Small but useful update on hivehub.dev.
Until now the landing page mostly acted like a shortcut to the block explorer. That worked, but it also meant the project did not really have a proper front page. If someone landed on HiveHub for the first time, they were immediately thrown into block data instead of getting a quick feel for the chain and what the site can offer.
Creating a real homepage had been in mind for a while, and I finally decided to give it a try. The goal was to add a proper entry point that gives a top-level view of the Hive blockchain before you dive deeper into the explorer.
A real homepage for HiveHub
The goal was simple: make the best Hive block explorer even better.
Instead of sending everyone straight to /blocks, the home page now acts more like a dashboard for the network. The idea is to surface the kind of information people often want first, then let them jump into the deeper explorer pages from there.
The first version includes things like:
- Head block
- Current witness
- Irreversible gap
- Hardfork version
- Hive nodes status
- Market data
So when you land on the site, you get a quick network overview instead of being redirected to a list of blocks.
There is also some nice synergy here with other @peak.open projects. One good example is Hive node status, which now shows up in the dashboard thanks to integrating data from beacon.peakd.com.
That part is powered by the Hive Node Beacon project here: https://gitlab.com/peakd/hive-node-beacon
Why I think this is a better direction
HiveHub has grown into more than just a bare block lookup tool.
It makes sense for the front page to reflect that. A homepage can give context first, then the user can move into blocks, witnesses, governance, market pages, stats, or the other tools depending on what they actually came for.
It also helps tie together work happening across the broader @peak.open ecosystem instead of keeping each useful data source boxed into its own corner.
That is especially useful for:
- new users who may not know where to start
- regular Hive users who just want a quick snapshot of the network
- people sharing HiveHub links who want the landing page to feel more intentional
So this is partly a design update, but mostly it is a usability update.
Still an early version
A few sections are probably not optimal and there are additional useful info we can include. So expect more improvements in the weeks ahead. But the structure is in place so iteration will take less time now.
That is probably the right way to do it anyway. Better to ship a homepage that is already useful than wait until every single tile is perfect.
Wrap-up
This is a fairly small change in code terms, but I think it improves the product a lot.
HiveHub now feels more like a complete Hive destination from the moment you open it, and not only like a redirect into a block list.
You may notice some similarities with the cutehive.com dashboard and, well, that is because their work had been a great inspiration for this change. I really liked the idea of presenting Hive data in a way that feels more welcoming and more alive, and that definitely helped push this rework forward.
That feels like the right move if we want to keep improving the overall Hive user experience, one step at a time.