Ive been looking around the market and thinking about our approach on Hive to "things".
Things being related to what our image we portray outside of our ecosystem is.
The legacy of Steem still weighs heavy on us here on Hive. Its an unfortunate truth but one I think many can agree with.
In the eyes of the wider crypto market, with those that are aware of Hive, in many ways they see it as a continuation of the core principles established by Steemit and the single attribute that defined it. "Social media rewards."
As much as that specific market niche might have re-emerged these last months, due to the utter failure of these new projects like Friend.tech or Star Arena to appear like anything but clown level ponzies, the FOMO lasted only for a short time.
The decentralized, free speech narrative has not been something that brought us any significant results either. Twitter (X) and Elon Musk has stolen the narrative, twisted it and managed to convince wider audiences that he is offering a solid solution with his platform.
Of course, its all a complete lie and nonsense.
All he offered was an excuse for the free speech supporters to self-silence because he promised to share their values. He parroted their narrative and even though he solved nothing, that was enough for them. They are satisfied.
So what do we do?
Firstly I want to address a problem we have with our dapp social media presence. While we have some dapp founders attempting to branch out on Twitter due to the crypto community reliance on it, its simply not enough.
Right now you have 3speak and their weekly show. You have Inleo using Zealy trying to increase our social footprint and affect the algos, but beyond that there is literally nothing.
Not a single Dapp founder is willing to put themselves out there and go talk to people on social media. Unwilling "to go to them".
Ofc, you cant expect anything from those that self fund their projects beyond hoping they see value in it, but from those that use DHF funds we should expect more.
If Im honest I just dont want to support projects like #Peakd in any way whatsoever anymore. I just dont. I just feel theyre content with being a Hive powerhouse, a big fish in a little pond and thats it. DHF funds coming in, they do some Splinterlands work, some opensource stuff.
Im not saying their proposal is not worth it, ill criticize them here and praise them elsewhere, but for a social media platform that is supposed to focus on users I see nothing at all coming from them in that regards. #Ecency same thing.
And even in these two positive cases no one is using one of the easiest ways to promote Hive, Spaces.
Beyond anything, its the easiest way for any of us to attract attention from individuals outside of the Hive echochamber. People are simply unaware of how thick the walls of our echochamber are. ALMOST NOTHING GETS OUT.
And commenting will never beat speaking to people.
But... you need to have something to talk about. What is it that you will present to these guys that they might even care to listen?
I went on a music Space last week to gauge interest in the Openmic idea I had and that idea spread around like fire among the NFT music space. I got probably followers that between them have 200-300k followers just for speaking for 5 minutes.
Anything I write in the future about music, or if the project comes to fruition they will likely see it and if I want to contact them, they will know what its about. What happens when I do it 50 times, a 100 times? What if others do it as well.
And dont get me wrong, theres a 100 other things happening, meetups, conferences, sporting events, the hive car, and other ways we spread the word. Im focusing now on this one thing where we are failing in my eyes..
Then you have an audience of people you can reach that are not on Hive, with you slowly piquing their interest.
Atm im waiting for the website to be built and the guy that will do it has so much other work that hes doing for Hive that I have no idea when it will be ready. But thats beyond the point.
When you have something to say that people are interested in, they will be willing to listen.
Thats I guess number 1.
Number 2 would be the change of focus towards being seen as a up and coming blockchain that wants to attract applications and builders. That is set to compete with the top market players.
Lets rip the bandaid and say that Koinos a few days ago exceeded the Hive marketcap. Yes, that happened.
- Their launch wasnt fair. I was there. I wasnt happy.
- They dont have our community.
- They dont have any established dapps like us.
- No DHF with the amount of funds we have.
- Theyre probably not as decentralized.
But what they are is smart. Andrew Levine is incredibly committed, patient and knows what the hell he is doing.
They push a single narrative of "easy to use, smart contract platform with free transactions and a unique twist that is supposed to compete with Solana, ETH, etc.
And it works. I see degens pop up in my feed all the time talking about it. Always the same thing. There might be nothing built there now, but in the future... who knows. Cardano was vaporware at billion dollars of marketcap. But the hope was there.
That hope is what drives investment. The "what if?"
Where is Hive going?
We need investors to be able to give themselves an open ended answer to that question.
So number 2 would probably be a rebranding of Hive. The second #VSC launches and if it is indeed satisfactory when it comes to smart contracts, we need to start to establish it as a HIVE NORM. A part of the base reality of Hive.
HIVE - Smart contracts platform powered via VSC.
If VSC is not it... because again, I cant know... then something else needs to be. With that we can rebrand Hive and point our attention towards our market competitors, those same ones that have the attention of the market even with their title of being, or soon to be "Jailcoins" .
Ultimately that is what I want to see.
1. Dapp owners or their representatives, going to the people.
2. Rebranding of Hive and adjustment towards market requirement.
A bridge as well with enough liquidity.. but I talked about that yesterday. 😉