It is easy to support funding public goods in the abstract and still not feel it, because the benefits are invisible when they are working. So let us make the opposite concrete instead. Not a doom scenario, just an honest thought experiment: what would actually degrade and in what order, if the shared work that keeps Hive running stopped being funded? Seeing the failure clearly is the best argument for preventing it.
Nothing breaks on day one
The first thing to understand is that under-funded infrastructure does not collapse dramatically. There is no dark day when the network switches off. That is exactly what makes the risk easy to ignore. What happens instead is slow erosion and slow erosion is dangerous precisely because it never triggers alarm. Each individual decline is small enough to shrug off and the cumulative effect only becomes obvious well after it would have been easy to prevent. So picture not a crash, but a gradual settling, layer by layer.
The nodes get slower and fewer
The API and RPC nodes that every app depends on are among the first to feel it. Running a reliable, high-capacity node is real ongoing work and real ongoing cost. When that work is not supported, node operators do not all quit at once. A few step back. The remaining nodes carry more load. Response times creep up. Apps feel a little laggier, occasionally time out, become a little less dependable. Fewer independent nodes also means less redundancy, so the network becomes more fragile precisely when it can least afford to be. You would not be told any of this. You would just notice that things feel slower than they used to, without an obvious reason.
Development stalls and the apps stop improving
Software that stops being actively developed does not stay still, it falls behind. Bugs that would have been fixed linger. Features that would have been built never appear. The rough edges that a funded team would have smoothed stay rough. Competing platforms keep improving while Hive apps plateau and the gap widens quietly. New users arriving find an experience that feels dated and they leave without ever knowing that the cause was a funding decision made long before they showed up. The onboarding that should have gotten easier gets harder instead, which chokes off the newcomers a network needs to stay alive.
The invisible workers burn out
Behind every piece of the commons are people and people run on more than passion. When the work of maintaining shared infrastructure goes unsupported, the individuals doing it are essentially subsidizing everyone else out of their own pockets and their own free time. Some can sustain that for a while. Almost nobody can sustain it forever. Burnout is not a dramatic exit, it is a quiet drifting away and every person who drifts takes hard-won knowledge and capacity with them. Replacing them is slow, because the same funding gap that pushed them out makes it hard to attract anyone to step in.
The compounding effect
None of these declines stay in their lane. Slower nodes make apps worse. Worse apps drive away users and creators. Fewer users means less activity, less reason to build and less community energy to fund anything, which makes the nodes and the development even harder to sustain. A neglected commons does not decline in a straight line, it spirals, each weakness feeding the next. That is the real risk and it is why the moment to act is while everything still feels fine, not after the spiral is visible to everyone.
Why the picture is ultimately hopeful
This is not a prediction, it is a warning and warnings exist to be heeded. The entire reason to lay out the failure so plainly is that Hive is not fated to it. The network has a built-in way for the community to fund exactly the public goods described here, which means the erosion is a choice, not a certainty and it can be chosen against. A thriving version of Hive, with fast nodes, actively improving apps and well-supported builders, is entirely achievable and it costs the community far less than most people assume. The difference between the garden and the overgrown lot is not luck. It is tending.
The next posts show exactly how the tending works and how you can be part of it for free. Start at ecency.com.
Before coming to Steemit/Hive many of the old timers here were on a social platform called TSU along with 2mIllion other accounts.
Tsū officially shut down operations in 2016 after failing to raise opersting capital. The friends I knew vanished overnight. Some of us reconnected on Facebook and came here.
Let's keep Hive alive.
We had a nice community on Tsu with lots of charity donations going on. Quite a few of them came here, but I've lost contact with people from various platforms that shut down such as Google+. I think Hive can endure, but some people have drifted away. We need them to come back.
I think it would be wise to study the critics of hive and their presence still being here along with the message they have to share. Blockchain is about transparency.
Yes, exactly. It is community's responsibility to recognize, challenge, form and improve entire culture
This is an interesting perspective. It's easy to overlook how much public goods contribute to the growth and sustainability of the Hive ecosystem. Thanks for sharing these insights.
Hloo
One thing is funding public goods, another thing is permanently hire people for that. These public funds are not for 'special people' in the community. Is for a descentralized nature, if you have a great idea you should be rewarded. THAT ONE TIME
These funds are not a Universal Basic Income or a lifelong guaranteed of reward.
These would make the community a second class citizen where we 'invest' in this coin that can't grow because we spend too much money paying someone else salary. I would love to see these funds been asked in Hive, and have a cap. That way, these companies actually are worried about the price of Hive because if it's low, they wont get as much as they wanted. They will actually build to make the price stronger as opposed as making the investment of the community weaker as the price go down.
I agree, nobody wants the DHF to become a cozy income or a passive lifetime check. It should be strictly about supporting the heavy lifting - the infrastructure, node providers and open software that keep the entire ecosystem running for everyone.
Ecency a public good. Jesus Christ. Peakd is also a public good, so is Inleo, Hiveblog, Worldmappin, every fucking thing. Everything is going to be a public good. All you need is a narrative pivot. 😂
Its hilarious you openly said it. Forever proposals with the slogan: "Money for us, because we exist."
Insanity.
Public goods are the API/RPC nodes, open software and shared infrastructure supporting the whole ecosystem. No need to be sarcastic here…
Not being sarcastic, I genuinely find this to be a bad joke.
Last year Peakd did the narrative pivot to squeeze money out of the DHF with the move towards "opensource" which they put almost no effort in whatsoever, just to get funded, now you are doing it.
Well jolly good. The same ninja move works out twice. Just have to pivot. Did Sergio recommend you do it like this, or did you think of it yourself?
Post here talking about community responsibility on public goods or shared infrastructure. It doesn't mention Ecency.
We have been running nodes and open infrastructure for years - no pivot or scheme here. DHF is transparent, stakeholders can look at real code, uptime, deliverables and vote accordingly.
I know you have, thats why its a narrative pivot.
Haha, performatively calling on transparency. Yes, I looked, remember the 85% exaggerated output you presented for ecency. Peakd was far worse.
Issue is that stakeholders dont actually look, I did look.
Honestly, blissful ignorance would have been preferable.
Open governance means everyone evaluates metrics, commits and value in their own way. Wish you all the best with your projects - I read you are building some new apps…
Well no, you were being manipulative and outright lying which is why you had to apologize onchain. Because I caught you.
It wasnt me "evaluating stuff my own way".
Just like if you increase your ask from the DHF and name people that will work on specific repos and I come in and see that a large part of those listed in proposal repos are dead, never worked on and the people you listed havent been writing any code, meaning youre pocketing yourself all that money and outputting less... Thats not me "evaluating things my own way"... thats that person being a lying, exploitative piece of shit thats stealing from Hive, hoping no one looks.
Not related to ecency.