Hive was born out of the carnage of the steemit takeover by Justin Sun, understandably the community was outraged by the underhanded deal made by Ned the 'CEO' of steemit at the time.
It didn't take long before the situation became deleterious and the witness voting wars began. I personally powered up all my steem to vote for community witnesses, which then took me months to power down again and convert to HIVE, resulting in significant losses.
The promise was that Hive would now be a community controlled platform without grifting tyrants like Ned and Justin calling the shots. However, like when the English nobles deposed and beheaded King Charles I and replaced him with Cromwells Parliament the result was far from ideal. I am not saying we reinstate sith lord Justin Sun or nasty Ned but I wonder has a new regime now calcified its dogged hand to the rudder.
This may not have been the intention but maybe we need to dis-engage the auto pilot.
The ethos is established, decentralised and censorship resistant to hostile external forces, this is admirable but does not mean that we should be an island that believes it does not need to engage or appeal to the outside.
Unfortunately this is whats happened, Hive has become a stubborn old man that never seems to leave the house.
Various attempts have been made by prominent users to get hive into the mainstream of crypto but it remains overlooked and on the sidelines.
I believe it needs re-direction and a make over.
The name, logo and general character was all decided at the time of the fork when things like that were not given much thought, the main issue was moving away from steem, any name will do right?
Personally the name 'Hive' conjures up an image of an angry, confined and confused place, or worse something corporate, not very inviting for your average crypto degen who just wants to post fun memes and read interesting content.
The logo is just the usual hexagon cube symbol that so many others have and the blood red colour scheme adds to the general hellscape. Why was there never any voting by the community on these matters, surely this is the sort of thing we should be doing to make this a truly democratic platform.
In spite of all this Hive is still bubbling along with lots of great people producing content and apps, it retains features still unavailable on other blockchains and it's probably the most resilient platform in crypto. I just think it could be more inviting and fun rather than akin to an overly defensive and traumatised world war veteran.
Maybe we need therapy?
I have been here from the start almost ten years ago and contributed much of my effort, I still post sometimes but I do not have much of a stake anymore and mostly spend time in other parts of the crypto sphere but I would love a reason to get excited and vibe again, maybe it's a good time to put things to a vote. We could have a rebirth and show everyone how creative we can be.
I think a better name could have been chosen, especially as Hive is used for so many other companies and products. That makes it really hard to search for. It seems that there is no strong drive to change it for now.
We have always had people with strong opinions here and that can result in disputes that manifest as so-called 'downvote wars'. Some of those people have a big stake. What I don't like to see is people being driven away over minor disagreements that escalate. I've seen too many 'rage quit' and then spread bad vibes about Hive. We cannot really afford that.
I have met a fair few of the top witnesses who do seem to have good intentions. They would be the big losers if it fails.
Despite the lack of growth we have loads of active projects and marketing efforts such as the rally car as well as things like the boreholes in Ghana. Those need to be translated into active users and a few more investors. Meanwhile Steemit seems to stagnate with little development and a few people milk most of the rewards.
I stick with Hive as it's fun. I've made a lot of friends here and I get to meet up with them now and then.
Have a !BEER
My complaints are mainly about the window dressing and the shopfront, plenty of good things happening on Hive like you say. Definitely better than steem so we dodged a bullet there.
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BEER.The fact that not one single dev answered this post, shows how broken Hive is. I think they're just interested in keeping their own rewards going, as long as Hive works well enough for that they don't care.
Every thing I said that would happen with Steem and subsequently Hive, has come to pass. It's a shame, because it could have been revolutionary, now it's just some oddity in the dusty corners of the internet. Crypto is booming and Hive is stagnating.
Shame. Nice article though, some lovely metaphors used.
Cryptogee