Does Hive have a Future? Perhaps ... but it will need an Alliance.

in #hive2 years ago

On Thanksgiving Day, I dropped by Hive to say “Hi” to a few old friends. To my surprise, Hive was trading at $1.69 and Twitter had exploded with Hive-adoration as everyone started breaking out their best bottles of bravado and braggadocio. As an ex-hedge fund manager, skepticism is my middle name, so I decided to do a little digging to see if this momentous breakout seemed justified.

Following is the comment-reply thread from my interaction with @cryptogee, one of those aforementioned friends:

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Image: https://ecency.com/hive-133987/@penguinpablo/daily-hive-stats-report-friday-november-26-2021

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Image: https://ecency.com/hive-133987/@penguinpablo/daily-hive-stats-report-friday-november-26-2021


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I should have known better than to drop in on Cryptogee. Somehow that bugger always manages to trigger a thought process requiring a long-winded response.

Situational Awareness

Blockchains do not exist in a vacuum. If it takes a particular blockchain a year to accomplish what others accomplish in a month, the world shrugs and moves on without it. And that's what happened to Hive. Despite this recent price pump, Hive still only has 14,000 Active Daily Users and is not even ranked in the Top 100 cryptocurrencies by market cap.

Acknowledging the realities of one's circumstances is, as they say in the military, "situational awareness." Pretending there are ten guys on the other side of the hill does nothing to negate the existence of a hundred. Irrespective of explanations or excuses, Hive is no longer even a near-peer of its competitors.

So, given this recognition of reality, what ought the blockchain do?

Form an Alliance

Throughout human history, most states (and city-states) were pawns in "The Great Game" of "The Great Powers" of their day. Lacking the ability to mount an independent defense, the less powerful formed alliances with one of the then-contemporary Great Powers. In ancient Greece, for example, there were, at one time, more than 1,500 polises (roughly, "city-states"), almost all of which either allied with Athens or Sparta. NATO in relation to the U.S. would be a contemporary military example, while the European Union in relation to Germany, a civilian one.

For any alliance to work, however, it must be beneficial to all parties concerned and hence the less powerful must bring something to the partnership that is valued by The Great Power with which it seeks to ally.

NFTs are the Great Game & the Great Powers are Forming

In the CryptoSphere, NFTs have become "The Great Game" and the likes of FTX.US, Coinbase and Crypto.com are rapidly becoming "The Great Powers" (mega-NFT marketplaces). The logic is simple: Given their gargantuan capital resources and infrastructure specifically designed for trading, they set sail in aircraft carriers while others set sail in canoes. Undoubtedly, there will be an army of challengers -- but not many that are credible. Concentrated capital is a fiercesome weapon in the hands of an adversary and as The Great Powers become entrenched, venture capitalists, and investors generally, will become more reluctant to fund competing endeavors. This is a dynamic that many in the CryptoSphere don't seem to see ... and I've frequently wondered if such visual impairment is the result of willful blindness. To many, anything that's not DECENTRALIZED is, a priori, bad.

Any financial exchange is a meeting place for:

a.) People trying to sell things; and
b.) People willing (and able) to buy that which is for sale.

Such dynamic strongly favors the creation of a small number of CENTRALIZED exchanges where everyone congregates so that buyers and sellers can easily find one another. This is why, in the real world, there are only a small number of stock, bond and derivatives exchanges, or for that matter, art auction houses. And, we can see this same dynamic already occurring in the CryptoSphere -- while there are innumerable DEXs (decentralized exchanges) scattered about, their volumes pale in comparison to that of the centralized exchanges. Throw in regulatory compliance, institutional market makers, institutional investors, greater liquidity (tighter bid-ask spreads), lower fees, etc. ... and the writing is on the wall. This same dynamic, I'd proffer, will be fundamental to the formation of NFT marketplaces.

What Does Hive Bring to the Table?

Hive's capital resources are too small to be of interest to anyone. And, its technology is nothing that any of The Great Powers don't already possess, or that which could not be obtained, quite easily, elsewhere.

So, what's left?

1. Curation

Hive possesses 14,000 crypto diehards willing to do almost anything to see their blockchain succeed. At first glance, this may not seem like much, but it could address a problem for which none of The Great Powers currently have a solution: curation. (And keep in mind that even at the height of its power, Sparta could only field 10,000 soldiers.)

Anyone who's spent even a few minutes scrolling through NFTs on the larger NFT exchanges cannot have failed to notice that 99% of NFTs are utter crap. Let there be a curse upon the first of the Illuminati who trots out that old saw, "quality is subjective," in the comments section. Yes, quality is subjective -- but not so subjective that anyone thinks Elvis couldn't sing ... or that I can.

The Trending pages of most NFT marketplaces are dominated by PfPs (Profile Pic art, that is to say ... cartoons). Such "art" is extremely unlikely to appeal to the "mainstream," the majority of the population without which cryptos have no future. This is not an assertion difficult to prove. Simply, spend a few minutes showing your non-crypto friends the NFTs on Trending pages ... and take note of their howls of derision.

Some NFT marketplaces have attempted to remedy the situation by hiring "professional curators." But here's the thing: typically, such so-called "art experts" are amongst the most insufferably pompous pinheads to have even walked the face of the Earth. Much like movie critics (and mimes), no one with an IQ over 2 agrees with their artistic proclamations and proclivities. To wit, here's an exposition about why paintings comprised of "white paint on white canvas" are actually worth the tens of millions of dollars that a handful of "thought leaders" paid for them. Apparently, the rest of us cave-dwelling knuckle-draggers are insufficiently sophisticated to appreciate the subtleties of the sublime.


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2. Artist-Audience Engagement

To the best of my knowledge, only one NFT platform (other than Hive) even plans to have a comment-reply section. But, as every Hivian knows, it is the interaction between authors and their audience that creates engagement and reinforces the bonds of friendship. Moreover, an audience's applause provides "social proof" to third parties (prospective buyers) that others share their favorable impression of a creator's creation.

Hive's upvoting system also allows those without the financial resources to buy an NFT to, nevertheless, reward an artist for their efforts ... while earning curation awards in the process. Moreover, it allows artists to reciprocate by upvoting comments, rewarding those involved with the elevation of their work.

Neither Twitter nor Discord, the primary venues used for post-publishing promotion, come close to replicating this kind of intimate one-on-one engagement.

3. Promotion

At present, if Shakespeare, Da Vinci and Beethoven returned from the grave and collaborated to create an NFT -- it wouldn't earn a nickel absent an effective promotional campaign or lottery-levels of luck. Starting a fire requires both tinder and a spark and Hive is perfectly designed to deliver both.

What I'm arguing is that Hive ought not be striving to compete with The Great Powers to mint NFTs, it ought be striving to compete with Twitter for their promotion. The former is a fight Hive would be hard-pressed to win; the latter, a fight it would be hard-pressed to lose.

Years ago, when I regularly posted on Steemit, I was part of a group called the PowerHouse Creatives (PHC). @theycallmedan organized a contest in which the team that received the greatest number of votes (from Steemians at large) would receive a substantial delegation of STEEM. At the time, PHC had less than 100 members and we faced off against teams many times our size -- some representing entire countries. It was the mother of uphill battles. But we out-hustled everyone, post-promoting not just on Steemit or in Discord; but on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram as well. To be candid, we drove everyone nuts but there was no question in anyone's mind who wanted it the most. And we didn't just beg. As the name suggests, the PowerHouse Creatives were a group capable of creating great content ... and we did.

And so, we won.

Here's one of the poems I wrote for the occasion.

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If one wants to catch a fish, one would be well advised to forgo fancy lures in favor of finding a hole full of fish. If Hive wants to attract mainstream users, it must cast its net in waters where they swim ... on mainstream social media sites. Getting their attention on such sites, however, will take more than chest-thumping and hullaballoo (it hasn't worked so far, has it?). "Great art" is a "shiny object" as good as any with which to bait the hook.

Word-of-Mouth is Naught but the Telling of Stories

Those of us in advertising have long advised our clients that word-of-mouth is the most effective form of advertisement. But how does one actually go about getting people to talk about one's products or services?

Word-of-mouth is naught but the telling of stories ... and the stories people like to tell possess highly predictable attributes. Just as no one wants to tell an unfunny joke, no one wants to tell a boring story. People tell stories that elicit emotional reactions in those to whom the stories are told -- and stories which make the teller seem smart, funny or intriguing in its telling.

Here's an experiment: Find a high-priced NFT depicting an ape cartoon. Now, find a non-crypto friend and try telling them a story about it. See how long you can hold your friend's attention and be sure to note their emotional state throughout. Achieving virality amongst crypto enthusiasts, I'd submit, is not the same as achieving virality amongst those who are ... sane.

Hive is perfectly configured to be the "proving ground" that separates NFTs which possess mass appeal from those likely to be little more than crypto curiosities. Moreover, by becoming the "collective curators" of NFTs minted by a Great Power, Hive would generate enormous amounts of exposure for itself in the process ... on someone else's dime.

A Hypothetical Example

Let's say, hypothetically, there is a brilliant poet and satirist named @chillsquire (who, amongst other things, is a damnably handsome man). And, let's say, he has created an NFT Collection that is actually the basis of a 9-month-long Great Power marketing campaign masquerading as a contest (one so cleverly devised that it redefines the meaning of "gamification"). To ensure that the contest attracts lots of participants and media coverage, let's also say that @chillsquire "blackmails" (in a good way) the Great Power into providing a $1,000,000 Grand Prize plus hundreds of thousands of dollars in weekly prizes.

Given the inability to communicate on The Great Power's NFT marketplace, @chillsquire would need to find a place to post the contest's rather lengthy rules. He'd also need a place to provide weekly contest clues (found on hyperlinked third-party NFTs and/or blog posts) and to disclose the prior week's winners. Lastly, he'd need a way to interact with contest participants as interaction is what drives enthusiasm and participation.

Of course, such place would also need a way for The Great Power to actively participate, to stoke interest while doling out additional daily rewards to the thousands of contest participants involved with its elevation.

A myriad of social media sites could fulfill such a role but none so well, I suspect, as Hive. Obviously, Hive could provide all the necessary communication. But it would also be able to provide an easy and efficient way for The Great Power to reward participants independent of the contest itself -- simply, buy a pile of Hive and upvote participants' comments on @chillsquire's contest posts. At the end of the contest, The Great Power could retain its stake (for use in subsequent campaigns) or liquidate and get its money back ... plus or minus the amount of Hive's price appreciation or depreciation since the time of purchase.

On that last point, Hive's price appreciation or depreciation: imagine that @chillsquire was smart enough to include in his NFT Collection a number of NFTs designed to attract other Fortune 500 companies so that once the present contest was finished, another might begin ... but with a different sponsor.

Who wins? The Great Power gets an extremely effective, yet relatively cheap, marketing campaign; Hive gets a ton of new users (the contest participants) and, quite likely, a number of new investors, both large and small; and, mainstream social media users (the contest participants) get introduced to the CryptoSphere in a manner that is fun and engaging ... and, for approximately 100 of them, very remunerative. And @chillsquire, one could only hope, gets filthy rich from the sale of his NFTs ... which seems only fitting as it was all his idea in the first place.

In Sum

You go to war with the army that you have ... but the army that you have determines the battles you can fight.

If Hive is to have a future, Hivians need to take stock of their surroundings and adapt accordingly. The CryptoSphere of tomorrow will not be the CryptoSphere of today.
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Quill

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The building of an economy takes time and commitment. Perseverance through the lean and reserve in the fat.

We will get there but of course it will take time and up and downs. If what you care about is a decentralized system that reward people based on merit and commitment than a slower growth curve is needed.

We grow too fast and we will attract the opportunistic that are just here for material gain. We are a slow revolution, Quill.

Hivelanders are ride or die.

Hey Pryde.

I appreciate the sentiment and I agree with most of it. That said, as I argued in the article, blockchains don't live in a vacuum. To stay in the game, Hive is going to have to do something to remain relevant and its resources, relative to others, is not an immaterial consideration. "No strategy" is a strategy, just a very poor one.

"Worse than a bad plan is no plan,
Worse than no plan, is two."

The problem with Hive is that it has a hundred.

It's good to see the old crew again. And, there's no question that Hive has the best "community spirit" of any social media platform I've ever encountered.

BTW, "Hivelanders" ... that's actually the best moniker I've heard. "Hivers" and "Hivians" sound lame by comparison. I hope you don't mind if I borrow it.

Quill

A truly decentralized blockchain will have many different strategies by its very nature. Maybe hundreds ... if we really catch on, thousands.

From my point of view as a blogger and 'social' democrat with a mean libertarian streak, I see newbies develop into dolphins and whales from blogging, my feed is my own, and censorship is null. SUCCESS.

The other thing have seen by sticking in there and sticking with it is monetary and influence gain. SUCCESS. A place where I express myself freely and aid others in doing the same. WOW!!!

If we talk about the nature of capitalism as Adam Smith envisioned it ... there is an invisible hand guiding the economy or in this case the block chain. We have an opportunity by combining mercantilism with a decentralized but somewhat collective ethos to build just that.

We have witnesses and developers, obviously with more influence at macro level control than the rest of us, I am thankful the heavy lifters.

I am going to verge into the "I told you so' land but those who HODLed and blogged these past few years, weathered the ups and downs, would have seen roughly a 15 000 percent return on investment.

That's huge.

We got this, Quill; all you need to do is settle in for the ride:)

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Day-um the girl does have a point. 😁

One of the most insightful, real-talk posts I've read on the subject in a while. Huge props to you sir. Whether any 'hivelanders' understand your points and act accordingly remains to be seen. In my experience, they'll just stubbornly argue against it. , but hopefully minds have opened and attitudes have changed since. :) 🙏

Thanks Mate.

The post was getting pretty long so I cut out a number of things I'd intended to put in. One was an admonishment by Napoleon of his generals. When reviewing their plans for deploying troops to protect France's borders from rapidly approaching armies, he quipped [paraphrasing], "Who are you trying to stop, smugglers?"

Not knowing where the enemy would strike, his generals had planned to disburse French forces along the length of the border. Such "de-concentration of force," however, would guarantee that no matter where they struck, there would be an insufficient counter-force to repel them.

As I've frequently written, the Achilles Heel of "decentralization" (cryptos and their dApps) is a seeming inability to "focus force," thereby achieving "critical mass." The result is a myriad of projects that "don't work" instead of a handful that do.

What separates Innovators & Early Adopters from the Mainstream (upon which all else depends) is the desire to prove a point: that "The Dream" is not a fantasy. The Mainstream couldn't give a shit about elevating ideology ... they only care about whether a thing works and whether it's easy to use. The "True Believers," though, will have none of it. Not only does one have to agree with their end goals, one has to agree with how to get there.

"We're not in it for the money," exclaim the holier-than-thou and soon-to-be-crucified martyrs (as they nevertheless do everything within their power to increase the size of their wallets).

Well, I hope they mean what they say for it has been my experience that those unwilling to "fight to win," are well on their way to losing.

Quill

Yes, the Napoleon story is a good example of people's (unfortunately common) tendency to spread themselves thin or attempt to tackle 'too many' things at once.

I've never bought-in to the 'decentralization' narrative. Like, sure, I like some decentralization, and I see it's benefits, but the issue is deeper than that.

Centralization is great and responsible for many of the things people take for granted everyday. I don't see an iPhone being developed by a rag-tag community, but I do see it being developed by a visionary leader.

The Mainstream couldn't give a shit about elevating ideology ... they only care about whether a thing works and whether it's easy to use.

Great point, totally agreed, and I've said the same here many times.

"We're not in it for the money," exclaim the holier-than-thou and soon-to-be-crucified martyrs (as they nevertheless do everything within their power to increase the size of their wallets).

Hah, yep.

Those unwilling to "fight to win," are well on their way to losing.

Spot on.

Wishing you a great day.

P.S. I'm no stranger to long posts (I've broken hive's character-limit many times), lol. 🙏

I just read your linked articles. I couldn't agree more.

BTW, I see you're a fellow Canuck. Although I live in Florida, I'm originally from Halifax.

Well met.

Quill

I'm glad my articles resonated. We have so much in common it seems. Interestingly my partner is from Florida, but moved to Toronto a few years ago, lol. Well met! 🙏

Funny — today I was thinking of your posts of old.

I'll read this one later, though. Sleep wins.

!BEER

Hey Manny.

Good to see you again.

Quill

Quill!

Good to see you post, Quill.

I am not sure if the ramp is from NFTs, perhaps it is a part. I like how Pryde said we Hivers are ride or die lol. That could be a part too.

I look at the same stats you do there, and draw the same conclusion. However, I am not sure if the Splinterlands phenomenon has been fully expressed in those figures. I know a lot of folk have joined to play that and some hive is burned in the process I believe.

However I think the main driver has been Farcebook. Once they started the metaverse bandwagon the pump has been pumping. Mind you, not solely with Hive but any other chain that is metaverse-like.

I guess we may never know, but all I do know is it sure looks nice.

I am not sure if the ramp is from NFTs, perhaps it is a part.

Certainly at least a part. And we can even say that it is a huge part, because Splinterlands cards are NFTs, and Splinterlands is brought and still bringing thousands of people to the Hive blockchain every day.

While many only play Splinterlands, some of them are active on the blogging/social network platform too. We met a few good friends because of the huge success of Splinterlands. For example one of them is @savvyplayer. He registered one year ago (on 2020.11.28), and he is socially very active on the platform.

Thank you for tagging me, appreciating my activeness on Hive, and greeting me for my Hive birthday.

I give you some !PIZZA and !ALIVE with !LUV.


@savvyplayer(8/10) gave you | wallet | market | tools | connect | <><

@xplosive! You Are Alive so I just staked 0.1 $ALIVE to your account on behalf of @savvyplayer. (9/10)

The tip has been paid for by the We Are Alive Tribe through the earnings on @alive.chat, feel free to swing by our daily chat any time you want.

Well, well, well. Looks what the funky winds of reasonable logic diatribes brought to us again?

So, are you back here in search of few old friends again eh?

Are they only the lettered members and colleagues of your PowerHouse Creatives Brotherhood? Or are you also in the quest to meet again with the stoics philosophical rebels, the renegades, the outcasts, the misfits and the old pink MoFos of the flamboyant lodge of the sense of humor too?

Hahaha funker! Welcome back poet. Glad to read your arcane and zany irreverent prose once again. I was already missing your style to spit the inners of your quirky mind out from some time. And with this post, I see that that style still remains intact despite the long sabbatical. Hahahaha

Yeah mate. In relation to what you indicate in this post. It is also my opinion that those who currently manage and have the control and destination of this place still have a lot to learn from the point of view of professional marketing, promotion, advertising, sales, RRPP and Strategic Alliances to bring the project to fruition in the immediate future.

I also notice most of them as the hodlers of too much naivety, randomness and ambiguity mixed with the distinctive enthusiasm typical of the youth who are basically lovers of video games. And as in video games, they seem to enjoy more slowly leveling up the game in unexpected and surprising ways without much commitment and serious planning ahead of time of what would really be the logical steps to follow in what indeed the new economy of the business world would demand.

Definitely, at the moment, it's just a lucrative passtime and funny game to them. And they seem to ignore that without an agile, direct and immediate action towards those professional financial fronts in the real world, the competition will leave them (all of us) swallowing dust sooner than later if we do not put the batteries on quickly. Too many great white sharks are already swimming in these crypto waters right now to afford to be careless.

That's why brainy articles like this one of yours have to be taken into account as soon as possible. We need a voice of experience in these promotional matters. And for the same reason, I am going to reblog this post. It doesn't matter if it's barely four dead cats who still read me. Hahahaha

Cheers!! :)

Well, well, well. Looks what the funky winds of reasonable logic diatribes brought to us again?

😂😂😂 That line is simply ... beautiful. 😂😂😂

"... reasonable logic diatribes ..." -- I wish I'd thought of that. Apropos.

One would think that logic and strategic planning would be a good thing. But, in the CryptoSphere, everything seems to get turned on its head. But that's all about to change. Indeed, I predict that 2022 will be the Year of the Great Reckoning.

For example, FTX.US, an extremely profitable crypto derivatives exchange that has launched an NFT marketplace, has recently signed Tom Brady (football), Stephen Curry (basketball) and Shohei Ohtani (baseball) as athletic endorsers. They also bought the naming rights for the stadium in which the Miami Heat play. They've also entered into a strategic marketing alliance with Mercedes and will release a Super Bowl commerical in early 2022.

Crypto.com responded by buying the naming rights for the stadium in which the LA Lakers play (formerly the Staples Center) ... for $700 million!!! (That's almost Hive's entire market cap).

Coinbase (publically traded) will now undoubtedly respond in kind.

These are classic (and very expensive) real world marketing initatives and they are extremely aggressive. Here's the point: the CryptoSphere is growing up and the barriers to entry will rapidly become much larger than what they once were. What worked in the past won't work in the future. Analogously, smaller blockchains (like Hive) are bragging because they possess top-of-line bi-planes while The Great Powers are fielding flights of F22 Raptors.

Firepower matters.

The future of crypto is entirely dependent upon the ability of blockchains to attract mainstream users. To become "household names." In this Great Game, Hive will not be able to directly compete against the Great Powers. It simply will not possess the size or scale. The only way it will survive is if it finds a way to ride the coattails of a Great Power.

And hence my post.

Quill

Artist-Audience Engagement

This aspect needs the most improvement, to be honest. And the Hive blockchain needs content consumers. Much more content consumers. Nowadays most of the current Hive users are focusing on content creation, and this results in a lot of overlooked/ignored posts.

Absolutely true.

There is an incredible imbalance between active content creators and passive content consumers. Hive's strategic imperative must be to onboard more of the latter.

Quill

Well, greetings @quillfire, nice to see you around these parts again! I was just chatting to someone on Discord the other day and we were remarking on all the familiar faces suddenly putting in an appearance.

Coming up on five years of playing this gig, I think Hive has a future. I also think "token price" is a poor indicator of anything much. Let's not forget that we're in an industry where the 10th largest market cap coin (DOGE) is a joke!

One of the things you say here that I really relate to has to do with the "language" of blockchain developers. It all feels very much like a latter-day version of what I used to deal with, working in usability in the IT industry in the late 1990s. The developers/coders, the marketing geeks and management all spoke three completely different languages.

I think Hive has a future because it's slowly heading down the road of ETH and BNB... It'll be less and less "about Hive" and more and more about "what you can DO on Hive." Recently, we had a big jolt because of the instant sellout of HivePunks. NFTs in general are doing well. Over the past 3-4 months, Splinterlands (which is free-standing, but Hive based) has been driving tens of thousands of new accounts a week. LeoFinance (which is also Hive based) has several things in the works, one of which (currently known as "Project Blank") will bring a decentralized twitter-like app to Hive... but it will be its own beast.

Of course, all that is separate from the question of "Does Hive, the BLOGGING site, have a future?"

I tend to look at things relatively speaking. Is Hive fairly valued for what it is? Let's compare to Ethereum... after adjusting for number of tokens outstanding, is ETH 300x more valuable than Hive, as a property? Is BNB 160x more valuable? What IS "fair value?" In that particular context, I'd say Hive was undervalued till about a couple of weeks back, and now it's closer to fair value, in the context of overall crypto trends. Is $20 Hive (which some like to toss around) realistic? Not from where I am sitting, except maybe as a momentary over-exuberant bubble.

As you pointed out, Hive has something most projects don't have: An almost rabid community... and that's an extremely valuable... albeit intangible, asset.

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Hive as a blogging platform hasn't moved forward too much but hive as an eco-system has evolved massively.

14k users isn't the real story as splinterlands has over 100k users per day that aren't counted in those stats.

We now have nft's liquidity, dapps, games, ect...
Partnerships with multiple exchanges, dex's, marketsquare, telos and other chains.

It might seem like things are standing still but they are slowly spreading into everywhere. The next step that we can see are large groups joining together. Splinterlands is bringing in thousands of players from guilds in one go.
Scorum is bridging to hive, so is somee for blogging.

The pump is strange but there are 6 airdrops for hive holders before January. People don't want to sell as much as before and there is no steemit inc dumping value weekly.

I know that i'm all in with hive but i can see where all of this is going and i like it. Now we just need more people shilling and more devs building to pick up the pace.

Our strongest point is the community and if we hit a bear market we will keep growing while others fall away.

Great post though. I really enjoyed the read, i take your point from it and it's good to see you back again.

Posted Using LeoFinance Beta

Hey Mate.

Good comment. Everything you say is true. There are lots of positive developments on Hive and within its ecosystem. I question, though, whether they'll be enough. When Coinbase announced it would be launching an NFT marketplace at the end of 2021, 2.5 million people signed-up on their waiting list within a matter of days. Consider the magnitude of difference in the scales we're talking about when compared to Hive.

Something that comes to mind is a quote by Wayne Gretsky (the "Great Gretsky"). Asked what made him different than other hockey players (and hence, "Great"), he didn't mention technical skills such as skating or shooting or passing. His response:

"I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been."

Every player against which Gretsky competed was, in his own right, an incredible hockey player. Hence, it was not superior technical skill that set him apart ... but rather a superior strategy for implementing those skills.

As I've mentioned elsewhere in these comments, I predict that 2022 will be The Year of the Great Reckoning. Like what happened during the dot.com bust, Actual Performance will replace Potential Prospects as the metric by which all will be measured. During the dot.com bust, it happened overnight. In the blink of an eye, Aspirational Happy Talk became verboten, replaced by hard-nosed demands to "show me the money."

Quill

I don't know what it was about steemit Hive, but, once I got settled in, I was addicted to it. I might argue that it is not about the money, but, the money is what makes it attractive. It has been a slow process, but, it is showing growth, even if the charts don't show the numbers you would like to see.

Money aside, the best part about Hive is the friendships I have made, they have meetups all the time and even last week had a virtual HiveFest. Everyone loved it. I have wanted to ask a million times how would I fit into NFT, because frankly, I cannot see it nor compete with what is out there. But, I was a little embarrassed.

Anyway, I am always happy to see you.

I should have known better than to drop in on Cryptogee. Somehow that bugger always manages to trigger a thought process requiring a long-winded response.

Ha! Glad to see I bring out the best in you! 😂

You make a lot of good points above, especially about this @chillfire bloke leveraging Hive in a unique way to promote his NFTs.

However I will say one thing, and I've said this to you before when I came back from Steemfest 3, Hive is not just the blogging site and your early comments made me realise you haven't quite got it yet.

Sure, those are valid points regarding the 14,000 users on Hive being tiny compared to the communities of the big chains. However did you realise that Splinterlands has over 300,000 users? That's massive, and that game is on the Hive blockchain, meaning there are 300,000 extra users you didn't account for.

Also Splinterlands is a trading card type game, and it could be argued that it was the first NFT game. As you're aware the first-to-market tag can be extremely valuable. As well as the 300k + users, I met a guy on here the other day who said he streamed Splinterlands on Twitch, and not only that, there are a whole bunch of people streaming on there.

Why is this news huge? Because Twitch is a popular platform (doubled in size in the past year) and people enjoy watching people stream games. I'm sure you won't be surprised that many people who watch these games don't actually play them, but get into playing them from watching these streamers. In fact the guy I met on here said that he got into Splinterlands because of watching another stream.

All of this means more eyeballs and more attention on the Hive Blockchain. Splinterlands owner @aggroed was very clever early on, and he made sure other cryptos could be used to purchase cards, so not everyone uses Hive on Splinterlands.

This though can be seen as a bonus, because it means people from other chains are spending time playing a game on the Hive chain.

At the end of the day I get it, you're old fashioned like me. Hive, previously Steemit, for us represented the coin, they are one and the same. People used to tell me back in those days when I complained about the quality of the site and the lack of marketing, that it was not all about the site and I shouldn't get so hung up on it.

I didn't really get them until Steemfest 3 and now it's abundantly clear to me that the success of Hive as a blogging site is independent to the success of the coin.

All of that being said though, I would like to see a lot of changes to the site. I think so much can be done to improve the look and feel of it. But none of that stops me from being optimistic about the future of the Hive Blockchain.

Cg

PS think I downvoted this post by accident, sorry about that, changed now :)

Cg

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Hey, Quill

Glad to see you around again. As usual, great points and equally great debate. I may come back and weigh in - things are pretty, well, umm...busy...

But, I thought you might find these observations of interest in relation to yours.

The point that is being made about Splinterlands is well made. I am part of an onboarding team and at the moment, we see around 80 first posts (not introductions). My unscientific analysis from having done this once a week for about 8 months, is that only 5%, if that will blog. The rest are gamers and the majority are Splinterlanders, SoMe and Axie.

Bloggers and "creatives" - NFTs - remain a mystery to me, will, as @tarazkp suggests, will be the face, but much, much more lies behind.

Finally, and again unscientifically, that the Hive is heading for its third anniversary in its current iteration and 6th if one considers its roots, bears thinking about.

Oh, and as a last word, the Hive is, by and large, a much kinder space than its former self.

Thoughts at 6am before life...

I dropped in on Thanksgiving to say Hi to some old friends and decided to publish a few posts while looking around to see if anything had changed. Earlier today I came across an admonition from "an authority figure" warning people against "buying or selling votes." Two years ago this same fellow was in my comment sections railing on about why bidbots couldn't, and shouldn't, be banned. So, the bidbots are gone ... but the BS remains.

This recent price spike has boosted confidence levels ... but I wonder if that's a good thing. Hive had, and has, structural problems, not least of which is its inability to be strategic. And, unfortunately, the motivation to address that which ails seems to directly coorelate with levels of euphoria/depression. I'm a big picture guy and do what I can to filter out the noise in search of a signal. Although I don't want to pre-judge, I'm struggling to see a path forward for Hive. Things are not as they were. As I wrote in my article, The Great Powers are forming and their marketing budgets (much of which are being directed at Hive's core business) are substantially more than Hive's entire market cap.

Anyway, I've sponsored a marketing contest to see if coelescing strategic initiatives is any easier now than before. I hope to be surprised.

BTW, are you still in touch with Jaynie? If so, say Hi to her for me. I miss you guys.

Quill

I think there will always be BS. It's one of the problems of decentralisation, free speech, etc. on which we have both opined before. I think that some of the bid bot peeps have seen the error of their ways and have changed their MO - they've seen the benefit.

The decentralisation is what will always hamper Hive as it moves forward as an entity and part of it is the schisms between the devs, the marketers, the gamers and the also rans. IMHO. As a total lay person (and also ran) in these matters.


Hey @quillfire, here is a little bit of BEER from @manoldonchev for you. Enjoy it!

Did you know that you can use BEER at dCity game to **buy dCity NFT cards** to rule the world.

Thanks Manny. 🍻

Quill

Art Basel in Miami is fast approaching and, presumably, will be attended by some of the same artisitic luminaries I mentionned in the post ... the "art experts."

Here's a link to a Best Seller from Art Basel's 2019's gathering:

https://nypost.com/2019/12/05/this-banana-duct-taped-to-a-wall-is-yours-for-120k-at-art-basel/

Quill

@tipu curate

Denise, that was very generous. Thank you. 🙏

Quill

It's my pleasure.