After I wrote my recent post, "Why Hive Feels Less Rewarding Lately (And What You Can Do About It)," my thoughts branched out further. I began thinking more deeply and doing some additional research into why this is happening on Hive right now. As I dug deeper, I realized that the reason we no longer see high-dollar post payouts is actually rooted in the very design of the Hive blockchain itself. The primary factor behind this is the scheduled inflation rate that funds the reward pool.
created using Sora
But before we dive deeper into that, let’s take a moment to look back at one of the most interesting parts of this blockchain’s history. For those who are new to the platform, Hive actually originated from the legacy chain called Steem. Hive was born after a fork from the Steem blockchain on March 20, 2020, at approximately 14:00 UTC. That makes Hive 5 years and 4 months old today, or 1,948 days to be exact.
However, if we trace back to the launch of the Steem blockchain, which went live on March 24, 2016, then the combined history of this blockchain spans 9 years, 3 months, and 26 days, or a total of 3,405 days. So if we consider the full lineage, we’re essentially looking at a 10-year-old blockchain. That is a significant milestone in the world of cryptocurrency, where many projects don’t even survive a single market cycle. The fact that we’re still here, building, growing, and developing, says a lot about the strength of our community.
Now let’s shift gears and talk about something fun: post rewards.
Hive is one of the very few blockchains that offers token rewards for content creation. So how about some cool trivia? Much like the Guinness Book of World Records, I’d like to share with you some of Hive’s (and Steem’s) record-breaking post payouts from the past 10 years.
Let’s start with the highest recorded intro post, which happened nine years ago. This post received a staggering $15,967.63 in upvotes, which is mind-blowing compared to what we usually see today. The post was by the user DollarVigilante, who was already an influencer on Web2 platforms. That probably explains why early whales were excited to upvote his intro post, even though it contained only a few words.
What’s even crazier is that just two days later, he published a follow-up post reflecting on his $15k payout, and that post earned another $9,554.53. That gave him a total of $25,522.16 in pending rewards in a single week.
Can you imagine the excitement that must have brought to the platform back then? Of course, it also raised concerns among other users, since such large payouts were seen as unhealthy for the ecosystem.
But that wasn’t even the highest payout. There was another post that earned even more, and it was about something totally unexpected. It was a makeup tutorial, the first one ever posted on Steemit. Apparently, that novelty was enough to excite the mega whales, who collectively upvoted it to a jaw-dropping $31,543.06 payout. That completely blew my mind when I discovered it. The post became legendary and in many ways even served as a marketing highlight for Steemit at the time.
The title was:
"THE FIRST STEEMIT MAKEUP TUTORIAL bringing Youtubers to Steemit!! Tara is back!"
That $31k makeup tutorial by Guerrint became something of a meme, especially because a few hours later, another user, Roelandp, posted a parody follow-up titled:
"💅 THE FIRST STEEMIT MALE MAKEUP TUTORIAL bringing Youtubers to Steemit!! Roelandp is back!"
That post also caught the attention of mega whales and ended up with a $10,310.81 payout. Pretty wild, right? Back then, whales had a huge influence on the platform.
Of course, it wasn’t sustainable to keep those kinds of rewards flowing. Thankfully, the hyperinflation phase only lasted about eight months. Over time, the influence of whales was reduced through changes to the reward pool, initially with a 75/25 split between authors and curators.
Today, that reward split has been adjusted to 50/50, which seems to be widely accepted by the community and has remained that way.
So now the big question is:
Can we still achieve those outrageous post rewards today?
Hmm… Theoretically, yes.
Really? Well, in theory yes, because the protocol sets a cap of $10,000 for a single post. So it's technically possible. But is it likely? That’s another story.
The reality is, the stakes are now more widely distributed. Many of the tokens are held in liquid form on exchanges, and the mega whales who once could move the needle with a single upvote are no longer as active, or their influence has been diluted. Coordinating enough stakeholders to push a single post to the $10,000 cap is incredibly difficult in today’s ecosystem.
Still, before I wrap up this post, let me leave you with one final fun fact.
The highest recorded post payout ($978.77) on Hive happened four years ago. And guess who authored it? Yes, it was Roelandp, the same user behind the legendary male makeup tutorial. It just goes to show how charismatic and influential he has been, from the early Steemit days all the way through to Hive today.
It’s pretty amazing how far Hive has come over the years. Sure, the way rewards work has changed a lot, but the community is still full of creative, passionate people. If we just keep showing up, building cool stuff, and supporting each other, I think the future of decentralized content will stay bright.
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