While so much has changed, mostly, it has remained the same and after talking to some people, I feel a sense that a lot were expecting something quite different, something earth-shattering - an immediate affect on experience. I don't think that is going to be the case, Hive, just like Steem would have been - is a slow burner.
Firstly, it is going to take some time for people to find their way, as even though much is familiar, a few tweaks to interface and a few broken connections can throw a spanner in the works of process. Then of course, there are the applications that need to catch up with the changes so that they can adjust their code, find new domains and rebrand. All of this takes time.
However, it is the culture that takes the longest to build and we do carry a lot of history in with us that has formed habits. Habits are hard to break, even if no longer suitable for the conditions. Because Hive is a socially-powered blockchain, the behavior of participants is what is going to affect the future direction, growth and of course, distribution of the community. I hope that what we have all learned are at least two key points.
It should be obvious to all of us that without well-thought and robust code, the blockchain is vulnerable to all kinds of attacks, whether it be the recent centralization, or that automation and passivity outperforms human activity. If we are going to create a space where humans benefit, we can make it one that is best suited to machines.
Hard work should always be rewarded more than automation. This a large part of the problem with the global economy, as it gives more benefits for those who have a lot, even though they don't actually create anything of value, other than generating money. This creates a continual stockpiling of wealth and a systematic widening of gaps in wealth distribution.
While redistribution is necessary, giving anything freely without an activity of some kind attached to it rarely works out well for anyone. Which is why there has to be work involved. In a community, the work comes from the community.
The community has obviously been instrumental in the formation of Hive and have been for 4 years. Without the community doing whatever it has done on Steem and even though there was a lot of negative interaction and behavior, people still found the concept of it worth saving and improving upon - that speaks something about the value of the community and it was the developer group of the community that made it a reality, created the new blockchain, which is fantastic.
However, we have to remember that one of the largest issues that Steem had was finding ways to balance the user groups, which I broadly define as developer, investor, contributor and consumer. One individual could very well belong to all, some might belong to only one. For the economy to work, the different user groups have to work together to find a reasonable equilibrium where everyone is somewhat satisfied in their experience. Again, this is something that the real world economics seem to have forgotten in the continual drive of value to a handful of global users.
Of course, a lot of the focus of the economics of Steem was on the distribution of Steem itself and the subsequent price, but there are other values that require distribution, like attention and relationships. If the value of a social blockchain is the community, that community has to work at being a community, to cooperate and build together to create something that is truly valuable.
This is why I see it is a slow burn, because this takes time and while there might be spikes in price value, the stabilization that comes through the community to create a foundation and therefore floor, requires investment of work in. What is great about Hive is we aren't starting from zero.
The core userbase that has been slowly gathering on Steem for the last four years has been transplanted into Hive to provide a foundation. If that group of users choose to continue building and expanding the community through activity and relationship, it becomes increasingly ore inclusive and therefore, increasingly more valuable.
As said, there are more values here that token price and future token price is a symptom of a healthy community, as it will start to stabilize as more and more people hold and release it in a self-sufficient ecosystem. Eventually, demand will meet supply to form that equilibrium point, but that takes a very long time as it requires many more participants and that means, an increase in demand, not necessarily supply itself. Smart Media Tokens can help in this area too, as they can become niche supply pools that feed market sectors.
What I am hoping that the developer group on Steem really start teaming up with the investors and finding ways to deliver the content of the contributors to the consumers. This creates an economic feedback loop that drives value through the supply chain. Developing for the sake of developing is largely useless, the development has to solve a problem of some kind.
This is something that the other social media platforms have understood well enough that they can generate huge amounts of interaction from their userbase, but that is where they stop. Rather than empowering their users, they extract value from them and use it as part of the driver of wealth to the very high pointy end, not distribute it widely. As a result, they will end up eating themselves, if their user base doesn't wake up and revolt before that point.
That revolution is coming however and I think while largely insignificant in the world economy, what happened to what Justin Sun thought was his purchase of a community, will happen again. The contributor and the consumer is waking up and saying, "serve the community or we go elsewhere". It doesn't matter what Sun thought he bought, the user base was never his, nor was it ever for sale.
At some point, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram are going to be forced into providing more than likes to their user base and one of the largest drivers of this is in the works now - global economic collapse. There is one thing that is an effective breaker of habit, and that is need - and people are going to be suffering more than toilet paper shortages.
Once people are in need, they start to look for alternatives that can fill the needs and that will mean increasingly looking to online solutions. When they arrive at Hive, they need to find a place that can support them. This doesn't mean economic support per se, but a place that they can build into a home that they find is valuable and worth spending time at.
Many will stay consumers to be the audience for content creators and businesses, some will start creating and, some will start bringing their businesses into the community to find a new marketplace, the digital economy. In time, the value that people hold in traditional investments will start to bleed into crypto through the communities that use them, the everyday people who interact here daily.
This takes time, and while so many want to rush, the slow-burn growth will add economic mass to create stability as well as a user base of an invested and long-sight community to interact and trade- Trade in goods and services, ideas and of course - tokens.
Work hard, burn slow, build for the future. This revolution isn't via an attack, it is through a steady replacement of the system that was designed to draw value to the few, to one that was designed to distribute to the many.
But, nothing in this world is without cost.
Taraz
[ 1st generation Hive ]
