This is one of the reasons why building on Hive is a battle on so many fronts. You or I may have ideas about how to make this place thrive, but unless we take the time to talk things through — to explain a vision — intentions are likely to get misrepresented.

I’ll try, although I might not succeed, to explain what SpendHBD is attempting to do, and why it’s not a leech in any way, shape, or form. I hope we can discuss this like old friends, because I believe us to be brothers in Hive.

Let’s start here…

Goal of SpendHBD / Distriator

The goal of this initiative, of these so-called “low effort” posts, has nothing to do with posts. Yes, that sounds scandalous, even heretical for us Hiveans and bloggers, but the goal is simple: push for HBD adoption. That’s it.

If more businesses around the world begin accepting HBD as their go-to token for transactions, we all win.

How do we win from HBD adoption?

If enough businesses start using HBD as their stable token, we’ll face a liquidity crisis. Put simply: there isn’t enough HBD to go around. If HBD took even a small slice of the pie from Tether or USDC, we’d immediately run into that fact.

And that’s great news. A liquidity shortage of HBD means there’s only one way to create more of it: buy Hive and convert it. That process burns Hive, reduces supply, helps with inflation, and pushes Hive’s price upward.

Those of us who hold Hive directly benefit from demand for HBD.

Leveraging Hive

The best way I can describe building on Hive is this: you adapt your idea to blocks that may not always be a perfect fit. For example, a game might work fine on Hive, but its structure could result in posts and replies that, to “legacy users,” look like spam.

Some argue custom JSONs are better for this very reason, and some projects use them. But even then, people push back, calling it bloat. The truth is, nothing makes everyone happy. We all know this.

The idea of leveraging Hive’s tokenomics and inflation pool to push for HBD adoption isn’t new. It’s years old now, and if I remember right, part of Dan’s original vision for this chain. I think it was @dalz who pointed me to an old post of Dan’s outlining Steem’s plan to take over the world.

SpendHBD began organically: a community where people simply wrote about where and how they spent HBD, and got upvoted for doing so. From that raw, manual process, an app emerged: Distriator.

What is Distriator?

Blockchain is complicated. Hive might be one of the easiest chains to get into, but it’s still confusing for “normies.” Distriator tries to close that gap. It lets non-bloggers also participate in Hive, adopt its token, and help grow an economy around it.

You make a purchase, write a short post about it, share some pictures, and get rewarded — essentially cashback — just for using Hive. Who wouldn’t love that? Who says no to discounts? Only crazy people love fees.

Distriator leverages the support of two whales, plus a lot of us orcas, to push a simple message into the real world: “Don’t pay with cash… that’s dumb.”

About the funding

Unlike plenty of DHF proposals we’ve funded with little success, Distriator doesn’t take a penny from DHF or valueplan. It’s entirely funded by Matt and Dan — the same two Hiveans who gave us the most important decentralized video platform in web3.

I won’t speak for them, but I don’t think it’s crazy to say they’d rather not go bankrupt footing the bill, while also avoiding the impropriety of “self-voting by proxy.”

To be clear: neither of them is enriching themselves here. They’re not padding their Hive bags in some shady way. I probably shouldn’t even say this in public (and I’ll just ask forgiveness later), but I know Matt has spent his own money to keep this alive — because he truly believes this can make a difference.

Hive is not just blogs anymore

I love writing too. You and I both do, maybe partly to stay sane. But let’s be honest: blogs alone aren’t the way forward anymore. They were a great start, a great distribution model, and a way to build community. But thinking blogging alone will sustain Hive is just denial.

There are fewer and fewer of us “bloggers” here now. Not because blogging is bad, but because it’s a niche. Its peak has passed. It will always exist, but never at the level it once did, when people lived off their blogs.

If Hive is to survive, it must be the blockchain of everything. A blockchain of actions. Those actions will evolve over time, but we need to accept the inevitability — and the necessity — of that change.

The TL;DR

• This is an HBD adoption push
• It’s completely self-funded (no DHF)
• It’s not making any profit; in fact, the opposite
• It’s onboarded thousands of real humans to Hive (not bots)
• It’s built a strong community

Other apps are coming that will leverage Distriator too, including a Hive Uber clone

Conclusion

I’m glad you’re asking these questions, because more people need to understand what’s happening here. We can disagree on how to make Hive thrive — that’s fine. But what we have to agree on is the intent.

And let’s be real: no one who has spent a fortune buying Hive bags is going to do anything to sink their own token.