Good afternoon. It is here! Tomorrow Web3Amsterdam.com (ping for a free ticket!)! See you there?
It's been a while since I've posted anything substantial about Hive development but I've been thinking a lot about this lately. In between building our house (which is taking forever and too long haha, but small win: just tested a toilet with automatic shower head TMI TMI TMI!) and maintaining my witness nodes, I've been thinking about an interesting tech mashup: connecting the Hive blockchain with the Fediverse.
Why thinking about this?
As my intention stated earlier this year is to be more dedicated to Hive again, as housebuilding slows down (finally), I started to think more about what is Hive and what makes it special. This is part of a bigger thought experiment and personal goal in my life after building a to big of a house yourself.
One could argue that Hive is multifacetted and has "too many features", whereas in a product world one should build one feature, kill your darlings and dumb down on the one feature. This is what made me think about "what Hive is" / what is the core product? Originally launched as a kickstarter for a new economic model, to get people to use the "Steem token", it grew into a community. And is that a success I mean: economy === community? Maybe it is. A community which is bound together by all these apps and initiatives build on top of the core blockchain.
And the core blockchain revolves around basic features: transferring value plus a database optimized for storing and discovering media content with a social graph (following / followers).
Hence I am now exploring, through this (hopefully) thought provoking / discussion initiating post, how to double down on the origins of Hive/Steem: the decentralised social network function of the Hive blockchain. Which might (or not) be able to be enhanced and hooked into other decentralised (social) networks through enable Fediverse features?
Disclaimer: when researching this topic I noticed that there was an initiative by @hivetrending getting Hiveposh users visible on the fediverse by bridging HivePosh users, but that seems to not work at the moment. But especially curious to hear your input!
So what's this Fediverse thing anyway?
The Fediverse is basically a collection of independent social platforms that can talk to each other. For example Mastodon (a Twitter/X alternative), PeerTube (YouTube alternative), Pixelfed (Instagram style), and others.
The great thing is that these platforms can all communicate with each other even though they're running different software. It's similar to how email works - I can use Protonmail, you can use Outlook, but we can still exchange messages. That's federation in action! It feels pretty decentralized right? How cool would it be to join this network with the decentralized Hive Blockchain?
The technical stuff - protocols and more protocols
To make things simple :sarc: there are a couple of protocols for one federated world :P
- ActivityPub: Standardized by W3C in 2018. Most modern Fediverse platforms use this one.
- OStatus: The grandpa protocol that ActivityPub largely replaced.
- Diaspora protocol: Used by the diaspora* network.
- Zot: Used by Hubzilla, offering some unique features.
- And then there is Bluesky (big!) with the AT protocol and let's not forget Nostr.
ActivityPub basically provides a common language for social networks to communicate with each other. It uses JSON-LD and something called ActivityStreams 2.0.
For the technically curious among you, check out fediverse.party for more details!
Why would Hive want to join this
The Hive blockchain is amazing on its own, with apps like PeakD, Ecency, LeoFinance, and many others. A huge ecosystem spreading its tentacles through all these apps and creative developments made by many of you. Connecting to the Fediverse could potentially bring some advantages, worth thinking about:
- Massive new audience: Your Hive posts could reach millions of Fediverse users who've never heard of blockchain.
- Content discovery: The Fediverse community is diverse and engaged - perfect for finding new readers.
- More decentralization: Both Hive and the Fediverse value user ownership and censorship resistance.
- Spreading the reward model: Mastodon users discovering they can earn crypto for their content!
- Potential PR / Promotional value? Headlines like: "Decentralized Hive Blockchain joins the Fediverse"
LeoThreads seems particularly well-positioned for this integration. It's already Twitter-like in format, which would blend nicely with Mastodon's microblogging style.
But wait... it's not all fun and fun
There are quite some serious challenges to implement this. And being part of Hive for almost (or) over 9 years now (I lost count here!), they should not be neglected.
Blockchain is forever, Fediverse isn't perse.
Here's the big one: Hive content is permanent. Once it's on the blockchain, it's there forever - that's literally the point! But in the Fediverse, users expect to be able to delete posts or even their entire accounts.
Think about this scenario: A Mastodon user replies to your Hive post through some bridge service. They later decide "oh no, that was embarrassing" and delete it. On Mastodon it disappears, but on Hive? It's there forever, permanently linked to your post. Awkward!
Economic models don't match
Hive has this awesome token economy where content and curation get rewarded with cryptocurrency. The Fediverse has... well, nothing like that.
How would this work in practice? Would Fediverse interactions count toward Hive rewards? If not, you'd create second-class content. If yes, you might open up the reward pool to abuse from Fediverse users who don't understand (or care about) Hive's economic system.
Technical headaches to overcome:
Speaking as someone who maintains Hive infrastructure bridging these systems would be a maintenance challenge. Both ecosystems evolve independently, meaning constant updates would be needed.
Our 3-second block time is amazing for a blockchain but could be an eternity compared to traditional databases that Fediverse instances use. High-volume interaction could create serious performance bottlenecks.
Authentication is a mess
On Hive, we use key-based cryptographic authentication. On the Fediverse? Traditional username/password or OAuth. Bridging these authentication methods creates security considerations that are difficult to resolve without compromising one system or the other. Or may I be overthinking this?
What should be built in order to get to full integration?
Despite all these challenges, if someone was crazy enough to build this bridge (and I know our community has plenty of brilliant, slightly crazy developers!) to make true content federation work, we'd need:
- Full ActivityPub implementation with all the required endpoints
- Follower list management for Hive users
- Content translation between Hive and ActivityStreams format
- A push system to deliver Hive content to Fediverse followers
- Translation of Fediverse interactions back to Hive operations
That's a lot of work! Reminds me of building my house - what seemed straightforward at first quickly becomes a complex project with many moving parts :)
My two cents on the whole thing
I've been with Hive/Steem for almost 9 years now, built apps like Hivewallet, HiveWhale (soon back in the waters after hibernation!) and run witness infrastructure. I love this blockchain and our community.
While integration with the Fediverse sounds amazing in theory, I'm practical enough to see the fundamental challenges. Data permanence, economic models, and authentication differences aren't small issues - they represent core philosophical differences between these systems.
That said, I'm all for experimentation! A limited integration focusing on specific use cases (like just federating LeoThreads content one-way into the Fediverse) might be worth exploring as a first step?
What do you think, fellow Hivers? Is Fediverse integration something you'd like to see? And if you're a developer interested in working on this, ping me - I'm always down to discuss interesting technical challenges when I'm not busy plastering walls in my never-ending house project :)
Please be open and speak freely in your response. According to you, the idea could be good, or not good, curious to hear your thoughts. Is it worth it? Or should the network not open up? Should we just stick with RSS-feeds instead or maybe explore connecting / integrating with other initiatives like Bluesky (atproto - the AT protocol) or Nostr?
Or could it maybe be as simple as an app which shows you content from several networks at once, just merging it on the client (viewer's) side and opening up Hive to other federated networks via a webfinger endpoint like @hivetrending experimented with?
Or should we build a "Hive this!" button instead? Where any content on the web can be "liked"? just like the good old Digg.com (it's returning!) days and/or for example Slashdot / Stumble Upon?
@roelandp
(is also my witness name btw :P)