Hello!
Voronoi here, looking to learn more from the core blockchain dev team about HF25+ goals and priorities. It would be great to hear if improving Communities at the blockchain-level is part of the the team’s thinking now, and if so, what kinds of updates are being discussed? From the outside looking in it’s not very clear what the priorities are once the housekeeping of HF24 is complete.
In the spirit of your open call, I put together a couple of draft ideas aimed at equipping Communities with token collecting/sharing options. Please keep in mind that while I know Hive well as a user, I am not technical - so some of these suggestions could end up being solutions that frontends can solve, while others might require changes to the chain. That said, here are 3 proposals:
Adjustable Community Beneficiaries
In Short: Community team members (Admins / Moderators) can automatically receive a percentage of the rewards generated by posts published within their Community.
Scenario: A new Community focused on “Crypto Gaming” is launched. A 2% beneficiary is assigned to the Admin, and an additional 3% is split equally across all assigned Moderators (mods). In this scenario a total of 5% of all “Crypto Gaming” post rewards would be split across the Community Team. Ultimately, these beneficiary splits will help build the Team’s stake, giving them more influence to scale their community without the explicit support of a like-minded whale.
Note: This sets the stage for Communities to explore the prospect of developing their own unique applications. Ideally, most Communities could aspire to integrate their own HMT (HiveMind Token? Or are we really still going with that “smart” and “brain” nonsense?)
Adjustable Community Subscription Fees (one-time or monthly)
In Short: Communities with paywalls.
Scenario: A new Community called “Hackathon” is launched with a 10 HBD entry fee to Subscribe to the page. When Subscribing, the user is prompted to pay a one-time entry fee. (This paywall would restrict who can post/comment within the community, but not who can vote). The 10 HBD would go towards a receiver @account(s) assigned by the Admin. In this case, subscribers can submit their proposals for the Hackathon and their fees collectively contribute to a Hackathon Prize. In many other Patreonish use-cases, fee-based Communities might enhance the desire to "use" HBD and give outsiders more reason to purchase it.
Note: I believe paywalls are very important to experiment with in order to give Hive a sustainable economy. I'd imagine this could open up a new wave of potential services like subscribe-able content (newsletters or even commissions when paired with something like this).
Community Advertising
In Short: Fee-distribution to Communities from on-chain advertisements.
Let’s build a new decentralized advertising mechanism across Hive. While burn-to-@null advertising has the potential to put some mild pressure on the token supply, it’s not likely to be impactful for a while. I do like what Peakd created with the “score” (more sent to @null = higher rate of visibility). On top of that, why don’t we bake in options on-chain to swap @null with real accounts within Communities? Ultimately, Communities are where more of the eyeballs are likely to be hanging out anyway. So, how could this work? Community Admins would have the option to opt into tag-based ads and in doing so receive a percentage of the overall advertising fee.
Scenario: The “Hackathon” Community just announced a new contest called "Open Call for Blockchain Games" and want to advertise it across the Hive network. For 50 Hive the Hackathon Admin (or other team member) submits the announcement post to be shared across all Communities that have opted in to ads and whitelisted the #gaming tag. There are 3 communities who have opted in for ads, one of which is the “Crypto Gaming” Community which has the most active users. Here’s how the fee could be broken down:
| Community | #gaming | Opt In | Active Users | Fee (%) | Fee ($) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Crypto Gaming | ✓ | ✓ | 1,250 | 62.5% | 31.25 Hive |
| Chain Games | ✓ | ✓ | 150 | 7.5% | 3.75 Hive |
| Hive News | ✓ | ✓ | 600 | 30% | 15 Hive |
| Gamers Unite | ✓ | - | - | - | - |
| Cool Stuff | ✓ | - | - | - | - |
Fee Income Sharing: From here, I think it would make sense to offer Community Admins the option of how to distribute any potential ad income. In this case, there are two options:
- Team: X fee income shared across Team (opt in requires Admin to select an Admin % + Mod %)
- Community: X fee income shared equally across snapshot of Active Users
Note: Calculations here account for “active users” not “total subscribers” to avoid dead communities milking advertising fees, etc. This is just a first draft idea, there are lots of other factors here that can make this more accurate and honestly more targeted than something like Brave's BAT mechanism. We've got the pieces here, why not put it together?
Looking Ahead
I would encourage the core team to explore and post their ideas about Hive here as well. Where do you want this chain to go? What from the old guard do you want emphasized or abandoned? It's encouraging to see ideas like the HBD Market Maker proposal and hope that more people join and post > here < too!