It's not basic at all, and you know... in some ways, the mass adoption question is best considered from a non tech savvy angle. I love people who ask questions! To be fair, this particular one is a doozy, and if we knew all the right answers, we'd be a lot further ahead. I do have a few thoughts on this myself and I try to use them as guidance for myself when I tackle work as a "representative of Hive".
Right now, we are working against "real world" momentum. Part of this is because every new thing that the crypto space invents, including words and labels, get used out of context by people that don't understand them. They get crazy hyped up or exaggerated into huge problems, and it means the response from the outside world is equally hyped or exaggerated. It's why you will hear people who have no real idea say things like "crypto is for criminals" or "it's all a ponzi scheme" or "this picture of a rock will make me a millionaire" or "soon I will be able to plug my brain into the metaverse and I won't need a body"!
For most things, the response to anything that gets too big and too overwhelming- even if it is good- will be bad! It's why mass adoption for everything to do with our space, not just Hive, is always an uphill battle. The very important things that we need, in my mind, are resilience over time, and good, automagical services that allow people to learn about Hive through the lens of doing things they can understand via familiarity. Believe it or not, the "time and faith" are the ones that are hardest to keep providing long term. BUt there's a reason we've been here for more than six years, when other projects and blockchains and tokens are long dead after bright blazes and immediate burnouts...
Thank you for your thoughtful reply. I did watch a crypto youtuber whom I respect and he was talking about how the user experience has to greatly improve for mass adoption of crypto. He was referring to the fact that most people are not prepared to write down seed phrases or prepared to take the risk of sending crypto to the wrong address. In other words for mass adoption to occur he was saying crypto has to provide a user experience as seamless and easy to use as Web 2. Do you think this view has any credibility? I want crypto to become embedded in our societies as a force for good it upsets me when it is constantly characterized as a get rich quick scheme. Thank you for your thoughts.
I talk about this one a lot too- I have a favourite term that applies here, and it's that we are very familiar with technology doing things for us "automagically". We are creatures of comfort and convenience, with a desire for speed and ease of use. When we build tools to match up with those needs, they often impact our self sovereignty and security. That's why we have a web2 that looks the way it does, and why web3 matters so very much! But we also have to fight the normalization of performance that web2 has created. How do you go from a fast, easy experience to one that might be slower and more difficult? That's a big ask! For the people willing to make that leap initially, they have a reason; it could be their ideals, it could be they got burned by shitty web2 big tech policies- etc.
There's absolutely truth to this take, and I tend to agree with it. It's why Hive is already a good middle ground- we learn new skills best when they're couched in an activity or format we already understand. Buying Bitcoin may scare someone, but blogging and earning a bit of Hive holds your hand through how to treat keys, what distribution looks like, and gives you a "no pressure" entry into the space that you can then choose to pursue wholeheartedly or may make you more confident with other forms of crypto. We are seeing Hive dapps find more ways to ease that transition, but you're right- at the heart of it, wallets and keys are very scary things.
I can say that this is an avenue I think Hive is pretty good at, but could be so much better, and to that end I do have a project in the works that I hope to announce some point soon. I feel it will be a great option to help our onboarding process and provide another additional path for access to Hive (and to any of our dapps that want to take advantage of it), but it's one of those things I'm working on as a Hive core team volunteer with the idea of bringing to everyone, and I still have a lot more effort to put forth on getting done. Fingers crossed we'll be able to come back to this topic very soon!