In my previous post in this guide, I've explained the signing process and some essentials to make your life easy. This post focuses more on rewards among other things.
Post And Editor
Well, this section is more about my individual or personal opinion but could confine my point. I've quite a few editors for writing posts and I have to say publish0x's editor is best among them and the next one is read.cash's editor. Rest all are not quite up to the mark and the same goes with hive,blog. It's not user-friendly and if you want your post to look elite, you'll require some pre-training like basic HTML, which is quite easy though but who wants to type all those tags and brackets. Hopefully, Leofinance and peakd are relatively easy to go editors more like publish0x. And the good thing is by using any one of them your post will be posted on hive,io. And you can access it via other dapps and others can also see your post using any dapp on hive.io. So, I would recommend peakd as your initial editor on hive and maybe later you can switch. So, go and post your first introductory post but first finish this article.
Hive Cryptocurrencies
There are three cryptocurrencies on hive with each of them having its own purpose. But I don't think it was necessary to put 3 different cryptos with relatively identical names in a project which is already quite complex. Honestly, they could have gone with only two of them. You'll get why so after reading about them. So, let's hop in.
HIVE or Hive Tokens or Hive Coins
This is only the first one and it goes with mainly these three terms. It is the primary crypto on hive because it's the liquid one, which means you can use it to trade or for transfers. You can simply hold it in your wallet or trade it, it will not affect your hive account in any manner(just keep this point in mind for few minutes). You can earn a small amount of 0.002 hive tokens every hour from this link. Simply click on the link, enter your username then resolve the captcha and hit submit. Now check your hive account. Hive tokens can also be bought from exchanges.
PS: From now onwards whenever I'll mention "hive" it would be referring to the hive platform and not to the hive token.
Hive Backed Dollars
So, as the name suggests, 1 HBD(Hive Backed Dollar) = 1 USD. But how? it's easy, they are just stacks of hive tokens with each stack having a value of 1 USD. For example, just like 100 cents make a dollar, a specific amount of hive token also makes a dollar(dumb example, but relatable). HBD can be earned from rewards or you can also buy them from an exchange. HBD's are also tradable on exchanges. You can also convert your HBD to hive token from your keychain extension(refer to sign up process in post 1) but it'll take 3.5 days to reflect in your hive account.
Hive Power
Hive Power or HP represents your influence on hive. The more HP you have the more powerful your account will be. But HP is just a native concept for hive, which means you can't use HP at any other place. HP can be earned from rewards just like HBD. You can also earn a small amount of 0.003 HP from this link. Follow the same steps as above. All your HP which you will earn from rewards and faucet will be locked or staked automatically, this staked amount will increase your influence. So, keep it high. The process of staking HP is called powering up or vesting. Hive tokens can be converted to HP instantly but converting your HP to Hive tokens will take 13 weeks and this process is called powering down. As these terms suggest powering up and powering down also up or down your influence on hive. Basically, 1/13th of your total HP will be credited to your account every week in the form of Hive tokens for 13 weeks.
Estimated Account Value: This will represent the combined value of your Hive Account in USD.
Savings: It is just like a savings account in which you can hold your hive cryptos but it will take 3 days to process a withdraw.
Did you understand why I said 2 cryptos will be enough for hive?
This was all about Hive Cryptos, there are still some relative points left but I'll cover them ahead.
Rewards, and Other Terminologies Related to Your Account
So, let's get familiar with some terms on hive. They all are quite similar so, don't get confused between them. And also learn how you can earn rewards.
HiveBlocks
Hiveblock is like a directory that keeps records of all your transactions(refer to Resources section in post 1) on hive.io among other things. You can access it via https://hiveblocks.com/@yourusername , this link, just replace my username with yours. You can see your repo, resource credits, and your voting mana too.
Voting and Voting Mana
When you like a post you can upvote it and if you don't like it then you can downvote it. But these upvotes and downvotes will consume your mana. And there are two separate mana for upvote and download. Voting will decrease your mana but it recharges automatically at the rate of 20%/day. But you can also recharge it faster on this link which is delegation(I'll explain it later). Just go to the link and follow the same process as above then check if your recharge rate is boosted or not on hiveblocks. Because the link doesn't always work due to the unavailability of delegation HP but sometimes it does.
Origin of Rewards
The rewards come from a reward pool that grows consistently and will stop by 2040. This pool consists of all tokens on hive. And rewards will fluctuate based on hive's token values. But how your post will earn? Well, this depends on the number of factors, let's take them one by one.
Reputation Score
It is one of the major factors that affect your rewards, the rewards you will earn, and those you will provide. Don't worry it doesn't mean you have to provide them from your cut. So, basically, reputation is just like your reputation in the real world. The more repo you have the more credible and reliable you are. If you have just registered on hive your initial repo will be 25 which you can see in front of your username and if you are a veteran or posting good content for quite a while then your repo will be high like 50, 65, 75, 80 and more. As you proceed with hive and start posting, your repo will start to fluctuate. If you are receiving more upvotes then your repo will increase and if you are receiving more downvotes then it will start to decrease. Remember that your repo represents how reliable or trustworthy you are. But how it is going to affect your rewards? read ahead.
Upvotes and Downvotes
Upvote and downvote are basically, like and dislike but with more value. All your upvotes will provide a specific amount of reward to the author. The value of this reward(or value of upvote) will be based on your repo and Hive Power(HP). Similarly, when someone else upvotes your post, the value of their upvote will be based on their repo and HP. So, if you post good content and get upvotes from some high-repo people, your post will have a good amount of rewards. But remember your post could also get downvoted which will impact your repo negatively and will also decrease the number of rewards your post has earned.
Comments
Comments are also a source of rewards. So, you can also upvote or downvote a comment, and just like above your vote will have a value specific to your repo. But the rewards on a comment will go to the person who has posted the comment and not to the author of the post. And yes, you can earn rewards by commenting on articles of other authors. But generally, only good, specific, critical, or quality comments get more upvotes, and simple, dull, generic, or plain comments go unnoticed. And remember commenting and voting on comments will also burn your resource credits(refer to Resources section in post 1). You can also earn in the same manner by replying to a comment and so on. But only engage in a constructive thread don't just post comments and replies here and there.
Reblogging
Well, this will only be beneficial if other's do it for you and you do it for them. It's a very familiar term if you have used any social media platform earlier. It's like repost or sharing. So, if you like someone's post and reblogs it then this post will be visible to your followers like any other post you have posted. This way the post will earn more attention and rewards or maybe some of your followers reblog it on their blogs. Although this will not earn you anything. But if someone else reblogs your post then your rewards may increase because now his/her followers may upvote your post. And remember reblogging will also burn your resource credits.
Delegation
There's a completely passive way to earn on hive and that is delegation. So, simply give your HP to other authors, why? Because whatever they are earning on hive, you'll receive a cut from it. This is basically like a loan, which you'll provide to someone and receive interest for it. And you can un-delegate your HP whenever you want to.
Well, that pretty much covers all the rewards.
Rewards Distribution And Payout
Now, what the hell is this distribution thing, right? So, all the rewards your post earns are not going to be yours. The upvoters get their share of rewards too. Yes, this also means that when you'll upvote a post, you'll also get your share when the payout happens. By default, this share is kept at 50/50. So if you are an author then you'll earn 50% of what your post has earned and if you are a curator(just another term for a voter) then you'll earn 50% of your vote's value. But as the value of a vote is based on your repo and HP, and because your HP and repo are not high enough(initially) your vote's value is low, which means maybe you won't earn much or anything from your votes. This could change as you progress on the hive.
PS: There's a tip button at the bottom of every post in peakd dapp which lets a post earn forever.
Now, when the payout happens your rewards will be given to you in the form of 50% HBD and 50% HP which is the default criteria. But you can change this at the time of posting. Don't worry about all this distribution fuss, I'll take an example after the next section to make things more clear.
Payouts
Payouts happen only after the seven days of posting. This applies to everything post, comments, or upvotes. Each of them can earn for seven days, then the payout will happen and your post will stop everything. There's also a $0.02 threshold. If your post doesn't cross that, then the payout will never happen. This also applies to comments. Once the payout occurs you can claim your rewards from the wallet section of any dapp such as hive.blog. Remember your rewards will go to your hive wallet which you can access from the keychain extension. From there you can manage your rewards.
Now let's take an example: Let's say an author @abcde on hive posts an article on hive. This article earns $100 in seven days. And you have also upvoted this post. Let's assume the value of your upvote is $2(which is quite high for a beginner) and the value of 1 Hive Power is $0.5. Now the payout day arrives.
Author Rewards: 50% of post rewards($100) = $50, this 50 dollars will be split into $25-$25, then the author will get 25 HBD worth 1 dollar each and 50 HP worth 0.5 dollars each.
Your Rewards: 50% of your vote value($2) = $1, this 1 dollars will be split into $0.5-$0.5 then you'll get 0.5 HBD worth 0.5 dollars and 1 HP worth $0.5 dollars.
Just put yourself into the author's place to calculate the earnings of your post.
NOTE: If you are using Leofinance as your main dapp then you'll find a lot of dissimilarities with rewards because leofinance has its own reward token LEO, which I'll try to cover in the next post or maybe in a separate post.
Well, that's all for this post, I know I'm late with this post but I'll try to cover the last post asap which will include some more terminologies and who governs hive.
Check the previous post on Hive Guidance at this link.
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Resources
https://hiveblocks.com/@cryptovial
https://hive.blog
https://wallet.hive.blog/
https://leofinance.io/
https://peakd.com/