Hive is Effin' Awesome

I spent a couple hours running a private "Hive workshop" for a friend of mine and I discovered something -

Hive is fucking awesome!

Okay, I already knew that, but diving in with someone who has no view of this side of crypto at all, and starting from the ground up, meant revisiting perspectives I barely remember once having and touring through whilst talking about blockchain future was a lot of fun. It was only meant to be a quick tour, but after a couple hours of me rambling on, they had to cut me off and head to bed.

Best sleep while you can!

A few years back I mentioned "Steem" to them and they spent a little while there in the morning, finding DTube and then messaging me, "I don't think I am going to find much of interest".

This is what triggered the impromptu tour this evening.

I couldn't leave him with that taste in his mouth for too long.

But, I started with Steem. Then DTube.
And I gave a quick overview of what happened prior to the fork and added:

You can't buy a community.

I then moved to the blogging interface, and onto an alternate face, then to an alternate with a secondary-layer token, then into video delivery, Splinterlands, alternate markets for Splinterlands, the wallet, Dex for secondary-tokens, alternate Dex for secondary tokens...

I think what was surprising was how many different types of interfaces there are and while they understood how they filtered the blockchain and other technical aspects, what I think they weren't prepared for was how things are handled at the social level in terms of governance, content organization and how much value is actually being generated across the Hive ecosystem, without any central core making the decisions. They were quite surprised by the level of quality in the comments sections too, as well how stake ordered the content, bypassing algorithms.

What was great was they brought up the challenges of social media platforms and how they have become more aware of how manipulative and controlling they can be, which allowed for a lot of interesting conversation. They also mentioned "policing" and asked how that is handled, as it is a massive challenge on the centralized sites. Well, they have to host everything, the blockchain only has text and without the algorithms and central interfaces with granular targeting, the ability to manipulate the masses is far lower.

But then I asked,

Seen any adverts or anyone trying to sell something to you?

They had to think for a bit and then realized, no - all the scam of crypto and no one is trying to sell anything, so, "what gives the tokens value?"

Demand of course, people want them for all kinds of reasons and there are many ways to earn, use, leverage, pool... Plus, people like me see this as a hobby and just like any loved hobby, it is possible to get a "little carried away" with it all. But I think one of the main reasons people on Hive are powered up is, they like being part of the staked community and having control over some of the pool as to how it rewards others. I know for me, I enjoy being able to add a few dollars to someone's account. It is fun and empowering!

But, overall, I think I was able to use a common example he and I share in order to give a very good (brief) overview of how the Hive Blockchain is changing how content is developed, distributed and most importantly, owned. I mentioned the censorship resistance, but also posited questions as to what would happen to all of the monetized if for example, YouTube shut down. People have spent years building their presence and even if another service fills the vacuum, their follower base is gone, as is their account. They own none of it. My Hive account moves as I do across this ecosystem and, is not reliant on any individual one of them for me to be able to post, or even earn something.

After two hours though, what I realized is that in order for them to really get an understanding, they would need to get into exploring the space. It is far too complex to give more than an overview, but one thing was encouraging, it wasn't all about the money. In fact, very little of it was.

I think this is what is going to happen more and more, as while the potential to earn is attractive, the possibility to own will become more so. And as the centralized spaces become increasingly problematic in the way they handle their data and treat their userbase, people are going to look for alternatives where they are able to be more free. More will come into consume, and they will find that they will also have the potential to build their own investments here, take part in the gig-economy and, start to enjoy being on the internet again.

For me, it has renewed my interests in the world as a user, not just a consumer.

Hive is awesome.

Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]