I've been looking around at the Hive discussions and it seems while complaining is one of the main purposes of the internet - a whine delivery system if there ever was one - there are some categories that come up time and again.
There are several issues facing Hive right now and the value of the currency is only one of them.
Community Engagement is Low
Even considering seasonal changes, it feels like engagement is dropping. This isn't great for a platform that relies on active users to thrive. What can we do to get more people involved?
Buying and Trading is Hard
For regular folks, getting their hands on HIVE or trading it is a bit of a challenge compared to more popular cryptocurrencies. We need easier ways for people to buy and trade HIVE.
Popular Games are In Trouble
Some of our top games aren't doing so well. If they disappear, our community takes a big hit. These games are a big part of what makes Hive fun and engaging.
Wasteful Spending on Useless Stuff
There's a lot of talk about money being wasted on things that don't really help us. I've heard 'marketing' thrown around a lot, but what specific examples are there? If anyone knows more about this, please share.
Selfish Incentives and Lack of Onboarding
Right now, the incentives seem to encourage selfish behavior. People are motivated to keep the value high for themselves, which doesn't help with bringing in new users. We need to find a way to balance this and make it attractive for new folks to join without feeling like they're just more competition.
How can we address these issues and make Hive a better place for everyone?
Because I do not like throw out problems without offering at least some ideas for solutions, I think we need to look at how people are rewarded for contributing here.
Right now you have one week to get as many high value votes as you can, without causing anyone to counteract those.
Many of these votes are not based on quality of the work. There are mutual voting circles aplenty, and sock puppets/bots too.
Outside of already baked-in votes from friends or self voting, the best way to get high value votes is to rehash already popular topics, and if you can mass-produce them using AI then you can really milk the system while accelerating the demise of the community.
What I would like to see:
- Accept that friend-voting won't go away, and can be entirely innocent, so replace with subscriptions/patreon-style rewards so as not to muddy the vote as "I think this is good"
- Part of the rewards to be based on longer term metrics like readers and page views to reward content that brings people to the sites rather than keeping the community static.
- Less emphasis on crypto. Yeah might seem weird, but people don't go to Reddit because they can get karma points, they go to discuss topics and then they learn about internet points as a secondary thing.