Value in the Spend?
I took this image of a bee resting on a sunflower, in Tallinn yesterday. It was in the middle of a flower market, and there were several various bugs and bees on different flowers. I like this kind of bee though, as it reminds me of a bull. A bull-bee. It would be nice if Hive had a bit more bull on the price.
But, there is plenty of bull still.
Bullshit, that is.
The other day @acidyo wrote an article looking at the ever-present "giveaway" posts that are just farming operations that add no value to Hive in anyway. I have written about them before as well, and I just see them as low-effort scam. I asked about another thing that I have very little clarity on, SpendHBD, but @starkerz hasn't replied to it. Perhaps here the question I have will be answered.
What value does the initiative bring to the Hive ecosystem?
I might be wrong, but it again just looks like low-value scam farming, where the same set of people (or a couple people with multiple accounts) are just farming value away from the ecosystem. Maybe I am wrong, but it would be good to know why I shouldn't flag those posts in the Spend HBD community page. They are cut and paste, low-effort, nothing posts, with no engagement. The posters don't even mention what they bought 95% of the time, but there seems to be a lot of alcohol. Nothing wrong with that, but does that mean that the initiative is just subsidizing a piss-up?
Again, since I don't have any clarity on what is being done there, all I see there just makes me want to DV any value away from it. But if it is actually a value-adding initiative for Hive, I don't want to do that at all. And, I am definitely not the only one thinking this way. Scroll through and click into a few of the posts down the list, and tell me what you think of this community view:
SpendHBD community page
https://peakd.com/c/hive-106130/created
I don't get it.
What the fuck am I missing?
Can anyone shed some light on this for me please??
I am all for charity and I get that many people around the world are struggling to make ends meet, but I don't think that Hive is a mature enough ecosystem to encourage farming of charity. And that is often what ends up happening when people try to create something to help people. A few end up taking most of the value, and the distribution doesn't go wide at all. Unfortunately, "people are people" and they don't care if what they do is right or wrong for others, as long as they are okay themselves. Many of us have seen it many, many times before, in many, many different ways.
Ultimately, Hive isn't like Facebook or TikTok, it isn't a volume game requiring billions of users. What it does require though is enough users who are willing to buy Hive and add value to the ecosystem through what they create, be it content, applications, or some other aspect that brings people to Hive, provides a service, entertains participants, and ultimately stores more value on the chain than is being taken off the chain.
I have visited quite a few of the account blogs that are posting on SpendHBD and they create nothing else. Everything is the same format, some looking,
"I visited blah blah market, here is my review"
But there is no fucking review.
What the fuck am I missing?
Does anyone know?
@starkerz, Maybe there should be a pinned post in the SpendHBD community explaining what it is doing and how it is doing with some regular updates. It has been running for a while now, but I don't see much happening around it, other than the repetitive low-effort posts from people with an 80% beneficiary set to @distriator.bene.
Please... what am I missing with this?
Taraz
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Seems you have identified an important issue regarding SpendHBD! If it is simply turning into a platform for low-effort farming, we must reconsider its function within Hive's ecosystem.
Maybe it is something awesome and I am just missing it! I don't know :D
Hopefully
Please see here a good explanation as to why it is NOT farming: https://hive.blog/hive-106130/@thedistriator/bjzefupi
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STOPIs this not the Hive Sucre brigade who get funds off Valueplan but just changed their name? South America again I bet.
No idea. It just seems super scammy. Might not be for a huge amount of value or anything, but it looks very strange.
Maybe it is awesome and I don't understand something?
I never looked into them properly with Valueplan because it was under 20k . But I think the gist of it was they are signing up businesses to accept HBD payments . But no doubt everyone is getting drink of water , from the business accepting it to the person who spends the HBD (I’d say it’s not their own ) and it’s just another way of taking from Hive.
This is what it feels like to me, but there is so little clarity on what is actually happening, it is hard to know anything at all.
The blog @thedistriator provides more than enough clarification there, also try logging into distriator.com with keychain and reading about it. Also, try checking your Discord where we have reached out to you several times over the past months to talk to you about this directly
This project is completely funded by Dan and I, we take nothinig from Value plan for SpendHBD. We rely only on the votes of whales. Not sure where you think this has anyhting to do with value plan, which generally provides zero KPIs on its spends. If you log into Distriator.com which is open source and we have used our own personal money to spend to grow the HBD economy on Hive, there are charts galore showing you spending over time and all sort of other things related to measuring the growth of spending of HBD. anyone is welcome to log in with keychain and go check the charts and businesses and maps of businesses that accept HBD all over the world
I thought this was what Hive Sucre are doing regarding getting businesses to start using HBD for payment who do get funded by Valueplan? Ok same idea , different people. Got it. Maybe you guys should make a video explaining the concept before people get the wrong idea about it.
This project is 2 years old, we have made many, many videos. but here is another one: https://hive.blog/hive-106130/@thedistriator/bjzefupi
I think the concerns you've raised here about SpendHBD are valid. It doesn't look like it's contributing any real value to the ecosystem, and if the people who began the initiative can clear the air or answer these questions, then it should be taken as a scam scheme. You did good noticing these.
It is not just me noticing, it has been going on for a while, but still no answers on what it actually is doing for Hive.
This makes no effort Actifit posts look good...
ha! That is saying something, isn't it? :D
Actifit should add an option to post in short form content channel like Waves then there would be nothing to complain about Actifit.
lol, funny i used actifit as an example in my comment but with a more positive spin to it :P
I actually love Actifit, but I know it does have a bad rep because a lot of posts are super short :) I like using Actifit to keep track of my steps so I think despite bad rep Actifit actually adds value to the Hive blockchain.
I've never heard of it before, so I can't help you there. Why don't you just go ahead and try to downvote it once. I'm sure that's all it will take before people take to Hive to explain themselves and cry about how unfair it is.
This is the weird thing. There has been plenty of downvotes on it, but no word. It just screams more scam.
Oh, interesting. It sounds like they are addressing it though. Perhaps that will bring some clarification.
Yes, your down votes have been well noted @tarazkp. We have tried to reach out to you in your discord about it several times. I sincerely hope, for the state of Hive that you generally respond to people who you downvote when they write to you off chain.
Where in my discord? I use it daily - who has reached out?
I am not very hard to get hold of. And always available on-chain :)
Downvotes without pre warning are noted. Apprecaite this blog for request for more info. Dan and I have made a video today addressing these issues. Please see in a couple of days and we will release this video for your further clarification
It generally takes a lot for me to downvote something. I prefer just to ignore stuff unless there is some kind of massive abuse going on like plagiarism.
I thought they were trying to make people accept HBD in exchange for money in different business from the few posts I have seen 🤔
This is just me thinking though
@theycallmedan and I have just recorded a video responding to this and @acidyo's comments earlier. Give us a day or two to upload it, but we will respond to this
Looking forward to it!
here it is: https://hive.blog/hive-106130/@thedistriator/bjzefupi
Will get on it after I have put my daughter to bed.
Wow! The picture of the bee makes sense, and it appears nice. On the part of SPENDHBD, I think I have seen their activities going on, particularly post about how they spend the HBD. I don't know much about it, though, but I believe it might be one of the ways of bringing people to Hive, that is, if it's done well. I like the fact that you didn't just downvote the post even though it looks like farming to you. I think it takes a thoughtful person who believes in fair judgment to reason that way.
The thing is, the purpose at first might be to elevate the platform, but once abuse, decisions can be taken against them, maybe only those that abuse it.
Well, the truth is I don’t know much about the topic of that community you mentioned in your post, I’m not even subscribed to it. A while ago I read that you get a percentage back of what you spend in HBD, but then I saw that you earn more than that, because you also get rewarded for making a post whose quality, in my opinion, is pretty poor but hey, that’s subjective.
Now, if it looks like copy/paste content, then that’s even more disappointing. I don’t know how positive it is that by spending HBD you earn a percentage back, and you might even generate more than what you earned through votes, possibly.
Regarding Acidyo’s post, I agree with him. I haven’t left a comment because it’s already been four days and maybe the discussion thread has ended, I’m not sure. What I do know is that, as a writer, it’s incredibly discouraging to see how the quality of content is deteriorating, yet those posts are somehow rewarded in a way that doesn’t seem fair compared to articles that take time and effort to create… Well, it’s something I’ve ended up accepting, I don’t have the power to change it.
These posts are way more valuable than a blog. They capture a real purchase from a real person to a real business at an exact time with an amount, with evidence of what was purchased, using a value transfer with a non KYC, non banking asset backed stable coin with no fees. That moment is incredibly valuable and is where I would like to personally send as much crypto as possible. Please see more details here: https://hive.blog/hive-106130/@thedistriator/bjzefupi
I was reading some comments, and most of them say that this project isn’t directly intended for people who are interested in Hive as a blogging platform, but rather to show people that instead of using fiat currency, they also have the option to make purchases with some discount through HBD. And of course, this brings greater adoption to Hive, perfect up to that point.
I’m not going to dive deep into whether this is good or bad for Hive; I’ll just speak from the perspective of a curator who looks after the content on Hive.
And I ask: if it’s not intended for people to use it as a blog, then what’s the purpose of making a purchase every day through this project?
At first glance, as a curator, I’d say this person wants to take advantage of the system.
Buying every day = posting every day = getting a vote every day.
The project might be great, but I think it lacks a bit of control. That’s all from my side.
I wish the best for this and all projects that are genuinely created with the intention of fostering real growth and adoption of Hive without any kind of abuse.
This is one of the most valuable things possible on Hive! Most bloggers just sell their Hive, at least these people are buying HBD, spending it, blogging to get cash back. All of that is incredibly valuable for Hive and HBD
Should I assume that all users buy Hive>HBD to then make their purchases? Something tells me that those who already generate hbd with their content on their blog, use this tool to buy, so.... Wouldn't the real purpose of the project and the adoption mechanism be lost there?
Sorry, it's great the project, if Hive wasn't right now and since it was born, a blog community, most of everything that has been built to Hive ends up creating a post. And as a curator, I would be worried to see a lot of low effort post because that affects something that is Hive, a blog as well, if in the future it stops being the main movement, it would be perfect this project, in an ecosystem where there is no blog, curators, curation projects, etc. But it exists...
The vast majority dont make any curation or author rewards and so they need to buy their HBD before they purhcase. As a result, these are not low effort posts. They are incredibly valuable moments, where a real business, person, spend, product and location are all recorded on chain with a specific time stamp. Far more valuable for Hive than the vast majority of blogs here which bring no views and no traffic to hive, but just constantly extract value. These people are buying HBD, say 10 dollars worth, then spending it, then getting 1 - 3 USD cash back from the rewards pool. Thats a net buying pressure on hive and HBD. Far more powerful than a blogger that just gets votes and sells their stake.
Also, IMO Hive has not been a blogging platform for years now. probably for the majority of the time it has been around at this point. It is a way to rewards valuable actions. Some of those actions are blogs, but blogging on Hive has generally failed at this point
I'm almost certain that you and others know much more than I do about this, which is why you lead the best projects and hold top positions among Hive witnesses. Hypothetically, setting aside those posts with two photos and a single sentence, I could say this is one of the best projects for adoption within Hive. I've understood for some time now that Hive's growth won't come through blogging alone. But I also understand that a large part of the community loves having a blog, putting in effort, and being rewarded in some way after seven days.
With that in mind, my only concern is that some people might see these short posts as structurally repetitive and feel discouraged or simply stop creating quality content (or at least appropriate content). Even now, onboarding in Hive is still done through blogging-based marketing.
Personally, as a writer, I would love to see other writers here selling their books in HBD/Hive instead of through a publishing house that might exploit them. The same goes for artists and so many others. I believe that blogging is still one of the best marketing tools for that.
I'm just sharing my thoughts, which may or may not be correct, and as I said before, I only wish the best for all projects because to me, in some way, all have value, even a blog.
One way i could see this evolving into, and I'd hope it would, would be in the way @actifit posts did. Adding a few curators to look for exceptional posts on any given day and adding some extra voting mana behind those posts, showing others that hey, if you add some more text, thoughts, originality, pics, effort into your physical activity counter of the app, people may value them more and also interact/engage and have more reasons to follow you, thus creating a healthy and genuine relationship between author and reader/also author as everyone on hive likes to post. This in turn brings a lot more value to hive than just posting a pic of a map with a line following a road you ran through and a number saying you got this many steps in, give me upvote.
This also prevents issues you mentioned such as multiaccounting, because people have gotta put in more effort into their posts, what were you doing that day, did anything happen at the market/on the way/after, you know, just blog, rather than just posting a proof of purchase and getting overrewarded for it. It kind of becomes vote-buy-ish as we also suffer from the effects of somewhat lately from some projects we've ignored for far too long.
So yeah, while the initial idea has value, as I said in my previous comment, if left stagnant it can quickly turn into abuse. So my suggestion would be, manual curators encouraging better content and that the app doesn't force people to instantly post the pics but let's them make a regular post about their shopping activity. With some potential more restrictions or whatever so it still far outweighs what other web2 projects/discounts can offer but not so much that it takes a big toll on stakeholders here while at the same time making many dislike what it is they're seeing.
I don't see a reason why the spendhbd activity can't just be an "add-on" to a regular post. Like, "oh and btw, we went shopping later that day and purchased this for a discount", along with an appropriate beneficiary forfeiture to the project that makes the discounts possible. Honestly, giving better discounts to "better" authors/social users doesn't sound like a bad business model either, maybe they'd try a bit more then! :D
Lastly, this is something for many "experimentative projects using the rewards pool" not just singling out spendHBD. For instance, while @redditposh may be giving out too much rewards currently to only ~50 weekly sharers give or take, it is based on attempting to encourage more people to join and hive prices being low. Naturally at some point this "early adopter" phase may start to diminish and people may not earn as much from the same sharing performance, especially if the price of hive remains the same and more people join in as voting mana is scarce.
There is zero vote buying going on here. people need to buy HBD off the open market to get cash back. so they are putting more in than they get out. that is the antithesis of vote buying, total opposite.
Also, Hive is NOT a blogging platform. There are blogging platforms on Hive and that is fine, but it should be aparrent to most by now that after 9 years, blogging is only a small portion of what Hive is and so quality of content is not always the top priority. Knowing you recorded a moment in history with a time stamp, an action, a value exchange to a real business with a non KYC non banking asset backed stable coin, with no fees, a geo coordinate and two real accounts is an incredibly valuable moment to which we should be sending as much crypto as reasonably possible without extracting from the chain. It is far far more valuable than most (now clearly unsuccessful) distribution attempts of the token.
Hive is not only a blogging system, it is a way to reward actions.
now dont get me wrong, we are working on changing the formatting of the blogs and the way the content is produced. but this project is open source, one developer, and the price of hive is in the toilet, mostly due to rabid spending of community funds with almost zero accountability or reporting. at least this imitative has reports, so you can see how the spend hbd economy is doing or growing. might well be the only thing showing growth on hive at the moment tbf, apart from a couple other things.
We have made a video to respond in more detail to these concerns, and will release it soon.
We agree on most issues, but hovering the idea of downvotes over this project can quckly turn into a small group of people removing the spend hbd economy from hive, as most of the authors that bring traffic here have also been removed. Its not a good look, and Taraz has already been contacted several times on Discord with DMs with zero response. So lets see how this goes. We have no resources. Hive price in the toilet. So progress is slow. Lets support the tag and make this more successful
About the vote buying, not what I was saying, I mean those who buy votes generally end up with similar low effort content.
Okay yeah, but there's gotta be more proof of brain behind the rewards, or just send everything through beneficiaries to spendhbd than give authors any since they're already getting the benefit from the discounts - if that's then deemed feasible by the community in on the other hand is another thing but the post was mostly talking about the posts themselves.
My comment was meant to give some ideas and possible solutions such as how many actifit posts improved a lot after being incubated in ocd communities, spendhbd has been alive for quite a while now to just give it the "don't throw the baby out with the bathwater" excuse. If the content/effort behind the posts getting rewarded the same has deteriorated to the point where people are downvoting and making posts about it, then maybe some changes are in order.
I'm personally still in favor of the idea and would welcome more experimental ideas that favor all stakeholders in the future.
Maybe you can help contribute to those ideas and help us build the tech to make these ideas a reality? Either way, we will continue to work towards it with the one developer that we have working on the project. At the end of the day, this is a community project, its exploded the HBD spending economy from zero to over a hundred thousand usd per year at points, and is currently around 80K HBD spending per year. There are hundreds of users now spending HBD that weren't there before and hundreds of businesses that accept HBD too, and its been done on a shoe string budget from personal money, from which Dan and I do not profit. Sagar and I have planned to implement a better payout system over teh previous months, but it takes time:
The above 4 are things that we are working on but it takes time with limited resources
I've given it like a couple hours worth of thought after reading this post, some comments here and some by @fokusnow and someone who asked him about an abuse vector, also talked to meno about some things regarding it and his experience with it.
Not sure why you're asking me to contribute more, we are all suffering from low hive prices and barely have devs hanging onto projects. Just thought I'd voice my opinion on how at least the curation and content could be improved and maybe the integrity of the sales compared to how it is currently looking.
Those sound like some good planned improvements already. We gotta remember that users like to game things, we see it all the time. No one distrusts you or dan, it's the other's that have leeway.
Yup and the only way that we close that leeway, is by using our resources to close loops. although im fairly happy that the amount of leakage here is minimal, especially when comparing it to some of the content that gets huge votes and has zero views, and some of the other ridiculous marketing initiatives being spent on that have no KPIs, or onboards to show. There are much more prominent people where we should focus our attention to hold to account with their spending directly of community money where zero results are shown or presented to the community.
Totally agree. Just saying it's good to have these conversations. I realize some here in the comments knew even less about spendhbd than I did. I'd also welcome people questioning if @redditposh is being abused/misused or overrewarded for the "value" it may bring to the ecosystem, since both projects are kind of similar where they maintain themselves using the author rewards pool.
Now if only we could talk more about the valueadd some proposals have it'd be even better!
We really need to quantify the amount of HBD being bought off the open market vs curation rewards, so that we can demonstrate that it causes a net buying pressure to HBD. i.e. the more whales vote, the more HBD is taken off the market via this imitative. Just haven't been able to do it yet, but the data is clearly there on chain.
I think SpendHBD is well misunderstood by many. While there are obvious things to improve which I have personally taken note of, the project is really impactful to the Hive economy and adoption. I'll give just one example.
If majority of the businesses onboarded start staking Hive to support their customers (@happycustomer just reached 1k HP in few months and still staking 3 Hive daily for the next 1 year), then the investment in HP long term is certainly a positive for Hive. If Hive is helping businesses to sell more, it won't be hard to convince them to buy Hive off the market and stake long-term.
Now if businesses start encouraging their customers (new hive users onboarded through shopping) to stake Hive too for long term, I feel it's a kind of great thing. I (Happy Customer Supermarket) have started it already, some customers joined August HPUD. So buying Hive and staking is one thing spemdHBD is encouraging and many other values like onboarding.
One obvious thing is this: adoption can never happen with a fire brigade approach. Step by step, customers learn to stake, to create more content, create quality content and just add value in order ways relative to what they gain. There could be mistakes and loopholes along the way, which we try to work on as fast as we could. But overall (without any bias) the project is well-thought out and has the potential to add value now and later.
I see beneficiary has been increased to 80% now, think it used to be 60 last I checked.
Yes, at this point you can check @thedistriator account, Dan and I are putting 700 USD per month of our own money into this to keep it breaking even, even with an 80% beneficiary. Low Hive and increasing daily HBD payments price limits the amount of payouts that can be made each day.
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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
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.
I get all of this and I appreciate you taking the time. However, I get the feeling that not all is what it seems in who people are doing with the initiative. I suspect that rather than aiding HBD adoption, it is just getting leeched. Not sure what kind of oversight any of this has, but it would be interesting to see the ecosystem in work, how the merchants are behaving, how the customers are behaving, and the HBD transfers between. I Also don't see many receipts for what is bought, so unsure how the HBD is transferring hands, or how it is being converted by the stores later etc.
Again, I have no issues with the intention, but I am unsure about the execution and real-world behaviours.
Please do feel free to bring some resources to help, could use another developer or two
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HBD adoption: Best regards. I understand that the idea is to generate an adoption of the currency. In my country. Venezuela there are many businesses in a city close to mine: Cumaná, where I have seen that there are many businesses that receive and handle HBD, and this is more than a year ago. Without any inconvenience and really quite functional and effective. The plans to generate currency movements are always long term. And so far in my personal experience I have seen the benefit of HBD on a weekly basis.
You have seen the benefit o HBD, has Hive seen the benefit of it?
It is my understanding that if HBD positions Hive grows, I am not an expert in crypto finance.
This project was born from a question: "what if I'm not a blogger?"
Can Hive branch out into being a real-world currency?
Hive by itself - no, but with HBD maintaining its value no matter what - Yes!
There are 2 ways to look at Hive:
It's a blogger ecosystem where creators and curators come together to assign value to content, that value is distributed among curators and creators generating more volume and more value.
It's a crypto currency that was created with a value-preserving algorithm where blogging is used as a mechanism to incentivize currency movement and staking - creating the need to attract more users and generate volume.
So now it's a question of chicken-and-an-egg: Is it quality blogging that brings value to crypto? or is the crypto movement that produces value and attracts more bloggers?
What if I want the crypto but not the blogging? Is there no way to implement this versatile algorithm to be of value in the real world?
What is more valuable: a blog about a bird that one found fascinating, or a literal tomato that I can purchase with HBD? (true story)
For 'Blog-Maxers' out there, there is only blogging, and may they thrive in all their creative endeavors. But what apps like Distriator does is - it opens the door for non-bloggers to adopt Hive and trigger the same monetary movement as blog-positing does, but with real world consequences - such as exchanging goods and services using crypto.
Distriator is one of the many ways Hive and HBD can be implemented in real world setting - where people buy hive > convert to HBD > and buy goods (from carefully vetted stores). In this system the blog aspect of Hive (as crypto) is secondary.
There is no scam. Distriator has taken steps to ensure that users don't abuse the system (or they get kicked-out):
Vendors that accept HBD are carefully vetted - they have to get permission to use Distriator, follow the guidelines, and if any abuse occurs, Distriator will kick them out of the discount system.
Buyers are responsible to actually make a post - with a photo, and a review - proving that this was a legitimate purchase and not a circle-jerk of transactions. There is a limit on the sum and number of times that a Distriator can be used daily.
Why poorly-written reviews? A lot of the people using Distriator are not even fully aware of blogging - they have wallets and they need some alcohol or a tomato that they can buy at a discount using HBD. They follow the guidelines of the Distriator app: complete a transaction > upload 2 photos > write a review > and receive a fraction of the HBD back.
Is the system perfect? No, it still requires a lot of oversight and improvement. Just like with anything-Hive there is abuse and attempts to scam. Those who are caught lose their ability to take advantage of the discounts offered by Distriator.
But the system in itself is not a scam - it is designed to facilitate more Hive/HBD adoption and use outside of the blogging sphere.
This, of course, is my experience as someone who uses Distriator, and I actually do like to list all the items that I purchase sometimes. I think that other users can be coached to improve their reviews, but within reason - cause how creative can you get reviewing your daily bread buying?
There is no reason to DV these posts, because they contribute to Hive the same way as any post - they generate volume and create need for more. The question of their value is subjective just as with any post.
I hope that this helps, even though I'm sure there are much better replies out there.
Where is the review? the two photos? No receipt required or proof of purchase? Is the post tied to a corresponding transaction for the merchant? Is there oversight as to whether it is one person, one account?
If a system isn't working as intended, the system needs to evolve. The intention can be there, but it still has to work.
I disagree with this, otherwise ten million automated AI posts submitted to the chain each day would make Hive a success. It does not. Perhaps if these people using distriator were encouraged to be part of the larger Hive ecosystem and actually add value to their chain transaction rather than a cut and paste effort, they would start to use it for more than getting a discount. That would have value for Hive.
Thanks for taking the time to explain a bit,. I have a pretty good understanding of Hive, how it works and what it requires to be more successful and am fully aware that it isn't just about blogging. However, I am not sure if this is doing what is intended. At least not yet.
Thanks for the reply, I understand your concern, and it is rightfully placed - especially if apps like Distriator take off on a mass scale. Things need to be tightly monitored. But, it does bring value to the over not just Hive but the crypto experiment as a whole.
Don't we all dream of being able to buy things with crypto? Distriator creates this posibility - and if HBD becomes the coin that takes off in the 'Real World', it can boost the demand for hive big time.
Check out @ankashops for the posts I make with each purchase. This is in accordance with the Distriator guidelines - and yes the post reflects the time and the amount of each purchase, as well as the discount received back.
What we're trying to do is build an economy for hive that could technically persist after Hive goes into bear market (as it will) by introducing HBD (which remains stable).
Also can you show us where you see the system not working as intended? links? If something isn't working as intended it is likely human error or abuse that needs to be dealt with. Otherwise I am not sure that it is that alarms you... perhaps you can provide actual examples to see where holes can be poked.
Do you know why HBD remains stable?
It's technically algorithmically stable - I might not understand all, but I know that there are several ways in which stability in HBD and Value in Hive are achieved: internal conversion and market, bots trading all day, witnesses burning Hive, HBD-stabilizer initiative (run by smooth) - in other words black magic.
While the initiative is well-intentioned, there are those who use it maliciously. For example, this user:
https://hive.blog/@ayojoy/posts
Hive publishes two spendhbd posts as soon as it's registered. I don't think this is innocent at all. It's clearly abusive.
Looks great to me. any evidence for this being abuse? its a proof of person oboard. they got some free hive and some free bitcoin for signing up via checkinwith.xyz, they then went and bought 12 HBD off an exchange (likely more HBD than most hive bloggers have bought for months), and then they spend that money, took two pics of their purchase and then got some cashback and changed it back into Naira. All in the space of a few short minutes. Probably the best onboarding process in all of Hive, from creation of content, to earning crypto to buying HBD to spending it and getting cash back in a few minutes. you literally cant experience crypto like that anywhere
U been here 5 years and have 31 USD in your account, This person above that you are claiming is a scammer, literally moved the HBD economy in 10 minutes more than you have done in 5 years of having been here
Hey Taraz,
First, I hope you'll come to KL for HiveFest 10 and we'll get to see each other again, 7 years after Krakow.
Second: you ARE missing something. Something BIG, probably the best chance we stand currently for a bull-bee on HIVE.
Let me try to add to the excellent explanations already offered by @meno and @ankapolo, this time from an economics perspective.
HIVE (the coin) is, from a banker's standpoint, a "virtual currency scheme". For the currency HIVE to function as such, it needs to be accepted by a community in exchange for goods and services. The matter at hand is the price of HIVE in fiat currencies such as the USD.
Simply put, for the desired bull-bee to start running, HIVE needs more people bringing USD in the (HIVE) currency scheme than people taking USD out of the (HIVE) currency scheme. When that happens, those promoting HIVE (us, the Hiveans) benefit because the net economic value brought into the Hive ecosystem is reflected into an increase of the price of HIVE.
As explained in an old theoretical report from the ECB (2012), there are two specific mechanisms to transfer value from the fiat economy to the Hive ecosystem:
Now let's look at this closer: we need more USD chasing for HIVE than HIVE wanting to be exchanged back to USD. That means that we need REASONS for people to want to buy HIVE and REASONS for people to want to remain invested in HIVE
I'll start with the latter. People remain invested in HIVE because of:
-- more HIVE via inflation and delegation returns
-- participation in the governance
But what motivates people to buy HIVE in the first place? Especially when those buying cryptocurrencies in general notice that, while other cryptos appreciate, HIVE stagnates?
First, we HAVE to observe that HIVE is not needed in order to use the blogging platform. One can blog and comment without buying HIVE and of course everybody can read posts without buying HIVE.
This is both a blessing (for usability) and a curse (for the value of HIVE). Once you think deeply about this, you realise HIVE, the virtual currency scheme, can be very cool in social terms, creating and fostering a community of people attached to free speech, blogging and interacting. But it has a big weakness in economic terms - using the MAIN applications, those for blogging and vlogging provides no reason to actually exchange USD for HIVE.
Subsequently, if we want HIVE to appreciate, we need additional applications that leverage the same infrastructure (both IT infrastructure and economic infrastucture, meaning HIVE, HP, HBD and transfer facilities) and provide outside people with reasons to want to buy HIVE with dollars. Splinterlands and other games on Hive that sell NFTs for dollars are such applications.
SpendHBD and Distriator are another, newer reason for people to buy HIVE. We are currently pushing hard with Innopay to have more shops accepting HBD as means of payment for real goods and services in the real world. This creates demand for HBD which is translated in demand for HIVE. Our Innopay users (which we attract thanks to Distriator) are new HIVE users that:
It's important to note that these new users that buy HIVE that remains in the ecosystem are often not interested at all in either blogging or reading articles.
To conclude: if we want to see a bull bee on HIVE, Distriator is probably the best application currently, as it gives people a reason to buy HIVE with fiat and that economic value brought in tends to be sticky and stay in the HIVE ecosystem thanks to HBD, its acceptance by real world shops and its 15% APR
Wow this was super insightful! A question if I may, should we incentivize even more upvotes for shoppers who post about using HBD to buy goods (through apps like Distriator)? If they learn that they are earning something via blogging (on top of the discounts that they receive at the point of purchase) would that increase the chances of them becoming more active on Hive (the blogging platform), or at least make them want to attract more people to join Hive?
Thank you!
Seeing the psychology of people, I'd say that if anything, we should decrease the incentives. They are so high now that they look scammy! I know they are not but whenever I tell people "up to 40%" their first reaction is "that's a scam" - instead of attracting them, I chase them away ! :-)
Most Innopay / Distriator users I see are not interested in the blogging part at all - which honestly mirrors the general population. The Hive blockchain acts as a bank. There is a reason why in the real world there is no "blogger's bank": there simply aren't enough bloggers nor blog readers out there to be worth building a bank for them :-)
Excellent explanation.
Where can I learn more about the interaction of HBD and Innopay when paying for goods and services of offline businesses?
Follow @ocln-content - you'll see we publish a lot of info about Innopay from that account
Don't hesitate to leave comments and ask questions
Understand all of the above except this.
Where is their incentive? Why would I buy Hive on Binance to spend on something I could use dollars/euros for, instead of just doing it straight? So I get a discount? What happens when the discount ends? Can the discount cover my purchases? What happens if the 15% APR ends?
I show people that I pay, say, 29€ for a cheesburger and a large beer and I get 4€ back.
"What happens when the discount ends?" - actually the discount is the reason that I mention last. I explain other reasons first. They are detailed in these posts:
Some people are curious and want to try it out, learn, discover something new. They might load 20€, spend 5€ and then never use the 15€ again. That generates "breakage" revenue for HIVE.
Some people want to help the local economy because they care about the gentrification and desertification of inner cities due to high rents. Up to 4% of their margins are eaten up by card fees. Paying with HBD incurs no fees for merchants or for customers.
Some other people want to be in control of their money and also have a fallback solution when card payments don't work. Some people simply are sick of waiting for the waiter to come take their order and enjoy the possibility of ordering directly from a QR code when they feel like ordering.
But obviously some people will react like you do. There's no problem with that, we never thought we were going to bring 100% of the population to paying with HBD. But even 5% would make a HUGE difference for HIVE.
I'll finish with what is probably my favourite Satoshi quote:
Funily enough, he said that to no other than ... Dan Larimer, the architect of Steem :-)
The discounts only end when the downvotes start. apart from that, the discounts go on. Ideally we I want to see the APR on HBD lower so that we can give better, more compeitive rate loans to proven businesses using HBD, if the APR on HBD is 15%, we can only give loans to small businesses that have proven HBD revenue at 16% or above. the potential to flood the economy with HBD via commerce and legitimate businesses is far, far greater than the attraction of people staking for 15% APR on HBD, and so the lower the HBD base layer rate the better, the more we can out compete on loans to legitimate small businesses and provide much higher returns to creditors, while using the profits the businesses generate to pay back the creditors, and not HBD or Hive inflation
Can you walk me through the reason why giving out loans is a good idea? How do you deal with defaults? Do you have any means to enforce repayment?
Unfortunately not. Too much of an investment for me currently.
The main problem with Hive is not that people are dividing the pie incorrectly. It's that the pie is gradually getting smaller. How to give the token value, that is the question.
I see some of us already posted some very good comments. From my side, I think that the time of only blogging on Hive is over. If we decide to stop building on Hive and only post articles and comments, then Hive will slowly die just like steem. But Hive is not steem and we want to grow our Blockchain right? So we need to innovate and find ways how others can use our blockchain. @starkerz and @theycallmedan are doing just that. They are looking for ways to onboard new users and create ways to use HIVE and HBD and everything from their own pocket. NO Valueplan!
Yes SpendHBD are all short posts, but the value to Hive is not their posts but the input in HBD economy and super easy onboarding. Plus, look at all these businesses on Hive. Would you be able to onboard more then 500 businesse just by telling them that you can blog?
We need to step out of this bubble if wr want to grow. This is still better then the Race Car 🤣
. I also believe Hive should grow through creativity and originality, because that’s what makes people want to stay and engage.
Good post boss.
This is how you bring value to the platform. Keep up your hard work!
We had a discussion on another platform about how blogging can add or sustain value. My opinion hasn’t changed: there needs to be advertising, audience reach, and accordingly, token burning or buybacks from the exchange. There are several platforms out there, but each of them could implement a proper demand-side token economy for a certain percentage.
I even suggested distributing tokens from advertising revenue based on the number of views authors receive - so that those who are read more would earn more. But that could also encourage various forms of bot activity.
This is quite interesting.
Maybe it's worth writing a separate post about this, in which you can explain in detail the essence of this idea for the general public?
SpendHBD and Distriator are not scams, although it is understandable that some Hive-ians are unfamiliar with their structure and how they work and believe that they are.
Hive Blockchain has not been just about blogging for a long time; the SpendHBD project gives Hive hope for mass adoption using HBD.
The project has to evolve, that's true, but all Hive-ians who have already been onboarded in this line could have an induction to be able to do more than just their purchase report on Distriator. They could also make a more detailed publication of their purchase or why they buy there. I think that would be a matter of perhaps promoting it in the spendHBD.gifs community, but the vast majority are not bloggers, they are just people who find refuge from their FIAT in HBD.
In fact, I have personally onboarded businesses here in Mexico, and the pitch is clear for them to join, giving them the option to accept digital dollars. In this way, those businesses that join Hive in this way are small businesses that promote the use of HBD, such as one of the latest businesses onboarded in Mexico by @bobaphet the Bar https://distriator.com/#/businesses/Berlins%20Bretzel%20Wagen%20-%20Biergarten
Great work is being done in various parts of the world to promote adoption for everyday payments. This, in turn, increases the purchase of Hive or, in this case, encourages blogging, shopping with your HBD, blogging again, and repeating the operation.
A lot has been achieved in terms of numbers, everything is on the blockchain at Distriator.com, feel free to take a look, best regards.
!BEER
!PIZZA
Cheers. Thanks for the shoutout :)
$PIZZA slices delivered:
@gr33nm4ster(3/15) tipped @tarazkp
Come get MOONed!
@tarazkp , @acidyo , @starkerz
Tell me this, which one is better?
Look at the following recent cashback transactions
Total of following cash-backs are lesser than the earnings of the parent post.
Definitely prefer the second set of bullet points to the first. They are all measurable, value added and involve the user putting money in first before getting paid out.
The first set worked well at the beginnings of Hive to distribute the token but without clear viewer statistics, the are generally extractive
On distriator blogs, The money spent should always be more than the cash back received resulting in a net value inflow to hive as the users have to go buy the hbd off the open market and then they get less back than they spent (but in meat space they also get a product).
Do you realise that without out all those people in the first list who have earned hive and powered it up, HBD doesn't work?