This post has come out of a discussion in one of the comment threads about how the Hive blockchain is predominantly a 7 day show owing to the payout system. And how innovations can happen on the platform so that it can compete with legacy systems which allow professional content makers to monetize content over a longer time frame. Content such as food travel music videos art etc have indefinite shelf lives. However the 7 day system makes it tough to look at long term engagements.
@bilbo had some interesting thoughts here.
https://peakd.com/@bilbo/qbh9bh
Well changing the 7 day payout system maybe difficult to envisage. The economics and the technicalities involved would be huge and may end up changing the vary nature of the platform. Also i do feel there is are some advantages as well to the current 7 day payout. So would prefer something that solves the problem without really making structural changes.
Legacy monetization methods take time to mature But here you can post something at night and wake up next morning to see some rewards. That is a lot motivation for content makers to keep going. The only problem is long term monetization options. We could look at some possible solutions like :
@engrave can be a very promising DApp.This app or this kind of DApps can provide the bridge between the blockchain and the larger internet ecosystem. It can be the platform where content makers can front end their stuff out from the Hive blockchain. And maybe they can then run legacy methods like affiliates and banners and adsense etc on that platform. That way you can have the quick 7 day reward to motivate authors and the long term problem solves itself. The app also would be offering something unique to users in the larger internet space.
A simpler way could be to create a facility for high quality RSS feeds. An author can post here and after seven days pull the post to their personal blogs. That way everyone gains. Just like youtube. A lot of the hits to youtube happens via videos embedded in wordpress blogs. This is an easy way to massively promote hive with almost no effort. 20% of self hosted internet is wordpress. Imagine Hive links all over them. As of now there is hiverss.com doing that to some extent. @torrey.blog
Wordpress plugins like @steempress are also helpful in ensuring it gives the author an option to post to the blockchain directly from their blog.
Platforms like @travelfeed are trying out hybrid models which look to bring the best of both worlds. There is a lot of scope there.
Peakd has come up with a tipping system. One can tip authors directly in Hive tokens, even on old posts. This feature could be promoted and developed further. Would it help to open the tipping to other currencies like BTC ETH BAT etc so that even those who have not signed up on hive can tip an author ? Those could be some questions we as a community can ponder. @jarvie
While all of these technologies exist. They are all as of now rudimentary and will probably take time to mature into full blown tools. Also in terms of importance they to some extent exist in the fringes of the Hive attention span which is occupied is otherwise by the non stop 7 day payout rush everyday for everyone.
Its my submission that these technologies are going to be central to take the blockchain to the masses. We could use the proposal system to promote such tech and support them, which will make Hive accessible to the larger internet. Support would allow for further development of these tools and allow the creators to provide it to the masses. Maybe even promote and incentivize usage to the authors.
Technology is best when it solves human problems. Hive can surely solve a lot of them provided we have a vision of what we want it to be a few years down the line.
Cheers
Thanks for mentioning me!
I agree that a vision of what a content-based blockchain should be is essential, and I think you outlined a lot of items that are ways to bridge the gap of long term rewards, but I do not think you can reach a broad long-term vision for hive without structural changes. Like you I’ve worked out more of a response than I’d like to throw in a comment, so I’ll link it:
https://hive.blog/hive/@bilbo/copyright-blockchain-money-and-the-mainstream-creators
Haha this is getting longer and longer. Read your post ! Great Points mate ! Added to it here
https://peakd.com/hive-174578/@sajannair/hive-needs-to-go-beyond-just-free-speech-and-decentralization
We already support btc ltc and doge through the swap tokens on hive engine