Going by the Inleo AMA yesterday by khal and Eric, it could be said that the much awaited evergreen rewards contract has finally arrived and is running. There has been much speculation about the release of the evergreen protocol with a lot of people still unaware about how this new system could benefit them.
First of all, I would like to congratulate the Inleo team for the successful implementation of the evergreen rewards protocol. Like Khal stated during the AMA, it wasn't an easy thing to get the evergreen rewards contract to function appropriately. There were a lot of building and rebuilding on the contract, and much testing carried out over the months before things finally fell on the right path.
With that being said, let's look at the incentive structure of Hive and see why the introduction of the evergreen rewards protocol is a welcome development for the Hive ecosystem.
Since its inception, the Hive incentive system does not encourage long term quality content creation in reality. The rewards system only rewards posts based on a 7 day payout window, where the bulk of the rewards comes from auto votes, and other upvotes received within that 7 days. This system favors content optimized for quick upvotes and popularity within the Hive ecosystem, rather than the lasting educational value of the contents. In this way, most posts lose their purpose and value, and stop receiving engagement after the 7 days rewards window, even if they contain information that people would like to reference for years. This therefore, discouraged content creators from producing top-notch content that has lasting educational values.
The Benefits of Evergreen Content for Hive Growth
While the 7 day Incentives window serves the individual writer, they do not necessarily benefit the long term growth of the Hive platform. High quality blog posts that have educational values on relevant topics can attract new people to Hive over a long period of time. An optimized content for search engines that contains valuable evergreen information helps people to discover the Hive platform through Google search engine. This type of content continues getting views and bringing new eyes on the platform long after the initial 7 day window. The Hive platform stands to benefit far down the line from long tail attention and users' acquisition over months or even years, compared to the momentous burst of engagement that fades quickly.
Welcome the Evergreen Rewards Protocol
To put the Incentives of creators together with the needs of sustainable growth of the Hive platform, Inleo, a frontend and a community on Hive launched the evergreen rewards protocol. This new system will provide ongoing monthly rewards to posts that continue to attract a significant number of views long after the date of their publications. For the record, any post that gathers a minimum of 20 views and above in a 39 days calendar month qualifies to earn a share of the author part of the monthly evergreen rewards pool, which will be distributed based on the total views each post receives during that month.
In this way, creators still earn the normal 7 day window based rewards, and also earn a passive monthly income for the month. Moreover, the evergreen rewards continue indefinitely into the future as long as a post keeps collecting more views. This changes the Hive Incentive structure to encourage the creation of high-quality, educational, and informative content that has enduring educational values, instead of the short term viral engagement alone.
Potential Impact of the Evergreen Rewards System on the Hive Platform and Creators
What is left for us to see, is how the Hive platform will receive the evergreen rewards system. If it's widely adopted, it has the potential to impact both the Hive platform and individual creators. For Hive platform, it could help to kickstart a sort of circle where quality, educational content attracts more long term users. As more creators focus on optimizing posts for long term value rather than just quick upvotes, the overall quality of content on Hive stands to improve. This can in turn the platform into an engaged, learning community with knowledge that helps to draw in more users.
For the creators, the evergreen rewards system open up the opportunity to earn ongoing passive income from older but successful posts, going into years after their publications. With time, most creators who know how to maximize the system could be able to accumulate a substantial amount of recurring monthly earnings, that may make them go into blogging full time. With both the Hive platform and the creators interest focus on sustainable growth, the future looks bright.
Conclusion
To conclude, the introduction of the Evergreen Rewards Protocol deal with the longstanding issue around incentives that has limited Hive from reaching its full potential. With the evergreen rewards system, creators and the platform now sits on the same table with same goal of building a community founded on knowledge and education rather than focusing on community upvotes alone.
I strongly recommend all Hiver looking to build a brand and sustainable business with their content to look beyond the Hive ecosystem and focus on creating evergreen blog posts, guides, and other educational value content. Those who do will reap rewards going into years in perpetuity as their work stands the test of time.
Personally, I will do my best to create content with an evergreen focus in mind. I expect to see an explosion of valuable informational content and a thriving community built on learning from now on. I look forward to seeing how the positive changes unfold. The future is bright for content creators on Hive.
Disclosure: Most of the information provided in this post where from the Inleo AMA recording of yesterday. You can check it out Here.