Why is Hive still around?
When I was following the presentations at hive fest in Split, there were several things that I heard that left a deep impression in my mind. One such moment was during the presentation of @crimsonclad. She pointed out that Hive is quite an old blockchain already and of all the coins and tokens that were around when Hive was created, something like 70% have disappeared today! So, why is hive still around when so many other tokens are not?
Hive: the Swiss Army Knife
I'm not a hive maximalist and I'm active on many other chains. However, there is no other chain where I spend so much time on. The reason is pretty simple. On Hive, I can do more things than on all the other chains combined! Some chains offer nice DEFI solutions, others even offer some social network, there are places where you can play games and others were you can host NFT's. But I don't know any other chain that allows you to do all these things in one place, with one keychain extension and without needing to pay any gas fees.
Hive is blogging but also much more
I would say that the blogging aspect of hive is what stands out when looking at the blockchain but I think it's not totally correct. I believe that the blogging side of hive is actually the component that keeps all the other parts together. The critical thing is to keep the information present for people.
What do they do on other chains? They need to write all information related to a project on their websites and when they want to publish something new, they need to bring people to their site or use solutions like medium, telegram, discord, etc... It's different for hive.
During the Splinterlands presentation in Split Yabapmatt said very correctly that all communication about the game is done on Hive. I think it's only us hivians who don't really realize how powerful this is. Not only can Splinterlands write about their newest offers, they can use the blogging aspect to discuss DHO proposals, they can ask users to write about their experiences and even reward them for it. Whenever we have an idea, a suggestion or a question related to Splinterlands, we can simply write a post about it and other users can react to it and in some case even the team can share their vision.
This is true for Splinterands but also for all the other projects and apps on Hive. In my opinion, this is very powerful and this is the reason why I believe that the blogging side holds the whole chain together.
Promoting the other sides of Hive
I have witnessed very often that people were marketing hive by promoting the blogging side of the chain to bring people to join. I believe that this approach is not really successful simply because very few people are bloggers. There are however plenty of ways to earn on hive that doen't imply blogging. You can put HBD into savings, you can stake HP and delegate to a project, you can add liquidity to diesel pools or you can purchase tokens that reward you for holding them. You can even earn tokens while spending HBD using distriator. All this is possible without having anything to do with content creation or curation.
Now there is a also a soft version of content creation that is available to people. You can create small form content with threads, waves, moments or dbuzz and earn some tokens.
And let's not forget that whatever you do on hive is free of costs. You only need some RC to do all you want on the blockchain.
I believe that we need to get away from promoting the blogging side of hive and attract people with these other aspects. Splinterlands showed the way. They attracted people with their game and people discovered the blogging side by themselves.
Hive is here to stay
I hear a lot of people complaining about some aspects of hive. I agree, hive is not perfect but a lot of things are working pretty well. The last years have not been easy in the crypto world but hive is still around. It's maybe less dynamic than it once was but I rather think that the dynamism is correlated to the general market conditions and is therefore not proper to hive.
We might have lost some people on the way, but many are still around, they are active in the way they want. Some are blogging, others are commenting, others just curate and then there are others that spend their time playing games or trading on the markets. There is no typical hive user. We use the blockchain the way we want and need.
Split showed me that this blockchain gives us a common ground that links us all together. Whether we are coders, project owners, curators, content creators or simply people who like games, hive gives us a common framework that we all carry with a certain pride. So hive is not just a blockchain where we do stuff, Hive has become a part of our online DNA and that is why I'm quite confident that Hive will be around for quite a long time....
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I believe the new WAVES app will be an easy way for new users to enter Hive without needing to be bloggers. They can ask questions and make friends. It's a simple starting place until they are ready to learn more.
I've started using waves and I agree that it's a great app. I hope it will soon possible to search content according to tags. That would be very helpfull. People need to be able to start using the chain without needing to know all about keys, content creation, curation and so on. Short form messages are a great way to do that.
Waves on Ecency. app has many features, with more being developed. It works best for experienced Hive users.
I search tags by clicking on the tag. It may not be ideal, but it takes me to all posts using that tag... They are In chronological order and if you are looking for something from last year you have to do a lot of scrolling! Improvements are needed. 😂
Waves app has intentionally been kept simple with few features for new users. It's simple and easy and a great way to introduce people to Hive without the need to learn blogging and any technical features until they are ready to explore more.
Hive has been here for years and we all know it will continue to be here, even if it's a bit far from its former performance at the moment. We have faith in Hive and hopefully years from now I will be able to show my grandchildren what I have achieved in Hive!
When I see how the crypto sphere "cooled down" in the last years an months, I still think that Hive is doing pretty well in comparison. I'm looking forward to seeing things taking off here :-)
Yeah I agree, been around almost everyday on Hive for the past 3 years and still here! Hehe!
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For me it's close to 6 years. We are addicted ;-)
Hehe!
Hive is like a Swiss knife, as you said, but also has its blogging and rewards core that can be attached to any project that is attempted on Hive. You mentioned about Splinterlands and their communications directly on-chain, but pretty much every (or 99%) of the projects that take off on Hive use its blogging platform. As much as some people think blogging is old-fashioned, I bet most other chains would love to have this component available in their ecosystem, instead of using external apps.
This blogging aspect is so powerful in my opinion. Not only you can do all the communication on chain with the same usernames and wallets, you can also incentivise people in many different ways!
I very much agree with everything you have said here, but I must stress one thing:
In its primary sense, Hive was created as a blogging platform. It's also true that it has evolved into something more complex, but I still have to stress that (as I did at HiveFest) there is no better and more profitable platform for blogging than Hive.
It doesn't exist in my known universe.
Agree with your view, and btw great post @achim03 😃
Thank you :-)
I've tried quite a lot of other platforms and I totally agree with your point. There is nothing like hive when it comes to blogging.
Yeah, but with the latest developments, almost everyone can find something for himself, that's true, also. Oh, maybe you should segment advertising - funnel page for blogging, then for gaming, then for finance? 🤔
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Man I am Jealous of you being able to attend #hivefest and appreciate your candid thoughts on your take aways.
Having been here a while, I think about these things too. When I joined in 2017, I figured the trajectory of traction and token value would be far greater than it is now by 2024. Then life, Justin Sun and FOMO set in.
What you reminded me of in this post is what I have come to know as a business owner. This is not a sprint, but a marathon. All we have to do is focus on outlasting the competition by focusing on what we do best and letting them go away. 70% seems like a big number but we are well on our way to outlasting enough of the others to prove the value of this community. The community, with all its people, is going to present a good number of challenges but we have shown the pattern of getting through them. The benefits and value of a global, consistently-expanding network of invested individuals will add up like the challenges and become a beacon in the attention economy phase of the internet.
Enough preachy. I have added you as a witness.
After 8 years on the chain, it was great to finally be able to be there in person. I can only recommend the experience :-).
That's very well said. What makes us hivians different is that we are invested in the chain. Not only financially speaking but also emotionally I believe. I don't care what people are doing on other chains, but I care about what happens on hive. Even if Hive isn't growing as fast as we would like, this identification with the platform is worth a lot and we only need to open the way to other people and let them build the same link with hive. In my opinion, it's a matter of critical mass until hive can really expand quickly. So until then we go on doing what we like here ;-)
Thanks a lot. It's very much appreciated :-)
Came here to start a blog about my music project. Found a bigger and richer treasure than I'd ever thought about.
I'm so glad to be here and I definitely want to stay and grow, together with the whole community
I'm happy to hear such things. There are many ways how we can end up on hive. The more persistent people, the ones that don't give up very quickly, will realize how nice this ecosystem is. Once we realize what hive really is, it's difficult to leave ;-)
I agree with your outlook. Hive isn't perfect but it's here to stay. I also agree that using just blogging to attract people won't be as effective. I just think that the amount of people who want to write long form posts isn't that high. Focusing on other apps like threads or games is a better way to target people's interests.
That's really true. I see a lot of people here on hive that prefer to do other things than creating content. The great thing is that it's totally possible. People would start playing games or making small messages on threads. Maybe later they could try to write some posts...
Liquidity pools are one of the best things about Hive but I don't really know anything about Hive, I've never been clear about it.
!PIZZA
These diesel pools are actually really great. You can put liquidity, take it away, earn fees, earn rewards and all transactions are free. This makes it really great for beginners who don't have that many tokens to move around.
HIVE is certainly has quite a bit of "stickiness" as compared to the other tokens thanks to it's community aspects. I've made quite a few acquaintances here which I don't think I would have had I just been looking at buying some other cryptocurrency. 😁
I think that's what makes hive stand a part. At hive fest there was also this notion that hive is a blockchain of real people and I think this social component makes helps to achieve this "stickiness" as you say ;-)
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