New Years Resolutions

Everyone makes resolutions but no one ever sticks to them. So what I'll do here is not go for anything I know isn't going to happen but instead focus on ones that I can maintain with some effort.

Some weeks ago Forbes came out with its predictions for 2022 in it's The 5 Biggest Blockchain Trends in 2022 article. At the same time, Bitcoin.com released its own more niche but still predictive piece titled Third-Generation Blockchains Will Pick UP the Defi Slack Left by Ethereum. Both are looking towards the future and the evolution of technology. The question that's relevant to us is: where does Hive fit in?

Both articles stipulate that the pioneering blockchains that we're all familiar with (Bitcoin, Ethereum) are not so much replaced but augmented with newcomers that offer more flexibility and address scaling.

Hive is not a new blockchain. When we launched in March 2020 we were already four years old. We're currently approaching our six year mark. We should be regarded with the baby boomers of the blockchain era and in age we're definitely closer to them than to the new chain smell with fresh paint crowd.

Since its inception, Hive has naturally gravitated to layer 2 solutions in its technical development and overall vision. Breaking from the pre-Hive development goals (whatever they may have been) gave us the fresh start of a brand new chain without naive over-ambition of a startup. Our decentralization in all aspects meant that all of a sudden we had a massive team of diverse individuals from all sorts of backgrounds leading and moving the progress bar. Many centralized teams fall into the trap of confirming their own biases or inheriting their own biases from their local environment of previous employers. At Hive, the biggest common denominator are on-chain interaction during the pre-Hive days and interest in DPoS. Our contributors come from such diverse backgrounds and locations that a uniformity in perception is impossible. So here's to contributing:

Resolution 1: Building Realestate

Bitcoin's article takes the example of chains like Cardano and Polkadot and applauds them for being the top choice of new defi applications. All of the defi solutions that will 'soon' be built on these remarkable examples already exist on Hive as either dapps or sidechains. Many of them are part of Hive Engine, which is just one service running on Hive. As part of the New Years Resolution myself and my team will commit ourselves to making Hive the absolutely best blockchain to build on. You've already seen our Seed and API nodes. Those are just the basics.

Sub-Resolution: Work on End-User Documentation

There is also a lot of documentation that never got completed as everyone knows. That has to change and it not all that acceptable that its been a few years. This is a big goal for the coming year. It sat for a long time now, I started and dropped it, but its past due to fix the documentation. The Welcome page on Hive.Blog is done and the FAQ is being worked on now. It's a big job.

This is probably my fault to begin with but I'm fixing it and it's looking much clearer and has links to Hivesigner and Keychain now. I get this isn't exciting to anyone and pales in comparison to the importance of writing a new plugin or a bridge. All of those small efforts that are very time consuming do add up.

Anyways, I've said it before but now I'm getting down to business. The FAQ is already getting its sections fixed up (once I go through the basic cleanup there I'll put up something to help everyone contribute without physically getting into Gitlab themselves).

Resolution 2: Truth and Transparency

Promoting the truth even if it's not what everyone wants to hear is a key goal and unfortunately for some of us who aren't all that eloquent day to day, it involves communication. In my case, communication is writing. Some of you know I can't hear all that well. Not very good at this writing thing though. I write one post a month on my account, a few more elsewhere. That's not nearly enough and it's time to commit to improve these shabby communication skills.

Writing in general doesn't come that easy. I'm not some great poet and it's already been years since I gave up on the notion that anyone else from the GP team would take interest in using this account for the brand as intended. And this is just on the account, not Hive in general. Whenever you see my writing in a Hiveio post or some article it's just hours of practice and studying, not natural talent (that's why there's ample room for improvement there).

I believe that some sacrifices are needed for Hive to really succeed. Hive is unique because it does rely on the collective. People who are interested in the self have to become suddenly cognizant of the other, of the greater aim and vision. We are a leader in Web 3. We are decentralized and not a company. We don't have the benefits of being a company. There are no government bailouts and bankruptcies. We have to put aside our personal bullshit and greed. If our relationship with Hive was purely monetary no one would be here. Hive is simply not profitable enough for anyone to justify the kind of hours put into it. Participation in Hive still requires a commonality of vision to some degree. And to achieve this vision we have to push ourselves. In this case, by writing.

Resolution 3: Remember Birthdays

In the Hive Highlight challenge I mentioned that our Twitter finally hit 30k. This year I want it to hit 100k. We also got rejected for the blue checkmark and this year it absolutely must happen. To make this happen we need to make sure we celebrate notable dates during the year outside of our own anniversary and achievements. We have to engage with the outside world. Yesterday we got Bitcoin's 13th birthday, although unfortunately without an image.

In the next coming days I'll put up a post for community feedback on the selection of the dates. So far I'm thinking along the lines of main religious holidays, maybe 1-2 per religion, notable days in tech, our anniversary which we'll have to do something big for, and a few 'world day of' something or rather. There's probably a World NFT Cat Day by now.

Getting a bunch of social media messages and maybe articles celebrating this or that isn't anything that will on it's own propel Hive upward but it will be another step to getting there. It's easier than bringing in partners and exchanges, which I will keep doing. I have no intention of stopping any of this under any circumstances.

Articles like the above-cited piece by Reuben Jackson on Bitcoin.com focus on the most popular chains when Hive is right there with comparable or better parameters. He writes (in respect to the other chains), "They are faster, more secure, cost-efficient, and have low resource consumption, positioning them as all-in-one solutions that broadly benefit the entire cryptocurrency industry." We're all of this too. People just need to notice us without always being paid to look. But being paid to look isn't noticing. It's just a business transaction. Meaning, its not all about paid ads; we can take a step with general proactive engagement along the lines of common ground of simply being a group of human beings.

That's that.