In case you're coming to this post several months after it's been written, the Hive blockchain was originally a fork of Steem, initiated in March 2020 following a hostile takeover of the Steem blockchain by Justin Sun and the Tron Foundation.
If you're interested, please see the video below which provides a brief overview of the events which forced the Steem community to fork Steem and create the Hive blockchain (this blockchain, our blockchain). NB it was produced by a non-steemian, so it has a certain degree of neutrality.
The majority of the old Steem community, blockchain and Dapp developers are now here on Hive, working to evolve this social blockchain, while Steem remains (probably) a centralised database (not really a blockchain) under the control of Justin Sun.
The question for the Hive community now remains one of how to maintain all of the positive technicalities they've inherited from Steem, such as the fast transaction times, scaleability and great d'apps, while evolving the chain into something that balances individual freedom of expression, fair reward for contributions, while being able to resist a takeover by another crazy billionaire.
Below is my wish list for Hive. It's ended up being quite a big list, but then again it's a block chain with potential:
- Security and continuity
- Greater equality of distribution of HIVE
- Continued development and SMTs
- Successful D'App Migration and Further D'app Development
- Marketing and on-boarding
- diversification of users/ communities
- Greater diversity of manual curation and real Proof of Brain
- More people contributing to anti-abuse
- More transparency in governance (HF) decisions
- Civility
This is my response to @theycallmedan's recent 'what does Hive mean to me' initiative.
1. Security and continuity
By this I mean I'd like the blockchain to stay, well, a blockchain, rather than a database, which Steem now is, as @anyx so eloquently summarises it in this post. Instead, I'd like Hive stay distributed over several different reliable servers in as many secure locations as possible.
I guess this means I'd like as many witnesses as possible to run 'full nodes' on full-spec hardware. TBH I'm not even sure what that means, but I do know I'd like my witnesses to know what I mean by that and spend more rather than less on maintaining their Hive servers.
I'd also like the Hive blockchain to keep running continuously and as smoothly as possible, even when new hardforks are implemented, and I guess this means having as many competent witnesses as possible.
Finally, because all of the above relies on Hive being valued sufficiently for witnesses to be able to meet their server costs, I'd like to see a robust Hive price going forwards. ATM we are doing just fine on that front!
2. Greater equality of distribution of Hive
My intuition tells me that IF you want decentralisation in a DPOS system then you need to have that stake distributed as widely as possible - and across PEOPLE rather than ACCOUNTS.
So as I mentioned above, I'd like to see things trending away from having one person (@blocktrades) controlling 1-2% of the stake. I'd like to see fewer Whales and more Orcas, Dolphins and Minnows.
We've started off well on this trend towards equality according to @arcange's latest Hive distribution stats compared to those on old steem:
Click the link above the picture for a comparison to old Steem - at the moment there are 7% less Whales on Hive, but things could look quite different after the thousands of Steem powerdowns have gone through after 13 weeks.
Having said all of that I don't mind there being something of an oligarchy controlling several tens of millions of Hive, as that maybe our best defense against another Justin Sun style takeover - it is relatively easy for 12, 20, even 30 large stake holders to co-ordinate and block a hostile takeover compared to there being 10* that number.
3. Continued development and SMTs
I think this is in good hands (ours). I'm delighted that we now have several 10s of million of HIVE in a decentralised hive fund to fund development and marketing of the chain. The daily budget is currently almost 5000 HBD, and at time of writing six projects are being funded receiving a total of 1000 HBD between them.
Please vote for proposals here.
There is worthy debate to be had about whether we should burn any and how much of the Hive in the HDF, but that's one for the future.
I don't want to bang on too much about SMTs here, but I do think that having a further layer of tokens for communities and Dapps would be great for Hive.
4. Successful D'App Migration and Further D'app Development
I can't see migration being a problem. We're not even a week into Hive being launched and we've already got 2 out of the top 11 Dapps.
I'd really like to see @splinterlands move over, but they have not committed to doing so yet, according to this post addressing the Fork issue. However, knowing especially @aggroed's love of decentralisation, I'm sure if a seamless transition can be made then that will go ahead at some point in the future.
It would also be nice if @nextcolony could head on over, I was doing OK out of that 1000 Steem investment I made! Be nice for that to continue over here on Hive.
@actifit also recently made the tranistion, and that's one of the more popular dapps, with potential mass appeal, so that's looking good.
Obviously I'd like to see more Dapps being developed, and I think there's a strong possibility we will see just that as the Hive Fund can help pay for such development, IF the community wills it so by voting.
On the topic of new Dapps, we're off to a flying start already with Exode, which is the first game to be launched exclusively on Hive later this week. Roadmap here if you want to get in early.
5. Marketing
It may have been painful, having to deal with JS, but his irrational actions have given Hive a huge amount of positive publicity, now it's just up to us to not fuck this up!
We all know we've got a great blockchain here, with solid fundamentals, and I think the Hive brand is OK - the colour especially stands out well, and the name is meaningful in a social media/ communities context, which is what we're about.
It would be really great to spend some of the HDF on a professional, coordinated, targeted marketing campaign, focusing of the types of people who might actually be interested in some of our communities and dapps.
NOW is the time to do this - we're possibly about to enter the worst ever recession in global history, there will be hundreds of millions of people looking to make a little extra on the side, or just for an escape: Hive can offer some hope here, maybe?
I think there's a role of some kind of on-boarding initiative here - Hive is a steep learning curve, and a devoted website with how-to resources would be MOST useful. I've already seen a number of 'how to do Hive' tutorials from various users - to my mind, this is a waste of time (although a good way of getting a 30 HIVE pay-out) as they just get lost on the chain, never to be viewed by anyone.
Such how-to information needs to be on a website - hmmmm, maybe I should check out @engrave and get to it?
6. Diverse communities with dedicated moderators
I think this is crucial to retention following onboarding - we need people working every corner of the chain if we are to keep people here - interacting through competitions, projects, or just plain comments!
SMTs would help with the gamification of interaction - with some of the old engine tokens, interaction was fun - !BEER being one of my favourite, I liked !ENGAGE too, so hopefully that element will come to Hive,
However, more important is the people - we need a few people running these communities, and being rewarded appropriately. That's probably down to us helping fund through delegations rather than the HDF.
7. A Greater diversity of manual curation and real Proof of Brain
@raj808 said everything I'd say on the importance of manual voting for Proof of Brain in this post, so go read it!
I'm not against auto-voting, but there has to be a balance between this and manual voting. Personally I use the AV to reward people I like consistently and to max my curation returns (it's a fun game), but I've lowered my percentages here on Hive so I've got more VP left over for manual - I enjoy it more and it means I actually read stuff before I vote - that is what we're supposed to do, right?
Also, manual voting is the only way we're ever going to be able to reward newer users, and it makes us look out of our bubbles every now and again.
I guess we should all be checking our community feeds along with our friend feeds to look for more diverse content to upvote.
I hope more people will follow some of the manual curation initiatives such as @curie and @ocd on this front, for some of the 'best of the best'
8. More people downvoting abuse,
I am VERY heartened to see that a few of us are keeping crystalliu's spam posting in check, almost zeroing out his rewards here on Hive so far:
On that other blockchain where crystalliu does the same thing, he's now earning again because the anti abuse initiatives have stopped:
However, this guy won't be the only shit-post spammer and it's so important we all keep an eye on shit-posts, as they just drain the rewards pool for the rest of us.
@steamcleaners is worth delegating to, it may have the wrong account name now, but it is DVing abuse. If you'd rather DV manually a good way to keep track of shit-posters is to follow the confusingly named @steemcleaners (now going by the name of HiveWatchers) who post on who they've DVd in the last period - quite often the same old people post shit post after shit post, so you can just go DV by person, but do check they're persistent first!
Not sure what the plans are for the old @steemflagrewards, I loved that initiative, it made flagging fun, hopefully on here asap!
9. Transparency
If there's going to be future hardforks, as there probably will be, I'd like all T20, maybe even ALL witnesses to make a top level post about where they stand on the fork, rather than just discussing it all in Discord Town Halls or, worse, a closed chat group.
Quite a simple request really, so I can unvote you if I don't agree with your stance.
10 Civility
Getting along with people we don't agree with isn't just a challenge for this chain, it's THE ultimate postmodern challenge which will probably never stop being a challenge.
That in mind, it'll be more pleasant for everyone if we're just polite to each other, and not all sweary and passive aggressive.
If someone insults you on the chain, just take some time out and respond to them politely, and not with that 'OTT I'm better than you because I'm not rising to the provocation' tone either - you know what I'm talking about, in some ways, that's worse than being neutural.
NB forceful argument and righteous anger are OK - you can still do this in a civil way without attacking the person.
I think some of the stuff @eco-alex has posted about recently on Non-Violent Communication is really useful in this regard!
Final thoughts
Ideally, by September 2020 I'd like to be in a field in Portugal, in a van, planning my eco-house build and earning enough to survive by tossing about on Hive - so hopefully by then we'd have made some good progress towards realizing my wish-list.
More likely I'll probably still be stuck in the UK on a partial lock-down unable to travel, getting poorer by the day as my savings dwindle. In which case, it would still be nice if there's some good progress being made towards my Hive wish list!
NB I would have added HIVE FEST 1 to my wish list, but I think rebranding might be needed. Hive Fest sounds like some kind of disease.
I did think of 'Hive Alive' as a name, but that's maybe even worse than it sounding like it's festering - Hive Alive sounds a bit like something S Club 7 would headline, if they were New Age Christians.
To summarise
I'd like a secure chain, with transparency in its evolutionary development and I want to see diversification of apps which leverage its solid technical fundamentals.
I also think we need effective marketing to onboard masses of new users, lots of civil community engagement to make this a nice virtual space to hang out in.
Ultimately I want Hive to balance individual freedom of expression, fair reward for contributions, while being able to resist a takeover by another crazy billionaire.
Thanks to @nateaguila for the most excellent Hive badges!
I have a lot of the same wishes. I hope that we can get better distribution of rewards so it does not look like it is set up to serve a few big accounts. That puts people off from the start and that is no way to really grow a platform. Real, manual curation is key. I know everyone is excited about having a new platform, but the trending posts should be more varied to attract a wider audience.
We are already seeing some abuse as some of the bots carried on selling votes here. SFR may not be operating yet, but we still have all these free downvotes to do some good. We need to get in early before it gets totally out of hand and I hope some big accounts will help out.
It will be interesting to see how many more orcas and whales we gain as some people sell Steem to buy Hive. I guess not all will do so. Some may take it as a windfall and may really need the money right now.
Trending does look a bit 'same old' - I guess people are jumping on the curation rewards, and now the auto voters back on, that's not going to help.
I'd like to know who controls appreciator/ rocky/ bd voter - seems to be manual now, mostly?
I was relying on those SFR posts and Steemworld to track abusers, but alas now it's more difficult!
I really can't tell what's going to happen with people transferring over Steem. It's going to be a mixture of strategies for sure!
So much good stuff here!
I'm pretty sure I've got to read it again.
Hey cheers!
Loving the badges btw.
All the right reasons for Hive
This post has been appreciated and featured in daily quality content rewards. Keep up the good work
Hey thank you so much,
Appreciated,
excuse the sort of pun!
Reward distribution could be a lot better!
I'm here for only a short period of time but getting exposure to your posts can be difficult.
It's hard when you start off, a good starting point is to comment on others, maybe work within communities.
Oh, and buy 10K Hive and power it up: money follows money on here!
You should :)
Wow. You have just said it all. All I believe us that with time and as the hive blockchain evolve, it will continue to grow. I will also love to see hive engine just like steemengine
Hey thanks, @aggroed's latest post suggests Hive Engine coming soon!