Disclaimer
Before starting the recap itself, I wanted to mention a few things.
First, I believe I won't be the only author to publish a recap of this event and, because of that, I will avoid tagging the Hive usernames of the people mentioned in this article, as I don't want to add to the flood of notifications I expect them to receive. If you want to find out more about any of these people, I believe you won't have trouble finding them on the blockchain but drop a comment if you need help with that and I will do my best to assist you.
Also, some people shared very similar - or even identical - opinions on some topics and, for the sake of simplicity and to avoid unnecessary repetition, I won't mention every single person who talked on the Space and will prioritize the different topics or opinions that were shared.
And, finally, even though I will try to do my best to convey the points shared on this Space, I strongly recommend everyone to listen to the recording in case you missed it because it was one of the best things I've listened to in the last few months!
With that being said, let's get to it.
Hive Town Hall 3
Before actually starting discussing the topics on the agenda, Eric (anomadsoul) started by announcing that the steempress witness is being shut down and he warned people to check their witness votes and remove steempress in case they were voting for that witness.
I don't really know what to think of it because I must admit I didn't really know much about that witness however, it's always a strange feeling to hear that a project is coming to an end, especially one that has been around for a while. In any case, I wish all the best to the people behind steempress!
He also mentioned the proposal put in place by vimm.tv to help rebuild. I decided to support that proposal because they are not asking for a huge amount of money and I believe vimm.tv adds a lot of value to Hive. We really need to get more streams happening there and hopefully more integration between vimm and other Hive dapps.
And now, without further ado, we will actually get into the topics that were discussed during the Space.
The first person to actually speak about one of these topics was r0nd0n. He started by saying that the idea of removing (or at least repurposing) the rewards pool is not his, and it's also not new by any means. It's a discussion that goes way back and it resurfaces every now and then.
One of the points he made is that rewards could be moved to layer two, which would help to decentralize things further and the share of inflation that currently goes to authors should be redirected to something else. Something that brings more value to the blockchain.
At this point, Eric made a very important point that should not be overlooked. Everything that was discussed was merely ideas. Nothing that was said is currently being worked on, so it's highly unlikely that we will see any changes in anytime soon.
A change of this magnitude would take months to plan and even more time to actually implement.
I don't really agree with removing the rewards pool, but I also have not given it a lot of thought. As we will see in a bit, many interesting points were made, and even if I don't change my mind after careful reflection on what was shared, it's definitely something to think about.
Someone made a comment that I think was a bit overlooked. They mentioned that a lot is said about AI-generated content but almost no one talks about those giveaway posts that distribute a few cents in prizes to the winners while raking up several dollars from the pool.
I could not agree more with that. And by that, I don't mean AI content is ok (more on that later) but there are many other problems already going on that are sometimes ignored in this kind of debate. I also don't mean that all giveaway posts are bad content but I have seen a fair share of them that were made with the sole intention of farming the rewards pool.
Eric then went on to say that, in his opinion, one of the issues with rewards is that stake is the only thing that's considered in the current model. He proposed that things like the attention that a piece of content brings to Hive should also be considered.
I tend to agree with him on that one but I also think something like that needs to be implemented with a lot of caution and planning because there are many ways to game that kind of statistics and that could make the problem even worse.
Many of the participants agreed that payments should be made to content that brings value to Hive but that leads to a question that, in my opinion, is very hard to answer: what is value? And how to measure it?
The 3speak team chimed in here, mentioning that they are working on a system that is based on statistics and hard metrics, leaving no room for subjectivity. I'm looking forward to learning more about that.
R0nd0n made an interesting point about the 7-day window limitation that Hive has when it comes to rewarding content. What if a piece of content goes viral after this window and starts attracting a lot of visibility to Hive? Should it not be rewarded for that?
I think that's a very interesting point and there is at least one very interesting model to address that but I will discuss that in more depth soon.
Edicted made a rather bold statement that AI isn't really a problem because if the content is good, it doesn't matter who - or what - created it. In his opinion, content either has value or doesn't and nothing else matters.
I must say that caught me by surprise! My first reaction is to frown upon the idea of AI-generatedI generated content but that is indeed an interesting point. Is it really more important to ensure that content is generated by humans, even thou that might mean compromising quality? I don't know but this has given me a lot to think about!
Khal also made an interesting point about how ad revenue can be a very suitable solution for this dilemma. Rewarding people with part of the ad revenue they generate can be a nice way to go about it because a user's rewards would be directly tied to the value they bring to Hive, regardless of whether said user is a real person or an AI.
I agree with Khal that this can be a very interesting system and I like to see that's somewhat the route InLeo is taking but that still leaves the question of how to measure value. In this case, I assume it would be measured by the revenue brought in through the traffic the post generates and that makes sense but wouldn't it be too easy to "game" the system? I guess there are ways to prevent that but it's not really my area of expertise.
Deann Dova raised an important point to defend keeping the reward pool as it is. She mentioned that Hive is literally giving people drinking water and putting food on their tables. Removing the rewards pool would make Hive closer to X and, as she said, if she wanted to be in a place like X, she would just be on X.
I completely understand her point. Even though I live a comfortable life, I come from a developing country and I know how Hive rewards can be life-changing to some.
Edicted returned to make a "closing statement" and he did a great job at that. He said that if we want to get rid of the rewards pool, all we need to do is show that it would help decentralize Hive even further. If it does, get the numbers to show it.
I like that line of thought. I believe that regardless of their proposal, almost everyone believes that their idea is the best for Hive as a community and it's about time we start approaching this from a data-driven perspective. To me, that's the only way to remove some of the subjectiveness of the matter and deal with it in the most unbiased way possible.
Additional thoughts
Some people had comments and questions that were not exactly related to the main topics discussed above, but I still believe that they are worth mentioning.
Someone asked why it is important to vote for witnesses and if they should vote outside the top 20. A nice discussion on the importance of witnesses and variability followed. I'm not entirely sure what to think about voting outside of the top 20 because I usually vote for witnesses that are aligned with my opinions but someone made a point that a vote for the top 20 is "wasted" and I believe that's worth at least thinking about.
Taskmaster also mentioned that we didn't have anything on layer 2 exploding since Splinterlands and I agree with him. Although I believe we have a few projects that are headed in that direction such as InLeo, VSC and a couple of others, they're not there yet.
And that's a wrap! Those were the main points discussed on the Town Hall and my take on them.
Again, I can't stress enough how important it is that you listen to the recording of this Space because it was a very good one and you may have a different view from the one I just described.