Ah, SaaS, or Software as a Service for those who don't speak acronym. I have been thinking occasionally in recent months about the possibilities of SaaS on Hive, and then saw a tweet from @khaleelkazi who was asking about the potential for micropayments for microactions on Leo Finance. For those who might not know, SaaS is essentially software hosted online that you pay for on a subscription basis and access through your web browser, instead of buying and owning it outright. We have all used SaaS. Think of Dropbox, Zoom, or Google Docs. These are very popular SaaS apps used by consumers and businesses alike, but there are many, many more SaaS apps out there that you have never heard of, to do all kinds of things that you probably don't need to do, like data analytics for businesses or athlete management for sports teams or crop management for farmers.
Many SaaS apps offer a free tier which is usually monetized with advertising, and paid tiers which offer premium features for a monthly or yearly fee. These fees are of course usually payable only in fiat currency.
Why SaaS for the Hive Blockchain Though?
So, why consider building SaaS apps on Hive? Because Hive could revolutionize SaaS monetization. Imagine a SaaS platform where instead of ads, users could just pay as they go, or could maybe also opt to perform microactions that earn them Leo or Hive tokens to offset their costs. It could be a win-win for both the user and the service provider, making ad-free experiences more accessible while still driving revenue for the SaaS app and/or for Hive.
When I think about a lot of apps being built on Hive, most are focused on crypto, DeFi, social media, and gaming. Of course these are great use cases for Hive and we need more apps like them. But there is a whole world of SaaS apps out there and who knows how many of them could be done on Hive and offer users cheaper or better service. A great example of this is @brianoflondon's PodPing, which has nothing to do with crypto directly but is taking advantage of our amazing Hive blockchain to make podcast update notifications cheaper, faster, less energy consuming, and more reliable for podcast hosts and aggregators.
And they could bring money into Hive. One crucial aspect to Hive's appeal for SaaS is its capacity for feeless micropayments. Imagine SaaS services that, instead of charging a large monthly fee, allow you to pay as you go without exorbitant transaction costs. This lowers the financial barrier for people to try new services and can result in a more vibrant, well-funded Hive ecosystem.
They could also give current Hivers the ability to pay with Hive or Leo or other tokens for services they would normally have to pay for in fiat. Not only would this be convenient but could provide a financial platform for the unbanked or those without access to traditional financial systems. This would be especially valuable for people in countries with limited access to credit/debit cards or those facing economic restrictions.
And there are other possibilities as well. Some SaaS apps might be very useful for what we usually do here on Hive. Imagine for example being able to insert a premium image into a blog post right inside the editor and pay for it with .01 Leo or whatever instead of paying a monthly fee. Or Grammarly type functionality that you could use for your Hive posts or other writing without having to whip out a credit card AND give Grammarly your personal information.
I'm no tokenomics expert, so take my app ideas with a grain of salt. But remember, SaaS on Hive could present a whole new market dynamic, from the creation of specialized Hive tokens to serve specific SaaS purposes, to stake-based service access, to decentralized governance models for SaaS. The possibilities are intriguing and wide-ranging.
Three SaaS Ideas for Hive
So here are three of my favorite ideas so far. Please, by all means, shoot them down if you think they're stupid or won't work.
1. A Flashcard App Like Quizlet on the Hive Blockchain
I'd like to start with something close to my heart: a flashcard app similar to Quizlet. I've been using Quizlet for years, both as a personal study tool and for teaching my ESL classes. Quizlet allows users to create their own flashcard sets, which can be used like traditional flashcards, or as games, quizzes, and other study activities.
Quizlet has a free tier and a premium tier, QuizletPlus, which costs $35.99 a year. Could Hive beat that price? Could Hive automatically pay flashcard creators for their efforts? Could Hive users offset the price with rewards? Yep. Yep. Yep.
Quizlet has an impressive 50 million monthly users, with $18M in revenue, so it's doing something right. But is there some specific reason that Hive can't bring a few million of them over here?
One worry some might have with putting SaaS apps like Quizlet on Hive is that they will quickly eat up space on the chain. But I don't think all of the data needs to be stored on the blockchain, does it? I mean, it might be useful to have the option to save flashcard sets on chain, but I can't think of a reason why it would be, and I don't imagine most users would ever need to. For this one I think you could probably put all of the flashcard data in a traditional database, so I guess on chain you'd really just need an account, and some staked tokens maybe. Then maybe a post is created with a hash and a link to the off chain database entry and stored on chain when someone creates a flashcard set.
I started doing a mind map of how this kind of app might work, but I think I'm going to do a separate post on just this idea and flesh it out more there.
Come to think of it, I actually have already built a flashcard app myself for teaching my ESL classes, which could serve as a starting point for this kind of project 🤔
2. The Hive Blockchain's Very Own Crypto and Blockchain Job Board
The crypto job market is obviously only going to get bigger and Hive could carve out a significant chunk of this sector with a job board. The alignment with blockchain tech makes Hive an ideal candidate for this space.
We have HiveList, which is great, but it's a general classified site going up against incumbents like Craigslist. A crypto focused job board would only be competing against a few other relatively new job boards and if done right could quickly end up being on top.
Another win with this idea is that everyone using it, both employers and job seekers, will presumably have no problem creating a full Hive account, so no need for lite accounts. Employers should also have no problem paying in crypto to post jobs.
Another layer of icing on this cake is that it would put Hive in front of the eyes of a lot more coders. Imagine having the best up and coming coding talent in crypto searching for jobs right here on Hive. It kind of gives us first dibs.
Another good thing about this is pricing. This is something where no free tier is necessary. The top crypto job board at the moment is CryptocurrencyJobs.co. They charge $299 per job posting with a 20% discount for bulk postings. Whoever builds this on Hive could potentially really rake in some cash. That price seems like it would be pretty easy to beat. Just have to get a few crypto companies or projects on board. We already have a few potential job applicants right here on Leo Finance, I'm sure 😉
Again, not all of the data for this would need to be on chain. Job postings generally are meant to be short-lived so they don't need immutability.
Actually, this app could be the simplest of all of them. Just throw up a page that says "Congratulations! You've got a job! Click here to create your account and start making money WHILE you job hunt."
And even more actually, this could be expanded into something like LinkedIn but for crypto. After all, this is a social media blockchain. Imagine social job hunting like on LinkedIn only better because you can be anonymous and also wouldn't be filled with corporate cheese posts.
Another point with this: Do you think there are people who would appreciate being able to apply for jobs without having to reveal their identity to the company first? This could go beyond just crypto jobs and be a contender to compete with big job boards for all kinds of jobs with such an angle. I know that when I apply for a job, I would prefer if the company didn't have access to any of my personal info until they were ready to interview me, or better yet not until they were ready to hire me.
3. Simple Task Automation App on Hive
Think IFTTT but for Hive. IFTTT (If This Then That) is a web-based service that automates tasks between different apps and devices. It works on a simple principle: if a certain trigger happens in one app, then an action is performed in another. For example, you can set it up so that every time you post a photo on Instagram, it automatically gets saved to your Dropbox. Or if you're a smart home enthusiast, you could have your smart lights turn on automatically when your GPS indicates you're near home. These little tasks are called applets on IFTTT.
This would be a great service to offer for micropayments. IFTTT charges a monthly fee of $2.50 per month for up to twenty applets (the free tier is limited to two applets), and $5.00 per month for unlimited applets. But micropayments would be great here, as you could charge a very small amount every time an applet runs, instead of forcing users to pay up and commit long term. It could also offer all of the advanced features, which IFTTT doesn't offer to free tier users, to all users. And it could still have monthly plans and give a discount to heavy users.
Man, thinking about this is getting me excited about micropayments. I think there are probably a lot of people out there who don't mind paying for stuff, but would rather not get stuck with constant bills for stuff that they ended up not using enough to justify the cost. Micropayments seem like the future where we can just pay for what we use and reduce wasting money on stuff we didn't use while making some bastard filthy rich.
Conclusion
In a nutshell, the potential for SaaS on the Hive blockchain is massive and largely untapped. The ideas I've covered here—flashcard apps, job boards, and task automation—are just the tip of the iceberg and the first three I've done a little research on. I've got a long list of other ideas in the pipeline and will be sharing some of them in future posts. Hive's ability to handle feeless micropayments could revolutionize how we interact with and pay for online services. So, whether you're a developer, a Hive enthusiast, or just someone intrigued by the future of SaaS, now's the time to dive in.
Oh, and the 127 tries or so it took me to generate the two images in this post, each one of those could have been monetized with micropayments as well.
