How is Hive doing with Communities these days? Communities are an essential feature of the Hive ecosystem as they allow for easy content discovery and finding specific topics that users are accustomed to. Almost all content is posted in some community that is later used by users to filter content, or by curators to support authors and communities.
If we combine communities with the possibility for easy tokenization, communities’ tokens, and provide tools for users to monetize, things can become very interesting. So far nobody manged to crack the code for this, but it’s never too late 😊.
There have been some well-established communities on Hive, and some new coming in. Some of the communities already have their token on Hive Engine.
Here we will be looking into the following things:
- Number of communities created
- Top communities by number of subscribers
- Top Communities by activities
- Top communities subscribers’ stake
- Top communities by active authors
Communities went live officially in February 2020, but they were in a test phase before that.
The period that we will be looking here is from November 2019 till now.
Number of Communities Created
First let’s look at the total number of communities created with time.
We can notice the spike in the number of communities created is quite visible in 2020 when they launched. Afterwards the number dropped and lately there are few communities created per day.
In the last period there have been a few communities created, usually it is below 5 per day.
If we look at the monthly chart, we get this:
More than 300 communities per month as ATH number, while in the last months there are between 20 to 30 communities created per month.
There are now 4.5k communities on Hive.
Top Communities by Number of Subscribers
Who are the top communities on the blockchain?
We will be looking at this with more than one parameter, but for starters let’s take a look at the most obvious one, the number of subscribers.
Here is the chart.
The LeoFinance community is now at the top with 26k subscribers, closely followed by the Photography Lovers and then the GEMS community.
Foodies, Worldmaping and the Gaming community in the top as well.
The subscribers’ numbers to the communities keep growing.
Top Communities by Subscribers’ Stake
Another interesting way to rank communities is the stake of their subscribers. After all we are on a DPoS chain.
What is the stake weight of the subscribers in each community?
Here is the chart.
In this type of ranking the HiveDevs community comes on top with 63M HP. Worldmaping, OCD, and Hive Statistics comes next.
Top Communities by Activity
The number of subscribers in a community and their stake is important. But more important probably is how active the communities are.
Here is the chart for the top communities by the number of posts and comments made in the last 30 days.
The red is the number of posts, while the white is the number of comments.
We can see that LeoFinance, or Inleo as the new brand stands, is at the top here, and by a lot. This is mostly because of the short form content and the blogging happening there. On the second spot is Snaps, another short for and then comes Ecency that also provides a short form content trough waves.
Some other know communities as Actifit, Worldmappin, Photography Lovers, Splinterlands in the top as well.
Top Communities by Active Authors
What about active authors? Here is the chart for the last 30 days. The MAUs.
These are accounts that have made posts or comments in the community.
InLeo comes on top with 900 MAUs, followed by Ecency, Actifit and Snaps. All short form communities. Overall the short contents seems to be overtaking with what’s left from the activity on chain.
All the best
@dalz
I think Hive's success as a posting platform will need to stem from communities rather than anything else, it's what I'm focusing on right now.
Waiting for it :)
Good breakdown. Nicely done, LeoFinance 🦁
InLeo seems to be where all the action is. Or is it? Is it some InLeo automation or is it genuine engagement?
Not sure .. maybe some automation :)
Yes automation, I have seen some bots which show live Crypto Charts/Prices.
It's funny to see that Actifit had the most number of posts. It's true. Sometimes my feed is flooded with those posts.
Very informative,the stats are based on real number but I am shocked to see Leofinance;
!BEER
The 'nobody's cracked the code for tokenized communities' observation is the thread I'd pull on here.
Looking at the top communities by HP weight vs. by active authors — I'd expect a meaningful divergence. High HP communities are often driven by a few large curators, which creates a kind of benevolent centralization: great for reward consistency, harder for organic content discovery. High author-count communities run the opposite risk: lots of activity, shallow curation signal.
The data question I keep coming back to: what does the retention curve look like for communities with their own Hive Engine token vs. those without? My guess is token communities show higher recurring author activity but more gameable content patterns. Haven't seen that comparison laid out cleanly.
On the 'nobody's cracked the tokenized community model' point — I'm not sure it's a tools problem anymore. The mechanics are mostly there. It might be more of a cold-start coordination problem: tokens need a community to have value, communities need token incentives to bootstrap engagement. Both sides are waiting for the other to move first.
What community in your data shows the best ratio of subscriber growth to active author retention? That combination would be the closest thing to a working model right now.