It is amazing how simple business sense appears to go out the window when it comes to Web3. I think because of tokenization, people think there are shortcuts that enable the skipping of crucial steps.
On Hive, we all know that promoting the idea of "get reward for blogging" doesn't work. That was something that was tried years ago and the results were obvious. People came simply for the rewards and were doing nothing more than trying to scalp the system. This was one group. Then there were those who tried to do that, were not successful, called it a scam, and left.
Neither is beneficial to the long term growth.
Then we have a series of discussions, panels, meetings, and, now, Spaces to discuss what the narrative should be. We embark upon marketing to attract users. All this is done in the name of growing the ecosystem.
Unfortunately, all of this is a failure. Growth is flat for a glaring reason. All of this goes against simple business sense.
In this article we will explore exactly what is going wrong.
Source
Business Services
What does a business offer?
This is an easy question. A business offers a product or service that customers are willing to utilize. From this, the company seeks to earn a profit by monetizing the transaction in some form.
When we discuss commerce, this is fairly straight forward. Money is usually exchange as payment for the good or service.
If we look at the banking industry, people deposit their cash to earn some interest. At the same time, they acquire the ability to make digital payments on things such as bills. In return, the bank is able to use the money to lend out.
Taking a quick look at these sectors, it is easy to see what they provide:
- energy
- healthcare
- retail
- automotive
- lodging
- construction
We can break this down even further by looking at professions. What service do these people provide?
- barber
- mechanic
- pool cleaner
- lawyer
- accountant
- fitness coach
Again, the answer is rather evident.
Now for the multi-billion dollar question: what services are provided on Hive?
Services Not Users
With all the focus upon users, there is a glaring hole that most seem to omit discussing. There are few services offered on Hive. Since that is the case, what the heck are these people even trying to market?
This all comes back to what does Hive offer? What businesses can you point to that people will utilize?
We, once again, are at the "Medium-style" blogging. If people are interested in that, why not just use Medium? Why would they post on Hive? The answer is rewards.
It is a vicious cycle that does not change. The reason why we keep having the same conversations, year-after-year is because of the absence of services.
Here is another simple question: where do you get your news?
Most either turn to the mainstream media or a site like Twitter. How come they do not turn to Hive? Another answer that is not difficult to figure out. We do not see news really posted on Hive.
So, how come, one of the most basic features of the online world, up-to-the moment information, is not even offered on Hive? This is a service people can utilize within this ecosystem.
Which brings us to another major question: did it even dawn on most people on Hive to post news related information so that it is available? I would guess most likely not.
In short, Hive is trying to get customers without having anything to offer in terms of a product or service.
There is some information posted, both in text and video form. The problem is that without intuitive search, people cannot find it. We also see a handful of games, most of which has marginal appeal. Unless they can promote the idea of some form of rewards, which usually means some ponzi-scheme design, few are interested.
Are there decentralized financial services offered? Can people purchase synthetic assets? Get a loan? Use an exchange for trading to other currencies?
Do we see book clubs? Review sites? Or videos that people will watch for either entertainment or information?
Can you buy stuff? Are goods sold that people can purchase?
Information. Commerce. Finance. Communication. How many services in these areas do we see offered on Hive?
Consider all the different websites that you visit in a day. How many of them can be replaced with something tied to Hive? Can you get your stock quotes? Heck, for the most part, we cannot even find cryptocurrency pricing.
Business Building
This is the reality that Hive is in. From what I can see, there are a couple reasons for this.
We start with the technical limitation and the absence of smart contracts. This is a problem since this is needed for the development of some of the applications to the services I mentioned. It is a situation that is being addressed so we need a bit more patience.
The other issue is we lack business builders. Some of the options does not require additional technology. In fact, many can be built with what is already offered. Over the last 18 months, I hammered the idea of building on Hive. This means attracting people with a business mindset.
Unfortunately, this is something that falls on deaf ears. Most are here, once again, solely for the rewards. This leads to discussions about reward pools, downvotes, and a host of other topics while overlooking the elephant in the room: what is really offered here to the new person?
To me, this is the target area that requires addressing. If you want more activity tied to Hive, we have to develop the services that have people returning on a daily basis. As always, I disagree with the nonsense of trying to pull it from the outside. We have to develop it ourselves.
For example, there is no need to bring in a major journalism entity to Hive to get "news on the blockchain". This is something that can be undertaken by the people who are already here. Hell that could be a community that people get involved with and post to. Will it happen? We will see.
The opportunity is for someone(s) build a kick-ass business that provides a service to people utilize and want. A few ideas were mentioned here. However, there are a ton more with just some creativity and imagination.
Hell, just look around the Internet to see what is already offered and mirror it. That is an easy starting point.
The technology on Hive will keep advancing. There is development with some key features being worked on. This means the technical capabilities is expanding.
What about the rest? Most of that is not up to the developers. Here is where the community has to prove itself.
Hive desperately needs services. A store that was open for business yet had mostly empty shelves is not much of a commercial enterprise. The same is true for an office that has a few desks and yet offers no services to clients.
That is what Hive needs to address.
Provide some services that people will utilize and then we can target users.
Posted Using InLeo Alpha
I don't know why people think getting rewarded for blogging doesn't work. I'm not doing too bad. Not rich yet, but I've built up a growing account that will only grow bigger. I'm not a witness nor am I a dapp developer. I curate, but most of my energy is spent authoring blog posts.
One thing that seems to be a big source of confusion is exactly what Hive is. It isn't a business. There are two things that make Hive what it is. First is the underlying architecture. The technology. The second is the platform. The architecture is like a state. It provides land for cities to grow on. The platform is like a city. It provides street corners and other resources for businesses to develop and grow on. The front ends are the business sectors. What we need, as you suggest, are Hivepreneurs, people who understand the technology well enough to show up and make use of the resources and build businesses that actually provide useful services. When that happens, people will show up to use the services.
I'd love to see a bona fide news agency on Hive. If I was a developer, I'd build it myself.
You get it and I agree with the analogy. I believe the network-state is coming and that is the base technology. Then what is built on top all feeds into the base economy.
Sounds a lot like my post yesterday I put up about what I feel like Hive is doing wrong and it comes down to business and how a blockchain in fact is a business. We keep fighting over the dumbest things and getting no where and honestly it's pretty frustrating when you see the amount of money going out with little to no money coming in. A HORIBLE business model that needs to change and will when we start to focus on the right things.
Well what are people building?
You've made a really good observation and possible ways forward but then is there anything you are doing to get these things evident so people can start supporting you in anyway possible?
I do believe that not everyone is innovative, some people are just good at supporting already made projects. It would be a lot more interesting if you give an example or something of what you want to see and let others follow in your stead. I believe at this point it's Actions that is needed or what do you think?
Music on Leo and LeoGlossary are projects I am working upon.
Okay, that's cool. I think it's not out of place to write about it on hive so more people who are not making use of the inleo frontend can know about it and that might even bring more people to threads.
I don't know if you've done that before, Maybe I missed it.
I think the problem is obvious and it's something called decentralization. Essentially all stakeholder are board members, but few view themselves in this way. It's easier at the Witness level, because there is a rational amount of users to conference together, but I've seen no evidence that this is happening.
On the whole of the userbase level, there's just too many differences, complacency and a lack of organization to come together in a way that will be productive. Maybe we need a structure built that serves as the Judicial level in western democracies.
Maybe this wasn't the best example. What I mean to say is that the American system has three levels of government that in theory creates a checks and balance to keep each in line. All have their specific function to make sure things get done. It's flawed of course, but the basic framework is usable.
We need a better way to bring the users together who want to be part of the bigger picture in an effective way to make decisions for the path of the blockchain and hold the other parts accountable for doing their part. It needs to be structured like a business or even government, so we can get better ideas, get users involved and users, witnesses and developers working together with a clear end goal.
Framework needs to be developed to make this happen, but it's even deeper than that. We need the witnesses to stop being complacent as well. I mean, where's the campaigning for the crucial roles they hold? Where's the userbase who should be demanding this? Where's the critical dissent to make sure the DHF is paying for what we actually need, rather than simply paying people to create unsustainable projects that stand on their own?
The unstructured decentralized nature of Hive is what's causing that and I think it's time to think about creating such a structure to make decentralization work, because currently it's less like anarchy and more like indifferent chaos.
We need more solutions and less finger pointing or complaining. This means more conversations started by the 'leaders' with them being more available and willing to listen then make the decisions happen. Decentralization is failing at each of the levels here and stagnation is the result.
We need the governance infrastructure to address this so we can move forward and build what's really needed.
Discussion Forums and Wiki pages are what hive needs. Forums so that there are centralized places to communicate and wiki pages to organize the information. Most projects are using Discord for their communication but that is mostly a very busy chat room it does have a threads option but its mostly not used . We need here on hive communities we can have ongoing and separate conversations like a forum such as https://www.howardforums.com/forum.php or a improved version of what reddit offers.
I think you are correct, those among other things are necessary to become valid
With a place to have good conversations the other things can be discussed. But how do we develop a place to have better discussions without a place to have the discussions!? I'm guessing that is what causes the stagnation you are referring to.
I would say we need people to simply build. Decentralization means we do not require permission. That is what makes it unique.
But we do need permission of 10-11 people
What 10-11 people do you need permission from. If you have resource credits, you can engage with the database.
consensus of the witnesses, who don't need to ask our permission
I see it as very valid and valuable to have a business model and the right business mindset to take Hive to the next level. It's been seven years now. Hive is an established decentralized blockchain, yes it is. Let the people spending time here get a financial success too and it's only possible to have services.
Services are what people use. We need to build the things that people want to utilize.
Yes, but there is one that I think we should be promoting the hell out of: using $HBD, non KYC, free, fast stable coin to pay for goods and services.
Such a winning use case.
I agree. And that is a trojan horse. However, there needs to be more to attract the users.
Plus, how about a service where people can use their HIVE or other tokens as collateral for a loan and get paid in HBD?
Very good post as usual, and I must say that, for the most part, I agree with what you're saying. However, I disagree with the proposed solutions. Here's a post I wrote a couple of days ago with some opinions: https://inleo.io/@uncubanomas/el-papel-del-creador-de-contenido-dentro-de-hive-the-role-of-the-content-creator-on-hive
In response to your comments about what Hive has to offer the public: Content, YouTube, Twitter, Spotify, Netflix are examples of a profitable business. The real issue lies in the distribution of rewards. It's been wrongly believed that writing a 600-word article with proper citations entitles you to monetize. On any social network, generating a lot of traffic is essential to making money, and for that, the content needs to be not only of high quality but also of mass interest.
Videos with low quality, no post-production, unappealing thumbnails, singers with poor audio, and articles that are pure filler should not be rewarded. Instead, reward creators who are genuinely going the extra mile, creating content capable of competing with other social media platforms to attract an audience.
Excessive support for Hive-related content.
Regarding the use cases of the Hive token: Stop supporting projects that continue creating new tokens, such as games or front ends that could easily use Hive instead. Improve the APR of staking; it's ridiculous to earn 20% for doing nothing with your HBD, and barely reach 8.7% by optimizing your curation strategy to the fullest with HP
NOT bringing in companies or specialists from outside to do the work seems like a mistake to me. No one does their job better than a specialist, an active community participant may do good marketing, but never like a professional with years of study and experience. This applies to all sectors. If you want to see Hive as a company, you need professionals to manage it.
I think that covers it, greetings.
COTI have just launched a foundation that will handle all marketing and development by offering grants and such like things, but they are separate from COTI. This will lead to adoption far quicker and possibly Hive needs something similar where an outside entity takes over the steering of the ship. Developers are not supposed to be good at marketing and never will be. Hive could offer so much more and will eventually through development. Once people start looking at Hive and how Hive can benefit and not themselves first then we will move forward.
And what are you going to market? Blogging?
No lol. I am no developer but have an idea which I would like to see if it is possible or not and I am seeing someone on Hive in the New Year. It may be something or nothing so who knows but the brain is always working on new ideas.
I hear you. That is what happens to me. I am the same way. It is why LeoGlossary is going in a thousand different directions. New ideas keep rolling in.
Yep that is what I keep saying.
Business that can create products that people want will be the ones that onboard the users and bring value to them and the chain.
That is what we are about to launch.
it will change things in a way people stuck with their head in the sand of Web3 can't see.
They can't see the forest for the trees.
True. Need that killer service to gain adoption
I couldn't agree more.
decentralization of Hive is a blessing and a curse at the same time. Folks do what they want to do and nothing more as there are no real rules to follow other than be nice to other users. No central control which is one of the main reasons alot of use are here to begin with. Yes stores and other stuff like that on Hive would be great but how it would do is another question
The answer I have no idea what it will be
Decentralized yes, still working within parameters of regional/local is where I think the stumbling block lies.
Physical selling relies on safe passage of goods, accounting as an example relies on knowledge of regional requirements.
Insight from another continent, other than the American or Britain who are far more developed.
I think you are very right on this. It is high time hive begin to focus more on the services instead of the users. By doing so, the value will be created more