Around 100 days after Hive forked from Steem the two tokens are at a very similar price according to @coingecko.
Hive has generally been ahead, but has slipped back recently. This may be down to various factors such as less people buying it now they have sold off all their Steem. Some Steem fans may still be selling Steem as they have to wait longer to power down. Those who are still milking Steem may be trying to prop it up so they can cash out and make a profit.
What is clear is that we need to make Hive the more attractive platform for the majority. It should not be an exclusive club that benefits a few. Contrary to what I have heard from others I do not believe that most of the witnesses are just out for personal gain. We have lots of them and many will not be making much. Unlike on Steem the community does get to decide who ranks highest, so use your votes to support the witnesses who you think do good for the platform.
I do concur that some big accounts tend to support their friends (or themselves in some cases), but in general we are seeing a better spread of votes than we had on Steem. Few people are buying votes and the community voting projects are getting rewards to many small accounts. If you can seek out new people who produce good content and get the attention of those projects then you stand to do better from curation than by just automatically voting for those who always trend. I have benefited from this myself.
I will plug @tenkminnows that does auto vote, but only for small accounts. Delegating to it or following the trail will help them grow. We are now further from 10k minnows than before the fork, so we need a push on that.
Although Hive is generally less prone to abuse than Steem it still goes on here. There are various people who self-vote or 'circle jerk', sometimes doing it at the last minute. We need less selfishness if we want Hive to succeed. With the way rewards are split you can do pretty well from curation, so there should be less need to self-vote.
I will not name the accounts, but I have seen this case where this represents the outgoing votes of an account with 20k HP. The blue part is self-votes and all voting is done after four days with multiple posts put up daily. The person will argue that they deserve it when they see whales voting up others, but they actually get dollars per post anyway thanks to some large accounts. That is the sort of behaviour we can do without. This person has been made aware that they are being antisocial, but as it is a minor case I will not expose them, for now.
There are various projects working to protect Hive from spam, plagiarism and other absuse including @spaminator, @hivewatcher (previously @steemcleaners) and @cheetah. You can support them or just check on what they are doing. What is vital is that they have an appeal process as people who are willing to change their ways should be given a chance. I have seen brand new accounts attacked by some for minor transgressions that may result in them just giving up. If they have something to offer we should not drive them away.
We also need effective marketing of Hive. Without a well-funded central company that is harder to organise, so we have to find alternatives. @hivepeople (organised by @stellabelle) are working on this, so talk to them if you can help. We need to do more than just post on social media.
Another couple of projects I want to mention are:
- @giftgiver give free delegation to people who need it for a limited period. I keep hearing about new accounts running out of Resource Credits as they may create an account, but get no delegation. Those of us with enough HP could be helping them out too.
- @fullalt are doing things like @hivetips that allows you to easily tip people on Twitter with Hive. It tells them to create an account if they do not already have one.
I have already mentions a few accounts you can check out, but here are some more to make a proper #FollowFriday post. Please consider doing your own to help people who deserve it to gain followers and support.
- @bhoa is one of the Nigerian community who is working hard to recruit new users.
- @mistakili is also in Nigeria and doing the same.
- @santigs is recruiting musicians from Barcelona. One of his successes is DJ @rogerfreedom. More are on the way.
- @nathanmars is a marketing machine for Hive on Twitter. He is organising a meetup in London on Sunday, so contact him if you want to be there.
Please support people who make Hive a better place. If it grows then we all benefit from more content and, potentially, a better token price.
Hive five!