Leofinance threads, figuring it out, and tip token comments

Leofinance debuted their "Threads" today, a very clever microblogging hack for the Hive blockchain.

The nerdiness in me wondered, "How's that work?" and, "How does this impact Hive tip tokens?" Their intro post is a bit secretive in the How? section (i.e., they don't say), but they are clear in that creating a "thread" is not creating a top-level Hive post. Rather, Leofinance called threads "'second-level posts' AKA comments."

As I understand, programmatically on Hive, a post is a comment is a post which is a comment. They're the same thing. Suppose you write a post about what you had for breakfast. When you submit it, the Hive chain looks for a "parent_author". If no parent_author exists, your account becomes the parent_author on the blockchain. Your post becomes the top-level post. By contrast, if there already is a parent_author, what you write and submit becomes what Leofinance calls a "second-level post", i.e., it becomes a comment.

The line below from the Hive Developer Portal explains this:

We are using the client.broadcast.comment function provided by dhive which generates, signs, and broadcasts the transaction to the network. On the Hive platform, posts and comments are all internally stored as a comment object, differentiated by whether or not a parent_author exists. When there is no parent_author, then it’s a post, otherwise it’s a comment.
Source: https://developers.hive.io/tutorials-javascript/submit_post.html

So, some if-then logic:

If posting/commenting on Hive is actually the same thing dependent on whether a parent_author exists, and since creating a "thread" is posting merely posting a "second-level" comment, then there must already be a parent_author post to which we're posting this second-level comment.

Test

I did a test and created a "thread" with nothing but !LUV as the content of the thread.

Visually, nothing happened. However, the LUVbot processed the !LUV as usual. One LUV token was sent to the parent_author. But, who is the parent_author? Who is the author of the top-level Hive post?

It's the @leothreads account. This account is rather new, less than a month old as of today.

The account is rather bare-bones, with minimal HP (only 25) and only two posts in its 16 days on chain.

This is all fine and this is good stuff. Building is awesome!

So, what's going on here?

Back to my test !LUV command that I inserted into my test thread. What happened? Simply put:

1. @leothreads made a post, which exists on chain, but is invisible on the https://leofinance.io/threads front end. It looks like below:

2. Then, when I "created a thread" so to speak, I merely replied/commented to this post. In my case, I replied to the "Leo Thread 0.2" post shown above. I didn't realize this at the time, because this top-level post is invisible on the LeoFinance front end. But, that's what a thread is...a reply/comment to a post.
3. Next, the LUVbot did what it was supposed to do. One LUV was transferred to @leothreads since that account is the parent_author, see https://he.dtools.dev/tx/f4fbfad4e513ddf2b2877c2100e860ccfb72f333

That's neat. PIZZA beat LUV by a couple of hours! :)

4. The confirmation notification that I received back from the LUVbot pointed me to the Leo Thread 0.2 post shown up above.

I mentioned that @leothreads only has made two posts so far. But, what's important is the number of comments. In the image above, the top-level post called "Leo Threads 0.2" shows 1245 comments. Those would be the threads created on the https://leofinance.io/threads front end plus the comments to any comments within that post.

The confirmation response from my LUV command is one of those 1245 comments. I dug through the 1245 and found it at https://peakd.com/hive-167922/@luvshares/re-re-leothreads-5me6w1-20220804t200843z and shown below.

Like any other comment on Hive, you can upvote it, you can comment to it, you can tip it, you can give it a tip token via a tip token command like !LUV.

Bottom line...what's going on is this.

Threads are replies/comments to posts by @leothreads. My guess is that @leothreads will occasionally be making a top level post. "Threads" will simply appear as comments to that post. Then, perhaps when the number of comments gets "too many" or burdensome, whatever that may mean, @leothreads will make another top-level post and "threads" will be directed to reply to that newer post.

Clever.

Further, the Leofinance.io front end cleans up these "Threads" and prettifies them so that they appear as entities themselves, which they are...they are comments with comments attached to that comment. The "thread" (a Hive comment), and any comments to the thread, then show up on the Leofinance front end cleanly and unobtrusively. Very nice.

It's important to remember that, on Hive, the base layer can also be viewed at any time. For instance, the entirety of the "Leo Thread 0.2" post (the top-level post) and all of its subsequent comments, err, "threads", can be seen at https://hiveblocks.com/hive-167922/@leothreads/leothread-0-2.

To me, hiveblocks.com is the source, leofinance.io/threads is the pretty. Both are good things. 😀

So, "Threads" summed up in one sentence...

Leofinance created a post, then created a "click-here-to-comment-on-this-invisible-post" button on the Leofinance.io front end, which upon clicking it, opens a form to submit a comment to that original post.

I'm impressed. It's clever and it's pretty and it works!

What's all this mean for tip tokens?

1. If you include a tip token command like !LUV in your "thread", it will go to the @leothreads account. You are tipping their invisible post.
2. Once inside of a "thread", you can issue a tip token command in reply to a user and that user will receive the tip token. You are simply replying to that Hive user.

• A "thread" replies/comments to a @leothreads post.
• A reply/comment within a thread replies to the user you're responding to.

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