I've always said and I still stand behind it that a blockchain is much like a business. The business is run by more than one person and active devs who are hired on to build applications on top of it. All of this interaction and transactions are what fuels the business.
Hive isn't any different in my opinion. There's a DHF which is a pool of funds that all hive powered up has a vote in. There's really no limit as to who or what can be added into this to be voted on and to me acts as the profits of the blockchain to fuel continued growth.
That growth I personally believe should come more form devs, hackathons and application development as a solid application in which people love to use and gains news is natural marketing that gets some serious results.
We saw that in the case of Splinterlands where the massive growth of the game during the last bull market sparked thousands of new users all interacting with the blockchain in more ways than one. Through blogging their game strats to simple blockchain broadcast via battles.
I believe we have only just started to see how hive is going to end up doing this. Right now it's all done via a side chain called Hive-Engine in which places like InLeo.io and Splinterlands assets currently run on along with a number of others.
Most of these applications however are small or hold little value within them. I believe that reason is because of lack of funds coming in.
For me the vision I see is a core blockchain like hive with steady rewards and a reason to power it up that then has applications all around it which need the hive powered up for the resources to support their application and community growth.
That application then generates revenue for their token via sales, sponsorships, advertising and other traditional methods of raising capital for a company. This is where most applications current fall short is the revenue growth and building multiple revenue streams.
This is why we see over 90% of new applications fail which is typical for any new company really. But with Hive that rate should actully be better as you're already coming in with an established community that wants you to build on it and wants your application to be a success because the success of your application means the success for hive as well.
Trying to do everything leads your blockchain or company to end up doing everything either good or just ok. While focusing on a niche makes it awesome at just that and then good or ok at everything else while remaining focused on the core niche.
Take the Wax blockchain for example. It's mainly promoted itself as the gaming platform and it's done VERY well at doing so. But it's also now started to expand itself through other applications in DeFi and brining everything internal.
This has caused the chain to actully have growth and while the gaming niche is currently still hurting a bit it is still the primary focus of wax while it has the ability to expand into other niches.
Much like this Hive is primarily known for blogging or really a social blockchain. However blogging isn't very "social" but InLeo launched threads which is a twitter (x) type format which allows for a lot faster and better community feel. You also have video with platforms like 3speak, live streaming with VIMM and a Instagram style with Liketu.
This shows us that hive has the possibility for massive growth however the one thing lacking on most of these projects is the revenue source. A revenue source be it ads, subscriptions or any number of traditional business models would spark growth in terms of revenue for the hive blockchain which would have a positive impact on everything.
At the moment however either these funds are generated by paying the application a small amount of the rewards you earn on your post (creating sell pressure on the hive token) or it gets funding from the DHF which also pushes sell pressure on the hive token. It would be better if these applications could instead generate the revenue to cover their expenses and become profitable.
Hive will get there and it's come a long way, we just need to refocus some efforts and continue to build applications and community in which people wish to be a part of.
