How much of a benefit is Web 3.0 over Web 2.0 applications?
This is a question that many are starting to wonder. Is there really a lot more potential on in an ecosystem like Hive compared to the traditional social media options?
In this article we will take a look at what is taking place and examine the potential.
Before getting into it, this is a very rough outline of what is happening on Hive. We are using some basic calculations and not going in depth with the total earnings over the past year. There is a fair bit of estimating which, nevertheless, does make the point.
How Much Does Existing Social Media Pay?
We can start with getting an idea of what people earn on the existing platforms.
Here is something put together a16z, the VC firm that is investing huge money in the crypto space. They are big proponents of Web 3.0, or what they believe it should look like.
Either way, here is something they put together to exemplify the difference between the two Internet iterations. They used NFTs which, in looking at the data, they took some liberties with. Therefore, we are going to ignore that for the time being since that sector is a bit questionable (bubbly) at the moment.
This is what they came up with.
As we can see, the average payout on the traditional sites is not terrific. On Facebook and Google, it is abysmal. Spotify at least gives people a fighting chance. However, keep in mind that many of those people are musicians trying to carve out a living off their music.
Nevertheless, this is what the numbers supposedly look like.
Keep in mind, this is average and not median.
Hive Pay Outs
For the numbers on Hive, we are simply going to use basic math. We know what the price of Hive is at the moment along with the reward pool.
Hiveblocks shows us what the reward pool is:
We will use Coingecko to see the price of HIVE:
With rewards of roughly $450K, on an annualized basis we see payouts of $23.5 million coming from the blockchain.
To determine the number of users, we will pull this chart:
Just eyeballing it, we can conclude there are around 15K accounts transacting each day. Thus, we can do some simply division to get the average payout.
$23.5M/15K = $1,570 per account.
Obviously, we are taking a few liberties here ourselves. We know not all accounts that transact actually produce content. At the same time, the reward pool is broken up in a number of ways. However, it does give us an estimate of where things stand.
Putting It All Together
So this is a rough estimate of the average earnings:
Hive $1,570
Spotify $636
YouTube $2.47
Facebook $.01
Another way of looking at it is this:
Spotify 1,077 HIVE
YouTube 4.18 HIVE
Facebook .017 HIVE
This is the amount of HIVE one would need to get in one year to match the average on the other platforms. If, for example, you made more than 4.18 HIVE posting on 3Speak, then you topped the average on YouTube. Facebook can be topped simply with a payout on a comment that exceeds the dust level.
Spotify is the biggest one although that works out to about 20 HIVE per week.
Of course, there are two major points that are omitted:
This only focuses upon HIVE. All other token payouts are excluded. Add those in and the amount of HIVE required to match these levels is reduced.
The calculations are based upon the price of HIVE at the moment. If the price moves, things obviously change. Higher levels on HIVE in the future will mean even better numbers.
We are also not factoring decentralized finance 9DeFi) which is being interwoven throughout the Web 3.0 platforms being constructed.
Community Over Corporations
They key to all of these platforms is the network effect. Traditional social media corporations did an excellent job of leveraging that for trillions in value. The problem is they are companies.
With Web 3.0, we are looking at a new ownership model. Instead of corporations benefiting, the financial gain is spread, at least to some degree, to the userbase. As we can see, while Hive is much smaller, the numbers do appear to exceed what takes place on the other platforms.
It is vital to keep in mind that the network effect has not really been recognized on Hive yet. We are still looking at a very small ecosystem. These numbers will skyrocket if the transacting user base grows to, say, 250K.
So the question is where do you want to spend your precious hours? Are you willing to put forth effort to further enrich Facebook and YouTube in the hopes that you might be one of the few who makes it big.
Or do you want to swim in a much smaller pond where you can help the platform to grow, thus enhancing the value of your holdings?
That is the essence of Web 3.0.
What are your thoughts? Where do you rank on the scale in terms of your rewards versus those on the other platforms?
Let us know in the comment section below.
For those who are graphically gifted, taking the average payouts lists and making some memes (showing Hive, Spotify, YouTube, and Facebook) might be helpful to spread on Twitter.
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