Had a few interesting conversations with a few hivers today.
The discussion came up that we're "bleeding" users or that we're not maintaining population replacement rate, which I assumed means we're losing more active users than new active ones joining. I just noticed a new one who had joined and commented on a post of mine, now if they're really new or just on a new account is anyone's guess. :P That's one of the tricky things about Hive, maybe I'm talking to the same person in my comment section even though there's 20 unique usernames at times.
Anyway, I wouldn't be surprised if we may be losing users. Hive is kind of unique in many ways and many are motivated by the earnings rather than the Hive they earn. What I mean is that they mainly care about the value amount rather than how much stake they can build before inflation drops and it gets harder to earn it the same way they may earn it now.
I'd be lying if I said these prices don't weigh on you, not that I'm really in a rush to sell hive for fiat or to buy shiny things, but I could definitely use more value to continue building one of my projects which requires it. For a long time now I've been at a place where I've felt the price of hive is too low to lock it up in my projects as everything that matters there is fiat value, because naturally people working on it (although maybe not all) aren't really looking for a long term investment and happy to receive 60% less value because Hive might 3x from here in the near future. It'd be delusional to expect that, similar like how people with active proposals aren't expecting to get 3x less pay just becase hive dipped from 30 cents to 9.
To get back on topic, yes we might lose some users here and there but it's important that we keep new users joining, because one thing that many forget is that, while account creation is kind of a barrier and a hassle at times, it leads to making sure those users store their keys and "have them" (at least most of them who are careful and thoughtful enough). This means that they can come back whenever they feel like or if Hive lures them back somehow in the future, either through word of mouth - the same way they may have been onboarded - or because Hive is in the news or doing well in terms of price action or a new shiny dapp appeared that got them to come back through other paths.
I don't remember who posted about this, but way back when the former name of Hive did well and there was a long queue waiting for a free account from the company that shall also not be named, there were some stats posted about returning users. They weren't numbers to joke with, either. You could also notice it in terms of engagement as I was posting the way I may be doing now, more often, you'd see familiar usernames you hadn't seen in a while pop up in your comment section and you'd welcome them with a response, vote on the comment or a quick checkup on their active posts. It was funny how most of them did the whole "I need to come up with an excuse as to why I was gone up until now that the price pumped".
I figure there's going to be a lot of these "temporary" users who only show up when things are going great then sneak back into the ether during times like these. It also makes me think way back when I was one of the few interested in crypto and Bitcoin pumped to $1000-1100k for the first time. So many people left the scene as it dwindled back to $200 or so, some clever ones returned at that price point and bought back in but I can tell you a majority didn't. It's kind of the same here, I've seen a few people come back and buy back hive and stake it for the long term with a lot of people staying active and keep building and stacking, while many others, or should I say a majority, you won't see until things turn around.
There's also people who may be forced to sell now or think hive may drop lower back into the haircut ratio so they're hoping to double or at least increase the total amount of hive they have by selling now - I personally wouldn't risk it - but that's understandable too. Many who just may be forced to sell due to economic reasons, knowing a large portion of our active userbase is from developing nations it's not difficult to understand that some can't keep holding hive even if they wanted to and are starting to realize, at least maybe after the recent hardfork, that hive isn't coming back as easily as it used to. Inflation is slowly dropping.
Naturally, those who will mainly benefit from this are those who know when to sell - I'm not one of them, unfortunately, maybe cause I'm too married to Hive and wish the sky for it rather than taking some profit here and there for darker times, I just keep hoping the day will come when we go up and then stay there to give projects and stakeholders some breathing room and time to shine. The other ones who will benefit are those who hold and have the means to buy more here and put it to good use - i.e. staking and curating so they dilute the traders who only keep liquid hive on exchanges. Now this is only possible of course if you believe hive is going to do well long term.
Of course there's other things as well, even though you may believe Hive will do well, you may think that it's not going to do as well as some other coins or that when it starts doing well you're here and aware with your finger on the pulse to be able to get back into it before it's too late and it takes off.
We still have long ways to go, as Vitalik tweeted recently, most other chains it's all just defi trading/investing and gambling, very little real utility and unique usecases that set web2 and web3 apart are to be found there. Something Hive definitely doesn't lack but could come up with new things. Inflation is set to keep being reduced every 250k blocks or ~9 days by 0.01% until it reaches 0.95% in 10 years or so. I do wonder all the things how we'll be using the rewards pool by then and how much of the daily voting power will be used for shitposts like these or short form content compared to all the other things we may have come up by then that the community deems acceptable to be used. Also how much harder it may be to earn hive by then, not just cause inflation is on the low side but also cause there will hopefully be a lot more users competing for votes.
My own personal goal is to have a few projects I believe will continue to live long and prosper and at the same time be a net positive for the ecosystem and hopefully I'll be able to get to my hive goals in time before the next decade to enjoy some nice passive rewards I can hand over to future generations of shitposters.
Have you noticed any active users go missing lately?
Why do you think they're gone?