focus on those rewards instead of dual rewards giving tribes and communities far more control over their tokenomics and demand and they will need to keep their user base growing bas not hive Being the reason to blog or do other stuff on the chain
It will also make it easier to get people in with the base layer free of the reward system it can be used for more support for features we need to grow a wider ecosystem or that’s just how I see it
Dear @chekohler
Obviously. If it would only mean, that killing current userbase would help onboard masses - then who wouldn't like it. However, what's real chance that this would happen? I would say: close to zero.
Firstly, HIVE would need to offer any utility which would attract new users. Turning economy and social structures upside down can easily destroy this blockchain if it would be done without offering something of value/use.
I wish to see it the way you do. And perhaps I'm wrong. Unfortunatelly I'm not very optimistic.
Yours, Piotr
I’m just of the opinion that if you’re in blockchain to play it safe then you’re in the wrong space! What is the point of holding on to what we have when it’s not getting us anywhere?
There is steem and blurt doing the same thing unless you differentiate yourself from other chains and products what’s the incentive to use HIVE?
I get people are invested financially and emotionally but I honestly couldn’t care about that! I would much rather see this place be bold and try something new then sit on what we have and wait to be over taken by real innovators
HIVE competes with its forks, other block chains and centralized systems if it can’t Even break out as the dominant fork whats the point?
The beauty is you can always switch to a chain that supports your ideals! I wouldn’t force anyone to stay where they don’t like what’s going on
I’m just not that tied to any one protocol or any one user or witness, I’m tied to seeing improvements as is the case with any business
His project would be useless if that happened. That's what he is trying to say.
To certain degree I agree with you @enforcer48
I just read your comment. Thanks @chekohler
This is exactly what my eyes look right now😂👀
Removing social rewards is code for I want to have a passive investment where I don't need to work to receive a portion of the inflation.
The curation game allows you to beat the inflation (if you are good at it). Currently curation allows me to receive an APR of about 15% measured in Hive (which almost doubles the theoretical inflation).
The biggest culprits that dilute the investment in hive are HBD conversions not social rewards. Removing them will simply attract a different type of user to hive. Instead of having people that look to farm post rewards we will have users that farm yield from staking. Both dilute investors by putting selling pressure on the market.
In my opinion the future of hive is in being the token that fuels second layer applications with resource credits. In that scenario investing in hive would not have the main objective of yield farming for a portion of the inflation but to use it as a utility token.
Having a reward pool is not an obstacle for that. If you want to boost short term speculation then what we need to do is fix HBD or remove it. One way to fix the pegging so that it doesn't create extra inflation is to not have it backed by a percentage of the supply but by having a pool of Hive tokens "assigned" for that purpose.
The blueprint for having a collateralized pegged asset has already been tested by the wider crypto community so why not use it.
Final note, removing the curation game from the equation will have the unintended consequence of reducing the APR for staking for everyone except the stake that is inactive. So that is a hard NO on my part unless if it can be proven that it will not affect my APR.
In order to “farm” staking inflation, you need to be staked. The same is not true for content rewards.
And if social rewards are moved to the second layer, inflation is reduced by half, and protocols that affect staked interest are implemented (such as how powering down affects vote weight), then this further reduces the selling pressures.
Resource credits are currently far too generous for this to be any driving force for HIVE purchasing, accumulation, or holding. That would need to be reworked - but then the average user would likely be affected by it, which people would then complain about and we’d be right back where we started...again.
I don’t care about short-term speculation. I care about user adoption and retention, fueled by useful development. In that department, we have been severely lacking. Four years ago, we had a few thousand active users. The numbers have not changed much at all. That’s a problem for a chain that has (barely) marketed itself as a social media chain. There’s a massive disconnect in several places that needs to be resolved if we ever want to get anywhere.
With 100x volatility within a four-year BTC cycle inflation doesn't mean shit.
Hive as a content creation platform hasn't taken off because the development in the last four years has heavily focused on back end issues including scalability. The UX still sucks. Only in very recent times have I seen any real improvements in that department. And now you and a few other people want to kill the content rewards at the base layer. Hive Engine tokens are worthless because they have near zero speculative value. SMTs will remain worthless for a long time when they're eventually released.
We agree on several things, but I am not sold yet on the idea of removing the distribution of tokens via social apps. I just don't see it as an obstacle to explore other avenues.
The idea of increasing adoption and retention is good (actually it's the most important one in my view) but it's still kind of fuzzy. I don't believe that we have discussed as a community what do we mean by that.
There lies the crux of the matter, we need some consensus on where we want to go first. I am not the only one who is not on board with removing the social rewards from the first layer.
Going forward that is going to be the most contentious proposal for the future of this place. If we go in that direction what is going to differentiate Hive from other blockchains? It has no smart contract capabilities, the inflation is higher than most of the major coins and there other networks that can boast about the speed of transactions (EOS and ETH 2.0 come to mind).
We have alot of things to talk about.
Bear in mind, those "scraps" to you keep food on the table for people around the world -- and we're in the middle of a GLOBAL economic crisis. Moving content creators to a second layer disrupts that reality -- having something already on an exchange is important, and it will take time for second-layer tokens to be transformed into the currencies people use every day.
I say this all the time: the community here is NOT what those who want to go to the moon on Hive decide that it is. I understand that Hive needs to make changes, but everyone else needs to understand that there are real people with real needs for whom what you consider scraps are a lifeline. Why is cutting that lifeline ALWAYS AT THE TOP OF THE LIST?
Have a look at Blurt and Zapata, later Steem forks that the community decided it wants no part of. Of course we don't think that can happen here. It can. A lot of us in the so-called richer countries are not going to stick around and watch Hive throw people we care about overboard. NO.
That some people in worse-off countries are able to earn money for food isn’t really relevant to the problems we have with interest in this chain and stagnant growth.
And, keep in mind...if we create a better ecosystem that attracts more speculators and investors - because they like the incentives and/or follow the growth - then these poor people who use Hive for basic necessities will be better off.
Also - nobody is throwing anyone overboard. Moving a set of rewards to a different layer does not necessarily mean that earnings will decrease. If done properly, it could result in the exact opposite for everyone.
Okay ... if they are not relevant, why are they FIRST on your list of things that need to change? You cannot have it both ways! Do you even KNOW how many "some people" are as a percentage of the community, by the way? Your analysis of the rewards and the inflation suggests it is a sizable number. @ph.fund could tell you. SO, you want to be responsible -- in the middle of a global crisis -- for helping those people into destitution? What's an acceptable percentage of the community worth sacrificing? You want to make Hive's name a CURSE on the lips of hundreds, if not thousands, around the world, where right now it is uttered as a BLESSING? You think we can afford that with Justin Sun's PR machine already working on a SIXTH of the world's population with an anti-Hive narrative? You want to FEED that, on the way to mass adoption?
AGAIN: transition time matters. Right now, Hive is on a number of exchanges -- IF there were a solid second layer that could take that up NOW or even CLOSE to being developed, that would be a different thing, but, hey ... that's EIGHTH on your list. EIGHTH. We all understand ordinal numbers and how they work, right? Had it even been THIRD on the list of priorities, I could have grudgingly agreed. But you put it out EXACTLY as you meant it. Dead last. Just realize that DEAD last is EXACTLY what can happen to many actual living people when financial infrastructure they need is removed and they have to wait because getting new means in place is LAST on the agenda.
We all came over here -- every single person that left Steem -- because the promise of Hive was for ALL OF US. Every week, someone comes through to let it be known that the needs of content creators are LAST on the list or just in the way. Now, to me, PERSONALLY, that's $20 liquid. Not precisely a "scrap," but I will be just fine without it. But that's LIFE or DEATH to people I know in this community right now. It is NOT IRRELEVANT to Hive's future because people who have Hive as part as the margin of their survival ARE JUST AS RELEVANT TO THIS COMMUNITY AS WE ARE, and whenever people come out front with wanting to remove the rewards, that also needs to be put out front.
I have no idea what you’re on about. I think you need to read the post and my comments again.
The numbering didn’t have much to do with chronology or importance. It was just an easy way for me to separate the bullet points from the rationale in a way that readers could follow.
And I didn’t say that anyone was irrelevant. I said that your point was irrelevant to the problems we have...because it is.
I read exactly what you said. If you DON'T understand that removing rewards from Hive, which IS accessible on exchanges around the world, and going to a non-existent second layer for rewards is going to cause problems to real people, then you don't understand it. You have been told by more people than me on this thread, and OTHERS understand it. Fixing ONE problem by creating another problem is NOT an acceptable solution.
I agree with 5b: let's remove HBD, since it doesn't work and makes the system more complicated than needed.
Otherwise, you're trying to turn Hive into EOS. There are plenty of general-purpose blockchains who have deeper pockets and a higher profile than Hive - let's stick to what makes our platform unique.
quite honestly I don't really understand much of this, and in fact much of how it all works, so I guess I'm a pretty 'run of the mill'user. If the 'normies' out there could see that they could earn little rewards for their posts and interaction, that's probably the biggest draw and for me it's that feeling of "the old interactive internet' that I love. It still has the mid 2000's blog feel that I know a lot of regular internet users wish was Still a 'thing'.
That speech was better than poker and your drawing is KOOL 🌟
REMOVE PFUNK !!!
Burn the DAO. 100% agreed. The DAO is a failure as is and itd be best to just get rid of majority of the funds. I'd say burn 90%. Keep what we need to fund the infrastructure.
The proposal system needs a major overhaul to benefit Hive.
Right now all it does is exert downward pressure on the price while we fund worthless fluff like the ledger development that will never pay for itself.
Regarding the rest... You need SMTs and a strong second layer to even consider removing social rewards. If that happens before the second layer is even somewhat established Hive will die.
There's no doubt about it.
The DAO is one of the greatest things to happen to Hive. It's new, and we could use more devs competing, but the amount of work the devs that are getting paid are putting in, I'd like to shout out to @howo especially, is what gives this chain value.
Investors look at developers, in the age of defi/dao if you don't have a self-funding mechanism for development, people won't touch your coin. Bitcoin has Blockstream, EOS has block one, ETH has the ETH foundation, etc. DAO's are the future, Hive does not need a "sugar daddy" because we have a DAO to fund dev work, we didn't need to have a 70% premise (ETH) or a year-long ICO (EOS) - we are pure grassroots.
Also, being on ledger is one of the best things you can do for your project. No serious investor is touching Hive until we are on ledger. Yes, I am an investor but I'm cut from a different cloth. Most investors don't do enough research and are terrified of risk. If they don't see you on a ledger or with a way to fund dev work, speculation goes out of the window.
agree