Today RCs on Hive are an ocean.
Nobody creates a budget for how they're going to spend RC bandwidth. Nobody has a spreadsheet that shows optimal paths to get the most bang for our buck. RCs on Hive are, for practical purposes, infinite. The only people who run out are pretty much new users that don't know how it works and end up getting the RC error message asking what it means. Even in those cases, there are my users around here willing to give out free delegations. Myself included.
Where will bandwidth flow?
So far it's chaotic and unrestricted. When resources are abundant, they tend to get wasted. I often notice when this happens because it makes me cringe. I try to avoid wasting resources even when there is no financial incentive to do so. Just because something is free or near-free doesn't mean we should casually waste that asset whenever it suits us. That's such selfish and unsustainable behavior at the core. This is why we can't have nice things.
When grocery stores in California started charging 10 cents per plastic/paper bag I was floored at how effective it was at changing people's behavior. In fact it's been the subjects of multiple posts. Micro-charges are provably a very good tool for population control. Suddenly instead of everyone throwing away 10 plastic bags on every grocery trip many people started buying reusable bags. Just another weird example of how capitalism can regulate itself without anyone being in charge. If only that was the standard.
Of course there is some debate about whether this policy has any affect whatsoever on the environment (same with banning straws) but that's not the point. Something went from free to not free and the behavior changed. That's what matters, and the point is incontestable.
The biggest example I can think of is when my landlord was paying the electric bill at my last place. So of course my roommates just cranked the AC because "who cares it's free". It was uncomfortably cold and one or two of my roommates would just leave their windows open while it was on. Seriously I still can't believe those blatant attitudes. Sitting in my own house with sweatpants and a hoodie on while it's 105 outside.
Well wouldn't you know it one day our landlord was over it after receiving multiple $500+ utility bills. He actually lowered our rent a bit and told us to deal with the power bill because he was over it. Lo and behold, we stopped setting the thermostat to 68 degrees. Shocker.
The same thing will happen to Hive.
Yeah, sure, today everyone posts 'lol' to chain and whatever else. Why wouldn't they? It's a social media site, right? Ironically I personally might be one of the most egregious offenders in this regard. I did, after all, fill up an entire Hive block with 65KB of data testing the block limits of the chain back when I was messing around with the Hive API.
Did I say 'data'?
I meant 0123456789 copy and pasted 6500 times in order to reach the limit. Check it out if you haven't seen it. What's even funnier is that the post was paid out $2 on what essentially amounts to a spam post (which was relatively a lot as I didn't get a lot of upvotes in 2018). "Who is this @acidyo guy?" Ah maybe the test was worth it. Who knows?
Point being that this kind of data will be expelled from the chain quite quickly when we have more infrastructure. More infrastructure means more ways to actually post valuable data to the chain. The more valuable RCs become the more valuable the data we post to the chain must be. These are the rules of WEB3: we pay for service but we also get paid for generating value. Not generating value is simply a waste of money. That's a much more sustainable model than what WEB2 has to offer. WEB2 is all about free service, and once again we can see all the ways that this free service has been exploited over the last decade or two (mostly Sybil attack via bots and multi-accounting).
It is the inevitable nature of Hive to go from being an ocean of unlimited resources to a river in which value flows in more predictable patterns. What will those patterns look like? I have no idea. I just know they'll exist. No reason to post 'lol' to chain when we can just as easily post it off-chain and everyone still gets the message. Of course once again this assumes infrastructure is in play that hasn't been invented yet.
But still the rule is universal
The paths of least resistance will always be taken more often on the average. Within the context of RCs the path of least resistance is simply the data that generates the most value. Should blog posts suddenly be less valuable than some other activity (say gaming or second-layer tokens) then less blogs will get posted and more of the other thing will be stored on chain.
What is a comment?
The language we use to describe what things are on the blockchain leads many to make incorrect assumptions. Andreas Antonopoulos has a very good video on this concept. In fact spooling through the video a bit it seems to be a theme across multiple videos I've watched of his years back. Words like "Bit-Coin" and "Wallet" don't actually make sense.
When people here "wallet" they're thinking "okay cool so the money is stored inside the wallet". To which we reply no your money in on the Bitcoin Network and your wallet simply has access to it. You can also copy your wallet multiple times across multiple devices so it's more of a "keychain".
But we don't call it a keychain, we call it a wallet, even though on a technical level keychain would make more sense, the people who named these things wanted to use lingo that applies to the previous financial system. Same thing goes for Bitcoin, which is neither a 'bit' or a 'coin'. Rather Bitcoin is a network of trust. TrustNet would have been a better name, but here we are. No going back now.
The same applies to comment on Hive.
People see "comment" and "discussion" and "social media" and think that's what Hive is. That is not what Hive is. To me a "comment" is simply a declaration that work has been done and gives the Hive network an opportunity to reward it with upvotes from the reward pool. It does not have to be a social interaction or a blog post. In fact, there's even a special place on the comment object that can house raw javascript code and be pulled directly from the API. "It is simply data that the network can choose to reward," he said as he continued writing his blog post.
Conclusion
Hive is still in the early game. Resources are abundant, and many assume that they will always be abundant and infinite. To the point we even allocate this ideology in the marketing itself: "Hive has free transactions." Yes, well anyone who's gotten a not-enough-RC error message may beg to differ. Oddly enough, this is a good thing, as it prevents the network from being Sybil attacked like all the WEB2 products that deliver actual free services (in exchange for your digital soul).
The real fun begins when Hive runs out of RCs. Where will those resources go? How will they be allocated? What kind of apps will be built here that end up somewhat deprecating the old ones? Not everyone can be blogger (even if they wanted to: which they don't). We need to continue lowering the bar of development and value generation so everyone on the network can participate in one way or another. We need more jerbs. The grind continues.
For some reason, when I read this I though of the movie The Platform. If you've never seen it, it's aight. Essentially the platform has enough food for everyone in a tower. The platform moves down through the tower from top to bottom, and of course people take more than they need. Grotesque behavior ensues.
Just so you know, I do have to manage RC's for Podping and I have written automated systems to keep track. The Podping account doesn't actually have enough RC's on its own so I top up with some from Brianoflondon (Please nobody delegate RCs to me or @podping as I don't need any more and incoming RC delegations are actually useless and break my automated system because they can't be delegated on!)
You can see nice graphs here: https://podping.org/RC_Overview
A “lol” from Elon Musk on HIVE is probably worth infinitely more than a well written blog.
Debate. 😁
Lol
How do you know it's Elon?
Debate? :)
Lol
We need some apps that would be used by masses - like a product review app, like a bill saving app, like a apartment/home service app etc etc.
With the apps data storage and privacy are the matter of concerns these days. One single breach of our personal information can stay alive on the blockchain forever. So I think apps are not the solution for this.
Well, apart from your phone number nothing else is needed. And our phone number has already made out to hundreds of marketing lists - getting calls from anonymous numbers is not avoidable at all - the DND project was a farce. Imagine, only one app would be developed that would be given to retailers and they publish every warranty on blockchain searchable by your phone number.
Yes you're absolutely right. Can blockchain alongwith AI solve this problem?
May be, someone has to build the app.
It will honestly be very interesting to see where we are in 5 years. Or 10 years. I think we have the staying power, provided we just keep doing what we're already doing... building cool things and thinking of new ways to use the chain.
Sooner or later your RC prediction will come true, and that will be a very interesting time.
I hear people saying “free transactions” all the time, and I say not free, but cheap. It is still cheap… but for how long?
In fact you skip a step. The key must be fitted into the lock onchain through a keyhole, which is the communications network via which you apply your key to the lock to access your money. Absent that keyhole, you cannot access your money onchain. It is an absolute requirement to unlock your funds that you have a keyhole into which to insert your key.
This keyhole today is entirely private property which is owned by legacy financial institutions. All cryptocurrency exchange online is permitted by legacy financial institutions, and is able to be prevented at their sole option.
Thanks!
Edit: speaking of free resources that are taken for granted.
It looks like the time of the content nazi is coming to an end.
It made sense when the chain was vulnerable to being bloated by spam, but now with 2nd layer coins being bought and burned to 'reward posts' in hive and 3speak nodes getting rewarded on 'quality posts' for running nodes, I think it is safe to reward things other than long form, 'well formatted' blog posts.
Running a 3speak node benefits everybody in the hive.
Buying and burning 2nd layer tokens for hive rewards is still bs, imo, but 'nobody cares', so the point is moot.
I think the bar is low enough though (I'd know, cause am not an exceptional blogger). We definitely need more users and developers exploring the dynamism of the chain though to boost activity
There are already good blogging platforms but I think we need better mobile explorer, hope Keychain get better on their next release since there are dapps like threads or liketu that dont work well with mobile keychain, mobile is key to get to the masses, thats why I like Ecency because its an app that most of the time works well if it doesnt crash but I understand Hive is only 5 years old and development is not easy task
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What will this mean for those of us who have already built a medium sized account? Will it prevent us from using the comments as much as we want to???
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