Remove content rewards from base layer? /Yea or Nay?

in LeoFinance5 months ago (edited)

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There have lately been some discussions about removing content rewards from base layer and moving it to L2.

There are a few problems with this:

  1. The obvious one being that we have no decentralized adopted layer 2. We have Hive Engine right now but that has its own problems.
  2. Where would the money come from? Would people even care?

Here are my thoughts:

I have completely stopped seeing Hive as a "content creator token". In this day and age to have a thriving creator space you need user adoption, which we don't have due to the lackluster UX and terrible sign up system, (hopefully lite accounts change that) then you get ads, and use that to pay creators.
The Hive reward pool, even if Hive did a 10x couldnt cover that.

Just for reference:

  • Top youtuber earns 3 million USD a month from Youtube just from ads. (double it from other sources)
  • No1 author on Hive earns 900 USD a month (out of that half is liquid)😅
That is 1/5th of top witness reward. 1/30th of the top curator rewards. 1/10th of a single DHF funded core developer payout.

1 Hive token would need to be worth more than 2000 USD and Hive have a market cap of trillions for the Top hive author to earn anything close to the top youtuber now. None of that will ever happen.

So lets put the base layer Hive creator ecosystem to rest. What we have is not even enough to reward a few contributors to the ecosystem let alone sustain a bunch of creators..
So RIP all that, lets be realistic and look at what we actually have here.

A very interesting take on a crypto faucet that exists to spread some Hive around to as many people as possible.

Not as much Hive as possible, but rather to as many people as possible. With the stabilizer, less than 1/3 of the reward pool goes to actual content creators and the Hive is fairly widely distributed, akin to a faucet.
Thats how I see it so I dont actually care if someone gets 11 cents for the picture of their meatball sandwich or 0.3 cents for their AI Poem.😅

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So... Would I be ok with moving content rewards to L2? Id say yes, but not yet.
We need the infrastructure, easy and quick signups, and a transition period with seed money for communities with solid ideas. We need to develop an idea of how to use that inflation taken from author rewards in a efficient manner.

The recent developments when it comes to smart contracts, Lite accounts and break away communities, give me faith that this might be a possibility in the near future.

The biggest initial obstacle is internal adoption. Will the Hive community accept the L2 tokens and give them a chance or will we have to cling to the base layer out of necessity?
How long do we intend to extend this type of base layer token distribution?
Could there be a hybrid system?

I am not sure anyone can give us all the answers now. What I am sure is that it needs to be attempted. Maybe it fails, maybe it works.
Cant know if it will stick until you give it a toss.

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Would I be ok with moving content rewards to L2?

Until anyone can show me why content rewards on Hive are unsustainable but content rewards on L2 magically are sustainable I can't take the argument seriously. In fact many have suggested that we just replace upvote distribution with simple yield farming, which is the equivalent of simply upvoting oneself 10 times a day. That is objectively mathematically more centralized on a completely non-debatable level.

It's not a serious discussion.

Until anyone can show me why content rewards on Hive are unsustainable but content rewards on L2 magically are sustainable...

I do not see it that way. They are definitely sustainable but I find them limiting and limited. Limiting kind of like training wheels that you never take off the bike and limited in the sense that they cant sustain a large creator ecosystem that would be competitive with anything mainstream. The reward pool is just too tiny, even if a 10x from here was the baseline during the next bear market.
L2 would by necessity have to be new user focused and inovative, something our top social media dapps right now that use base layer rewards are not in any way whatsoever.

That only comes from ads run on a layer two smart contract. and then expanding outside of it to subscription services etc. But you need that ad revenue first to get people moving. It's exactly how web2 operates and web3 isn't going to operate any differently.

"Unsustainable" is not really the right standard. Can an extra 6% or so inflation with little to show for it be "sustained"? Probably, it's not earth-shattering. But it's also not really helping anything and it's a lot of money.

But it's also not really helping anything and it's a lot of money.

See I keep hearing this line but no one can actually present the actual data to backup the argument.
If it's so obvious then it should be trivially easy to show how the reward pool centralizes the chain.
The data that I come across shows the opposite.

Removing the reward pool breaks a dozen different mechanics on a network that has relied on it existing since inception.

Here are the big ones:

  1. Account recovery is destroyed.
  2. Hot and Trending tabs are destroyed (and comment rankings).
  3. All curation bot models are destroyed.
  4. The ability to reward for other types of value creation (not blogs) is nullified.
  5. The only reason to stake Hive is bandwidth and governance (many will power down).
  6. We lose a massive amount of reputation for upending the entire system.

I don't see anyone in favor of removing the reward pool addressing any of these issues. In fact the only time that I did (to fix #1 & #5) was to add simple yield farming in place of the upvote system... which would be equivalent to 100% upvoting ourselves with no possibility of downvote. It boggles the mind to think that anyone could deem that an upgrade. It's a mathematically provable downgrade.

I remain unconvinced and very skeptical.

The pool decentralizes the chain.
Removing it will centralize the chain.
The burden of proof is on those who want to gut the system.

I finally see the points in this neverending discussion that I can agree with.

I don't understand the connection with #1.
I don't support yield farming. That's just staking with extra spam. So I agree it is a downgrade.
I don't agree whatsoever with #2 and #3 being a downgrade. These are both hot garbage that add minimal to no or even negative value, plus again a lot of spam.
I agree #4 is a valid point, but the system is way overly complex and requires way too much constant babysitting from stakeholders and a turn off to would be investors (I'm going to have to vote 10 times per day?! WTF?!). DHF is a better model.
#5 is offset by reduced selling pressure day after day, year after year as people milk rewards and cash them out. Also, it is conceivably possible that a L2 reward scheme could use L1 stake weighting for voting, in which case the reasons to hold stake would remain essentially the same.
#6 is a mixed bag. Our reputation is not great (possibly optimistic), and sitting on a system that works poorly and clearly discourages potential new investors (they don't see the value in being inflated to generate selling pressure to pay for low-quality content and a stagnant model) without taking action is not a good look. Being willing to evolve a stagnant model that has failed to produce growth is a positive, not a negative.

I agree with you and I think AI is a super weird reason to rush this decision.

This thing, that's new, might hurt us... so let's cut off our legs first.

If you can't tell it's IA who cares, if you can tell and you are offended don't vote for it.

AI at this point is just a tool.

Oh, yeah, I dont really care for the AI reasoning. I think its silly. I don't generally care at all about someone posting AI content.
Id want them to say it was AI that wrote it, simply my curiosity, and id still think they deserve whatever votes they would have got.

I see zero, null, danger for Hive from AI content creation. If its better and more liked stuff than people right now create themselves, id even prefer it.

This is the only cohesive, rational argument I have seen from you in these comments.
But you might be trolling again and I can't tell.

Bye for now. Would love to sit down and talk to you about this in a more civilized manner and over a drink perhaps.

But you might be trolling again and I can't tell.

Trolling again? Where am I trolling originally that this is an "again"?

Would love to sit down and talk to you about this in a more civilized manner and over a drink perhaps.

I think the discussion here has been pretty civilized.

I refer to you walking on stage in Amsterdam and claiming your whole persona as 'lordbutterfly' on Hive was all a elaborate big troll.

edit: and now you get all butthurt when I troll you back.
It's not cool tbh.

I dont know how I was supposed to know what you meant.

And that is exactly why this would be much easier face to face.
These nuances easily get lost.

Can't help but feeling some Schadenfreude here. You kinda walked into your own trap.

Aynways, I think we are on the same team and are sitting in the same boat. Talking to you via Hive comments feels pointless though.

It's not the reason for the rush. It's the catalyst that allows for us to see the flaws in the design that was not seen before.

Seems to me most people could easily list the flaws before AI came a long, literally nothing has changed.

People who don't understand the network effect arguing about what adds value.

The answer to that has always been subjective (regarding content) and the only thing that will add value, is making the network bigger.

(something we seem comically opposed to)

Very true.
Hive needs a lot more variety of content and creators. The only way to get them is to appeal to all of them.

Right now we mainly only appeal to crypto centric creators. Which is less than 1% of the market of content.

Are we having a new conversation now? Cause this isn't new..

I'm not being snarky I'm just pointing out that AI has nothing to do with this discussion that we have on and off every couple of years.

I see your point.
I was attempting to say essentially the same thing except I am terrible at it cause words are hard.

AI is just the latest "bad guy" in the arguement to keeping Hive's content variety and on boarding issues in control. The current excuse to not actually solve the problem but to keep it more or less the same.

I mean, why try to change the system to attract the rest of the world. It must be the rest of the world thats obviously broken. Not the system. (That last part the snark should be obvious. If it's not just pretend like it is.)

Here it is in a nut shell. Our largest stakeholders aren't interested in nor passionate about the social level. They feel it inflates the Hive currency and thus devalues their stake. (and they aren't wrong)

They have put little effort into building it, they've never hired or consulted experts, etc. They also haven't taken many steps to move away from it or add value elsewhere.

Hive has all the potential it ever had, but very little interest in building the social side.

That is their right in a DPOS system where they hold the biggest risks and do literally have their stake inflated. These are highly intelligent people, but that doesn't mean they have the skill set or knowledge of the Network effect and how to assist it in growing.

At some point the decision is to invest or not invest in hoping someday it is "discovered". I think Hive will carry on much as it has for another season. I don't think someone is finally going to type the right words to motivate anyone to market, promote and better moderate the platform.

We are not remotely ready for this, in my opinion.

We've been developing this ecosystem for seven years, and there are only one or two tribes or tokenized communities that have been successful.

I think it would be possible if we have, as you say, better L2 solutions.

Maybe development will be accelerated in the upcoming months/years.

We are probably a year out from actually knowing if we can actually attempt it.
The infrastructure is being made, it needs to be made user friendly but it should be here fairly soonish.

Nobody is saying anything about making the change now. It needs to be discussed openly and at length. It's obviously something that will not happen over night. It must be taken into consideration with every step of building going forward and not overlooked or pushed to the back burner or down the list of priorites.

Ok, but Hive should create, not remove.

I don't think it's a good look for investors to see these discussions in the public. They won't have the time to learn all the context.

IMO, there are many priorities before this. There's a long list.

I get what you are saying.
But having these discussions "behind closed doors" is not how open source and decentralized systems are created. We are all Hive owners and have just as much right and just as much say in the direction of it as any body else. It's not a centralized, corporate stucture with a board of directors calling the shots for share holders. It's either public or it's not.

Having this kind of discussion now is tatamount and as big as if not more importance of all other prioirties. To make a decision to change something like this later could rip apart or change the direction of things that are being built now or coming. You cant rip out the foundation of a building after you've added the third level and expect that third level to be the same.

It might be better to start these discussions until we have at least five or ten successful tokenized communities running for a considerable time.

What if they don't work at all?

Look at all the ones out there. Only one really works, but it's because the leaders have made a tremendous effort and development. The rest are pretty much worthless.


We are focusing too much energy on this when we should be solving other priorities. But that's my opinion, not everyone needs to agree.

The discussion about this leads to attention towards L2 and smart contracts. It puts necessity on its development.

Ok, I get that.

Let's hope we have something that can be tested and works soon.

There already is a hybrid system. Lots of people earn the HIVE as well as multiple L2 tokens for their content.

I see no reason to discontinue the L1 content rewards in the foreseeable future.

Im looking at the hybrid system at the point when basically all dapps would exist on L2. Would it be necessary then?

Yes. Let's abandon rewards, votes, witnesses and while we are at it, move from this nasty blockchain onto a normal, centralized DB.
A brilliant plan by brilliant minds.
I vote you as our new leader and I suggest we call this new thing "Y".


@dan please come back. We need you.

Yes. Let's abandon rewards, votes, witnesses and while we are at it, move from this nasty blockchain onto a normal, centralized DB.

Such a juicy and plump strawman. 😅

@dan please come back. We need you.

Dan tried social media with Voice already. It didnt work out.

That's not even a strawman, that's just sarcasm. Quite obvious at that.
I thought we were talking silly and trolling each other; I didn't realize, you were actually serious. Now I am more confused about your intentions than before.

Being sarcasm or not, it is a strawman. What youre implying was obvious even if it was clearly said or said through sarcasm.

Now I am more confused about your intentions than before.

I think I make my intentions very clear in the post. Not sure whats confusing here.

Since my top lvl comment might gain some traction I just comment here again:

You walked onstage in Amsterdam and claimed your whole persona as lorbutterfly is just an elaborate troll. Now you claim you are making your intentions very clear. Which one is it?

Inb4: You are 100% serious now. Yeah, nah. If you are really serious about what you wrote as root post, my respect for you is back to 0.1

your whole persona as lorbutterfly is just an elaborate troll.

I never said that.

I went to look it up and to my surprise, you didn't

https://www.youtube.com/live/DZ9MpQQoPu4?si=wAD-aO7ns2Ma1PlQ&t=9293

All you said was 'the name is ironic'.
I apologize.
I honestly thought you had said something else.
Don't know how I got so confused, I usually have a pretty good memory.

Why do we want to you YT for reference? There are heavily censored and editorialized with views that have been sanitized for advertisers.

Considering Hive's content rewards are not exactly subject to these whims. They should be considered more valuable so a 1:1 conversion doesn't work. Even so, our rewards are still likely dwarfed by YT due to their institutional support but we have certain intangibles that put us at an advantage.

We have the ability to support free speech for not only the unbanked but also the DEBANKED.

This is what I wish Hive would lean into more. Being a tailor-made platform for dissidents rather than continuously trying to win over the mainstream.

It's like trying to push the square peg in the round hole considering Hive's unique use case.

Why do we want to you YT for reference? There are heavily censored and editorialized with views that have been sanitized for advertisers.

If you want mass adoption and a robust content creator ecosystem you need to pay people.
Hive cant do that.

We have the ability to support free speech for the not only the unbanked but also the DEBANKED.

This is a more ideological argument I dont think applies to the discussion here. Masses generally dont care about free speech, big content creators dont care about free speech at all.
Its a massively valuable thing, dont get me wrong, but in the context of Hive being a content creator ecosystem I dont think its a factor.

It is ideological but wouldn't really consider it a non-factor in today's social media landscape.

I think, instead of targetimg creators who are established on other platforms, we should try to pick up the ones who are pushed out for ideological reasons.

With these creators come their audiences, potential investors and possibly loyalty when they realize Hive was their safety net that allowed them to continue their work.

I do also understand there is a risk involved in bringing in those type of people but think it's one that could pay off significantly. Could be wrong.

I think, instead of targetimg creators who are established on other platforms, we should try to pick up the ones who are pushed out for ideological reasons.

I used to think that was a possibility as well. What I eventually realized is that they value attention far more than free speech and almost 100% of them are full of shit. They use the free speech narrative to get attention.
If you can offer them free speech, but not attention or money, they will refuse.

Remember the crypto youtubers that cried foul when they were deplatformed?

Aren't we talking precisely about attention seeking anyway when we speak about content creation platforms and their creators? That's what it's about... everyone creating content online is seeking attention

Yes. thats why im saying that the free speech narrative on its own will not bring in anyone here.

I wonder how many witnesses are even contemplating such a change. The difference between Youtube and Hive is that anyone can earn here. I never made a cent on YT, but I can make $100/month here. Okay, so that is not life-changing for me, but it is if you live in Venezuela. I want to see far more people have that potential to earn.

I've not tried it, but I saw a video about sign-up to Leo via Twtr and it didn't seem too bad. Lots of less technical people already use Hive every day, but they need to be educated on the security issues.

The difference between Youtube and Hive is that anyone can earn here. I never made a cent on YT, but I can make $100/month here. Okay, so that is not life-changing for me, but it is if you live in Venezuela. I want to see far more people have that potential to earn.

I mean that is for sure true but the earning ceiling is extremely low on Hive and its never going to be able to support content creation on the level of anything mainstream.

Thats why I see content rewards as more of a crypto faucet. Content being proof of participation.

Also, YouTube has been running for 18 years and for 17 of those years has been owned by one of the largest, most powerful corporations in the history of humanity...
Hive doesn't want to chase after any of that because the sacrifices wouldn't be worth it... it would stop being Hive at a point not to far from where we are now, and then what would be the point for anyone to use it at all?

I've no idea what the earnings curve is like on other platforms. Do a few accounts make most of the money? I don't think we have really seen what Hive can do yet as there are so few users. It needs more pioneers to try it. We do have people with thousands of subs on YT producing good content, but they may not get too much support here yet. Some of that is down to some snobbishness about not being exclusive to Hive or part of the in crowd. I do know of comic artists who make more here than elsewhere even if it is not enough to live off.

Hive can be cliquey and that can be part of the problem. We need to get support to good content as the creators will tell others. Not that I am any sort of marketing expert. I'm just a guy with opinions :)

I think along the same lines as yourself. At some point distribution should move to a stake based system like other chains where people can be rewarded for their investment passively like everywhere else.

Creator rewards should come from the different apps that people are using and be funded through investment and ad revenue like everywhere else.

But we are not there yet.

We need the ability to create simple content apps or communities cheaply and easily.

We need lite accounts for people joining and sign up through Twitter or Facebook.

We need smart contracts that can take ad revenue and buyback those tokens from the market.

We need a better market for trading later 2 tokens and the ability to move them cross chain.

Each community would be it's own business and funnel users and value back to the eco-system. It would be up to the founders of each one to ensure their token held its value and generated ad revenue by moderating the content properly.

It could be possible in the short term future if the focus was building these options which the current users could use to built more gateways to hive and soak up hive from the market for rc needed for their members and paid for with ad revenue.

100 inleo sites all trying to attract users and grow their brand would buy up a lot of hive and make their sites even more attractive as prices went up.

I do believe that this is exactly what my whole existence has been dedicated to building here on hive for the last 4 years now. we already have the community platforms. tokens to follow soon. light accounts we have them in ceramic. its built. its all there. btc bridge is built so no need for centralised exchanges. onboarding is now easy too, especially with light accounts.

we need a bit of defi building on vsc for liquidity and community run infrastructure so the communities have independence from layer one (SPK Network) and we are almost there.

6 months to a year id say

Can't wait until we see the theory working in practice.

This is how we expand the chain and move to another level. I'll be here in six months and probably in six years so very excited about these developments.

Yeah, I think that is a reasonable future progression.

L1 rewards distribution is a big USP of hive, I wouldn't remove that. Also incentivizes to hold HP and curate and create content. No L2 token was able to replace L1 rewards, they are more a bonus than replacement.

What would it take, in your mind, for L2 rewards to be more appealing than base layer Hive rewards? Is it just a matter of the amount of money available for content creators?

Because if you look right now, the reward pool is 900k Hive valued at 320k USD.
About 20%-25% (stabilizer to take into account) of that goes to content creators which is 60k-70k USD.

Yes, mostly amount of rewards, I would say. Instead of removing rewards, we could also restructure the reward pool. If Hive succeeds, the reward pool will also grow in USD terms.

I dont think, even with a 10x in market cap it ends up being enough.

HIVE doesn't need to payout as much as Youtube does to its top creators to find success within such markets. Ex. There are plenty other markets that thrive in such a system like click to pay sites and survey taking sites that pay similar or in allot of cases less than a blogger on the HIVE Blockchain can make. All users of such sites are within the same userbase (a userbase that is trying to earn online). The difference is the payout one gets from those click to pay sites and survey sites don't have any chances of increasing in value. Such users also run the risk of having their account taken away (banned/blocked) and with it the potential to earn. That isn't true for HIVE as we get paid in cryptocurrency and answer to only ourselves.

Toss in the fact HIVE blogging adds the lawyer of investing in the ecosystem itself with funds earned in that same ecosystem. Doing so is as simple as not turning your HIVE to Fiat or any other off-chain currency. Such a change if not successful could be very damaging. I also feel as there are some unknowns like what happens to the price of HIVE. I feel as many think it will rise but I'm not convinced. I believe HIVE's Fiat value could shift to the second layer tokens that replace the current reward system. So if whales are supporting this idea and trying to push it forward thinking their bags will increase in value I hope they have something in place that keeps the attention on the main HIVE Token because if not the desired results might not be what they expect.

There are plenty other markets that thrive in such a system like click to pay sites and survey taking sites that pay similar or in allot of cases less than a blogger on the HIVE Blockchain can make

When people say "content creators" they have in mind creators that create what is considered high quality content on a continuous basis as a job part time or full time. Because Youtube can support that they get to have a robust and dynamic huge content library.
Hive will never be able to sustain that on the base layer.

If you want to look at Hive as a click and pay site, well, that kind of ties into me calling Hive content rewards as a crypto faucet with a twist.

When people say "content creators" they have in mind creators that create what is considered high quality content on a continuous basis as a job part time or full time.

I disagree, when I hear content creator I think just that. Anyone who creates content regardless of the income they receive from doing so. I haven't interacted with many who put an earning threshold on who is or who isn't a content creator.

If you want to look at Hive as a click and pay site, well, that kind of ties into me calling Hive content rewards as a crypto faucet with a twist.

I wasn't comparing HIVE directly to click2pay sites. I was making the point that the blogging section of HIVE can carve its nitch within the userbase that like to earn online as did many other industries. Aside from the examples I already mentioned some more are Fiverr and Upwork. Both respected sites that many use daily to earn a handful of dollars. The earning HIVE for blogging is what drawn many of us here in the first place and imo is HIVE's greatest onboarding tool.

I disagree, when I hear content creator I think just that.

In that case we dont really need rewards at all. Which again just shortens the path to L2. hehe.
But if we want high quality stuff people will create on a continuous basis they need to get paid. Quality takes time. It takes incentive. Or they will go to where they can be.

My wife is probably the best musician that ever posted on Steemit. She doesnt make music here anymore on Hive. You know why? Because its simply not worth the effort needed.

She would rather post her music elsewhere, where there is a chance to earn something significant while earning nothing right now, then post here on Hive for a few dollars without there ever being any chance to earn something significant.
Most quality content creators think the same way.

In that case we dont really need rewards at all. Which again just shortens the path to L2. hehe.

:)

I'll play along; If by, we don't need rewards at all, you mean content creators than I can agree. Content creators sometimes create for the love of doing so or because it gives them an escape from everyday life. Thus my point that an earning threshold doesn't dictate if someone is a content creator or not. If instead you mean we as in the Hive Blog Community, I would disagree as its the model that the current user-base of hive signed up for. Changing it, changes what Hive Blog is at its core. To do so would be the same as sticking a big WEB2 sticker on HIVE's non-existing face. Web 2 tokens would help the transition and keep us away from being WEB2 but I commented on how that might go in my opening reply to our conversation.

But if we want high quality stuff people will create on a continuous basis they need to get paid. Quality takes time. It takes incentive. Or they will go to where they can be.

I can agree with this to an extent. There is multi routes to finding quality content creators. If one is trying to attract those who are already massively successful than you would be correct but if instead we focus on finding exceptional content creators that are just starting out the lure of getting them to post on HIVE won't be as costly. I would argue that there are some benefits to the current HIVE Blog that work in favor of early content creators such as earning instantly, youtube does not provide that. Youtube requires at least 1000 followers an X hours of watch-time before they consider any content creator as an earner.

My wife is probably the best musician that ever posted on Steemit. She doesnt make music here anymore on Hive. You know why? Because its simply not worth the effort needed.

She would rather post her music elsewhere, where there is a chance to earn something significant while earning nothing right now, then post here on Hive for a few dollars without there ever being any chance to earn something significant.
Most quality content creators think the same way.

I understand and get all that and it goes back to my point of finding new quality content creators vs already established ones. The other rebuttal I see to this is that with music its not frowned upon to repost the same music lyrics or music video on multiple platforms. So even if one is earning more elsewhere, earning something extra for linking work already created is an option.

This has been talked about a lot, and I always thought it is the way Hive needs to go. I just dont't think Hive would survive it.

Whales would support L2 projects via investment if they saw users were leaving and there were no base layer incentives to keep people here.
That is my assumption.

😂

If you shut down author rewards on base layer and L2 cant offer anything, there would be panic. So L2 would need to be supported.

L2 would be supported by their own tokens. But as I said, Hive wouldn't survive it.

My 2 cents:

Steem was designed as a concept by very imaginative people who, despite being flawed, also understood something about psychology and marketing - at least enough to take Steem to the #3 crypto in the world with a market cap of $2B+. It was essentially the same core system as Hive.. So what changed?

Obviously the markets changed and the fork happened, but ultimately the technology has really only improved since then - albeit at a slow pace.

From my pov one of the important things that changed is the philosophy of key stakeholders. There is a mishmash of perspectives among the key stakeholders from what I can see, which doesn't really allow the kind of directed action that is possible with a motivated corporation directing things. Obviously Steemit inc. sucked in some profound ways, but at the same time they obviously did something right. Imo they understood the philosophy behind the spirit of decentralisation and cryptocurrency - in fact they helped to shape it... but that has been almost totally lost on Hive and has been replaced by people who even have the balls to ridicule the base foundation of how/why the technology was created in the first place.

The FIRST thing that must be done when seeking to grow a project is to gauge market sentiment and apply the scientific method to building a concrete understanding of the specifics of what people think about the project and why they aren't using it yet. It's not enough to just have some anecdotes, it needs to be professionally done. Surveys, analysis, reporting, analytics etc.

From this we can then better understand the pain points of potential users, why they aren't here and what needs to change to get them here. We all have our ideas, but it is possible to go beyond opinion through proper research - which as never been done afaik.

Once this is established there can be a better focus for projects that get funded from the DHF, in fact there should be projects proposed by stakeholders (not by developers) and then the developers can tender/bid for the work. So we identify the work that's needed, put offers out and pay from the DHF. This way it could even be completed by hiring external devs, like Steemit did.

I can definitely see a world where L2 solves some of the problems on Hive but ultimately the network needs more motivated and talented technical people to work together and make new stuff work. This also happens organically as new users come - so there are actually numerous ways to hit the ignition on this process.. we just don't have anything that I know about at the moment that is working on solving this in a tangible way... and instead of fixing the obvious issues in a systematic way, people are unimaginatively seeking to destroy the primary unique selling point that.. you know... built a $2B market cap.

I can definitely see a world where L2 solves some of the problems on Hive but ultimately the network needs more motivated and talented technical people to work together and make new stuff work.

Were you there during the CTT last week? I think you might have been.
We talked narratives and the L2 narrative I think is one we should explore. Obviously... This post here is written with intent that people start thinking about that narrative more.
If we manage to offer infrastructure that can be competitive in the open crypto market, @vsc.network for example, then you will inevitably attract new motivated and talented technical people. That all happens before any move to L2.

If moving rewards to L2 is step 10, there will be so many things happening from the point where we have the infrastructure to the point when we can actually seriously consider the move.

These kinds of topics drive engagement towards what we ultimately need to be talking about. Layer 2. If I wrote a post:

"L2 will change Hive and provide so many future options... blabla"

No one would read that.
This... everybody has read this post and is talking about Layer 2.
Something we have been waiting for half a decade.

Do you want to make an even more engaging post?
I can do it but I'm sure you'll be able to do it better with better engagement! 😉

It's a bit philosophical but also disruptive, I'm quite sure will not happen because it would be another Blockchain.

Topic: - Hive is a communist Blockchain
Argument: - Taking as example the cake you have on top, Hive (the state) is producing cakes to slice and distribute to people. In a real decentralized and liberal place, if Mary wants a cake and John makes cakes, Mary will have to buy it from John, fair enough, no?
The rest is up to your/my/our imagination 😁

Wait! It's better to not talk about this type of things because the investors! 🤡

Haha. Tts not really a communist blockchain. Its closer to some sort of plutocracy.

Well, luckily we are the first implementing something not established anywhere 🙌. But I would like to keep this topic in the philosophical level and you're pushing to the history level lol
Plutocracy is the new communism, let's focus! 🤪

This debate on the removal of the hive reward pool has been on for quite a while now and I think reducing the reduction is better than eliminating it.

Can you consider reigniting your participation on the zealy campaign? The prize distribution will be announced today.

This debate on the removal of the hive reward pool has been on for quite a while now and I think reducing the reduction is better than eliminating it.

Its not really an elimination, its a repurposing and refocusing on L2. You cant simply remove the rewards, you need to offer an alternative. Thats what i think L2 daps can do.

Can you consider reigniting your participation on the zealy campaign? The prize distribution will be announced today.

No worries, im always paying attention. @anomadsoul basically just needs to call and even if its walking on my knees to Rosarito to promote Hive, i might not do it, but ill seriously consider it.😂

You're an optimistic but let me get you back to earth lol
1-There is no decentralized L2 and there won't be any time soon, unless the only guys capable of doing this decide to waste less time on core code and develop a truly decentralized L2 (you can screenshot this sentence as future proof).
2-Best solution was, when, if, there is a true L2, combine the rewards. As you know great part of active users and those who are coming soon brought by fundraising campaigns inspired by direct sales such as Herbalife or Tupperware are just here to get a job and pay bills, Hive would be a desert with just the usual camels if you simply take the rewards from L1.

Biggest Hive problems are visibility and better devs!

Tell me one guy with more than 100k followers on Twitter "you" onboard on Hive on the last 3 years.
Forget the rewards for a second and tell me one Hive dapp that you would recommend to your friends, be honest 😁.

Tell me one guy with more than 100k followers on Twitter "you" onboard on Hive on the last 3 years.
Forget the rewards for a second and tell me one Hive dapp that you would recommend to your friends, be honest

You cant onboard them. Theres simply not enough people here for them to care and the base layer rewards cant attract them. Thats why Im saying we need to look at L2 and how we can establish it once we get lite accounts. VSC is setting up to offer most of that.

I mean, I made the top 10 most rewarded list on Hive and barely made 500 USD in a month after spending 10 days of my life in mud, cold and rain with Bilprag, putting 3000 kilometers on my personal car for the Hive car project. The rewards about covered my coffee for a week. 😂
And then theres folks like Crim, Matt and others that do this stuff as well. Conferences, Hivefests. Some have DHF funding, some are whales so contribution comes easier, some run witnesses that pay ok but Crim and some others for example I know dont have any of that.

Hive base layer rewards cant even cover the non-developer contributors let alone provide what a creator ecosystem would need.
Its not about me wanting to move rewards off of base layer. Its about it not being the optimal solution, the stakeholders that could increase rewards showing unwillingness to do so by voting the Stabilizer comments for example.

Its simply a necessity imo. What else can we do?

Let me get a bit out of topic but in the end it is all connected, believe me :D

Theres simply not enough people here for them to care and the base layer rewards cant attract them.

This is a closed circle, base layers rewards can be enough to all if hive price goes up, hive price goes up if there is visibility and good Dapps.
One example, why shouldn't I leave YouTube and start with 3speak if everyday you need to get help on a Discord channel for them to manually finish your upload because it just doesn't work on its own? It's just comic! That's the real reason You cant onboard them, but we can always pretend other reason.

barely made 500 USD in a month after spending 10 days of my life in mud, cold and rain

You and other guys doing those work to the Blockchain marketing should be payed for that by DHF funds, period!

VSC is setting up to offer most of that

These are the same guys that made an app (3speak and SPK Network) who can't handle 100 videos a day without 10 support requests or recommend to first upload videos on YouTube before post them on 3speak, because of encoding issues. But let's wait and see what they do with VSC.

What else can we do?

Come up every day with these type of question and invite people to talk, agree, disagree, find solutions, improve, care, encourage resilience and critical thinking. Honestly is always the best and only approach, instead of saying we are the best, talk openly about what we can do better is what I expected as investor.
There are too many guys in Hive looking in the mirror!

These are the same guys that made an app (3speak and SPK Network)

No they're not the same team. 3Speak and SPK network team is completely separate. The only common person between them is me. I've hired in my own dedicated team to help develop VSC. It's clearly stated who is in involved in our proposal and other posts to prevent confusion between the two projects.

Well, you are the guy on both sides.
Looking forward for better code 😉

This is a closed circle, base layers rewards can be enough to all if hive price goes up, hive price goes up if there is visibility and good Dapps.

Not even with a 10x in price do i think we can sustain a creator economy at any significant level. Base layer acts as a faucet and right now author side gets around 70k USD a month. What do we have 3000-5000 users?
The preferred option is that people dont come for the rewards but rather the experience. Eventually you still need to get top creators paid to keep providing that experience.
If we just want to spread some Hive around, that obviously doesnt matter, but if we want to have a robust content library with quality content we need to think further than the base layer.
Theres 38 million active youtube accounts with billions of viewers. The Hive base layer rewards couldnt cover 1/1000th of that number even if hive had a bigger market cap than youtube. And thats just video content.

You and other guys doing those work to the Blockchain marketing should be payed for that by DHF funds, period!

Nah, nobody can ask anything before Crimsonclad gets paid first. They could though vote more contributor stuff instead of those Stabilizer comments.

There are too many guys in Hive looking in the mirror!

True... But we are some good looking folks here on Hive. ;)

I will make a post to reply you here lol

The investor sentiment around here is at an all time low and honestly I can understand why. I really think it's going to be up to 3speak, InLeo etc to just start running some dang ads already to pay out content creators otherwise there's going to be extremely low adoption.

Sure, things like decentralized, DAO and not worrying about your videos being taken down are nice but that's pretty much a standard that people just expect and is not a selling point. The selling point is going to be you can actully make money/crypto for putting content and it's actully funded by something instead of just raping the Hive market cap every day.

Until these apps start funding themselves, stop using DHF funding and start producing revenue that's paid back to the people that use their platform/app these things simply aren't going to go anywhere and I don't understand why applications and hive in general can't understand that. Maybe they do but they are too busy stuffing their own pockets.

Google Ads pollutes the visual; perhaps it would be better to create a smartphone app and follow the model used in games, where users earn tokens for each ad watched. Or, implement a decentralized advertising system that utilizes tokens to highlight posts, offer memberships... The issue is that there's a significant risk that once a Dapp manages to survive without the rewards from HIVE, it might leave the ecosystem to grow more.

The video for points always seems to be a popular option but that's not really going to be the greatest. Adsense works for now until the platform gets larger and can support it's own internal ad platform that people want to get in on.

https://inleo.io/threads/view/princessbusayo/re-leothreads-djftsuct
I bet we have a few hundred more of these stories. But that is not the only narrative we have.

That would make people sell the HIVE token because it has little or almost no utility... Which community has succeeded in layer 2? What I see is that all layer 2 tokens are used to earn extra tokens and then sell them.

What I see is that all layer 2 tokens are used to earn extra tokens and then sell them.

Why wouldnt the case for layer 2 tokens eventually be the same as it is now for Hive tokens.
When Hive started off as Steem people said the same thing. Used to earn extra tokens and sell them for Bitcoin.

Your points are valid and well understood. I think if we must attempt removing content rewards from base layer, a model that really works equal to or better than the former has to been in place.

You've been doing well on the. Zealy campaign, I hope you jump right back and fight on, still many days left, you can have good position on the leaderboard.

I honestly don't see the problem with how would the rewards work now.

What I think is that Hive base layer cant support a creator ecosystem if we indeed want one. L2 might have a chance to.

I've never thought of Hive as a faucet. It makes sense. The true value in rewards is not in the few cents or dollars you earn on each post. It's the long-term staking and the value built over time. As Hive grows, so grows each user's account value. That should be incentive enough for every user to recruit others to the platform. If users simply take their few pennies and cash them out, they don't help anyone. Not even themselves.

There seems to be a lot of questions regarding the reward pool. I saw this on a proposal for HBD stabilizer:
image.png

I think the stabilizer is doing a great job to keep the peg but I really wonder whether it's a good idea to reduce the reward pool for authors like that. There are 10 comments posted every day and each comment makes between 300 and 600$ worth in post value. This is average about 2000$ per day that is redistributed from author rewards and goes into the DHF. Wouldn't the money not be better invested if authors got nicer rewards? Wouldn't it allow to attract talents from the outside? Would people not invest more time to try to understand Hive, if it was really worth it for them?

Who wrote that? lol

I couldnt disagree with that more. The global reward pool is tiny. Its so tiny that it disincentives any quality content that requires added effort. Its so tiny that it cant even fairly reward the few contributors to the ecosystem that arent funded by the DHF.
And they want to vote stabilizer comments?

I mean the top 10 creators on a protocol that was built with content creators in mind earn 300 USD on average a month (the other 300 being illiquid), with a token thats worth 200 million USD. And they think the reward pool is "too large".

What can I say. Ridiculous.

Another reason why we need an adopted L2.

The text comes directly from the proposal for the HBD stabilizer. This is in place for quite some time as you can see in the screenshot:

image.png

I believe that @archange said that he sees the author rewards as a kind of marketing fee to attract people and to keep them in the community. I believe he is quite right with that. This comment upvoting is certainly good for the HBD stabilizer or even the price of hive but I think it would be better if we could attract people with higher rewards. I don't think that somebody is willing to learn how Hive works if he can then expect to get 0.05$ post rewards...

Its a faucet, not much more than that imo.

Im more talking here about the content creator ecosystem and it not being able to be built on the base layer. On L2 maybe. On base definitely not. If that is indeed what we want to have. Ofc it depends on the type of content you want to happen, but that again requires L2 since reward distribution on base layer is heavily influenced by archaic ideas of what should and should not be rewarded.

I have read he post and all the comments currently here and it has not swayed me thinking this is the answer and I just see total disaster. Moving rewards to L2 will not work and people will leave Hive. The reward pool stays the same size no matter if we have 20k users or 20 million users and why Hive is so valuable long term. It just depends how you view Hive as everyone sees value in different ways. Hive is not easy and why it takes commitment and years of consistency.

I just dont think that the current reward pool will ever be able to sustain a large content creator ecosystem and I dont think many of the current whales actually value content creation that much or anything that isnt related to development.

I mean, theyre voting stabilizer comments for god sakes claiming authors are still, even after the 25% author reduction in payouts, earning too much. 😂
Top 10 authors on Hive barely earn few hundred dollars.

I get that part and why Hive needs to climb in value which it should when we 10 x or 100 x the numbers on Hive. People will be earning less Hive but it will be worth far more. I have lost all trust in L2 tokens by the way they have been mismanaged and milked and why they hold no real value. If everyone grew their stake instead of selling and gave those communities a chance to grow then things would be way different. I tried to grow the sports community and grew my stake to the point I could never sell it without taking it to 0.

Id say ads and some fun gamification plus DHF funding would be a good start for a new L2 dapp.

Ads for sure. I am with u for any new income generation for authors. But I love paying authors after 7 days period too. If an author makes 1$ in ads in a month from all his blogs then atleast give that authors something. I slowed down blogging for some reasons. I will put 10x more efforts in my blogs if I get even 1 cent by a single blog based on traffic i generate. If u check prompts then to some degree I agree it's a faucet site for poor nations.

Do u know how much traffic controversial topics makes? I bet u know. But on hive it earns mostly 0 cause 1 person disagrees.

Decentralized ads. Content discovery algorithms way beyond payout windows. Authors getting some part of rewards if not all.

I commented this here but I was reading all comments for half hour atleast. U got alot of watch time if it's a thing for blogs. Some whales might not agree with ads as it's annoying for them. Why not pay authors for ads off for them on monthly bases they subscribed too? Also, adblockers are getting smarter.

I also read about ocd data tracking and all it is beneficial above by antisocialist. I read all sorts of things on hive but I am a living proof why I don't blog. Some of your concerns r real but layer 2 is not solution in my opinion. I see it in different ways. Sorry for typing too long xD

Do u know how much traffic controversial topics makes?

Yeah, lol. Controversy attracts attention. Whenever I've written those types of posts they ended up being the biggest posts on Hive for days or weeks.
I still get Peakd views on my Mario Nawfal post for some reason that was written 6 months ago.
They dont get more votes though. That is almost never the case. Its something about not wanting to be associated with something controversial as it implies agreement. So attention isnt actually what is valued the most.

Yes I have considered this creating a new sports community with realistic tokenomics.

HIVE is still going to be created. Where would it get allocated too? Large HIVE holders as yield farming? How convenient…

I have no problem at all with people being able to earn a bit for what they post and I think trying to emulate YouTube’s financial model is a fool’s errand.

Not saying we have to.

I'm pretty sure 95% of Hive users will leave the platform if that happens :P

Steemit used to be a top 300 website in the world, so in a sense they already have left if you look further back.

What im proposing is giving L2 a chance considering that the base layer reward pool cant sustain an actual creator ecosystem considering how poor the rewards are and the pool tiny. L2 might be able to.

AI says we have halvings and in 3 years the distribution will be half of what is today. so maybe it is not a problem.
hive halwing.jpg

I dont actually think we are giving authors too much money so we would need L2.
Because authors will never be able to earn anything remotely meaningful is why I think we should see if L2 is a better option.

Dependence on votes from those that think its a good idea voting the stabilizer comments isn't a good basis for a content creator ecosystem in my opinion.

Waiting Reply of this question, want to know too.

Nay.

Getting consensus to push changes forward itself is an uphill battle. Some built in tokenomics can help

It is nay for me
I love the way Hive is based on the reward and every other thing
We don’t need a change, lol

Fair enough. No opinion is a wrong opinion. :)

By the time that happens, we'll have another Hard Fork and Hive will be like Steemit. Just flies and whales.

I think wer done with those types of Hard Forks for the foreseeable future. :D

This is also a good point ☝️

I don't think that HIVE and Youtube are comparable. Imo, HIVE is not convenient for vlog due to only 7-day revenue rather than lifetime.

Another argument for L2 :D

One of the greatest aspects of Hive is that you don't need to go "viral" to earn something. It's more egalitarian than anything else similar online. Not perfect, by any means, but better...
How many millions on YouTube are working towards those top potential earnings for years and years but never see a cent on the way and still fail to earn anything beyond negligible cents from advertisers? The huge majority!

For every handful of winners there are millions of losers. Compare that to Hive and Hive wins my vote again and again — as it currently stands (with L1 rewards system)

One of the greatest aspects of Hive is that you don't need to go "viral" to earn something. It's more egalitarian than anything else similar online. Not perfect, by any means, but better...

Sure... but you can basically earn nothing if you do spot for spot comparisons with the mainstream. Hive cannot sustain a creator ecosystem even at a 10x. The ceiling is far too low.
If we want that to be possible, if we indeed want a mainstream viable platform to exist on Hive we simply need to look at L2. I dont know what else we can do to the base layer besides increasing inflation significantly.
I dont think many will opt for that.

Where would the money come from?

Apart from direct L2 revenue such as advertising or end user paymium features, the money could come from a DHF proposal that is supported by stakeholders. The level of and continuation of funding would need to be supported by a case that the L2 activities are aligned with supporting and growing Hive, which is not the case now.

the money could come from a DHF proposal that is supported by stakeholders

That is my hope as well.

To be clear, this wouldn't address your issue of adequately paying creators, which would still need to come from consumers via advertising or subscriptions at level 2. It would be more of seed funding, and a way to transition from L1 to L2 management of rewards without an abrupt cutoff of funding. In theory, if stakeholders were agreeable, the funding could even be unchanged at that point of transition. Such a change need not be seen as "getting rid of L1 rewards" so much as restructuring how they work and getting explicit buyin from stakeholders that they are worthwhile at any particular level.

this wouldn't address your issue of adequately paying creators...

But it can lead to it. Base layer is limited as I dont think it can sustain any serious creator ecosystem and obviously stake holders right now would rather spend their voting power on voting stabilizer comments then spending it on other users, contributors, authors, writers, whoever.
So its obvious they see value elsewhere.
Its also limiting as it doesnt encourage the search for alternative sources of rewards or innovative systems.

need not be seen as "getting rid of L1 rewards" so much as restructuring

yeah, completely agree. I do mention it in the post... we need to develop an idea of how to use that inflation taken from author rewards in a efficient manner.

The image on this post is 100% accurate.
If people are hungry give them cake.
What if the cake is not enough? You bake more cake.
Layered 2 cake.

Not! If people are hungry give them tools and knowledge to make their own cakes. Begging is not a disease, it is a condition!

The tools to get cake are here. Not many make use of them.

But I get your point.

I would be in favour of decreasing (but not eliminating) blogging rewards and increasing staking rewards.

Id oppose that actually. :)

If they do it like this, the platform will suffer a lot and many people will stop using it because people from poor countries are making their living through it. There are people who earn 100 dollars a month from here and live their life and we all know that here also by working hard a person gets money if they do anything like this reward. If we end it, it will be a lot of abuse for those people who work hard day and night to bring content here and comment day and night and this is a fact, if you look at YouTube, people are earning crores of rupees. People are not getting anything from here but still the people are working hard and we will see in the coming time its user will be more but by bringing such things the platform will have to face a lot of problems. So it is better not to do anything like this now.

What's your defenition of "work hard"?

Hey! You can still keep on fighting on Zelay Campaign leaderboard like there’s still a possibility for recover of points. Keep fighting 😀 also they are going to announce about the prize distribution today.

Hello lordbutterfly!

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