The Future Of Social Networks
I've spent a vast amount of time thinking about social networks and their evolution in web3. I've studied the game theory behind every network out there.
The plumbing is out there; today, if we wanted, we could decentralize networks without needing a blockchain if we all merely self-hosted and downloaded others' data and seeded it. If we lived in a world where everyone gave a little, we would have more than we ever needed.
However, as we know, this isn't how it works in practice. Without incentivization, you'll end up with a few things.
A: Centralisation, only a few people are willing to store the data, and there is no free lunch. The only reason someone will store your data without cost is to make more money off that data than they expend to get it.
B. Low-grade performance. Remember torrents back in the day? Ever had a file you wanted to download, and you find out no one is seeding? If no one stores your data, if no one provides bandwidth for CDN, you're experience will either be low grade or nonexistent. Users will only use web3 if it looks and feels as good as web2 and adds extra benefits web2 can't. The majority of people will not switch to a lesser experience in the name of decentralization. There will always be a honey pot of centralized sites claiming to be decentralized, offering a better user experience that users will flock to, like chasing sinking stones to walk on.
C. Easily taken over. If there is no ownership in the network, if people cannot put skin in the game, the network can quickly be taken over. The reason Bitcoin is so hard to attack is because of the hodlers. Layer zero is and always will be the essential layer of any network. Layer zeros with zero skin in the game end up putting zero effort to preserve the network under attacks.
The fact is, you need an incentive layer to run web 3. Don't believe me? Go tell Twitter to burn all of their earnings and store your data for free.
Now that we have established an incentive layer needed for a social network to become a robust decentralized ecosystem, we can look at the best ways to build such a layer.
For distributing rewards for those that contribute resources, there is only one option available that is practical, crypto. Try paying miners with your visa card when they are worldwide and anonymous. That's another thing; miners will not dox themselves to earn money; some will most a lot will not. Fiat is simply impossible to use at scale for funding a decentralized network to become self-sustaining.
Stop fighting it. Blockchain is more significant than Bitcoin. Blockchain is the perfect tool to fund a decentralized network. You can try and reinvent the wheel as much as you like, but distributed databases are the future; single points of failure are not. Decentralized funding is the future. Centralized financing is not. Self-sustaining networks are the future; VC funded networks are not.
Blockchain is simply an open-source code run by voluntarist. No one is obligated to run the code they don't want. That's why your actions matter in the blockchain world; it's run by free people who will turn the other cheek in a nonviolent way. You can easily create code. You can't easily create a community, and you certainly can't buy one.
Why Hive Can't Be Built on Bitcoin: https://hive.blog/hive/@theycallmedan/hive-is-bitcoin-s-future-sidechain
Hive has no ninja-mine; the largest holder has 3%. It takes roughly 30%+ to take out the top witnesses now. The exchange attack (Binance, Huobi, Polo) powering up users' funds for three months and using it to overthrow the network has been solved. Any newly powered up stake takes one month before it is allowed to vote in governance. Any exchange attack now will not only lock their funds for four months if they wish to attack the network, but we would see it from a mile away.
Furthermore, I don't even think you can buy 30% of the liquid Hive in existence if you wanted to. If someone tried to attack, it would make us all very rich; if they were successful, we would be so rich that we could easily have resources to fork again, dump the token the attacker is buying and getting a free airdropped token like last time. Many Hivers doubled their net worth during the hostile takeover, selling their Steem and keeping their Hive for free. Without the ninja-mine, such an attack would be nearly impossible. It's an attack I welcome wholeheartedly.
▶️ 3Speak
Hello Sensei it's good to see you around once again. Besides agreeing with what you said I'm going to share my opinion from a user's perspective.
When I heard first about #hive, formerly steem. And after reading every piece of bit of information and managing to understand how the chain works I instantly quit my job in Venezuela because I thought and still think I've found the new "facebook" for at least the next 30 years. That convinced I was/am.
To me #Hive is a country. With the difference that there is no government, as utopic as it sounds, yeah, a country with no government, no politics, heck, not even rules because every user is entitled to voice out whathever they feel to voice out (censorship free) and even though its possible to see bad actors, and see content that may be harmful to our eyes; Such a child porn or the alikes, and yeah, as sensitive as it sounds, it's something that we have to address yet even if it cannot be wiped, there are two sides:
If the community's moral is healthy enough (which is it), such content would be hypothetically hidden via downvotes yet not erased.
Not being erased may be dangerous even for such hypothetically given that again, it cannot be erased, hidden but not erased. It's like commiting a crime and leaving the evidence so everyone could see.
What impresses me the most, is that Hive is ruled by its people. By its users. A couple of days ago I read a tweet in spanish which kinda says like "if the product is free, then you are the product". That quote pretty much defines what Hive is yet more than a product, we are a conglomerate of humans brains, all different, yet with one goal in mind which is the protection and transparency of keeping our chain healthy.
Hive is so inclusive that everyone, EVERYONE, is allowed to get in. There's no way you can prevent someone to be part of this, even if they are possible bad actors.
Staking, the whole power up process is notorious when it comes to governance. That's why distribution is so important. The more people are distributed with stake, the harder it would be to compromise our chain, and like you stated. The worst thing that may happen is that someone may out stake us but that would make us millionaires, we can fork, and continue to do what we do, that simple yet complex but still simple. We demonstrated by forking to Hive that our community doesn't bend the knee to the thousand of Justins who may want to take to our chain.
The Venezuelan and third world country users case is another thing that impresses me. If mainstream media knew how helpful has been this system for people like me and like many others that use Hive as main source of income, we would have been mainstream already.
Three second and feeless Transactions, a place where coders, programmers, artists, influencers, everyone can build and not be silenced. We literally found gold.
Time will proves us right, hopefully. It feels great to be part of history and be one the first to be in, our future, our children's future, our grandson's future will be assured.
Thanks once again Dan for being such a good man to us. Kind Regards.
strong statement!!!
Thanks a lot champ.
Today, after reading the interesting post by @tarazkp where he reflected on the intentions of investors in the crypto market and their little knowledge of the underlying technology; He made me wonder how a blockchain works inside, and especially #Hive.
In this sense, I went back in time, to the year 1993 where I had my first encounter as a relational database designer (ORACLE) under the client-server platform on UNIX. Now, almost thirty years later, I hear about the benefits of relational database applications that are distributed and built-in open source with free access. Just look at the user interface to understand the logic behind it. Of course, I leave the programming work to young people, like those who you represent. I worked under a philosophy of data centralization, but now I am convinced of the correct and liberating capacity that feeds the decentralized philosophy of a true Blockchain. The bifurcation that gave birth to #Hive when the authoritarianism of those with the most power was fought was truly epic. Not everything is perfect at the moment, but if exceptionally perfectible.
Those are some of the features and events that excite me to be here.
It's always insightful listening to you speak about the future of decentralised social networks. You've certainly helped me adjust my thinking and develop my own ideas.
Loved your tiger/misinformation analogy in this one. We can't bubble people because this is real life. What we can do however, is give people the tools required to live safely alongside tigers/stop the spread of misinformation via front-end management.
Keep up the great work mate!
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
I have not just doubled my net worth during the Steem takeover, I more than 10X'd my crypto.
I never sold hive. I sold all my steem for different cryptos. Thankfully my portfolio did really well. Now I've been buying hive regularly for months, and will keep going.
It was good for me and good for hive, because as I'm buying more hive is getting into stong hands. I'm probably not selling what I powered up ever. Have more on exchanges.
congratulations! I think the same about power up hive :)
Congrats! I've heard many have done the same.
If people understand this they’ll understand the true potential of HIVE
one of the bad things about Web 2,0 is the sellout from attention. People give their attention away for free and bad people can buy this attention if needed. Web 2.0 is manipulative. Hive is free and this is good!
Is it just me, or does this keep loading for others, too?
I have a hard time watching 3speak videos because of this.
reload page. That works for me.
I will try that.
As always I hear myself talking. I also thought of black mirror when blocktrades mentioned the reputation system.
Algorithms can be gamed and will force certain behaviors from people. It will turn you into a hypocrite to improve your reputation, it's easy to lie and get to the top in a popularity contest, we have thousands of years of history proving that with politics.
As long as reputation scoring is just an option, I'm fine with it. Communities should be able to run without using it if they wish. I can't see myself starting a community then having a system scoring everyone's reputation.
And I certainly hope it doesn't get embedded into hivemind.
Agree with you.
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
Hive is a bulwark and becomes stronger and stronger from day to day.
10 years from now we will look back to these days as the early days of btc.
After thinking a bit longer about what you are talking about, I come to the idea we can onboard the web 2.0 critics.
The people former work for Google, Facebook, and so on and leave because of ethical concerns about the business model.
After the purge, I think there are more than ever before. I don't know what the smartest way would be to get in touch with them, maybe someone has.
Otherwise, sooner or later they will join Hive anyway :D
Dpos + Open Source + Open Ledger + Community = Success!
I think decentralization helps alot, users have real -time control over their privacy and security as well. It's about we take our privacy and security seriously, that's why I use a truly non-custodial wallet application like that of atomicwallet.io where users have exclusive access to their private keys.
Wonder why you see this?
Read here and here.
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
Hey Dan, you are making a good case for politics being debated on hive, you could have true opinions discussed out in the open without the fear of having your account banned but still the restrain of facing possible downvotes if you dont play by the rules.
I was thinking about what you said before about being independent from the internet. Is there a chance that we get blocked by Internet Providers when we host ie actual Nazis who legit call for a fourth Reich, I never met people so extreme but I would not want to censor them.
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
Very good points. I think it's very important that the UI/UX be very, very simple and easy to understand. For example, I just joined LeoFinance a couple days ago and had to go through a few steps to get a wallet set up etc. The experience was very straightforward and simple compared to most other stuff in crypto land. However, I think it was more complicated than what the average social media user would want to deal with. The difference between Hive and the Leo token, how posts earn rewards, how you can reward others, etc. - all this needs to be very clearly explained up front and very simple. This would be even more important for something like a microblogging platform that aims to get very wide adoption.
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
I can not say I understand the wholeness of blockchain technology, what I can relate to is a peer to peer understanding and owning your content working to making life abundant for all involved, connecting with people all over the world, at the sometime earning cryptocurrency. This just sound and feel right. If this can make the world a better place, lets go.
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta