I remember the first time I came across Hive on nairaland, it was on a thread about online hustles and someone mentioned crypto blogging via Hive and readcash. I asked for more details about these platforms and from the little explanation the person gave, I found myself on both platforms that same day. When I joined, the only thing I knew about Hive was “make a post, sit back and watch the money flow in.” That was the mentality I had when I joined, and of course you all know how things will turn out for a person with such mentality.
So, that was basically the first thing I found hard to understand about Hive; getting rewards. I thought I had it figured out from the start and it worked out for the first couple of weeks. I just show up once a day, publish a post and when I return the next day, I see some HBD on my post, sometimes 2, some other times 3 but I was just glad I was earning. Suddenly, the rewards stopped coming and even after publishing for one straight week, I got nothing. I didn't understand anything about Hive, and I tried reading the FAQ on hive.blog but it gave me a massive headache 😅
Speaking of hive blog, that was what I was using back then coz I didn't even know about ecency or peakd. I eventually gave up after a month of trying to figure out why my posts weren't getting any “money” and I focused on the other platform; readcash. That was where I grew and got a lot of knowledge about blogging in web3. Readcash is a smaller platform but it does have some similarities with Hive and one of the major ones is; engagement. After several months, that was when it finally clicked; the thing I was getting wrong on Hive was engagement, I never commented on any post and even ignored comments on my posts
I got back to Hive and restarted my journey properly. I used the first month to just read and comment on other people's posts, then I made my introduction post (I never made one when I joined) and the post blew up with a very high amount of upvotes. This was when another problem came up; the HBD I earned on the post didn't reflect in my wallet, I got a lower amount than that. Let's assume I earned 40 HBD and I knew the reward would drop in my wallet after 7 days, I checked during that time and saw only 10 HBD. “How?” I asked myself.
It was later on I figured out that 10 HBD went to the HBD wallet and around the same worth goes into HP (Hive power). “Ok, that is half of my earnings, so where did the other half go?” I didn't know who to ask, so I just took it as “that's just how Hive works”. It was several months later when I read someone's post (I've forgotten who) and found out about the curator’s reward and also how rewards received on a post are broken down. I was like “Oh, that explains it,” and that knowledge has been very useful since then.
There are also lots of other similar things I never understood about Hive, and it's majorly because I had to figure out a lot of things on my own and it took time to do so. I found myself skimming through Hive FAQ on Hive blog just to understand some things and it worked out well sometimes but some other times, it just made things worse and left me more confused. But the great thing is that I always found an article or two that properly explained things for me and I understood them better. Hive is huge and I would say it's impossible to understand everything about it in one day, great things take time after all.
Thanks for reading
Connect with me on:
Twitter: @kushyzeena
Readcash: @kushyzee
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