I understand the Decentralised Hive Fund exists (and maybe it can be used to fund an idea like this one), but I don't think it would do well for this initiative.
This is just an idea, maybe someone can come up with something better. Rather than highlight everything that is wrong with hive, I will also like to proffer (simple) solutions. Cheers!
This fund will be set aside for community development and profitability. It can be a hive project by coding it into layer one or a venture by powerful stakeholders where resources are pledged towards this initiative.
The Hive Community Development Fund would have an annual budget of $20,000-$200,000 HBD and 5,000,000-50,000,00 HP set aside to support communities that can bring value to the hive ecosystem. Communities interested in applying would have the following:
I will be using the HIve Fantasy Football League (HiveFPL) community to illustrate how these guidelines would work, however, I think every community can apply this to their unique situation.
I also believe that most communities, if well set up, can provide value for not just the hive ecosystem but also their larger communities. For instance, HiveFPL falls under the Fantasy Football community where they can attract new members to their sub-community. So this is more of an outreach program.
This annual budget gotten from the HCDF can be spent in the following:
For instance, a project/community can reward their top 3 league teams each week with merch, which should have the community’s logo and details (this is a form of advertising). HiveFPL can also pay for (cheap) ads prompting their league or sponsorship deals with sports influencers to promote the community and hive.
HiveFPL can take it a step further by starting a podcast independently or with Sports Talk, where they talk about sport, fpl and Hive. This content can generate revenue on hive and also be repurposed for other social platforms (hence the need for a social media manager). This can be set up in the region where HiveFPL has its largest community members.
Hive (or the HCDF committee) can also take a big set by building creative studios in different regions of the world where communities can host podcasts, youtube lives, conferences, etc. It would be cheaper in 3rd world countries and the returns on such investments will be significant (better than just giving people free money for saying the same thing every day. This can be set up with what the top 20 creators earn in a month.)
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With the required delegation from the HCDF community can support their members and on-chain activities. This also helps in the distribution of hive and also ensuring that community members are well incentivized to participate in community activities.
For instance (still using HiveFPL), microblogging is a thing now on hive. The HiveFPL team can put out a weekly thread where communities engage and banter with each other (taking away some of that traction from discord) and reward the top contributors with upvotes. This benefits the community members as they get rewarded; it benefits HiveFPL by generating HP via curation rewards; It benefits hive by creating a healthy social ecosystem.
Every community should have an active team of at least 5 members including the founder, discord moderator and social media manager. Some of these individuals will have to be employed.
Most community projects have structural problems. They are either run by one or two persons (usually the founders). They cannot afford to pay a social media manager or any person to work on the project. This is why projects like leofinance and splinterland have outlived many other projects on hive–they have the structure and funding.
We need dapps/community to be well structured and funded to bring about the development that will increase the value of our stake. Without these things put in place, we are basically amassing shitcoins in the long run.
As earlier stated a community should have a manifesto upon which its plans/projects are built. It should also be a sustainable plan which the community can fund after its incubation stage. For instance, a community like the HiveFPL can generate revenue through its leagues and cups; newsletter and podcasts through ads (depending on how large they grow). The FPL community has over 2 million active members, and attracting just 1% of this community will do a lot for HiveFPL, The Sports Talk community and hive.
Unlike the Hive Decentralised Fund, community leads must deliver their 20% quota and be sustainable in 2 years. This eliminates the risk of breeding lazy and entitled leads, which was one thing steemit failed to do when it started this similar initiative
In conclusion, My idea may not be perfect ( and I am open to further dialogue and corrections). However, I do believe this can work and help save our seemingly stagnant social ecosystem.
