Does hive need a Safety Net?
I'm attempting to help set a productive tone to the conversations we are having about hive these days. A few days ago, @friendlymoose, wrote a thoughtful piece on the subject of rewards. How some people put a lot of work in, and get nothing, and others shit post and get lots.
His questions, and the discussions that followed in the comments point to a lack of common ground, as far as I can tell. Which is to say, there's a very good chance we've not taken the time to reach some sort of community consensus on how this place should run.
Today I began writing down a list of the problems we have on Hive. I'm of the idea of tackling them on separate videos, so that we can achieve a common north, so to speak. If such a thing is even possible, that is.
Our challenges - In no Particular Order
- User retention
- User culture
- Vote Selling
- Value extraction
- Shit posting / Low Effort
- Scammers and Spammers
- Hyperactive Immune system (Hivewatchers)
- Content/user discovery
I'm aware there is no way this is a complete list, and I invite you to add more items on the comments. I should say, just in case, you are welcome to disagree with the list as well. That's the point of this post.
Let's talk solutions
This is where I want to end up at. As I say in the video, it's easy to complain. I do it all the time. It's a lot harder to come up with solutions. Most of the time the easy path is the wrong one, so I guess the message should be clear to all of us.
I want to open up the floor, if you will, with the idea of tackling the issue of user retention. Which to me is probably our hardest challenge to overcome. We have thousands upon thousands of dead accounts, to prove this very point.
I suspect @josephsavage's UBI is an attempt to fix this problem. The one also pointed out by @friendlymoose (people leaving after their efforts are ignored). But I will let him speak for himself in the upcoming Podcast @buttcoins and myself are putting together.
So, I'll start with a proposition. I think we need a Safety net of sorts. I think in order to fix user retention, we have to learn the lessons of the world outside of our blockchain.
In the video I do make references to some things I've written over the years. Before you attack me for being wrong, it would help if you precisely how I feel and understand these things.
My expectations
This post would not be complete if I don't put forth my expectations too. Do I think we are going to solve everything? Of course not. I'm not that naive. I think most things if not all things can be improved, but the there is no such thing as a perfect platform.
If anything, I hope these conversations help set the tone going forward. Rising tides raise all ships, and we are all already in the water, so it makes sense we collaborate on finding solutions that benefit us all.
MenO
Great video man and I think you have provoked a really interesting discussion about Universal Basic Income. For me I am not a fan of UBI. There are perfectly organic distinctions in our society, the class based system isn't an artificial creation, well what's left of that system.
In my country the obsession with equality and breaking down the old class order has resulted in much higher crime, abjectly lower moral codes, living standards shattered, the middle classes hollowed out and most people now struggling with their finances with the vast majority of young people never having a chance of getting onto the property ladder.
The whole UBI thing is a classic Marxist deception tactic.
The old social order has now broken down but it has only been replaced with new elites and the new elites make our society a much worse place. They have unleased untold misery on our society.
And I used to believe in this order, I thought that the whole equality, diversity and inclusion project was something wholesome and good and I felt compelled to sign up to it, not realising of course it is a profound deception.
As for Hive and UBI now this is where things get strange. As I have just outlined in great detail I am no fan of UBI. However, on Hive I would welcome it with open arms. I thought the blockchain and Hive was supposed to be part of the solution but sadly it too has been corrupted and lots of ugly things happen on it. There is no chance you can break the system either, protest will get you nowhere. Having principles won't get you too far either.
You can produce a ton of decent, intelligent and engaging content and get little to no rewards. It's all about who you know, not what skills you posses and what you can contribute. So on Hive where so few people hold all the financial power and where the situation is much worse than in the real world, sadly yes UBI is needed.
In that kind of system yes I would absolutely like to see UBI introduced. And you never know with some form of workable UBI Hive might just attract and retain real talent.
VIP reward: 0.5 Hive
Thanks for this thoughtful comment. You happen to be one of those accounts who is putting in the work I speak of. This comment alone has enough thought to warrant a good upvote.
Discord in this sense has helped you, and others for that matter, gain visibility. But, imagine how many people never get seen and give up before being found by someone with any kind of stake to support them.
Yes I have been putting in the work from the day I arrived on Hive. Dare to scroll back to when I started you will see a Herculean effort with my posts. But it wasn't until I started delegating for vote support until I started receiving fairer rewards.
Discord has indeed help me gain some degree of visibility but rewards have not followed from visibility.
Yes, the comment I wrote is enough to warrant good upvotes, but watch how it won't get those votes.
After seven months of solid and sustained effort and after creating and hosting my own Discord show alongside an endeavour to reawaken the official Hive Discord server, which has succeeded, the average payout for my posts are still around $2.75, before curation rewards.
I think the level of rewards would accord with many people's experiences on Hive and the amount of time it takes to build a network.
I can agree with this. Which is why "incubating" people makes sense to me. With a lil help, they can stand on their own feet eventually.
I've noticed it 😉
Unfortunately we (@topcomment) don't have that much power to give you a massive upvote, but our stake is slowly growing.
Also we need to get some visibility 😊
Your comment is upvoted by @topcomment
Info - Support - Discord
UBI isn't going to work. HW will continue to suppress user retention, so that the oligarchy will maintain the majority of stake, and thereby retain control of Hive, and thereby retain the majority of rewards and stake on Hive. I reckon grasping that prudential view of their mined stakes necessary to consideration of every aspect of Hive, because it is the view of them that control every aspect of Hive.
Thanks!
Thanks for mentioning me. My post was a collection of my own experiences and ideas together with the things I've seen in other blogs and the good discussions I had with others (like you) in comment or discord channels.
Nice to see you have set up a list of points 'we' could work on. I havent checkout out your video yet, but I will do so tonight.
I think there is a good movement starting to grow of Hivers that really want to make this platform better.
I think the discussions in blogs and podcasts are really helpful in fostering these discussions.
Ooooh. When is that one? I have to see if I can join the show then.
We should try to prevent it from getting worse. And every little bit we can improve the platform is a win! Small steps at a time could get a snowball running (at least, that is what I hope for).
Thanks for sharing this!
all in all we are looking Tuesday. I hope to see you there too.
I'll keep and eye on the Discord channel.
I guess helping to manage expectations is part of user retention, and that there is no entitlement or right to rewards.
This is part of the solution for sure. A vide of its own. I'm taking notes.
@clareartista
The best thing for me is that these discussion is getting talk on chain right now, so its not on a discord e.g. peole talk and have opinions about this. We all have responsibility to make our home as good as possible
is there a reason why you don't discord?
No, I actually am in many of the Hive related channels. But this chain is about being social, why do we use other tools for that is my opinion :)
Better have it open for everyone, all people are not on discord and will probably never be for many different reasons.
Well, having more people participate of the podcasts is mainly the reason why I ask. We are having one on tuesday. @buttcoins will probably announce it very soon.
Will try to attend then, I really enjoy Hive Thrive and Crypto and Cola show!
There I see why discord is useful. Never tried to have a #threadcast going?
Not yet... I know about them because of LEO. Haven't looked into "the how" just yet.
The only thing needed is to go to Inleo and make a thread with #threadcast. If you want it to be listed on top you need to buy premium which is 10hbd for a month.
Otherwise I can maybe help you set it up 👏
That will def be in the future for us. As we grow the audience of the shows.
As I continue to reflect on this, @meno, it is nice to see your reference to the post of FriendlyMoose. You already have my reference to that post in a previous comment.
What impressions are made, if one were to read them both in a very short time frame, as I have? Two sides of a great divide? Across which even thinking about building a bridge is irrational? Just a friendly squabble amongst "family?" And, therefore, no big deal?
I could say I have no idea, but that would be false. I could toy with some verbal gymnastics, but I am no fan of playing games. Certainly not with something as serious as what the content of both posts is discussing.
It will be more than just curiosity for me to see what comes of your efforts referred to in this post.
Because that is happening is that I want to have these conversations. I find them very needed (again). I don't see bad actors, I see people thinking they are doing the best for the platform. We first have to agree on what is the desired outcome.
https://x.com/lee19389/status/1908861200353341542
#hive #posh
thank you for helping spread the word
Welcome
A necessary and thought-provoking post, which is full of great ideas that should be widely discussed around here.
This is definitely a worthwhile conversation, and something I've been thinking about myself for a while.
In a perfect world, we'd all make enough in passive income HBD & HP interest etc) to create a UBI. But of course it's not a perfect world. Key issues are that subsistence level for a UBI varies hugely from country to country, and that it takes a huge amount of time to build (say) HBD interest up to the point of being a decent % of what you need to survive.
The current SBI system is nice, but isn't a UBI because it takes so long to build a decent stake and is mostly used as a slow-burn long term reward tool, so doesn't help the new users we're trying to retain.
I have an idea for a solution, but it's not going to be popular in some corners of Hive !
Basically, it looks something like this, although all the exact numbers would be up for discussion.
For the first two years of an account's existence, author rewards would be doubled, and curation rewards would have a "hard floor" of 2 cents vote value on post upvotes down to 50% vote power, as well as vote value being quadrupled for comment upvotes.
These modifiers would all be on a very slow reducing rate, finally reaching zero after two years. Thus, after one year, author rewards would have reduced to be at 1.5x standard.
There would be some kind of "clawback" mechanism in the form of a (similarly declining) fee to pay if you power down or extract HBD interest during that time.
What this would help to achieve is enabling new users to grow their account quite rapidly at first, with the slowly declining bonuses leading to a tapering effect (hopefully countered by account growth) rather than a sharp cut-off. It also has a mechanism to reduce farming for extraction.
How it would be funded (this is the controversial bit) - I feel that the DHF should be converted to a loan basis rather than a grant. Each proposal should submit a business case including detailed financials. Only core code upgrades would qualify for a grant, or perhaps only those which aren't monetised in any other way. It's a pet peeve of mine, admittedly, but I hate seeing proposals asking for lots of HBD when they then go on to charge any kind of fee to users.
The one problem I can see with this idea is how we'd stop existing users creating a new account to get the bonus, then transferring their old account HIVE and HBD into it. But I'm sure some kind of mechanism could be adopted (maybe having an HP & HBD threshold at which the bonuses cease to apply, either based on account value or just on inbound transfers).
Aaaand... I've written an essay. Sorry !
This is the kind of crazy thinking/brainstorming I want to read about. It's the only way ideas get sharp, by allowing them to collide against realities.
Can you think such a thing could be implemented on a layer 2 protocol?
Thanks for the quick reply ! I must admit I think in business terms rather than being technically competent when it comes to coding. My guess is that it might be easier to code on layer 2 - after all, we've got Hive Engine already.
But if it's on Hive Engine things we'd need to think about are anti-extraction mechanisms that still help people to build their actual HIVE (and the anti-extraction still works), and we'd still need to find a way to fund it and keep the price of the token used stable or pegged to HIVE. Tribe tokens are notorious for losing value !
The additional issue of doing it on layer 2 is that it adds complexity, and I think unnecessary over-complexity combined with poor information provision is a key driver in pushing new users away.
Layer 2 tokens are a difficult puzzle, but they are also a lot easier to deploy. They don't need consensus from the whole chain.
Soon (I hope), I'm going to be hosting a podcast with some Hivens that have solved tokenomics on top of Hive. It's the bricks one would need to then implement anything else on top of.
Back in 2017 whales needed to grow the community to make their mined stakes financially valuable, so they upvoted n00bs they noticed for a couple weeks. When there were suddenly >1M new accounts they realized their ability to maintain a majority of stake was impossible with that level of distribution, and HW began DV'ing accounts to their breaking point, gradually and suddenly reducing users to that level the oligarchy found optimal. That's where we are today, with ~3-5k users on Hive.
Because Pharsesim and the oligarchy maintain a majority of stake, they maintain control of the witnesses, and that maintains control of the code, and that maintains their ability to secure the majority of rewards and of stake. So einfach is das.
Thanks!
I like the idea of helping new users. Maybe small rewards at first could keep them from leaving too soon. I've delegated to two friends but hoping to grow more HP to do more
you get it bro... you get it. this made me smile.
yes man, after I get to a certain level, it's all about bringing others up, one thing that inspired me to do so is you man. Meno was and still is a big support to Hivetuber rising on Hive, I can't forget that man. You're GOATED to me here
Yes and no. If consensus is viewed from the coded perspective of stake, then it has been copiously considered and implemented by those with that stake. However this view is comparable to the view of lawyers of words in legal documents in relation to their understanding and use by ordinary people in common language. I reckon we view community and consensus a lot differently than do the whales that actually run the place.
Our view of user retention is quite insensate of the view of the oligarchy that is the primary beneficiary of Hive. I think your consideration would benefit from that perspective, and enable discussion to relate to actual potential of Hive.
Thanks!
Bitcoin itself put a lot of the arguments for the existence of systemic inequality, to bed for me. There was no glass ceiling stopping women from buying $1 bitcoin. Racism didn't stop black guys from mining it in 2012.
If you had an internet connection and were paying attention back then and were wise enough to spot the opportunity, then no patriarchal/hierarchical/racist system was stopping you from capitalising on it.
The main blocker for UBI online is multi-accounting. To confirm an individual is a distinct individual, we need to sacrifice privacy; and that causes more problems than it solves. Even if we could use retina scans etc; and wanted to, what's to stop me from signing up on behalf of a dozen homeless guys, who are happy to be scanned/logged for a sandwich? I could visit a nursing home, posing as an optician, and be a hundred people.
omg bro... hahahah you've sent me on a crazy mental journey. But, you bring a good point up. How can we confirm a person has only one account.
I'm going to ask Joseph this question, courtesy of you.
I am not sure what to say or think. I guess what approach we decide to take depends on what issue we think is the largest at this time, user retention/new people joining or auto-voting/bid botting system.
Would be great to tackle both.
i have a sense the auto voting is not hurting things as bad we might think... at least not in comparison.
Thats my feeling as well.