Should The Global Content Reward Pool Be Done Away With?

There has been discussion about it recently.

The problem according to @therealwolf

@therealwolf's argument was that the only valid argument for retaining the global content reward pool has been that it brings users onto Hive. But that user retention has failed as the chain only has some thousands of daily active users, which is why the chain should stop paying users for content that mostly wouldn't be valued on any platform.

Hive is also a social network of stakeholders of all sizes

The content reward pool has served another purpose which the opinion piece that I'm referring to did not mention: vastly improving stake distribution. Proof-of-Brain refers to exchanging creative work for cryptocurrency instead of computing power as in PoW mining. But Hive is also a social networking site where stake is earned by forming social networks. Those networks were a major reason why Steem was capable of fighting Justin Sun to a standstill. That battle put Steem and Hive back on the map and brought Hive a lot of goodwill and an excellent start.

If the global content reward pool were taken away, it would be interesting to see if Hive would really become attractive to millions of content creators and other users and fulfill the dream. If nothing else changed but the content reward pool wasn't there, I strongly suspect "the masses" would not come banging on our door. Would the token value automatically go up if Hive became just another DPoS chain where staking rewards and witness rewards were the only rewards? I'm sure it would be noted by the crypto press. I wonder if the publicity were positive, though, if Hive admitted its original value proposition was a failure.

Scarcity alone does not a valuable coin make

Would lower inflation make the coin moon by making it scarcer? Scarcity is not enough. Have you heard of a coin named Unobtanium? I guess not. It's a coin which is the hardest to mine on the market. Bitcoin's rate of inflation is halves every four years and is currently 2 percent per year but that's not fundamentally what gives it value. It's the fact that Bitcoin is decentralized and that it has no governance structure which makes altering its monetary policy extremely unlikely. For the same reason, it is very unlikely that any powerful centralized entity can meddle with Bitcoin or destroy it. HIVE being merely scarce would not give it any value.

Inflation by itself does not destroy value. It just necessitates doing something to keep on top of things. There are options for passive income on Hive even without replacing content rewards with staking rewards. A stakeholder can lease their Hive Power at a rate between 10% and 14% APR.

The aggregate value of all content created is lost because of poor content discovery

It shouldn't be forgotten that in exchange for one-time crypto rewards, authors create text content that lasts forever thanks to the immutability of the chain. The problem is that the visibility of old content on Hive front ends is very low. This creates the illusion that the content has a very low value while the aggregate value of the content is most likely much higher than usually given credit for. It just has to be made readily available to the consumer.

If the global reward pool were removed and it were not replaced with a consensus layer token (a Smart Media Token) - listed on any exchange, there would be no valuable tokens to be earned by creating content. I've got to know a few people here and I'd probably continue talking to them on Discord or Twitter but I'd cut down on my time spent on posting. I suspect most other people here would do the same. I would definitely continue my photography hobby but monetizing it would have to be done elsewhere. Based on feedback on other platforms, I believe it would be possible at least to a modest extent.

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Isn't the unique feature which distinguishes HIVE from other blockchains/crypto currencies the social aspect (where it's main advantage compared to conventional platforms like facebook is that authors are getting paid for their work; plus censorship resistance)?

In my opinion user retention only doesn't work because (manual) curation doesn't work!

I had written about that here and here, and just recently got involved in an interesting discussion with @blocktrades.

In short: the manual curator who upvotes later than all the auto voters is disadvantaged on HIVE because of several reasons, for example the short curation window. It's more beneficial to upvote popular authors again and again instead to seek for new authors or also check the posts of long term but less popular users to encourage them to improve.

If we removed the global rewards pool what would then still be the incentive for the average blogger to join HIVE?

Isn't the unique feature which distinguishes HIVE from other blockchains/crypto currencies the social aspect (where it's main advantage compared to conventional platforms like facebook is that authors are getting paid for their work; plus censorship resistance)?

Yes. It is its very identity.

In my opinion user retention only doesn't work because (manual) curation doesn't work!

There are many other impediments, including the difficulty of creating an account and the overall complexity of the platform.

I had written about that here and here, and just recently got involved in an interesting discussion with @blocktrades.

Thanks for the links. I'll check them out.

In short: the manual curator who upvotes later than all the auto voters is disadvantaged on HIVE because of several reasons, for example the short curation window. It's more beneficial to upvote popular authors again and again instead to seek for new authors or also check the posts of long term but less popular users to encourage them to improve.

That's actually a misunderstanding. When you upvote popular authors, you're going to have to share your curation rewards with a larger number of other curators. In fact, this is why @acidyo had @reward.app created. He said too many large curators eschew voting on those posts that already have many votes on them because it means lower curation rewards, which is a problem according to him because it means many of the best authors are left without the large rewards that they deserve.

Also, remember some of the most powerful curators on the platform, @appreciator, @rocky1, and @upmewhale are engaged in active manual curation just for that purpose: user retention.

If we removed the global rewards pool what would then still be the incentive for the average blogger to join HIVE?

Censorship resistance, although the average blogger will never need it. Only those who write about topics that are controversial enough to deter advertisers.

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There are many reasons for why centralized platforms have millions of users while Hive only has a few thousands. Centralized platforms are endorsed and have backing by many companies who use them to sell their products, there are deals, funding and so much more. They have the influencers whom they pay huge amounts to keep them there and their following. Centralized platforms are easy to use for everyone and users look at their favorite creators in awe and hope to become them one day. Look at Twitch and Youtube making deals with the big creators. Even fing Dlive tried to have an exclusivity deal with PewDiePie hoping that it would kick start their platform. How did that go? He went back to Youtube because they paid him more and also he probably thought well this sucks, no one even watches me here anymore.

When people talk about removing the reward pool as an answer to the problem why Hive price has not reached the Moon yet, it just makes no sense to me. There are other issues far more important to solve before you can say that having a reward pool is useless and to say that the content creators we have here now are not even deserving to get rewarded is insulting. We have wonderful creators here who have embraced all the difficulties one has to go through understanding the crypto world even a little bit. They are people who have been realizing the potential of crypto and they should be rewarded for it. Many creators have also become investors over time.

If we want to take crypto to the masses, we have to make tools and apps that are easy to use and to understand for the masses and if we want to compete with centralized platforms, we have to think of creating something that’s not been done so far instead of inventing new Youtube, Tik Tok, Twitch, Steam etc. Centralized platforms are already competing today with each other, smaller platforms get squashed by bigger ones all the time too. It is not even only about Hive either. It is crypto in general. As long as people don’t understand it and what opportunities it offers, Hive or bitcoin, or any other chain or coin will not Moon. We are in business to make crypto popular, but to do that we have to build things that allow people to begin understanding it and embracing it in their lives.

Removing the reward pool would solve nothing.

I fully agree with that. Removing the content reward pool would kill the platform.

Inflation by itself does not destroy value.

No, but it does destroy value of the currency.

Inflation by itself does not destroy value.

No, but it does destroy the value of the currency being used to represent a value.(HIVE)

The market cap is what counts, IMO.

It's interesting to think of content creation as a Fetter on Hive's development for sure.

I just don't feel we're quite 'there yet' with being able to offer anything other than blogging as a working selling-point.

This proposal is maybe one for a few years down the line?

It wouldn't surprise me if it happens though, as it would mean more Hive being sucked upwards and less for the bottoms and middle.

It's interesting to think of content creation as a Fetter on Hive's development for sure.

Yeah, until you remember that old content has value, too, but that it is very hard for anyone to access.

I just don't feel we're quite 'there yet' with being able to offer anything other than blogging as a working selling-point.

Well, there is Splinterlands and other games.

This proposal is maybe one for a few years down the line?

The total inflation is decreasing by half a percentage point per year.

It wouldn't surprise me if it happens though, as it would mean more Hive being sucked upwards and less for the bottoms and middle.

Yes. I think that's the only reason Wolfie proposed this.

I think what we need is a more effective way to access good content.

Fair point on the accessibility - but we do have side chains with their own front ends now, which still publish to Hive.

I'm not in favour of getting rid of pure Hive blogging, I think it's a real pull.

I was taking account of Splinterlands, it's thousands, not tens of thousands, then what's next? I don't think there are any other games that have brought more than 1000 users to Hive? No where near that.

Fair point on the accessibility - but we do have side chains with their own front ends now, which still publish to Hive.

They suffer from the exact same problem: poor accessibility of old content.

I'm not in favour of getting rid of pure Hive blogging, I think it's a real pull.

It would be premature.

I was taking account of Splinterlands, it's thousands, not tens of thousands, then what's next? I don't think there are any other games that have brought more than 1000 users to Hive? No where near that.

That is unfortunately true. But I think with gradually improving every aspect of the user experience we can achieve results eventually.

Well now TSU is monetizing content and not even crypto...They will send to your Paypal. Sign up is a minute at most. All mobile app. Looks nice too...

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Interesting. Is that platform funded through ads?

Yeah although I dont see many yet.

https://www.tsusocial.com/

It seems that you have to download the phone app to even see the posts.

Yeah I think that is right although you can see some basic info about the company on PC. TBH it looks good on phone. It seems more like Instagram than FB or Hive.

By the way, I think it's time to review our witness votes.

I am removing my witness support of anyone affiliated with therealwolf