Coopetition?
Is that even a thing? Kinda sounds like some new-agey kumbaya mumbo-jumbo doesn't it?
But it's a thing. It's happening on Hive and other blockchains. And it's a really powerful idea.
Coopetition is a combination if the words "cooperation" and "competition", if you didn't already know or couldn't figure it out. And while other companies and even some blockchains are out there trying to destroy each other, here we are on Hive coopa... coopeteting? err... mutually benefitting each other in various ways THROUGH competition.
Take D.buzz and Leo Finance for example. D.buzz is at the moment the most popular microblogging app on Hive, while Leo Finance is a Hive powerhouse about to release their own microblogging app. We can't have two microblogging apps on Hive now, can we? Doesn't that mean Leo and D.buzz are going to be at each other's throats trying to take each other down?
Well, maybe. But if either one of them succeeds in bringing in a bunch of new users, it will be good for the price of the Hive token, which benefits both parties. If both of them do, even better. And out of all those new users, some will probably use both platforms, or go back and forth as each app develops exciting new features. So it would actually be kind of counterproductive to try to take the "opposition" out of the picture.
Another form of coopetition on Hive is just regular users posting. We all compete for the upvotes (because of the warm, fuzzy feeling it gives us, not for the money), but the more content generated the more likely it is that users out there will find out what's going on here and create an account. Even flame wars are good for the platform overall (as long as there is also a lot of civil discourse), as a lot of people love to see a good fight.
You could even say the entire crypto/blockchain ecosystem is ONE system with coopetition happening via open source repositories where developers can share code, although some projects lean more toward competition. But with all of these cross-chain projects starting to pop up, like wLeo and atomic swaps, cross chain coopetition is ramping up.
And hopefully one day this ethos will spill over into society at large - that we compete to better each other, not to destroy.