I can feel how you must be thinking I've lost my marbles when I say such a thing. Hive is the fast and feeless chain with the three-second transactions, right? Surely, suggesting a very small fee for every transaction must be complete nonsense.
The utility of Hive is that it provides a decentralized high-throughput platform for DApps.
Tell me where in the world do you find utilities no one pays for in any shape or form?
But does it not cost money to buy Hive Power which confers the holder of that power Resource Credits without which it is impossible to transact on chain? Yes it does, but once you have bought 100 HIVE or whatnot and powered it up, you will have enough to get you through the typical day indefinitely. Trouble is that to run the system you need a positive cashflow. If the number of users stays constant and everyone has as many HP as they think they will need to use the platform, no one will need to purchase HIVE and there will be no cashflow.
The greater fool theory is the only thing that has kept Steem and Hive from imploding so far. We assume the cryptocurrency bull market will float all the boats, including Hive and that we don't have to worry about having any type of sound tokenomics. Speculators will come out of the woodwork en masse and moon the price come bull market.
Maybe, maybe not.
Speculation always requires a kernel of a value proposition to get going.
Owning Hive Power must eventually, when all the hypothetical growing is done, provide a positive cash flow. How? In Ethereum's case it is clear. To transact on Ethereum one must have Ether because that is the currency in which every user pays their transactions fees. That creates a lot of organic demand for the token. When Ethereum is done switching over to Proof-of-Stake it will still continue to have transaction fees, although much lower ones than before, which is no problem because Ethereum mining will be a thing of the past. Staking is inherently a much lower-cost activity than mining.
Interestingly, Blurt (a Steem fork whose token we all got airdropped last summer) has small transaction fees.
Why force users to power up at all? Why are we debating on how long the powerdown period should be? Why not make it possible to use the chain by paying for the transactions as you go instead of locking up coins by staking them? I understand that Steem was originally intended to power social applications and making users pay for all transactions when they are used to "transacting" without any fees on Web 2.0 social platforms seemed like a non-starter.
But social apps aren't the end all be all when it comes to potential Hive applications. Far from it.
I haven't really concluded anything. I'm asking you whether or not what I'm saying makes sense and hopefully giving you food for thought. What is the compelling revenue generation model from owning Hive Power that does not depend on a constant flow of new participants in the system like in a pyramid? A sound revenue logic must eventually be implemented.
