The Challenge That Hive Poses Us

Hive has a multitude of problems on many layers through many social levels. I've always been open about this, and I've never shied away from the conversation. We are, as blocktrades tells us, lightyears ahead of any other social chain in the crypto-space when it comes to the type of activity that we do here.

What do I mean by that?

Well, Hive (previously Steem) has worked through a unique set of problems never posed to any other social like platform on the internet ever. This is probably because no-one has ever attempted to do what we have in a space so open and free to the end-user in a reward environment that competes for the attention of the chain's audience.

Sure, you hear stories of YouTubers making thousands of dollars per video but that has taken them years to master their craft to get to the point where they are. You might also ask yourself what happens to the millions of others trying to compete for that audience but never getting a look in.

On Hive you can spit out a half arsed post with not much thought to it, that's worded well, that doesn't even need to make it onto google, or gain any traction whatsoever that makes a decent enough reward. Hell, if you have a good following you can even do this twice to three times per day before the reward pot protectors come hunting for you.

But this poses some unique questions which are also quite hard to solve. For example who deserves these rewards? What constitutes as an action that should get a reward? Who are the reward distributors? And should they do anything they please with their heavy reward hands? All great questions, but brutal when applied in practise. Most work here is subjective and one man's Sistine Chapel is another man's dumpster fire.

The debate is a fierce one too. Some people argue that a well written post is reward worthy, whilst others argue that meme's and twitter type posts should be rewarded also. I know I've seen my fair share of Reddit one liners that are sent to the moon with likes. But that's not to say either is wrong, or both are right. Each argument is subjective and personal preference.

And then we look at whale stake. Most of them are really too busy to be sitting here applying the correct amount of rewardage to the correct posts. A lot of them are quite happy to delegate their voting responsibility to a voting bot or another person -- that can go really bad for them if they apply their stake to the wrong trail or a person with malicious intent.

Do you see a whale that comments? I rarely do -- shout out to @themarkymark probably one of the only ones. Oh, and @theycallmedan. But this of course is only because (I assume) they have time to do so. I am not throwing out shade in this post, only trying to make a point! Time is money.

I am proud of the progress that Hive has made over the last five years though, we have worked through and overcome some serious barriers to social attention rewards that other places have yet to even come across. And boy will it fuck them up. Because people are people and they will try and get away with what they can.

Take when we were first born in the early Steem days. We saw a massive ravine between author and investor. Only a few authors were being upvoted into oblivion and the rest were being left by the way side. Investors were trying to reward only their own stuff, and authors were demanding that they be upvoted. There was no community consensus and it was a bit of a shitshow. But through a process of ups and downs over a steady period of several years we managed to build community tools to disincentivize high greed and/or high take.

So we've been through it all. We've travelled that challenge. Imagine if Ethereum built the blocks to have people be rewarded for writing on their platform in a Reddit style fashion. But, because they haven't travelled our journey they are going to get fucked by a train, especially at this point of time in crypto. But they, like us, will eventually work through all those problems.

So we're quite far ahead.

But to me we will always have the problem of human subjectivity and the drama that it brings with it. Whenever there is money at play expect conflict. Whenever there are opinions and money at play, expect super creative style conflict.

We see this in the culture wars in America right now. What can be seen as a war between the left and right side of Politics can also be seen as a battle between legacy media and outlets like YouTube that provide competition for attention that was previously dominated by TV & Radio. These places were usually gatekept. But now, any moron can pick up a camera and make a video.

It's the same thing but in a different format. We are battling for your attention here for rewards, as are they.

So never go into this thinking that there will be peace and fluffy rainbows and beautifully white kittens, because we're all at war with one another in a weird way. It's just that Hive has brought us together in some weird-comradery through our shared struggles. That's what I like about this place.

I guess I'm here to stay!

Posted Using LeoFinance ^Beta