I wanted to pick the Hive Communities brains on something. We have seen new tokens get set up over the years on Hive engine. Some have done well and most have fallen by the waste side. I remember one of the first Communities that was launched on Hive was the PAL community and everyone got excited. They launched a token and many purchased it. PAL has since fallen by the waste side. Not sure why but their volume is 0 and their token is pretty much now worthless. Well maybe it hasn't gone completely but you get my drift. Sportstalksocial is another. I do not want to single these Communities out but I used them as an example as good Communities that went belly up.
I started dabbling in Discord lately and some interesting conversations spring up in the Hive Discord channel. A user received yet another token in his hive engine wallet and they lamented it.
"Oh no - not another free useless token".
I was thinking that he or she should be thankful that they are getting anything for nothing but no - they don't want another airdrop. This got me thinking. Are airdrops bad for a Community when it first sets out on Hive because all you are going to get is selling pressure on the newly launched token which lead me on to thinking about Communities and tokens built on Hive Engine.
What was a Community in the wider sense of the word. Take the Amish Community. I am going for an extreme example here but if a young Amish man gets married and wants to set up a homestead then the troops are rallied and everyone helps out to build the house and give them guy the best hope in life. They all contribute and when they are in need of help then the man whose house is built is happy to help back. This is a Community. Everyone contributes something - whether it is carpentry skills, food etc. The Community gather around. Now to my question.
In order to form a new Community and launch a token on Hive, would the Hive user be annoyed if the Community took a cut of their post earnings? More than likely I would imagine. Some Communities do this already but if it is transparent. If you want to be a part of this Community then you gotta contribute and by doing this then the Community will take some of your earnings. This way the Community builds its base. Their curation account may add some HP earned from these beneficiary to curate their Community posts , hold competitions, and give the contributors some dividends at the end of each year. This may have be in the form of staking a layer 2 token that has a tight supply. This way the Community contribute and also receive without the Community leaders having ever ask for handouts to run the Community Competition etc. If a Community can't survive on its own two feet then we are wasting our time but the only way to do this is to build up resources without using the DHF as you can become too reliant on it.
Now I am looking at the pitfalls to this method. Is their any? Would a Community break the rules of Hive if they do this? This is what I am asking? If the user is aware that the Community takes 20% of the rewards for the greater good of the Community in order to grow it. The rewards wouldn't be long about adding up. The user that posts is happy to contribute to their Community and everyone wins? I cannot see another way a Hive Community can grow without doing something like this. Well apart from a game where people buy NFT's and the Community make revenue this way
Lets take the top two Communities with tokens in Leo and Splinterlands. Splinterlands is an exception because it has a very very good game behind it so the use case in their native tokens are excellent. Leo tried many things and gradually grew their token over time and it is now overtaking Hive which is kinda funny but Leo Voter was a main contributor in the token growth. Write a Leo post and Leovoter would come to town and give you a nice upvote. People earned their Leo as a result and the Community developed into what it is now. If Leo voter was not around then I do not think Leo would have been as successful. All of a sudden you had guys doing Splinterlands posts with the Leo tag because it was crypto related and you would get more earnings from Leo than Splinterlands. Not only that but they would also earn the Leo token. I take it the Leo.voter HP came from some of the Leo token supply which was put aside for curation etc. So one can say that it is the close to what I was describing above. Maybe some people on Hive may not say this but it is Hive's most successful story to date.
So what is the right way to grow a Community and launch a token?
As per Discord friend moaning about airdrops , He is right, this doesn't look like the way to go. Also with past token launches the Community just sells up and the token is dead in the water before it even begins.
Does a Community launch a token and just release it gradually to their loyal Community members? Seems a better way to go? No?
I'm open to feedback here. I have not even got into staking a token yet.
What is the ideal way to go without upsetting the masses and staying within the unwritten laws of the glorious Hive Blockchain. I'm all ears. Because it seems whatever way you go there is complaints.
Some steps back. The question is what a community is on hive. There are probably more answers to this question but 2 come to my mind.
Is a community a place where people gather or share posts about topics which are related to the community. Building a great conversation and information trail.
Is a community a group of people who just want to earn more and more, builded around a so called community topic?
If the question is 1. There shouldn’t be a second layer behind it. If the answer is 2, such a token could help.
We have to be honest. If there suddenly was a community about carrots. And all those carrot related posts would be upvoted to heaven. Then hivers without any carrot passion would appear. Posting about the most beautiful carrot in the world hoping on the same payouts.
We did try many moons ago setting up a sportsbetting related community. We did create a poor upvote bot for it. And yes, while the payout wasn’t great we had so called sportsbetting related posts.
A community can only survive if the fundaments are good and if it is driven by real genuine posts.
We all like to have the whales discover our posts. Regardless if it is community related or not. But that does only happen for the lucky few.
Carrots 😂 😂 😂. I'd be jumping on that Community if it ever launches. Do you think a community should start at Community 1 and then progress to Community 2 once they have a solid base? I think a Hive user could want both of these at once. Building great conversation and also earning more and more?
That would be probably the natural way to go. But it all comes down to support. Or from a whale or of lots of planktons!
Didn’t want to risk to use a community name which would insult people. Carrots seemed a safer bet 🥕
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Airdrops just get slammed onto the market at the start meaning the token price crashes then everybody panic sells into it creating a storm of removing all the value.
I like the idea of a community taking a cut, if its up front and open then people cant complain. Especially if said community gets curated by some decent accounts
There needs to be some sort of revenue generating method for the community to grow without handouts and without becoming a Hive outcast 😂. Leo voter is under the spotlight a bit but I actually thought this was fine but others might not have . I dunno. If we could get clarification on how best not to become a fugitive that would be great .
I think LEO voter was only under scrutiny because of the paid subscription thing that they were doing on Leo which essentially guaranteed votes from the Voter bot. It looked like buying votes and I guess it was as they kinda guaranteed a return?
Who knows, something shady like that, but general taking a cut to fund it is something good I would say
Jesus if I knew that I would have signed up years ago 😂. Cheers for the feedback. It actually is really valuable.
Lol, that's what I'm here for! That and the lolz of course
I think the whole idea of community token is a bit flawed, unless there is a use case or working tokenomics behind it. For 99% the only usecase of the token is to sell it, what per definition makes it doom to fall into oblivion.
I also thought several times about creating a chess token for the chess community but I always gave up in finding a way to create something around it what cannot be done with the layer 1 token itself in a way less complicated way.
E.g. you could build a community treasury with Hive, HP or HBD, accumulating Hive/HBD and spending for community purposes and fed by beneficiaries. For what you need a (costly) L2-token at all, if not to (secretly or not) create some extra revenue for the token issuer. Because let´s be honest: 99% of the H-E tokens created the most benefit for the creaters or early users, if at all. With a few honorable exceptions.
True , you could just have Hive rather than any layer 2 as bozz said above, hive users prefer Communities that have a layer 2. I suppose if you were going to go the Community beneficiary route the users might want something back in return. The chess one is interesting. Could the token be tied to how many games you win and the total points basis.Earn tokens for winning your matches. You pay token to get a chance to play the high level players. I dunno but there is a use case there somewhere.
Yes, but an entry fee with a HE-token creates a hurdle that might put off some users. Once I had an entry fee of 10 Hive (100% of which was put in the price pool), less players joined and the checking of who has payed already and who not was a hassle. But I will keep it in mind.
I have always maintained that no token can survive unless there is revenue to give it value.
Whether that is through beneficiary rewards, ad revenue, premium accounts or anything else there needs to be buying pressure or the token goes to zero. Simple as that.
I have no problem with giving up a cut of the posts for a certain community if you are getting another token in return. If you join a soccer club you will need to pay fees and costs. The same for almost any community or club that you join.
You contribute and you get certain benefits in return. A successful club is one where more is put into it than taken out. The same for a community or a token.
Airdrops are great for people who don't care about the project. 90% of airdrops that I've gotten i've sold and bought projects that i care about and that are hard to obtain their tokens. So an airdrop is just free money to most people.
It's better to earn a token and have an owner mentality.
We tend to be in agreement here.
To me it seems that people don't really care about a community unless there is a token tied to it. Whether that token is worth a little or a lot. It's actually sad because there are a ton of great communities out there like my grilling and smoking one that get hardly any love. Then you have communities like sportstalksocial that just collapse. I want to say that one happened because the tokenomics were junk, but even a community like Marky's STEMGeeks has good tokenomics and yet it is stagnant.
It’s true about the Communities without a token . I set up a football one once and there was no interest because there wasn’t a token so people staying on sportstalk . People actually said it to me . There are communities that are great without a token but they all have a ceiling and unless there’s a use case or benefit from staking the token then there you are snookered . But the question is would you sacrifice 20% of your rewards to grow a Community you like ?
No, I wouldn't and I don't. I purposely post where I do because of that. If I was going to sacrifice some portion of rewards, I would send it to @commentrewarder. I mean I know that people have to build their community, but there are other ways. The problem is if you want a token then you need a developer to set up a front end and all the other stuff (assuming you don't know what you are doing yourself). It's a lot of extra hassle. It would be cool if one of the front ends had something built in like a framework for communities.
That's interesting @bozz. I'm glad you said this because this is what I am looking for. So is it true to say that you post where you do to achieve the most optimal rewards?? No shame in saying yes. I think we all do this. For a frontend to be developed you need a few pound to get it off the ground which is where the token comes in. Other than a token there would be no income to pay for things like hosting the website , databases & cost of development. If the token is not successful you are back to square one unless they have another in flow of resources such as a Community staking HBD and paying for hosting from the interest . Who knows if the Community which you contribute to from posts becomes successful it may mean a massive ROI from your 20% reward beneficiary contributions. What I am saying is there needs to be some give and take when it comes to rewards if the users want their community to grow and not just relying on whales to support them,
Yeah, I get that. I think 20% is a lot though. I think if the community is active enough you can get by with 5% of the rewards going back, but then it better be a pretty awesome community with lots of stuff happening. Here is a good example of your first question though. Even though I own and run the grilling and smoking community, I will put those posts in the Discovery-It community and then cross post them into the grilling and smoking one because my small community doesn't catch the eyes of the curators like the larger ones do. It's sad really because I think a lot of good content gets overlooked that way.
yes it is disheartening. I remember seeing one of your turkeys on the barbi and it looked unreal. I must sign up for your community now actually.
You should! I'm actually getting ready to head out and fire up the grill right now! What I would really love to do is start a new sports community with proper tokenomics and strict oversight, but I don't have the skills to do anything like that.
👏🏾👏🏾