We've been mostly content to be in our own bubble for a long time both on Hive and on the previous chain. And by that I don't mean people hanging around the ecosystem and not exploring more, not going to Web 2 and trying to pull in some new members.
While I commend those who do it, I understand that Hive needs a metamorphosis to be attractive to either a wider audience from crypto, or more people from Web 2. And they will come if that happens...
Splinterlands is going through such a metamorphosis. And likely it is and will be more attractive than before. Price evolution matters, by the way. A SPS token going up by over 60% in a few days and likely continuing on this trend attracts eye balls.
On the social media side, we added onto the basic blogging supported at the base layer. Some things are supported more or less at the base layer, with some special interpretation of the data, like short-form text content (through comments) or polls (through custom JSONs). We also have video and short-form video via 3Speak (supported on other front ends too). I don't know if we still have any livestream platform connected to Hive. If we were to consider specific interfaces, we also have a front end for fitness or workouts (even for walking), one focused on images (Instagram-style), and the Twitter experience on Inleo, where one could also find subscriptions, in Substack style (not very popular on Hive, I'm afraid). We also offer discounts for people who use our stablecoin for purchases. And various benefits for people promoting Hive in different ways.
What we lack are numbers, users. And a better retention rate. The last part should tell us something, and that is that people do come in, sometimes being dragged in, and they don't find something compelling enough to stick around, or they get lost and they'd rather stick to what they know.
We know downvotes are a turn-off for some people. But unless we come out with something better, that's the mechanism we have to cope with abuse of the reward pool on the base layer. Unfortunately, that sometimes escalates, and people don't like the negativity surrounding them, especially if they look at social media as a way to relax.
Then there is defi, which went through various phases in crypto, but certainly evolved a lot since their beginnings. Many in crypto are interested exclusively in this aspect. Even their interactions are with the purpose of learning more about opportunities to learn more about them.
Hive is different, has all sorts of people with or without interests in defi, but one thing is sure. The fact we didn't have real support for smart contracts to this day, has kept us behind other platforms, probably both in terms of users and funds on Hive.
The fact both VSC and Blocktrades teams practically acknowledge this by working each on something related to smart contracts (in the latter case, more in the stage of idea), is an indication of how badly we need smart contracts on Hive, and how much we missed them for the last few years.
VSC has already been launched, which is a good thing, but time seems to pass so slowly until we have some real useful defi platforms comparable to the best we can find on other investor-popular ecosystems out there.
However, at this point, I do have something that needs to be mentioned. We have had for around two years a significant interest on HBD, which is true dropped from 20% to 15% (and I don't have a problem with that). That was and is a major defi component at the base layer, particularly during a crab or bear market. I have to wonder, why didn't we have more investors from the outside use HBD savings? And I know for a while it's been heavily pushed out there. And the reaction often was - it's a scam, even before looking into it. Was it because it seemed to good to be true? I'd have to say, it is a high probability that's what people thought.
Returning to VSC... They published a DHF proposal today asking for funds for another year.
What I like from the post is the screenshots. I like how Altera looks
although there's probably much more work to make it really useful. I also like that PeakD started to integrate VSC, for now in testing:
Keychain is working on integrating VSC too, as we find out from their DHF proposal.