Decentralization is the process by which the activities of an organization, particularly those regarding planning and decision making, are distributed or delegated away from a central, authoritative location or group. wikipedia
That is how Wikipedia defines decentralization. If you google the word you may even find definition that don't really represent what decentralization represents today. When talking about decentralization two names come to my mind Satoshi Nakomoto - creator of Bitcoin and Rod Beckstrom - an author of The Starfish and the Spider and a founder Beckstrom's Law.
Of course there were others who talked and contemplated about the concept of decentralization and its benefits before these two folks. Satoshi's Bitcoin came at the right place and the right time to gain traction and attention of people. Bitcoin is a brilliant idea and implementation for the alternative financial system that challenges the global financial status quo. For it to become a global phenomenon it was important to have right conditions and be presented at the right time.
As Rod Beckstrom states in his book - "Decentralization is not a new concept, it has just been dormant for many years. Creation of the internet unleashed its force." Rod wrote and shared his ideas on decentralization even before Satoshi did about Bitcoin. Established internet infrastructure and connection among people globally made Bitcoin possible. Not only the widespread phenomenon of internet but also massive failure of global financial system caused people to pay attention to the alternative solution. These two combined, Bitcoin has become a global movement for change. A change for better financial system. At the very least preservation of wealth and property rights.
So what does Bitcoin offer and what is its value proposition? It offers people an alternative to the traditional financial system. Traditional financial systems rely on banks to process transactions, store wealth, and provide various financial services. This process is powered by Central Bank policies, their fiat currency, and laws of the land that grant massive authority to Central Banks over monetary policies.
Bitcoins has revealed to masses the corrupt nature of the fiat currencies and monetary policies instituted by Central Banks and governments. It has demonstrated that trust put into these institutions by the participants of these economies was misused in form inflations and other policies that diluted peoples wealth. In short these policies served and still serve the few in power at the cost of ordinary participants of these economies.
What Bitcoin offers is a removal of trust from centralized entities to a programmable code and decentralized network where not a single entity can single-handedly make monetary policy decisions on behalf of all participants. This in return transfers trust from entities to code that can't be corrupt as long as decentralized system is in place.
Remember the internet made decentralization to wake up by connecting us all globally and providing technologies to move away from centralized systems and relying on trust? While internet inspired innovation and competition, it has also brought forward tendencies to monopolize services. While internet's nature is decentralized, brilliant corporate minds figured out ways to monopolize and centralize the internet. Amazon dominates e-commerce; Google dominates search, video sharing, mobile phones, etc; Facebook & Twitter dominate social media; Apple dominates mobile phones and apps built on them.
One common thing these monopolies share is that they make money off people's creativities. The art, videos, knowledge, social interactions, and other content they create and share on their platform. Not only they exploit people's talents and social interaction but also they monetize on their digital footprints by packaging the eyeballs and selling to the advertisers. Occasionally they even go further violating people's privacy.
In a free market nothing is wrong with innovating and profiting from innovations, providing services people need and would like to use. Just like Central Banks and governments these services may prove to be useful. However when too much power is concentrated and centralized, these entities have a tendency to take actions that do not necessarily benefit the participants of these networks and end up causing harm rather that serving the participants.
For these reasons decentralized solutions will play a vital role as a competition and an alternative to traditional monopolized systems. This is why Hive matters. Hive has proven to be a decentralized platform that is innovating when it comes to web, social media, games, communities and dApps. Just like Bitcoin offers an alternative to traditional financial and banking systems, Hive offers an alternative to web technologies in form of social media, games, dApps, and anything people can think of.
Hive has a solid technology that provides a secure and easy to use wallet powered by decentralized blockchain. Decentralization is super important when it comes to keeping wallets secure. Not only it provides security and ownership of ones wallet but also transfers responsibility to keep it safe. The wallet holder is the sole responsible party to keeping keys secure.
Decentralization is a goal in a long journey. It journey is not in a straight path, it oscillates between points of centralized and decentralized. Hive matters in the space to decentralized web, because it provides working solutions no other project comes even close to address. Decentralization has become a marketing word that anybody can throw around to attract people to their projects. Even scammers use it with zero substance to back their claims. Hive has always been true to this claim and direction it is going.
Challenges Hive faces is the lack of understanding what the value proposition is. Not only for the ones outside of this economy, but also the ones who are within don't have a full grasp of the potential to change the web.
It has always been a good time for participants of Hive economy to take long term investment position versus short term token gains via various reward systems. Any reward systems that Hive provides are short term and do no necessarily translate into long term significant gains that can be shown in the form of price appreciation of the Hive coin. The only real and significant investment return on Hive investment can be through Hive coin increasing in price. While prices are usually at the mercy of speculation, the real use case also matter. Of which Hive can offer in abundance.
In my humble opinion, the only metric that matters and should matter for Hive as a long term goal is the user-base growth. Not only user-base growth with onboarding activities, but also actions that improve user retention. For this it will always require a collective effort by all Hive stakeholder, users, and participants to focus on this one mission, making this platform home for all. Because it has a lot to offer to all users of the internet. If we continue to improve in this matter and have greater focus on users, the valuation fo the coin will follow, investors will follow, network offer will follow. We have always had something revolutionary here. We always had something important here. We are the pioneers in decentralization.