A lot has happened in this platform in the past 4 years. Recently, an article was realized about the rebellion against the Steem empire. In an article on decrypt, a very lengthy story was told on how Justin Sun acquired Steemit from Ned Scott.
For most of us, we know the story. We followed the witness control fight on Twitter, saw numerous accounts get block by Justin Sun and saw the news when he tried to steal the steem from those who were against him. There even is a Hivebuzz badge that was awarded to over 700 people who downvoted him on his 'own' platform. I put 'own' in quotations, because technically, Steem doesn't belong to him. He bought Steemit, a company, and not the Steem blockchain, nor Steem the cryptocurrency.
But the scary thing for me was a part of the story I didn't know. Let me share that part with you:
A week later, Notestein realized that Scott and Larimer had used the surprise launch to give themselves a head start to mine 80% of the supply of Steem tokens.
Now, while a large part of this 80% was redistributed and the further decentralized over time, this is really a blow towards something that many newcomers considered a decentralized platform.
As you can see, there is a lot of baggage that comes along with Hive. For some this is a brand new platform. For others, it is part of a community that split up. Of course, I don't want to dwell too long on the past and I want to look at the future.
Looking forward: #FutureHive
During one of our many discussions on Twitter over the past month, a discussion arose about what the best way to onboard new members to Hive.
Certain parts of the community felt that it was the web3.0 way to go join a tribe. This means that you join one of the communities that best fits your interest and grow with them. This of course, does make sense. You immediately get connected with likeminded people, you get support from the get go and you are also welcomed, no matter your background as long as your interests are aligned with the rest of the tribe.
This idea also connects with the mindset of the tokenization of Hive. Even though this isn't official term as of yet, there are several tribe/community tokens that can already be earned on this blockchain. Both LeoFinance and CTP offer this option, which allows you to earn tokens on the side. The layer concept was already announced years ago als SMT's (Social Media Tokens), but never really took off on Steem. On Hive several communities have been very vocal about it in their respective tribes, but it is not common knowledge for someone just starting out, unless they are part of a tribe that explains it.
Where the real issue comes in, is if we look at the Hive from a collective perspective. Tribe life is fine, but it does narrow down the people that join and stay significantly. If a newbee can't find a tribe or doesn't figure out how tribes work, they kind off become isolated and lost. Tribes also tend to focus more on specific topics than just general posts. For the tribe system to work on Hive with millions of users, the amount of tribe should be drastically be diversified. There are already several successful tribes, but aside a handful of interest based tribes, most of them are country driven, which again, isn't a bad thing, but it is limiting and inclusive.
Of course, every problem has a solution, so we are searching for solutions here. My questions to you are:
Should joining a tribe be part of the onboarding process on Hive? And why?
What are your tips on how we can better accommodate new community members to become active Hive members within the first weeks.
Considering now everyone who joins will remain active (that doesn't happen on other platforms either): What would you consider a reasonable percentage of members still being active 6 months after they joined Hive?
Looking forward to your response. Feel free to write your own take. Discuss with others, whether it is a comment here or on your own post. I've used the tag 'futurehive' to label this topic, so feel free to use it as well.
Disclaimer: Do to local lockdown and bad internet facilities, I will respond to all comments Monday night (-3 GMT).