In-person events might have moved the needle in 2017-2018, but it's an incredibly outdated form of marketing in 2026. People aren't going to crypto events as much as they used too, especially for a chain as small as Hive. Sponsoring art fairs and other events is not going to result in any meaningful growth. The problem is Hive is such a generic name, if you search for it online a bunch of other irrelevant results come up. It doesn't have the unique brand recognition and moat of something like Bitcoin or Ethereum.

With all of the Middle East conflict happening right now, the price of everything is going up and even if things get better, they'll take a long time for prices to come back down. There is already talk in many countries of increasing interest rates because of the pressures many countries are facing on their economies. People aren't just willingly travelling to niche crypto events when everything is getting more expensive.

Do you know what does move the needle? Getting recognised socially online. Hive isn't even in the conversation on crypto Twitter, barely anything on YouTube, TikTok and other places people are actively handing over their attention to. We should be funding efforts to get better reach on Twitter, funding YouTube content and other things that could have a net positive and don't require the expensive cost of organising an in-person event to hopefully onboard a few people onto Hive.

Even then, once you get people onto Hive, what's the value proposition, why should they stay? This place has become a good ol' boys club where a handful of influential people participate in one big circlejerk to benefit themselves and their friends, while pretending to care about the lesser powerful and influential users. We've been funding these types of proposals for years, Hive is at 6 cents, we're not seeing much new user growth, we've lost people and we're not fostering the people we have left who have the skill and means to actually contribute to this place. All I see is the same people taking from Hive, pretending they care and pretending they've helped grow this place when everything suggests what we have been doing has not worked and we need to try something new.

This place has no shortage of smart and capable people, but we're not fostering or encouraging them because what's the incentive, to make whales and DHF abusers wealthier off the back of lesser influential peoples ideas and work? We need a reset, we need new thinking.

The sad reality is the crypto ecosystem has all but standardised on other larger chains like Ethereum, Solana, Tron, Cardano, etc. That's not to say Hive doesn't have a place, but we're never gonna be top 10, not even top 50. When people go to crypto conferences, they've already made up their mind about smaller chains like Hive. There is no incentive for them to come here and try, because as it has been proven time and time again, it doesn't matter how much you try or how good your contributions are, the same people benefit (many of whom had first-mover advantage with Steemit).

ValuePlan needs to break out of its 2017-era thinking and try something new. Stop throwing so much random stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks. Because from an outsider's perspective, it looks like VP doesn't actually have a clue what it's doing and just hopes one day one of its ideas pays off like a gambler in the casino hoping they'll strike it big one day on a slot machine.