I wrote earlier that I had decided to stake my POB earnings and that I've had a pleasant surprise exploring the community so far. Since then, the price has already more than doubled, and I've been able to spend more time engaging on the site.
Sure, the volume isn't the greatest, so the price should still be taken with a grain of salt. But at the same time, it's very early, and seeing people willing to buying in is more than promising enough at this stage.
The POB token has been on fire recently, seeing another doubling in price today on Hive Engine: POB
It's tempting to start doing some math on where the price could go short term, as HIVE still has more than 1000x greater supply than POB, which has capped supply of 21 million tokens similar to Bitcoin with a halving in inflation every 4 years. However, it is more useful to look at the actual user experience had and whether or not that suggests that more people may want to get active in the platform. After all, growth always happens on the margin, with new people deciding to give a product a try, and then retaining as active users.
So how has it been?
Getting to know new people
This may sound like a bit of a cliche, but the best part of trying out proof of brain is that I've been having fun! With some new motivation to curate, as well as a more digestible "New" tab (for now), it has been interesting to come across new Hive users as well that I've never interacted with before, and who I would have never engaged with if not for this tribe. The same goes for the discussions related to how we can improve the user interface, content discovery and the community-run writing competitions here. I also find it interesting how by looking for creators on proofofbrain.io to curate, I am also distributing HIVE to users who would have otherwise had close to no HIVE payouts on their posts. So goes to show that using a new Tribe can be a great way for new users to get attention!
I've had my critique of proof of brain (the concept, not the tribe) in the past. But one thing I always liked about it is the way in which it gives you the incentive to spend time looking for new people to build relationships with. Admittedly, getting to know people with the primary motivation being the hope of financial rewards in the form of an upvote on a comment, a post or a regular follower is a bit strange and at times a bit toxic. However, after having started off with that motivation one quickly forms connections that are then worth keeping regardless, and one can appreciate the dialogues and exchanges of ideas with or without the rewards (or just allowing them to happen in the background more or less).
This is quite a cool differentiator to the other "social" platforms I'm on outside of Hive, where I've rarely ever come to know new people from outside of my existing social circles. Perhaps it's just me who has been fairly inactive in recent months prior to the bull run, but experiencing this again (which I did sink a lot of time on back in 2017 in particular), has been a fun reminder of what our token model can be good for if used correctly. And I think the scarcity model of POB with the deflation in supply helps enhance that effect, as it feels as if every upvote received is more precious.
Anyhow, I think we can expect the price to continue to go up, as people will likely continue to speculate on this Tribe going places with the momentum that it has. And I also expect the community to produce not only some cool content, but also some lessons in community building and tokenomics that I am sure many other projects can and will learn from in the future.
Brain on!
Fredrik