I was chatting with grok as usual, asking about hive. What is going on in the crypto world and where we can generate revenue which should be the number one goal for our apps right now if we want hive to succeed and grow.
I have always advocated for ads and any other solution that can capture external revenue. Grok thinks the same.
I was asking grok about ways for Hive to generate external revenue and this was one of two very interesting responses that it had for me.
The first was to create three new DHF funded games that draw in users that spend money on chain. We all know how hard it is to create, run, sustain games as only splinterlands has been successful and most other efforts no longer exist.
The more interesting result was the theory on a hive wide ad service. Peakd already trialed this on a smaller scale and didn't like the results on their site but they never really loved the idea in the first place.
Also that was just one site compared to a network wide approach as suggested here.
A true "decentralized Google AdSense for Hive" is very feasible technically — Hive's feeless custom_json operations and 3-second blocks make it perfect for on-chain bidding and transparent payouts. Here's a realistic, step-by-step implementation that could be built and launched via DHF proposals in 6–12 months:
All major frontends (PeakD, Ecency, Hive.blog, InLeo, 3Speak, Splinterlands) integrate a simple JS widget that queries a public Hive API endpoint (e.g., hive-api for winning ads).
The widget pulls the current winning creative (image/banner/link/video) and displays it.
Impressions/clicks are tracked on-chain (optional lightweight custom_json from frontend) or off-chain for privacy.
Integrate Stripe/Moonpay → HBD directly on the ad dashboard (one-click buy HBD with credit card).
Ad spaces are defined per-community or per-frontend (e.g., sidebar banners on PeakD/Ecency, top-of-feed promoted posts, video pre-rolls on 3Speak, in-game billboards in Splinterlands).
Hive currently has very low traffic (10K–30K daily uniques across all frontends), so you can't expect Coca-Cola day one. But realistic early bidders who would pay real fiat/stablecoins right now:
Ref: Grok
Run "free credits" campaigns: Give new advertisers $100–500 in HBD credits if they spend via fiat.
Outreach team (DHF-funded): 1–2 people cold-DMing 100 crypto marketing managers on Twitter/Discord weekly.
Partnerships: Integrate with crypto ad networks (e.g., Coinzilla, A-Ads already accept crypto payments) as a "Hive placement" option.
Even $10K–50K/month external inflow in year 1 would be transformative: it creates real buy pressure on HIVE/HBD, reduces sell pressure from inflation, and funds more growth.
Technically easy, politically doable via DHF, and the bidder pipeline starts 90% crypto-native (who already spend heavily on Twitter/Reddit/Discord ads). The hardest part is coordinating the frontends to adopt the standard — but if PeakD + Ecency + InLeo + Splinterlands all integrate, it's game over for fragmented manual ads. This could be Hive's killer revenue primitive.
Even if it only generated a thousand a month for the first year that would be buy pressure directly on the token from external sources.
One of the biggest issues with Hive and it's token price is the fact that it is inflationary with nothing to offset the inflation.
We keep printing more tokens but we have less buyers than four years ago.
A recipe for disaster and one that will only get worse over time unless we focus on bringing in new users and creating buy pressure on the token.
In contrast we as a community have spent an estimated $300-$400K on creating and maintaining a rally car that has no measurable impact on the chain or it's growth other than creating more sell pressure.
We don't need gimmicks to market hive we need success.
We need token price gains and we need user growth to get back in the right direction. I don't care if Hive ever hits $10 but if it keeps leaking like this we will lose more users and create more sell pressure.
If the price is going up it will attract more users and encourage more people to grow their stake instead of sell.
I'm not saying that this idea would work or is even easy to build but i do think that we need to change our mindset if we are to survive.
We are in a bear market and need to act and to budget accordingly.
Play to hive strengths and if we can build some revenue generating projects they will stand out even more and have more effect in these low markets prices.
Just a thought, I can't actually build anything and i know how opposed some of the old guard are to ads and actual revenue.
