I've been building things on Hive again lately. A few different projects over the past few months, getting my hands dirty with the chain, putting in the work. And I've noticed something that's been bugging me enough to finally write about it.
Hive feels empty.
Not literally empty. There are still people here. The whales are still doing their thing. Posts are still going up. Votes are still being cast. But the energy is gone. The community that used to make this place feel alive has thinned out in a way that's hard to ignore once you see it.
Cast your mind back to 2023. Someone could build a simple dice betting game and people would absolutely lose their minds over it. Not because the game was some technical marvel, but because people were genuinely excited about what was being built on this chain. Splinterlands was thriving. There were dApps popping up left and right. People were using blockchain for actual things beyond just posting and hoping for upvotes.
There was a buzz. A real sense that Hive was a platform where builders could create and users would show up, participate, and care. It wasn't perfect, but it felt like a community rallying around something bigger than individual post payouts.
Fast forward to today and I'm looking around wondering what happened. I scroll through my feed and I see project update posts from various Hive projects (and there are a LOT of alternative UIs for Hive, which is a whole other conversation). I see people writing their daily posts. I see the usual suspects doing their thing.
But where are the users? Where are the people who used to get excited about new dApps? Where are the builders who were experimenting with what a blockchain social platform could actually do?
It feels like Hive has settled into being a blogging platform where the primary motivation is earning money from writing. And look, there's nothing inherently wrong with earning from your content. That was always part of the value proposition. But somewhere along the way it feels like that became the only proposition.
This is the question that keeps nagging at me. Did Hive's culture shift in a way that pushed out the people who wanted to build things here? When I look at the ecosystem now, I see a lot of content creation tools and not a lot of utility. The chain itself is technically solid. Fast, feeless transactions, custom JSON operations, a built-in governance system. The bones are good.
But are we using any of that to its potential? Or are we just running a blogging platform on infrastructure that could do so much more?
I think part of the problem is that Hive's identity has narrowed. We used to talk about being a decentralised social blockchain with endless possibilities. Now it feels more like we're the blogging blockchain, and even that feels generous some days with the AI slop I regular see here getting ridiculous weighted upvotes (don't get me started). The community aspect, the part where people actually interacted with each other beyond comment-for-upvote exchanges, has faded.
I don't have all the answers, but I think we need to be honest with ourselves about a few things:
Are we okay with Hive just being a place where people post content to earn crypto? Is that enough to sustain a blockchain long term?
Have we created an environment where building something new on Hive isn't worth the effort because the user base isn't there to support it?
Do people even care about blockchain utility anymore, or has the broader market shift toward speculation over substance hit us too?
And maybe the hardest question: is the current state of Hive a temporary lull, or is this just what Hive is now?
I'm still building on Hive. I still think the technology is solid and the chain has potential. But potential doesn't mean much if nobody shows up to use what gets built. You can have the best blockchain in the world, but if the community has checked out or condensed down to a small group of people posting and voting in circles, then what's the point?
It's hard to stay motivated when you build something and it just disappears into the void. You spend weeks or months on a project, you ship it, you post about it, and then... nothing. A few upvotes, maybe a comment or two, and then it's buried under the next wave of daily posts. That wears on you after a while.
Builders need feedback. They need users. They need to know that someone out there actually cares about what they're making. Without that, you start questioning why you're building on Hive at all instead of just shipping it somewhere else where people might actually show up and use it.
I'd genuinely love to be wrong about this. Tell me I'm missing the pockets of activity. Tell me there are communities I haven't found yet. Tell me the builders are still here and I'm just not looking in the right places.
Because right now, from where I'm standing, it feels like the lights are on but nobody's home.
What do you think? Has Hive changed, or have I just gotten cynical? Drop a comment and let's talk about it. I'd rather have an honest conversation about where we're at than pretend everything is fine.
