Why I'm Building what I'm Building.

That is an interesting question, especially now with all the turmoil going on about the price of Hive lately. Just the fact I'm am building anything is a unique story in itself. But, let's get to the "why" I'm building anything at all for the Hive ecosystem.

I think this is a subject that needs a little bit of a back story on my part.

A Little bit of History and a convo on Discord

This all starts from a group chat in a voice channel I just happened to stumble into about 5 or 6 years ago. It was in the PAL (Peace, Abundance, Liberty) discord server. When I joined the chat the topic of discussion at that moment was about Hive. Now me being more of a green horn about subjects on Hive at the time , it just started out by me listening, seeing how the chat was moving along and the overall vibe.

What was evident pretty quickly was the banter back and fourth about Hive wasn't too flattering. I was a bit taken aback at first, but as I continued to listen, there were points being brought up that I did agree with. As the discussion continued almost all the participants were big fans of Hive, but there were issues that they had, that I felt were legitimate gripes.

By now I had gotten the guts up to actually start participating in the discussion. When one of the participants began talking about how he thought individual Hive users didn't really have a good reason to be here on Hive. He brought up various points about specifically the frontends. He thought they were to centralized and that there had to be a way for the individual Hive user to take advantage of what Hive had to offer.

He spoke on the censorship resistance that Hive offered but if someone were to start posting "spicy" topics, then they could or would be censored by the various frontends. That could happen by user downvotes and then visibility could be scuffed or by the owners/maintainers of the various frontends moderating content. He acknowledged that this was their right to do. At that time there were just basically two main frontends, Hive.blog and PeakD. He was concerned that particular kind of content could get buried , and then who would want to go to a block explorer to view someone's content? Or even worse the OP having to direct people to a block explorer just to view what they have posted.

At the moment he stopped speaking he then asked what the chat thought. For whatever reason and to this day I still don't know where I got the courage to speak up...I spoke up.

I replied, "Yeah. I see what your saying. If I were a blogger starting out, I wouldn't want to point someone to hive.blog to see my content. I wouldn't want to build on Hive as potential blogging/content creation business if I can't earn after 7 days. I can't run ads unless they are in a post and let's be honest , hive.blog and PeakD don't have exactly the best designs."

Surprisingly , after I had stated my opinion, most of the chatters chimed in that they had similar feelings. The frontends at that time weren't really up to snuff design wise for users to have confidence to really go all in on Hive to build their blogging empires on.

One big point that was brought up in the chat, and this point is what really stuck with me, is that the 7 day payout discouraged users from creating "evergreen" content. They just made posts to get as many upvotes as quickly as possible. I never really thought about it that way because Hive is a "social blockchain" as was Steem. Social media content isn't meant to last to evergreen status.

Life moved on but not the Idea

After that chat, life moved on. The COVID pandemic got into full swing. I was live streaming retro gaming on DLive and @Vimm and making an occasional post here and there on Hive. And I was more active on Twitter because that is where all the other live streamers I interacted with posted.

Then when things got back to somewhat normal, I kept streaming on Vimm and that was pretty much the only thing I did on Hive. I would just check my feed make a few upvotes and maybe a few comments and I was out.

What kind of brought me back was that I started seeing posts and videos by @taskmaster4450, @starkerz and @theycallmedan and others that were having discussions and making posts about all the other things that can be done with Hive. De-Fi, data storage and all other kinds of things. It was really outside the box thinking. It was enjoyable content that really got people thinking. And that is what brought back the idea that had formulated back in that PAL voice chat.

The Idea

After all these years, what was that idea that that stuck with me and I never forgot about?

A self hosted , user controlled Hive frontend.

Not very exciting is it? lol

But to me, this is what decentralization is all about. You own your account and you own your content. In my opinion, you should be able to own how you serve your content to the masses. You should be able to control :

• Your hosting
• Your domain name
• How you display your content
• How you monetize your content
• The design choices of your site
• How you can best promote your content
  And most importantly, you control where the visitor to your content lands. Hive users put a lot of time and effort into creating great content that is posted on Hive. Yet when they hit the publish button and that transaction is successfully completed, they are now at the mercy of the various frontends.

The idea I got all those years ago was that the Hive user should be in control of all of those things. Less centralization in the major frontends and more decentralization with the users self hosting their Hive content.

And it had to be as easy as possible for the Hive user to accomplish these goals.

I had the idea, but I didn't have the knowledge nor the financial ability to make this idea... a reality.

I knew there were other projects out there trying to "kind of" do the same thing like spinning up their own community and at one time there was a Wordpress plug-in to display Hive content. But to me, all those projects had a bit more complexity to them for my liking. To be fair there could be other projects that do the exact things that my idea does, but I have no knowledge of them. That still left me in the same position as before, having an idea that I was still unable to execute.

Until now.

What Changed

The one thing that has changed that has brought my ideas to life is ....

Artificial Intelligence - AI

This is the game changer for me. This is what has brought my idea, the one I have had for close to 6 years, to life. And yes everyone has heard the doom and gloom about the destructive possibilities of AI, but in my case it has realized something that for years has been just a dream .

In the course of 3 weeks I have created , with the help of Claude AI Free version , three Hive based tools that the Hive user is in control of.

I have learned a great deal in these 3 weeks. Prompting, better prompting and patience... lol . But seriously, I have learned so much about How the Hive blockchain handles transactions, formatting JSON, more advanced CSS , user experience, code audits and testing, troubleshooting and more testing. It's been frustrating at times, but that's with anything you are passionate about while bringing it to life.

So What did I Build?

I built three projects that a Hive user can self host all 3 on any host that can serve HTML files. I created them for the non technical Hive user to get up and running as painlessly and quickly as possible. These project I must say I am proud of.

They are:

SoloHive

A self-hosted blog engine that displays your Hive blockchain content on your own domain. Your posts live on Hive — this script presents them beautifully on a site you fully control.

No database. No server-side code. Works on any web host that serves HTML files.

Your Blog. Your Domain. Your Rules.

GitHub: https://github.com/dotw-hive/SoloHive

HiveWrite

A clean, lightweight browser-based Markdown editor for publishing posts directly to the Hive blockchain via the Hive Keychain extension.

GitHub: https://github.com/dotw-hive/HiveWrite

And my latest project, I haven't written an intro post yet so you are getting a early preview.

HiveDrop

A single-file micro-post composer for PeakD Snaps, InLeo Threads, and Ecency Waves.

HiveDrop lets you fire off a thought to any of Hive's micro-blogging platforms without leaving your own environment. No logins, no platform UI, no distractions. Just write and drop it.

GitHub: https://github.com/dotw-hive/HiveDrop

All of these projects are self hosted on the hosting of your choice, domain of your choice, design of your choice. Hive is the database. They are all under the MIT license so they are open source and you can modify them anyway you see fit. The Hive user is in control.

Wrap Up

This is a post I felt I had to get out. Not just to promote my project, but to get my experience and story in words. I'm not a naturally gifted writer so bear with me, It's hard for me to express the feeling and emotions I have of actually seeing something I've only thought about come to fruition.

It's funny how a simple chat in a discord sever spawned an idea that has stayed with me all these years. That in itself makes me scratch my head in disbelief. And the fact with the help of AI, I had the determination and patience to actually see these projects through to actual working Dapps. Again, to me it's still kind of mind blowing.

What I want to leave with all of you is that sometimes, dreams and ideas do come true. If you don't forget them, and all the stars align, and the moment presents itself, you can accomplish great things.

And are my projects anything mind blowing? Something ground breaking? Technologically advanced? Not at all. Are they simple and do they work? You bet.

And that was my idea. And that idea is now a reality.

Dudeontheweb

P.S. Shoutout to @acidyo. Just watching his progress on scrobble.life has been fun and motivating for me. (Even though I have no damn clue what the heck a scrobble is.)

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This post was written using HiveWrite v1.0

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