One of the goals of @resonator is to help the Hive community to get better at promoting Hive so that we can accelerate it's growth and take it to the next level. What are the main reasons that people use Hive and who do they benefit?
Hive is a decentralized community, so the Hive 'team' is big but mostly doesn't work in a coordinated way. Being able to combine the talents of each of the Hive users into a group effort would be a very powerful boost for speeding up adoption of Hive's Web 3.0 technology and although this is hard to do, we can help the situation by providing resources, tips and tools for Hive's growth that anyone can use.
We all have our own vision of where Hive can go, but everyone who holds Hive tokens can probably agree that attracting new users, new investment and new opportunities for Hive is going to benefit us all. Maximizing the effectiveness of our efforts to promote Hive requires us to work together and the more we can agree on important questions, the easier that will be.
In this post we are going to discuss the main selling points that Hive currently has and also what type of people are motivated to use Hive and why. This is a useful starting point for like minded people to come together to help each other to promote Hive and also helps us to all be on the same page in this important area.
If you think we have missed out any important points or have comments then please let us know by replying to this post!
Top Selling Points of The Hive Blockchain
What does the Hive blockchain have to offer?
1. Proof of Brain (Get paid to post on social media!)
Although there are many other great features on Hive, the best known one and the one that most people speak about is that Hive contains a built-in way to receive financial rewards for posting creative content online. Proof of Brain began on the Steem blockchain that came before Hive and is designed to allow the community to upvote posts that they subjectively decide are valuable in some way.
The system constantly creates new tokens and awards these to accounts who receive upvotes. This feature is great for creative people and helps them to access funds they might need in order to find time or tools they need to make better content and achieve their goals.
There are a some downsides too, such as that Proof of brain can result in the value of Hive tokens dropping (due to the constant inflation involved) and also that those with the most money invested in the system have the most power to direct rewards - sometimes leading to feelings of injustice.
Target Audience: Anyone who likes to post creative content on the internet and who uses money!
2. Immutable Accounts & Posts
Hive is a system that is powered by blockchain technology that is decentralized and 'immutable'. This means that in almost all cases, comments that are added to the Hive blockchain will never be deleted by anyone other than the owner of the account that created them. There is no centralized corporation or other group that has more power than you do to delete accounts on Hive - so your account is owned by you and you are protected from being totally censored on Hive (unlike existing Web 2.0 social sites like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram).
This is very powerful for activists and people who have messages to share that are controversial or 'unpopular' in some way. If the Hive community dislikes your posts, you might see that you don't receive financial rewards, but your account will not be deleted and you will always be able to post. You will also be able to counteract attempts to downvote you if you have enough Hive Power in your account.
Target Audience: Anyone who loves free speech - particularly activists.
3. Trustless & Transparent Networking
Trustless refers to the way that people can use Hive to interact with each other and even though they don't know each other outside of Hive, each party will be forced to interact in a predictable way. This is because the system is run by electronic 'smart contracts' that are publicly readable and which let everyone know the rules of the system, which cannot be broken or bent.
Trustlessness means that we all know exactly how the system will respond in advance, so we can rely on certain rules of behavior when we communicate with other people. All of the transactions on the Hive blockchain are transparent and publicly visible too - so while people can still talk together privately, we can all see more about other people than we usually can on other networks - which can lead to more openness and ease of communication between people.
Target Audience: Anyone who wants to network with other people.
4. Community Building
Hive allows anyone to create a community that can benefit from all of Hive's features. This means that any number of people can combine their forces to achieve goals, raise funds, work together and to generally help each other out. In addition, people interested in niche topics can meet like minded people and make new friends.
Communities on Web 2.0 sites like Reddit and Facebook are limited in terms of how much they can work together because they have no easy way to share money or raise funds in a decentralized and 'trustless' way. Hive overcomes this and the newer 'layer 2' community features even allow advanced users to create their own version of the Hive token/system and to apply their own rules as they see fit. This is the first time such technology has been available in human history and we are only now starting to see the possibilities come to life.
Target Audience: Anyone who wants to use the internet to share information with like minded people.
5. A Framework for Creativity & Project Development
Hive also has a project proposal system that lets stakeholders vote on project proposals that anyone can create. Projects that receive enough votes will be awarded financial payouts to fund them, so if you have ideas that can help to grow Hive or that Hive stakeholders will like, then you can get a major boost this way to achieve your goals. This is an example of a DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization) and we will see more and more of these in society as time goes by and they are better understood.
There are also many software tools and community groups dedicated to helping software developers to create new projects based on Hive. This means that the very hard work of creating blockchain and social networking features is made much simpler and coders only need to build their own unique features on top of Hive in order to have a very powerful (decentralized) website or app.
From games to health apps to video sharing platforms and art galleries, Hive continues to grow it's ecosystem of exciting websites and projects.
Target Audience: Software developers, entrepreneurs, organizations and other individuals that want to push the boundaries of what internet technology can do.
6. Helping to Spread The Philosophy of Decentralization & Open Source
Hive is one of the few fully decentralized projects in the world. There is no 'big boss' or company that runs Hive. Most of the systems in our world are very centralized, which means that a small number of people hold most of the power and it is often impossible for anyone else to influence the important decisions.
While Hive does concentrate more power into the hands of the accounts which have the most Hive Power, it is always possible for people to acquire more Hive Power to match or equal their power just by buying the tokens or by other methods. Layer 2 projects enable users to duplicate Hive's features and to run their own token that the existing Hive token holders have little influence over. Plus, if all else fails - Hive is open source technology, which means that anyone can take the computer code that runs Hive and then launch their own competing version.
The cost of doing most of this is either free or very low. This means that massive amounts of cutting edge tech power are now available for free to everyone that wants to learn how to use it and has the passion/time to do so.
Decentralization helps us to solve many problems that cannot be solved any other way. However, blockchain technology is still one of the few areas that decentralization has taken off. This means that projects like Bitcoin and Hive are very important teachers for the rest of the world, who are likely to fall in love with decentralization after seeing the benefits in action. Once the world understand why decentralization is important, we will see it being applied in more ways, which should result in greater peace and prosperity for all.
Target Audience: Everyone who values freedom and peace.
Conclusions
As you can see, Hive is much more than just a blogging platform with a cryptocurrency attached to it! Hive offers people powerful ways to connect with each other, to build, to learn, to share and to help to support each other.
Our world has grown more connected through technology but is often less connected because we spend so much time online and not enough time relating to the people near to us. Hive helps to bridge this gap by bonding people economically in ways that motivate them to relate more closely than they would do with 'random strangers' on other online networks. The more tools we have to co-create together, the more we can feel part of a powerful group instead of a disconnected internet user, acting alone!
Hive also offers creative people an outlet to build exciting new products and services online. The limits are only those found in our own imaginations!
Did we miss anything? Let us know in the comments section below!