Eight Years on Hive

Hi Everyone,

I’m up to eight years on Hive. Every year passes quicker than the previous one. Before I know it, I will be posting about being here ten years. Every year I write an anniversary post. Last year, I wrote my most comprehensive anniversary post. I summarised what I considered my main highlights for each of the seven years. It turned into a mammoth 4000+ word post. I’m glad I wrote it because it really captured the essence of my content since I’ve been here as well as how my priorities have shifted over time. You can read that post here.

This year, I’ll just quickly summarise my focus over the past twelve months, and then I’ll briefly discuss how I feel about Hive, the direction I think it’s going, as well as the direction I believe my account has been and is heading in.

Year Eight (June 2024 to June 2025)

I spent a considerable amount of time on Hive, but less time on this account. Instead, I spent the majority of my time writing content for my @captainhive. That account has become the home for my Spaien Loop content. Sapien Loop is the series of books I have published as ebooks on Amazon. I have also published all the chapters on my @captainhive account. These chapters are also in collection posts on this account.

During the year, on my @captainhive account, I posted all 99 chapters from the book Sapien Loop: Frozen in Time and 13 short stories, which will be collated into another book later this year. Next year, I will write the final book in the series. This has been tentatively named ‘Sapien Loop: Worlds Collide’. I plan to publish this by the end of 2026.

Much of my content on this account has been linked to my Sapien Loop content. I run a monthly Sapien Loop quiz, and I have recently posted a short series linking aspects of Sapien Loop books to our reality. Hive is my best outlet for the content of these books. It is far easier to promote them here than it is on Amazon, where they are buried. It is more difficult to promote on social media, where the algorithms do not work in my favour.

My content outside of the book and short series has been limited, but I still covered a few areas. I briefly wrote about the UK General Election and the implications for the UK. The results were hugely significant as the combined vote share of both main Establishment parties collapsed. The Labour Party, despite receiving fewer votes than they did in 2019, won by a landslide victory in terms of seats.

I also posted a short three-part series about the UK summer riots. In Part One, I discussed the divide that has been brewing in the UK for a long time. In Part Two, I speculated about who might be behind the riots. However, the focus of the post was around the reasons people protested as well as the reasons other people opposed the protests (i.e., counter protestors). In Part Three, I discussed racism, the mythical far right, the police and justice system response to those arrested, and prison overcrowding. I finish the series by discussing the inevitable collapse of the UK and the reasons I believe are behind it.

I also wrote about the US Presidential Election and made my prediction in my post US Presidential Election 2024: Will There Be Fraud?. I incorrectly predicted that the election would be rigged in favour of Kamala Harris. However, I discussed a few possible scenarios if Donald Trump did win. I followed this up very briefly in my Actifit Report.

I continued my annual tradition of the Economics Challenge Series. It was in the same format as previous years.

At the beginning of this year, I posted my peer-reviewed journal and conference papers to this Hive account. I wrote these papers between 2010 and 2016 while I was working in the Queensland Government. Most were published with conference proceedings. Over the years they have become harder to find. To protect them, I posted them to Hive. This guarantees that they will be preserved and kept in a location where I can always find them.

Where is Hive Going?

I don’t think Hive is going anywhere. This is both good and bad. It is not going anywhere, as I believe it is going to be around a long time. The DApps will change. Some will disappear, and new ones will come along. However, the core of the community will remain, and the chain will always have enough people around to keep it going. All of this is good. However, I strongly believe there is a limit to the extent of adoption. The main pull factors of Hive are not strong enough or not relevant to enough people.

One of the biggest selling points of Hive is censorship resistance. This should have been a powerful draw considering the rising level of censorship on mainstream social media. It did not work out that way. This changed when Elon Musk bought X. He did very little in terms of reducing overall censorship on the platform. Instead, he changed the type and targets of censorship. He reinstated many previously censored content creators and used his algorithms to promote them. This gave many people, particularly those who identify as right wing, the impression he opposed censorship. He followed this up with his own rhetoric about free speech and his support for Donald Trump. However, he was still censoring other content using his algorithms. Unfortunately for Hive, people have accepted X as a platform where they have a voice. On top of that, people can earn money on X through posting content.

Another pull factor of Hive was the potential to earn money from blogging. In the early days, this attracted a lot of people to Steem. It was an important factor for me as well. Several of my early posts really pulled in the rewards. The potential for earning rapidly increased as the price of Steem rose. It briefly reached US$8 and remained over US$1 for most of 2018. The majority of content did not benefit from the high prices. The system was inherently unfair. A tiny group of content creators received a large share of the rewards. The only chance the majority of content creators had at earning rewards was by buying votes. This resulted in less to go around for anyone else. The content that showed the most value was of a very low standard. On top of that, there were downvote wars. It became very ugly. The price of Steem continued to fall in 2019, and a vast number of users left Steem. The possibility of earning a few cents was not worth the time. Despite needing to pay a fee, earning on X is more attractive. In addition, if you don’t pay the fee, your engagement is close to zero.

Ultimately, Steem failed when it was taken over by Justin Sun. Everything the remaining community loved about Steem was quickly destroyed. Hive was then created, the majority of DApps shifted to Hive, and it was Steem reborn, but without the massive stake tied to an organisation like Steemit. In the hardfork, the stake was transferred to the Decentralised Hive Fund. This stake is supplemented by newly created Hive. This has allowed Hive to grow with many new projects. However, these new projects have yet to have a noticeable impact on the number of active Hive users. Even Hive’s professional documentary Freechain has not significantly increased the traffic to the Hive DApps.

Hive has been unable to attract investors. The price of Hive has risen and fallen in accordance with the cryptocurrency markets (i.e., the 4-year bull and bear market cycle). The price is moving because of speculation. Hive needs investors who will hold Hive for the long run. We want them to power up their accounts rather than leave their coins on an exchange to dump when convenient. What would Hive need to do to attract investors? I don’t have an answer. I don’t even know if there is an answer. I think investors are not interested in Hive.

Big investors (e.g., banks, financial institutions, large businesses, etc.) prefer to invest in cryptocurrencies that fit or blend into existing financial systems. In regard to social media, big investors prefer centralised platforms that can be controlled. Hive is far more difficult to control because ownership is decentralised. It would be difficult for a few big investors to centralise control. It was only possible with Steem because of Steemit’s enormous share. Even then, the community was able to fight back. Instead of big investors, Hive could attract smaller investors such as myself and the many others already on Hive. We would only need several thousand to make a difference. We are in difficult times; even attracting merely thousands is difficult. This is particularly true given that Hive has consistently been falling in market cap ranking over the past couple of years.

All of the above could be considered as negative news. It would be great if Hive could grow and have a huge number of active users as well as climb back into the top hundred coins in terms of market cap. None of that would be worth it if Hive lost its identity to attract more money. Hive has strongly maintained its identity as a decentralised blockchain that protects content. Steem/it threw that identity away and still failed. If Hive remains small forever, I do not see that as a huge problem. It still works for me and most of the community that have been around as long or longer than me.

My Account

I am committed to remaining on Hive for the long run. My content would have close to zero visibility on another platform. On Hive, I still have a handful of regular followers, and several others pop by now and again. The traffic on my account has noticeably dropped off over the past couple of years. A big reason for that is because of the amount of time I have spent writing the Sapien Loop books. The books are deeply based in the economics I write about on this account, but it seems my regular followers have not seen it that way. That’s one of the reasons I posted the series linking the books to the real world.

Another reason I think my active followers are going down is because I rarely engage with others over their content. I rarely leave comments. My interactions have been limited to just upvoting. I upvote manually as well as automatically. I generally do not read all the posts I upvote. I typically just skim through them to get an idea of what they are and form a rough idea of the vote I’ll give them. I respond to most comments made on my own posts. I feel that is the bare minimum of engagement that should be given, but that probably is not enough to entice more followers.

For now, I’m not going to do too much different. I’ll be spending more time on this account. I will post several posts with character profiles for the Sapien Loop books later in the year. I will also begin writing the final book towards the end of this year or the beginning of next to have it ready before the end of next year. I hope this does not cost me much in terms of followers.

That wraps up this year’s anniversary post. I want to end with a big thank you to all of my followers; over the whole eight years, it has been quite a journey, and there’s still a long way to go.

The Sapien Loop Series

I am writing a trilogy of books titled Sapien Loop. The first in the series is Sapien Loop: End of an Era and the second is Sapien Loop: Frozen in Time. I published both of these books as ebooks on Amazon, and I have posted completed chapters to my @captainhive account. I anticipate publishing the third book in early 2027. I expect to title this book Sapien Loop: Worlds Collide. In 2025, I plan to write short stories about some of the characters and their adventures. I will post these to my @captainhive over the course of the year.

Brief Summary of Sapien Loop: End of an Era

This story is based on the fictional planet Sapia and its sole country, Sapey. Sapey is portrayed as a form of utopia for all its citizens. No poverty. No war. Almost no crime. Opportunities for all.

This was enough for most citizens, but not all. In one of the small regions, some of the citizens had become discontent. They felt something important was missing in their lives. Their discontent did not go unnoticed. Some of the Sapey elite wanted to weaponise this discontent to gain more power. This created more chaos than they anticipated. This led to further widespread social unrest.

On top of the chaos, ambition and greed provoked another enemy. This enemy was on a mission to settle both new and old scores.

Brief Summary of Sapien Loop: Frozen in Time

This story is based six years after the original story. The Downs Region is still suffering from a serious health crisis caused by the contaminated water. The main characters are desperately trying to a find a cure for the illness that has been caused by the water.

One of the main characters has discovered frozen humanoids in hidden chambers. It appears they have been frozen for a long time. These chambers connect to a vast network of tunnels. While exploring the tunnels, one of the frozen humanoids disappears. It appears he has been stolen.

The story takes a step back in time to tell the story of the frozen humanoids. How and why were they frozen? This part of the story also explains the fall of ancient Sapey and the birth of the Sapiens. Can those from the past be able to coexist with those from the present?