Greetings #Hivers,
this post is a reply to @theycallmedan's video:
Intro
As you might know, I've been quite vocally arguing against the global rewards pool recently (even some months before):
- Hive Staking Rewards
- Why the next bull run will matter for Hive
- Will Hive stay a niche blockchain and die?
- It's time for a change
- Steem-Era: On the Need of Downvotes & their Negative Consequences
- Steem Era: Hive? Hive! Hiiiiiivvveeee!
I know that my message came over as provocative, triggering some people - and while that was my plan to get people to talk about the subject, I'm grateful for this learning experience and I'm thriving to be more chill & diplomatic in my actions.
Who am i?
Before I get into my response to dan, let me give you a little bit more background about myself, so you might understand why I see & say things the way I do.
Coming to #Steem/it initially in 2017 as a young man in search of adventure & potentially also success, I quickly became "entangled" into the blockchain and its community. There were multiple times where I was close to leaving, even nearly getting bullied off the platform for misplacing a vote at one point, but something in me kept me here.
It also helped that the #Steem ecosystem gave my "creative/disruptive" brain something to hold-onto while developing my skills & knowledge as a developer, entrepreneur & human. Which is what I'm always going to be grateful for.
Now, jumping to the 2/3 quarter of 2020, an important year where #Hive became finally fully decentralized, I've reached a point, where my stake in the platform is big enough so that I have a massive desire & incentive to see it (and the community) grow and thrive.
But not only that: I also see #Hive as a valuable technology/platform. Which is why I'm utilizing it in my next project (the best I've ever done - coming soon™ ).
However (and this is important), building/utilizing Hive is something that requires optimism in regards to the future of it. Imagine building on a blockchain that won't scale ... 🤣
Which is a big reason why I'm vehemently pushing for changes which I see #Hive thriving with, with the perspective of a developer, entrepreneur & stakeholder. I'm of course also looking at things with the eyes of a content-creator or community member, but those are of a lower priority for me.
re: dan
First of all, @theycallmedan is a great guy, who I very much respect. Now, his opinion in the video was logical and I'm actually agreeing with much of it.
Hive - A big World!
Dan's analogy of communities on Hive having their "own neighborhood" is great. I decided to take it a step further and increase it by changing "neighborhoods" to countries, as I want different #Hive communities to be able to develop themselves completely independent, and neighborhoods in cities always have some contact area.
In that sense, #Hive is a big world, where everyone in it is sharing the love & appreciation for the fundamental world (Hive) while having their own country; and the own community living in it.
As in the real world, some parts of the HiveWorld might develop better than others, depending on the incentive structures, leadership, and the people that are attracted to it. We can already see some of it happening through HiveEngine-tribes (LeoFinance, etc).
But most importantly: there would be no real reason for fights within this world. If you prefer 10x free downvotes, there will be a country for it, where you can downvote the shit out of each other, without having to worry about a snowflake such as myself 😜
Which also brings me to the next point
Flat curation, no curve, 1 free downvote per day
I agree with all of this, but I don't think we should do this on the main-chain. The problem with it is simply time & security-concerns due to hard-forks.
It takes far too long to reiterate through changes, and we need to see them in action - in the real world, in order to determine if they work.
We could also have multiple experiments at the same time with SMTs, and the SMTs with the best parameters would "theoretically" come out on top.
The problem I see though is that AFAIK the current implementation of SMTs doesn't allow for changes afterwards, so a new SMT had to be created, which isn't perfect UX IMO. I hope we can work on this and make sure that SMTs are as good as they should be.
Making it easier to do something with your Hivepower
Dan also mentioned multiple times that it should be easier for investors to use their Hivepower; i.e. delegating, renting, etc - and I agree.
But, when I think about holding Hivepower within a project, then I don't necessarily want to deal with upvoting, as owning more and more Hivepower requires more and more due-diligence about what and where it's used on. Then delegating it out really is not an option.
Especially if the project has its own SMT with its own parameters (maybe it doesn't have any downvotes, so they wouldn't implement any downvote logic for the main-token integration). All of this creates too much complexity in my opinion. Let's have a simple & clear inflation based system for the main-token.
Getting on Binance & Crypto.com staking
While dan didn't talk about this, I do want to mention that it would be good for HIVE to be available on platforms such as binance & crypto.com for staking/lending. But I don't see this happening within a global rewards pool with downvotes and all this jazz.
If you were Binance, would you want to deal with other whales wanting to punish your investment and downvoting/countering your votes? I wouldn't.
Outro
I could talk about this forever, but I think I wrote down the most important points. Basically, it will take until we have SMTs to remove the global rewards pool if we want to do that. But I honestly believe it would be a step in the right direction.
Thanks for reading!
Wolf
I wish I understood this, even a fraction of it. I am one of those simple content creators that happened to love a decentralized writing platform. All that developer stuff and percentages and reward pools....I'm just not that quick on LOL. It was an interesting read and I wish all of those who are responsible to make a fair system can come together and make something great out of this blockchain.
EXACTLY. The normal user ... the people we need to excite to join the platform and participate do not care about this. That isn't to say we should talk about it, but we need to focus of the big picture. We did this already with the EIP. Things improved, but it was a very small drop toward mass adaption. This is just another small drop. We need some bigger splashes and we have a limited developer bandwidth to make that happen.
Since these things can’t happen until after SMTs anyway, I think it is clear where our focus needs to be.
I am rooting for you who are vested in this work. Sending my prayers for success.
So basically you both agree that what we need is
SMTs --> Hive without the reward pool --> "EIP" on SMTs
I think one of the most important things Hive needs is more promotion, my idea is to add a DeFi category on hivedapps.com and list and promote all Hive-powered DeFi apps like the internal stablecoin DEX, hive-engine or @nftshowroom and also list all Hive wallets on hivedapps. What do you think?
These conversations would be so much easier to have if we had SMTs available and could witness how people were using them, etc.
These conversations are healthy to have but for the love of God, 110% of our focus should be on SMTs in my opinion. I know other things have needed to happen to support SMTs, but we need to shit or get off the pot.
The SMT carrot has been hanging over our heads for soooo long, it is hard to consider the future until that is addressed.
I agree, but fact is that SMTs aren't around and while it would be more fun to actually use those in the wild, there are valid reasons to first do the "boring" optimization and refactoring work before SMTs.
I should say that any anger in my comment was not directed at you, just general frustration.
SMT's won't have the impact people are expecting to...That should have happened back in 2016/17. Back then it would have been revolutionary...And God knows when/if we'll ever get there...
Sadly, I 90% agree with this. I also feel like at this point we need to finish it just to finish it since we have spent so much time and resources on it.
To me this represents unfinished business and unfinished business that is very public. I struggle to think long term until this is accomplished. I assume others are in the same boat.
Since it has been so long and always “months away”, it just hurts our credibility to be honest. I hate to say and feel that.
I am sure after the next hardfork has taken place these questions will be pushed to the fore. Usually, I am not one for change but I do believe Hive needs some big ones like these to help it continue to grow.
SMTs are the future and I believe it would have a good impact in terms of marketing and new devs to join the ecosystem. Experimenting on SMTs is actually a very good idea.
The only worrying thing is the timeline for SMTs and its final date of launch.
Posted using Dapplr
Can someone explain this in short?
What problem are you solving by getting rid of the reward pool?
I may very well be missing the specifics of exactly what you're advocating for. Obviously I get the main idea, but the devil is in the details, like, how, when, what does the transition look like, what's the new and improved value proposition etc.
But if I AM understanding that you agree with Dan(and me) in the fact that this is only really something that we can even think about doing post SMT's, it seems sort of like advocating for affordable housing on Mars...like sure, I suppose at some point that needs to be addressed, but there are SO MANY things that need to happen in between now and then that it seems premature. Although maybe your goal is to just get it in people's consciousness early.
I expected more in this post.
I do respect that you represent your human, but really thirs boils down to..
LET'S STOP THE PISSING CONTEST
LET'S KEEP DREAMING OF SMT
SO WHEN (IF) THEY ARRIVE, WE CAN PISS IN CREATIVE WAYS.
That's why when SMTs were announced I called it A PIPE DREAM. Not because I'm a prophet but because it essentially got presented as A MIRACLE IDEA but not one Dev expressed confidence. Fat toad Ned actually asked the community to "find errors" so not even he was confident. Of course it became clear he had no clue about anything really. He just piggy backed on Dan (the original Dan) then pretended to be the leader once Dan left.
The thing I watch and see as very important is that community here is essentially as Dan (version 2.0) described it "A Popping Island" though I would substitute his meaning of popping (shining with success) with popping like popcorn. Just like popcorn, some kernels (communities) expand, while other kernels fall to the bottom and never get recognition.
Now it's not promised that just because a community exists it should expand and succeed. The issue is however that the "HEAT" (Hive delegation) is in the hands of so few here that once those whales have satisfied their vision of ROI they likely don't care how other communities are fairing. So some communities are doomed. Not because they're not quality, but because each one literally needs to lure a whale their way through committed "ass licking". Or "brown-nosing" if the first term offends.
This is a major flaw of this system. Because for example the Latin Community here is the most organic and committed, but for the most part they get peanuts. When there's clear opportunity to have HIVE be recognized (in the Americas at least) as a real option of prosperity.
That there (rewarding those communities) would create the wave of uptake that nearly all agree is needed here. Because the one thing those communities prove is that they support each other with heart and belief. So investing in them would have a lateral effect, as they DO distribute the rewards in a way that leads to constant growth. They essentially bring in their two world networks.. but with the current system the rate of "dropouts" is extremely high.
Such an endeavour would shine like a great Digital Utopia for these countries too, that this thing here, really is what it promised. I would even say that media recognition, would take place, and that's a thing that creates mass effects. This doesn't even need SMTs. It can take place now. Yet it seems like rewards to them have a type of limiter.
"Reward them, but just a little, they're poor anyway, anything is better than nothing"
Anyway this (Hive) is all in great danger of collapsing. People don't want to address that fact. That this ISLAND has waters all around it. The rise of them waters and shrinkage of this island isn't something any SMT idea will fix if by that time everyone (that here) is all up that one lone palm tree, fighting over the last coconut.
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I know, this post is not about SMTs.
... But is there someone working on SMTs? Since HIVE's fork I never saw an official announcement or mentioning that in some posts.
I'm just a mannequin-blogger, so I don't have any idea if there is a development in such direction.
I'm not on GitHub, just here on HIVE posting some weird stuff, hahaha.
IMO we need some serious promotion, like Grayscale's last video or Galaxy's ad on Financial Times... I liked also @roomservice's idea to promote on Brave browser.
I would follow whatever fork away from this terrible idea if it ever came to fruition, and I suspect a great many others would as well.
As a three year survivor of steem/hive this is always a sticking point for me. While we have some great developers on hive that have put in a huge amount of work over the years they have never seemed to realize the benefit and importance of the regular users. The people that turn up every day and keep hive active and a great place to launch apps and projects. They are the difference between hive and multiple other chains that you can build projects on.
Over the years we have lost thousands of users due to large stakeholders abusing and neglecting the overall community. (Not you, just in general.) It is impossible to build if war rages around the system as it only hurts and destroys as we have seen in the past. For hive to succeed we need everybody willing to grow the system even if it is not to your taste. Every user brings the possibility of bringing people with them. This could be the person that builds the next big thing. That brings their following, that brings hive to the forefront of decentralized systems. Every person that leaves hurts our efforts to grow. It is far better to have a smaller share of a successful project than a huge share of a dead one.
While getting large investors will temporarily pump the price we have also seen the downfall of people having too large a stake. Having base users earning is vital to decentralize and bring even more people in. They will distribute the token further, advertise what is being built here and provide an audience for projects getting started. That is why hive apps are the most successful. It is far better to have a million people spend $20 on hive than one person spend 20m.
With that said there could be a way to do it better that would suit all sides. But to do so both all sides need to realize that they all have a value and think about that when trying to build or make changes. Any changes to the reward pool would need to add the most value for the most amount of people. Not just one group.
This and SMT's could be a possible solution backed by hive. We have been waiting on SMT's for two years and are still looking to see what will be offered on this front.
This is a must for me as I have seen how good crypto.com is and have the card already. We should be trying to get listed on their exchange as a first step and it would give us a great narrative to show how you can earn hive and spend in real life. Staking would be great after that as it would allow for passive holding of hive. There does need to be a passive solution if we are to try and bring in larger investors that just want return on investment.
The future will be tokenized projects running on hive. Blogs, communities, apps, markets ect. You can build anything that you want and monetize it. Ownership of your online space. Tokenize the projects to give value back to your users.
That will not be worth anything unless we have the people here to use it. So many great projects have died due to lack of users and not having utility. Hive is one of the few with the users to make it worthwhile but we will lose them unless we build with everybody in mind.
Very sad. But so very true :(
I share your approach and view.
Can u please tell me, and I am asking this in a nice way, why should we trust your vision if u already game the steem system? How can we know this is not just another way to get yo'self more profit?
Dear @therealwolf
Thanks for this interesting read and for sharing your thoughts.
I've been thinking a lot lately about idea of moving rewards to 2nd layer and I'm wondering: if neither Steem or HIVE managed (with all it's resources) to create enough value and demand - then how can we expect that those who would launch their tokens (2nd layer) will succeed?
Steem-engine and hive-engine are great example. Literally hardly any token have a value. I'm afraid that most would fail (failure is to be expected in my opinion).
Aren't you afraid, that moving rewards to 2nd layer would be complete failure? Just like most SE and HE tokens turned out to be?
You may not like me in the past (or my ways of being), however I would like to offer my support. I'm founder of "Project Hope" community and we're attracting large number of content creators and consumers. I would gladly share info about your next project with all of our members.
If you would find it interesting, then add me via Discord crypto.piotr#3426 and let's discuss it there - I will gladly help the best way I can (as I value your work on hive a lot).
Yours, Piotr
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Sorry I just discovered that community @therealwolf - you might remember or not that I am saying similar things since nearly two years.
The blockchain needs business cases - not reward pools - because of content reward the prize is where it is at - get rid of it and focus on the advantages of the chain but paired with the right story and business key messages.
And even decentralized we need powerful decisions, fast - a group of community leaders might be too much to act flexible and fast - especially in marketing - we need a story and speaker to push that out to the world, many great community members to marketing on social channels, often with different stories and messages - so a bit noise is good but needs focus - there is only ONE Story for a community with maybe different pillar. This what has to be agreed on first. Thanks in that case for folks such as @guiltyparties who understand what I am talking about - appreciate all the guys do promotion of course - if we get the layer stuff by @blocktrades and the technical vision into a business vision we can grow as community and as THE blockchain of the future.
I pretty much agree with everything you wrote on here. I have high hopes for this decentralized platform. Let's cross our fingers!
Thanks for sharing this insightful article. You made many vital points and I think that I find the part that talked about Hive staking on Binance and Crypto.com most valuable. Also, we need to do something fast about downvoting. Since it was created to end the use of bid bots and other large scale abuse, I think it has outlived its relevance as it has become an atomic weapon of warfare on the blockchain, scaring away potential investors.
I hope that the changes you've proposed see the light of the day. Cheers!