What a proposal to the DHF is teaching us

"Most projects don't fail because they're poorly executed. They fail because they're solving the wrong problem."

When we published our new proposal for the DHF, we thought we had a pretty clear idea of what Hive needed.

More content.
More campaigns.
More tools.
More outreach.

But after reading community feedback, talking with people across the ecosystem, and revisiting our own methodology, we realized something more important.

Maybe we were starting with the answer before we fully understood the question.

The Mistake Almost Everyone Makes

There's a well-known concept in the startup world called an MVP (Minimum Viable Product).

Most people think an MVP means building a small product.

In reality, an MVP exists to answer a much bigger question:

Are we solving the right problem?

An MVP isn't there to prove we know how to build. It's there to prove we understand the problem.

The Hypotheses We Tested

When we published the proposal, we assumed:

Hive needed more marketing campaigns.
The main problem was a lack of content.
Creating resources would directly drive adoption.
An onboarding platform would have an immediate impact.

But the community started asking questions we hadn't fully answered.

Is the real problem onboarding? Retention? Activation? Use cases? The first-time experience? The lack of tools for communities? Why aren't we promoting dapps?

That's when it clicked: we couldn't keep building answers without first validating where the real bottleneck was.

The Feedback Was the Real Product

Sometimes the goal is to get the most learning possible for the smallest investment, and that's exactly what happened. Our proposal sparked questions, debate, and criticism, but also a genuine exchange of ideas.

And that's worth a lot more than just hearing "yes."

Because now we understand how the community thinks, and our first priority became clear: earn its trust.

What Changes From Here

Instead of asking:

What campaigns should we run?

We'll start asking:

What problem do we want to validate?

That changes how we work at a fundamental level: we're moving from assuming to validating.

Instead of launching big initiatives on day one, we'll start with small experiments.

Instead of producing more content or building more apps, we'll try to figure out which mechanisms actually drive growth for Hive, whether through content creators, gamers, or the development of new applications.

Thinking Like a Lab

Maybe the biggest lesson from these past few weeks is that Hive doesn't just need more marketing. It needs to understand what kind of growth actually works. We can have the best proposal in the world, and the community still might not want to spend 1 HBD on marketing.

That's why the goal now is to learn and share those results, so any community within Hive can reuse them.