Earlier today, I had a conversation about hive which prompted me to write this post. The conversation was centred on third-world countries exploiting Hive and the general state of the chain. So this is a detailed response to some of those claims.
Third-world leeches
I am aware that a few people from the first world do not appreciate the contributions of hivians from third-world countries. They see them as leeches who only take and give nothing in return. They want more people to buy and hold hives for speculative reasons and people from third-world countries cannot contribute in this manner. It is kind of sad reading takes like this when you know that most of what we consider to be Western civilisation was built on the backs of brown people and resources of third-world countries, but that's a discussion for some other day.
My question(s) to those who do not value the contributions of Hivians from third-world countries: What do you think will happen when you alienate participants from third-world countries? Will that bring your first-world country friends to Hive? Would that make them buy Hive? Who in the first world wants to spend 6-12 hours a day to earn $5?
Over half of the hive traffic (that are not bots) comes from countries like Venezuela, Nigeria and Ghana. These demographics make up a chunk of your active users. You also have a significant number of Hive curators and community managers from this same demographic because they are the only group willing to do these jobs for peanuts.
Let's not forget that most of the people who have benefited the most from Hive are from first-world countries. I know people who were earning $200-$300 per post back in the day that are nowhere to be found. Some even stayed back on Steem to support a usurper. It has been these third-world communities that have been active here through difficult times, and yes, they aren't doing so for altruistic reasons.
Most hivians from third-world countries like Venezuela, Nigeria and Ghana need their hive earnings to survive. You cannot tell someone who hasn't had a decent meal to plan for the future except you are deliberately being obtuse or wicked. I clearly do not understand why providing people with a means of livelihood would bother anyone.
Now it is also important to state that these content creators (most times) earn upvotes on their posts. They did not coerce any person or group; neither did they beg. Hive says: create good content to earn; engage to earn; support community projects to earn. People do these things and somehow it is bad for Hive?
Now you might not like content from people from certain demographics. Everyone here has the freedom to express how they feel with their vote. If your vision and goals do not align with that of the collective you have the option to power down and move on or at least create something different on hive. What you really cannot do is police what people curate. You can appeal to the minds and conscience of people to see the benefit of holding hive or curating engaging content but you cannot force your opinions on other people (well except you are a whale).
A platform is as good as what it curates
If anyone thinks hive is shitty then the onus is not on the creators but the curators to justify their actions of rewarding subpar content. The basic principle behind capitalism/free market is that people are selfish and will pursue selfish interests and by doing so benefit the collective by creating tools and services. However, when the bar is set low people will engage in low-quality activities as it is the proven way to gain the most out of the system.
Curation on Hive has been a subjective thing. This is why we keep having this debate about quality content which is a false narrative. Quality content isn't engaging content. In our pursuit of quality, we've turned the blockchain into an echo chamber where people write content to earn. If engagement was prioritised maybe people will take out time to research and write about relatable topics that will earn views and comments; maybe people will spend more time promoting/sharing their posts.
Maybe it is not about content
Some Hivian argued that the sole purpose of Hive curation is distribution -- to get the token in as many hands as possible, and I do agree. You can't have a decentralised chain if it's only accessible to those who have money to purchase it. If that were the case you will have venture capitalist chains like Polygon, Solana, etc where most of the activities are simulated by bots.
Hive is doing great in terms of providing a solid infrastructure for the distribution of its token. However, it cannot do everything right. No Base layer can. When was the last time you heard about Ethereum doing something exciting? No one talks about Ethereum anymore, however, most of the developments in the crypto space are EVM-compatible. They are building on top of a crappy chain. The point here is Hive isn't broken or needs fixing. It is doing what it does well. To take the chain to the next level we need more and better layer-two solutions and applications.
Hivians don't appreciate hive enough
As an active airdrop hunter, I can't help but laugh when people complain about Hive. 99.9% of the chains and crypto projects out there are dead. Most of the people using these chains are either crypto traders or airdrop farmers like myself. Hive is one of the few blockchains with actual normies. I don't know if people understand how important this is to the future of this space. They are so pressed about VC money and want people to buy their bags but they miss the big picture.
If there is any chain capable of onboarding the masses it is certainly Hive. Yes, it needs to do a lot more work in marketing but that's a problem layer 2 solutions should solve. Leofinance, 3speak, Ecency, etc should all promote their platform and grow their user base. They can define their platform culture (leofinance is currently doing this) and attract the users they need to grow their community.
Conclusion
I have been on Hive for half a decade. I have experienced what many will consider to be our glory days but those days are long gone and will never come back. Hive has evolved from what it used to be in its early days.
Hive is not your moon coin. If you are betting on the token to 100x then you are going about this the wrong way. What you should consider is its use case; the number of active dapps in our ecosystem and how to keep existing users active and bring in new users. Let's focus on getting and keeping more people here.
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