HIVE is a pretty cool place. There are a lot of people with different agendas and that is really interesting.
There are a lot of different beliefs around how different things in HIVE should work, what are the rules, and who owns what. To me the current HIVE ecosystem mostly includes:
• HIVE
• Discord
• Hive Engine
This is in no way is everything. That would be impossible to include in one blog post.
This really concise list obviously excludes other items like applications, tools, Splinterlands etc. Including those would lead to a way more nuanced discussion that I would rather not get into today. But to be clear, I love Splinterlands, and I would be lieing if I didn't say it has an important place in my heart and on HIVE (on HIVE in my opinion).
One issue I have with the current ecosystem, is the majority of the discussions on people's beliefs happen in Discord. I mean Discord is awesome don't get me wrong. I love Discord and it is pretty cool how customizable things can be.
The main issue I have with Discord, is to me it is not serious. I literally act like a ridiculous person because that is what most people are doing. If you are using Discord and making decision based on what people say there, you will walk away confused most of the time. Discord culture is heavily rooted in gaming culture which is inherently not serious.
Can there be serious Discord servers? Sure! But usually not. And if you want things to be serious you have to moderate pretty heavily. I have had a Discord server in the past, I did not moderate it at all, it was not serious, it was just friends. That was it. It was not a business or an investment so I did not need to moderate anything.
In an effort to do what I am advocating for, talking on HIVE more and Discord less, I would like to talk about the HIVE Reward Pool.
So on Discord, who owns the Reward Pool comes up almost daily now. When I came to HIVE to play Splinterlands, who owns the Reward Pool rarely came up. And back then, there was a much larger sense of community. We were all going to retire into the sunset together.
I actually had a pretty big hiatus from HIVE and Splinterlands. I mostly let my Discord community run itself. I would get my SPL brawls in and buy new cards, but that was mostly it and it was my hobby and what I did for fun.
I do remember when I started to work on ending my hiatus, and there was a long transition, some of the people on Discord I am closer to were pretty relieved lol.
I did tell them I was getting a new job, but they didn't know I would disappear. Something that is weird about this, is I still feel bad about this to this day. That I went and focused on my job and didn't have enough time to do everything and come here.
One reason I feel bad is, because I did it on purpose. I sacrificed a lot of my fun time to commit to work like a savage. I can't help but think I may have sacrificed a part of my humanity. I did lose a lot of my innocence when I left here to commit my life to work. I regret it sometimes. The cool thing, is it worked! When I came back, I had money to buy stuff. I didn't need the Reward Pool to fund anything I was doing. When I came back, I had mostly quit working. I had enough and I couldn't take it anymore. I don't mind working all the time and not getting much sleep, but I do mind not talking to the people that I met years ago that matter to me. And to these people, I TRULY AM SORRY, I made a mistake, and I ask you for forgiveness. I am sorry.
So I came back and had money for the things I always wanted to do but couldn't justify in the past. The people I wanted to get a chance to talk to, the things I wanted to buy, and the HIVE/HIVE Engine goals I wanted to achieve. These things that were previously a pipe dream were now achievable for me. It was about the journey and doing the thing. It was about the experience. Did I want to make money? Sure! But that is not why I am here. I do not care about money anymore. I did the thing. I made personal sacrifices for more money. It was a mistake. I am so so sorry. I truly am sorry.
I do feel like I missed out though, because although when I came back things were much cheaper, the environment and the people changed quite a bit. I didn't realize this for an extended period of time. I was on vacation for the last 6 months. I was drunk A LOT over the last 6 months and most people on discord I talk to know this lol. And drinking while doing all these things was a wild time man. The experience was way bigger than what I thought it would be. It continues to be life changing.
But I am sobered up now, I stopped drinking when I started this HIVE trade. This is the big leagues; it is time to get serious. Once I sobered up I started to backtrack a lot. And a lot of the things I blew off or ignored were things that fundamentally changed.
Without getting too deep. One thing that changed is people talk about the Reward Pool A LOT on Discord now. Like all the time man. And it is a bummer because it is impossible to advocate for changes to HIVE on Discord. HIVE Engine token talk makes sense on Discord. But advocating for changes to how the Reward Pool works makes no sense on Discord. Talking about the Reward Pool is cool! Teasing out ideas and theories in Discord is great! But advocating for its changes on Discord is weird.
I can give you an example of the kind of environment that happens on Discord that I, as an investor, can have nothing to do with when it comes to HIVE Governance; this is the big leagues. So in Discord with meme tokens a big part of meme token culture to those traders is making fun of the rug puller and the bag holder (Same as your homie that gets pawned when you are playing video games together). It is super weird and kind of gross because money is involved but it is just part of the process 99% of the time; it is the internet after all. You have to have fun with it, it is Discord, it is not serious. But HIVE is serious, so you usually (not always) don't want to have discussions on Discord about HIVE because you will get a lot of feedback from people who are just messing with you and are inherently unserious people. Discord is a hobby for most people. But some people don't know that and will give you real feedback, so it is confusing. And someone who is messing with you is not going to tell you they are messing with you; that would defeat the whole point of messing with you in the first place. "You no what I am saying bro?!?!? You feel me man? Wen moon bro!!!" (Discord talk). This is what happens on SOL/PUMPFun and their Discord servers 99% of the time. I don't know the exact percentage obviously but I have never seen a discord in the meme token arena with a consistent serious tone.
I am a fairly new HIVE stakeholder. I mostly focused on Splinterlands and Hive Engine tokens before. So a lot of this stuff I do not understand. Like one thing that comes up a lot is Steem. I am not even really sure what Steem is. Or more importantly why Steem would matter to someone like me? I don't own Steem, I do not know how to buy Steem or if I even can. So I really hate talking about Steem. I hate talking about and pondering about things I cannot change, especially if the discussion is positioned as if I can change these things when it is literally impossible.
Talking about Steem is super weird if you have no idea what it is. People say all this stuff I have never even heard of before. I even Google some of the things people talk about and I literally cannot find any documentation on it. So that is strange and I do not know what to make of it. What do you do when random people on the internet talk to you about things you cannot find on a major search engine like Google? It is odd.
So anyways, I do not understand what the Reward Pool is. Like is it capped? Is it unlimited? Where does the HIVE actually come from? And who owns the HIVE that is going into the reward pool? And then who owns the HIVE coming out of the reward pool? I know I missed some things so please let me know what I missed.
If anyone will take the time to talk to me and have a conversation IN GOOD FAITH I would appreciate it.
Please make sure you read my other recent posts about my previous HIVE projects before making your first comment here. Otherwise you will be out of the loop. Do what you want. You are free on HIVE. HIVE is beautiful. You don't have to read my other posts. But I would like it if you did. I put them there for a reason! 😊
Sincerely,
The Potato Dragon on HIVE
