DEVELOPMENT: STEEMIT VS DHF
For the past two days, I have had the luxury of exploring the hive ecosystem. I will admit that it has been a bit nostalgic, taking me back to a time when i had the luxury of exploring and learning about the hive blockchain. One of the things I noticed was how hive/HBD liquidity had dried up on Bittrex exchange which was once a major trading platform for hive/hbd. I knew there was some sort of debacle between Bittrex-steemit-hive over customer funds during the hostile takeover some years ago, but i did not follow up on the story. Well, if you do know why liquidity has dried up on Bittrex please offer some insight on reverio, I posted a question there on the matter.
Speaking about Reverio, which is a question-and-answer platform on the hive blockchain, I love the front and it jogged my memory of a time in the hive ecosystem when we had thriving dapps like dtube, musing, steemgeek/steemhunt, etc. Those were infact the best times on the blockchain because they led to a more equitable distribution of hive from the reward pool, and it did that in the most effective way by encouraging diversity. This was probably the best thing Steemit (the company) did.
Steemit supports startups/dapps via delegations which directly impacted the users of these dapps and also helped these dapps grow. Unfortunately, these dapps became over-dependent on the handout and failed to grow. Also, the agreement between the dapps and Steemit where not in the public domain, so stakeholders were not in the loop which didn't do well to engender their confidence (esp those who were pissed that the little guys were making more than they wanted).
Now hive has decentralised funds. I went through that recently. There are a couple of core projects funded by the community but mainly on the maintenance of infrastructure. However, it is not doing much for the development of dapps. There are different aspects to the development of dapps. There is the core infrastructural development, but then there is marketing which involves promotion and incentivizing potential users to explore these dapps.
Delegating resource credit/hivepower was a safe way to help dapps grow and incentivise hivian to use these products and services. Unfortunately, hive does not hive a centralised entity like Steemit to make this happen or come to a quick consensus on the matter (perks of decentralisation).
The Hive Decentralised Fund can also function in the manner steemit did during the dapp boom of 2018/2019 by providing dapps and even communities with the required resources to support their enterprise or community for a stipulated period of time, under specific guidelines.
Certain communities are over-saturated because they provide the right incentive for users who would ordinarily engage in other activities. I will let to see the HDF used in more strategic ways that encourage dapps. I do not like the idea of just giving out HBD to proposal without any obligation to keep to the fine print of the said proposal.
On a micro level, I will like to see a shark-tank-style initiative that supports entrepreneurial activities on hive. Let's be honest, there are not that many decent creators on hive. The reward pool can be used in a more productive way that benefits the chain e.g invest in startups on and off the chain.
Finally, the layer 1 hive is doing very well in terms of development. However, on the second layer, it is more or less a hit or miss. We need more entrepreneurial initiatives. It is impossible to grow the internal economy of the hive ecosystem without them. The hive ecosystem was able to produce a ‘mincorn’ in splinterland during the dapp era, and I believe if such initiatives are taken more seriously the blockchain will have more successful dapps. Also, more functioning dapps means users are most likely to keep or use their token within the hive economy as opposed to selling on the market, and also increase inflow into the hive ecosystem.
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Reverio looks really interesting, but also really quiet. With enough publicity within Hive (and maybe some search karma fed through to "traditional" search engines) it could become both a useful resource, and a good "gateway drug" to help onboard people to Hive.
I certainly agree with Hive needing to support more entrepreneurial activity, although there's always the perennial question of how to do it in a way that includes some sensible qualification of prospects, due diligence and a way to recoup the investment with interest to fund even more in the future. Once people find out there's an opportunity to get some free money, abuse becomes an issue, so we'd need to be sure the funds do get repaid in some way or other.
Yeah, most dapps lack the required exposure to grow, which is something major stakeholders need to look into and the general community. This needs fixing asap!
This is why public discussions like this matter, where people can share ideas and those who have the ability to bring those ideas into fruition process them. Yes, there will always be the risk of exploitation but the benefits of such ideas scaling override whatever shortfall we might envision. With the right guidelines, I think the idea can pull through
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You're right about the growth of Dapps. There are so many good ones out there, and I haven't yet found a single place where they are all clearly listed with links and an outline of what they are used for. I might have to start one if I can find the time, but I appreciate it would never be complete !
As for how to get them the exposure, I guess it's a blend of getting really significant HP delegations (both from whales and the community) so that they can be "gamified" with rewards, and finding ways to get the community at large to build them into their daily routines. Any Dapp needs a critical mass of regular daily users to stay alive.