Hive Power Up Day September 2024

It's the first of September, and Hive Power Up Day !

Image created by AI in Nightcafe Studio. A bit surreal and not what I expected from the prompt I entered, but I like it !

I've powered up 10 HIVE this time around. While it's less than usual, it's because I want to keep most of my liquid HIVE to but SBI's for people and to convert to HBD. Right now, I haven't got enough fiat to buy more HIVE !

Overall, I must admit I'm feeling mildly bearish about Hive right now. This is for three reasons...

1. The Long Term Price of HIVE

While there are fluctuations due to normal crypto volatility, the price of HIVE has been gradually but steadily declining since hitting an ATH back in November 2021.

Most of the fiat I've invested in HIVE over the last couple of years was bought at a price significantly higher that the current one. I'd like to see a general slow upward trend before investing more !

2. Concerns About The Governance Model

The recent change in the interest rate for HBD from 20% to 15% has given me some concerns about Hive's governance.

15% is still a great rate of interest. What concerns me is that it was done in a single painful jump, which feels like a knee-jerk reaction. I have long argued that more frequent incremental changes would retain user confidence far better, especially as HBD is supposed to be a stablecoin.

To me, the issue is the way Hive is governed. To be a top 20 witness, the main qualifications appear to be popularity and (even more so) the technical knowledge, hardware and reliable infrastructure to be able to run a node.

So we are governed by some highly accomplished technocrats. All of the ones I have come across are great people who are working hard in the best interests of Hive.

But how many have a broader background in business or finance, as well as technical knowledge ? I just don't know.

3. The Lack of Mass Adoption

Hive feels like a very exclusive club. There are some seriously wonderful people here ! But we've got a few thousand active members, and that's all. It's a far cry from the billions using Facebook, X or Telegram.

With just a few members, we're already making a difference in the real world, with projects like the wells in Ghana and rolling payments out to local businesses in Sucre.

Just imagine the impact if we had millions of active Hivers, or even just a coupe of hundred thousand ! I think that getting to that point should be our absolute priority.

Some Ideas For Solutions

I never like to complain about things without trying to offer some kind of solution, even if they are ones I don't have the in-depth knowledge or resources to carry out personally. So here goes... and I appreciate these are disjointed ideas, not any kind of fully-formed manifesto.

Hive Price

I recognise that the price of HIVE to a great extent is just down to it tracking overall crypto trends.

But I think that the key way to break this is to find ways to gain mass adoption, and do more to tackle the perception that Hive is a pool of funds just being drained from the DHF by top witnesses and proposals voted on by popularity rather than because they've got a business plan demonstrating how they deliver more in returns than their cost.

Governance

Hive's governance isn't bad. So I feel that the changes needed are tweaks rather than an overall re-design.

The kind of things I have in mind include;

• To adjust witness rewards so that they tail off more slowly. That way, witnesses just outside the top 20 at least have their costs covered. We'll need the processing power of more witness nodes if we can gain wider adoption !
• To develop ways for non-technical people to become witnesses. I guess this means making more easily deployable light nodes that an ordinary member could set up. Again, we'll need processing power if we are to scale up, and I believe we need a wider spectrum of skills involved in the decision-making process.
• To develop a "template" for proposals wanting DHF funding, illustrating the expected benefit, how (in detail) the funding is to be spent, and how it will be repaid to the DHF (either through earnings directly from the project, from growth in Hive membership, cost savings, or whatever). Also, that proposals should show a timeline with criteria for success so that funding can be removed from it if it badly misses it's goals.

Adoption

This is probably the hardest one of all. Hive doesn't really have a "figurehead" personality in the way that Web 2.0 social media businesses do. We don't have a Musk or Zuckerberg who is always in the news. We don't even really have any high profile influencers.

What we do have are imaginative and talented developers.

So I believe what we need is something that will capture the imagination of non-Hivers in the way Splinterlands did, and an even easier onboarding process. It doesn't have to be a game, it could be some really novel app of another kind, payment processing method or whatever. But whatever it is, it should combine the easiest possible onboarding process with a really strong marketing campaign focused on non-Hivers. We may need to even get non-Hive influencers on board to help spread the word.

So that's what I'm thinking right now. Happy HPUD everyone ! 😀