The News

I expect that many of you will have noticed that the $HIVE price is down again, but then it seems everything is. Bitcoin is half its peak value for the last year and is falling. I do not follow things enough to know the reasons, but I still think Hive has value as a platform. Price-wise it has had a couple of pumps recently, but we know that a sudden rise is rarely sustainable. I would hope that the various projects can keep going, but the economics get tougher as we have seen with @risingstargame.

The updates keep coming for Ecency and Peakd. @keychain have a new proposal that they hope can be the last as they look to earn from multichain swaps that will integrate Hive more into the crypto ecosystem.

Friday Follows

• I keep mentioning comics as I think they can make your feed more entertaining. This week I saw fresh ones from @northwestnomad, @sidekickmatt and @dead-pets. What are your favourites?
• I think that music should be big on Hive too. @breakoutthecrazy have a nice new song, so let them know what you think.
• We are now seeing people reach ten years on this blockchain, but we can celebrate any anniversary. @godfish has an app to show when your friends will reach one soon.

The Dog House

Having an open platform like Hive without centralised moderation tends to involve some compromises. We want it to be easy to join, but it should not be easy to create loads of accounts that could be used for abuse. There is a cost to creating an account, but some of the projects will cover this if you give up some information such as an email address or phone number. I just saw that @hivewatchers highlighted a possible issue with the Ecency creation service. I have not used that, but it seems that someone is creating lots of accounts, some of which create spammy posts that are just trying to influence search engines. There is some discussion there on how big a problem this is, but someone is taking the effort to use disposable email accounts and phone numbers as well as VPNs to do this. Barriers such as CAPTCHAs may not do much when they are cheap to bypass with AI or human resources. There is a constant 'arms war' to try and deal with this.

I do wonder if accounts should have a higher cost as they can have a lot of long-term value. Some people may already have created thousands by other means. I could create many more by using resource credits to get account creation tokens. Anyone with enough HP can do this. How you do it depends on how traceable you want to be.

There is also a cost to posting, but it is pretty low now so that most people can post and comment as much as they want. As I understand it the cost would rise if things got too busy. You can mute accounts you do not want to see, but if there are thousands then it could be a problem.

The End

I will be attempting to produce a fresh #BritList this weekend as I try to get old scripts working on my new PC. I have seen a few people return to Hive recently after long periods away, so perhaps we will see numbers go up again. We need new people too and I can create accounts if anyone needs them.

How are you feeling about Hive these days? Obviously I am still enthusiastic, but that is more about the connections I have made than what I can earn. I value a platform that does not try to exploit me. I feel that I can do good here by supporting others.

Hive five!

The man behind:

@tenkminnows: Helping good Hivers level up @proofofbrian: A bot that checks for tag typos #BritList: A monthly list of Hivers in the UK