It's only a week or so until Hardfork 25, dubbed "Equilibrium" drops onto the Hive blockchain and I think one of the noticeable things people will notice is the change in curation mechanisms, which should give an even keel to manual curators and provide a far more steady curation return. Gone will be the days of earning more in curation than others and it will settle close to the simple book value of the 50/50 split between author and curator, which makes things far easier in many respects.
The game of curation was originally a good idea as it did encourage some kind of identification and front-running, but not much - and as soon as the bots started playing (which was very early on), the manual curators were at an advantage evermore... until now.
Now, even though there won't be the the differences like we see where a bot account can earn 4 HIVE per thousand HP a week, while a manual curator can struggle to get two, there is still plenty of game in Hive. It is the maturing of the ecosystem that has undermined the importance of curation returns and perhaps with the potential being seen in DeFi, people will see that anything near or over 10% is pretty good, but it is actually more than that.
Of course, people look at yields about how much they make from it, but if looking at the crypto industry from the usecase and inclusion perspective, Hive is pretty incredible. While it is unlikely that any individual account gets a lot of consistent support (unlikely but quite possible), a lot of accounts can get something and in time, even build a relatively continuous trickle of HIVE.
What this means is that an account earning a yield as a curator, is also a crypto advocate, someone who supports the growth and development of the technology and the community. This is especially important in the infancy of an industry, as the uptake is slow as adoption happens.
While there are already growing numbers in crypto, currently they are almost exclusively on the trading side of the equation, with very few having any visibility on other aspects of the chains, especially the social aspects. Crypto when lumped as a set of investment assets can look like a very individual and lonely game, but once the other aspects of daily digital life are interacted with, communities swell and propagate, spawning new communities.
These are more than people pushing out Tweets in the hope to moon their bags, these communities becomes part of life, a meeting place and a point of stability for life. It isn't just about having to post, just dropping in every day or so and catching up with a favorite author or leaving a smartass comment for a friend becomes part of the routine. It might not even be on a blockchain.
A lot of the community is off blockchains and for example, I spend many hours speaking IRL with friends of mine who are not on Hive, but things are changing. Currently, because most people don't actually use blockchains, it isn't "natural" get paid to leave a comment, get some actual value and appreciation for the time it took. Sure, it might just be a friend asking about the weekend, but when there are millions of people taking part, the power of advocacy increases also.
At some point, a critical mass is reached in the industry and on many blockchains so that it becomes self-perpetuating, growing and reforming, driven by the communities that use them. Curation is another good example of this, where while not everything is gold, on average the posts that do end up getting relatively good support are better than the average post. Sure, a lot of them are crypto and inward facing, but a lot aren't also and in time, the amount of people in the world interested in being on blockchains for more than transferring tokens will increase.
Once upon a time, social media was seen as completely useless and it didn't really perform very well until the first smartphones made it easy to share slices of our lives with friends and strangers. Social media was built on the internet, which itself was seen as useless for the average person. The thing with all of the technology is, regardless of where it starts or how it is meant to be used, people will find new ways to empower their lives with it, whether it be downloading torrents, sharing pictures of lunch or building a new economy, the trial isn't the legislation, the trial by fire is in the population.
It takes time to people to get their head around things at scale and as a result, it takes time to be able to replace all of the conditioning with new possibilities. This is why it is so important to have advocates in an industry, as they are more than just early adopters, they are also the social proofing and in many ways, the local authority that brings in new layers and helps them see that while it isn't already yet, there is potential.
It isn't always easy to survive the early days of an industry, especially when you know how much potential there is, but setbacks keep arriving. However, if you want to get through the door, try pushing.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]