The Way
Hive is the way. That's been my little catchphrase going into the New Year. I got it from watching The Mandalorian and wrote about it here. It really is the way forward for crypto and blockchain for all the reasons that have been talked about: free and fast transactions, secure, decentralized, etc. But really, what does Hive actually do? Nothing. It's just the backbone that allows everything else to work on top of it. That's obviously a little simplistic, but for most of us mere users, that's all we need to know.
Whether its the front-ends ( #Ecency, #HiveBlog, #PeakD) or the communities and their front-ends ( #CINE, #SPORTS, #STEM, #CTP, #ONEUP, #NEOXIAN, etc), Hive just makes them all work. It's up to those front-ends and other dApps, like games, to bring in the users and let #Hive do its thing.
The whole point of blockchains is to create a ledger, which is immutable, that can keep track of everything it is used for by a network of people, businesses, and other entities using it. But you obviously have to build that network.
The Changes
Which brings me to LeoFinance. If Hive is the backbone, I think Leo has the chance to be the face of Hive. Not only that, but probably the hands and feet as well.
If you haven't heard, Leo is in the process of bringing their latest UI improvements to their front-end, LeoFinance.io. In the past few months they've released LeoThreads to their community and are in the process of making some major upgrades. @Khal & Co. have been teasing these upgrades in posts over the last few weeks and are saying it will be out sometime this month. From what they've told us, this should be a major game-changer for Leo and the Hive ecosystem as a whole.
The biggest upgrade is going to be integrating the former #ProjectBlank into the LeoFinance front-end and turning LeoThreads into a close copy of the Twitter UI (user interface). LeoThreads has been picking up steam over the last couple weeks as the UX (user experience) has been improved and it's been easier to post, read, and vote. This will blow the roof off.
The goal is to make the first impression when you land on the site as easy and as intuitive as possible. They want to make it so that if you have used any social media in the outside world at all, you'll know how to use LeoThreads and LeoFinance without having to think. As @Khal spoke about in the latest AMA, they want you "threading" in less than a minute from when you arrive, and ideally, seeing upvotes on your posts (worth money) shortly thereafter. This is huge!
I read a post by @gadrian yesterday (here) and he was talking about how he thinks we all should quit marketing Hive to new users and instead market the dApps built on top of it. I couldn't agree more. Hive is complicated, especially for novices to crypto. Leo, on the other hand, is not.
When the new UI is implemented, people should be able to log in and start threading immediately. From there, they will be able to delve into the long-form blogging if they want. They'll be able to go into their wallets. They'll be able to vote, comment, reply, whatever. And #soon, thanks to work being done with #3Spk, they should be able to add videos and "short clips" a la YouTube and TikTok. It should all be right in front of them and easy to understand for experts and newbies alike.
THIS is what needs to be marketed. This is the on ramp for potentially thousands of users; something that normal everyday people are already familiar with using. The future is becoming NOW at LeoFinance.
[](Photo by Kirk Thornton on Unsplash )
The Gateway
When this is all in place, Leo will be the gateway to Hive and all it's surrounding communities. From the Leo interface people will not only be able to interact with each other, but they'll also be exposed to the writings from other parts of Hive. Articles and threads written about #Hive and #Cine and #Splinterlands and #PsyberX and photography, fitness, gold & silver, you name it. Not to mention all the Leo articles and regular crypto and finance articles already so prevalent in the blogs. It will all be there for the viewing. All the while, just a click away, will be the added bonus of them being able to see some rewards coming into their accounts. And if they've got questions, LeoGlossary will be there to help answer them.
Nothing else has that. Not Twitter, not YouTube, not TikTok, not Meta. Sure, you can get "monetized" on those platforms...if you have thousands of followers. Here, one vote and you get rewarded.
Meanwhile, in the background, Hive is making sure this content is yours and yours alone and it can never get taken from you. It's making sure you have access to it forever. The only way you can get "banned" is if the community bans you. And even then, you still own your information and can access it via another front-end. It will never be taken from you as is happening on those other platforms.
This is just the beginning of where this can go. Once these users start coming on board, some of them will certainly delve deeper into what they're using. This brings in DeFi with #CUB and #polyCUB. This brings in the liquidity pools there and on #Hive-Engine. This brings in more people checking out other communities. The sky is the limit.
Right now, WE are making the world go around on Hive. Imagine what it will be like when there are thousands more of us. I expect the world will look very different a year from now.
Hive is the Way, but LeoFinance will be the gateway.
(And just so you know, it's a nickel right now...not financial advice.) :-)