Hi Hive account@demotruk, as always, excellent work with these analyses. I really liked the previous one.

I’d like to share a few observations, hoping to provide useful information as a complement, along with some corrections.

First of all, mballesteros is Venezuelan 😁.

Regarding the point you mentioned about the economy in Venezuela: the idea that "it’s a country where people can survive on very little" is a thing of the past. I understand that reputation persists for many, but since 2021-2022, we have become an extremely expensive country. Doing groceries here can now be more costly than in several first-world countries. This is why many Venezuelans have left Hive. In 2017-2018, when most of us joined, a single post could cover a week’s worth of groceries; now, even 30 posts a month aren't enough.

Another factor is that many parts of Venezuela face constant electricity issues, which creates a barrier to posting. Because of this, many people decide the "sacrifice" is no longer worth it.

I’d also like to clarify something regarding Aliento. I see it’s the only project you mention as a "community structure," but I doubt it accounts for even 50% of the Venezuelan structure. For context, Aliento began its work in 2020, even though the account was created in 2018.

There are several Venezuelan projects doing onboarding. For instance, Hive account@holos-lotus has done it in person through various events. Now, let me tell you about Hive account@rutablockchain, the project I co-lead with Hive account@enmy. We are the longest-running active onboarding project in Spanish—and I’d venture to say in all of Hive. We started bringing people in from Facebook in October 2017, even before the Rutablockchain account was created.

Our onboarding process includes reviewing the introduction post before the account is even created. Our "mentorship" begins right there. Most accounts are created via Appreciator, and the introductions have been published in Loving HIVE ❤️, Meettoo 👋, GEMS, and Hive Run 🏃‍♂️🏃‍♀️. They are upvoted by the Rutablockchain trail and, since 2020, by Appreciator as well.

We have this onboarding registry, though it’s not up to date; many are missing. Looking at the data for votes we’ve cast on the #introduceyourself and #myhiveintro tags, we have 784 via Rutablockchain. However, we started onboarding people three months before that and created a WhatsApp group where some people from that era still remain. Additionally, we organized several meetups in 2017 and 2018 funded by Hive account@cervantes.

Regarding why there are still so many of us Venezuelans, even though Hive is not profitable for most: I believe it’s the network effect. Since we’ve always been a large group, it’s harder for us to stop being the most numerous. Many of us know each other in person due to those Steem meetups and later events funded by Valueplan. This created bonds, and many people stayed longer because of that. Therefore, in-person events in Venezuela have been a key factor for retention and should be taken into account.

On the other hand, there are the communities created by Venezuelans, many of which remain very active. This might also be an influence. I believe the commitment of managing a community makes you stay longer. We publish a monthly report on Venezuelans on Hive, which includes these communities. Although we mention the top 10 in the report, these are the ones we use for statistics:

I hope this gives you a broader perspective 😎