What Metrics are the Most Valid Indicators of Hive's Success?

I remember being in work back in February and sneaking a look at pre-Hive, and feeling a bit ill having caught sight of the sudden change in T20 witnesses, following the then recent hijacking by Justin Evil. All I could do while at work was push it to the back of my mind, but as soon as I was back in my hotel room, I was on Discord for that long and not particularly encouraging Hive Townhall hosted by @aggroed, and then again the next night, and several other evenings in early spring.

Thankfully, since those dark, dark days, and the hard work of a number of people (which may or not be worth $30K a head), we've now got a brand new chain, and now that the Steem PowerDowns are done, things seem to be pretty stable, which is much better for my peace of mind than all that volatility back in Spring.

Summer on Hive has been relatively calm, things just seem to be bimbling/ bumbling along: I make some posts, I get some decent pay, people comment, I reply. Other people make some posts, I read some shit, I do some voting, I don't read some other shit, I do/ don't (?) do some autovoting anyway. I play some games, I win I lose, I trade a few Hive-Engine tokens, I occasionally buy a little more Hive.

The HIVE-USD trend: nice and stable for the past few months!

Yes, things are bumbling along nicely, but they are just a little, well, like the price, just a little flat!

I believe (note the faith element there) that the infrastructure is pretty well set up here on Hive for us to scale and moon, but I also know that since the last fork and new people effectively having to take on responsibility for the core development, that it's slow progress to stabilize the chain and bring on board new core features (like SMTs, whatever they are, and if they ever happen).

I'm kind of ready to see some real growth here on Hive, rather than flat-lining, but I'm kind of wondering what indicators are the most valid for measuring Hive's success.

So what are the mos valid indicators of Hive's progress?

Obviously the price is important to me - $5 Hive and I never have to work again.

But price depends on people buying Hive and powering it up, and in turn that depends on what users or investors think about the usability of the blockchain/ frontends.

The growth of Hive also depends what people use it for, and I guess because I'm a believer of strength through diversity, I want to see more of a diversity of applications being developed on Hive for people to use.

But I do not believe that every type of use is equal - what we don't need is thousands and thousands of people posting relentless photos or videos and then cashing out their rewards, fine doing the former and not the later, but what's more valuable is surely quality content creation, and people keeping their stake in Hive.

And then there's the whole issue of decentralization - which is fundamentally a function of distribution - the more evenly distributed stake is, the more decentralized we can say Hive is, and that counts for stake voting on both witnesses and DAO funding.

And all of the above depends on the stability of chain, which depends on the quality of the core development going on!

I've come up with at least the following possible indicators of success/ progress:

1. The Hive price - lets face it, while it may not be 'all about the money', $5 Hive is nicer than $0.025 cent Hive. TBH I'm quite happy with the stable price ATM, given how young we are.
2. Staked Hive compared to Liquid Hive/ HBD - the ratio is currently 137 to 227 million (plus around 4M HBD). TBH I'm not comfortable with seeing so much Hive Liquid, a lot of which is on the exchanges, it just suggests to me scope for future volatility.
3. Core development - Everything depends on this, but it's extremely hard to monitor, we're essentially dependent on weekly updates from people like @blocktrades and @howo, very hard to quantify this for the lay person.
4. DAO funding distribution - there was a real breakthrough just today as @dapplr has got funding, now that an 'outsider' can get funding, I think this is a great sign. I was quite uncomfortable with seeing the same old faces getting funding.
5. Distribution of Hive Power - I'm a bit obsessed with this, as it's fundamental to evidencing our claims of decentralisation. With around 36% of Hive Power in the top 30 or so Whale accounts, and now stable around there, I think we're not doing too badly in the grand scheme of things.
6. D'App rankings - I've started to take this a bit more seriously recently, since I've got a bit more into @splinterlands, which is a huge economic success in its own right. This could be crucial to success - the development of D'apps that get people using Hive without really knowing they're using it!
7. Price of (which?) Hive-Engine tokens - Many of us are into our Hive-Engine tokens, and some of us have built up huge stake in the tribes. This is worth keeping an eye on - both LEO and DEC, and a whole load of other tokens, have more than doubled in price relative to Hive over the months, so there is room for them to grow independently.
8. Daily accounts transacting - I say accounts, so it's not just all about blogging. This could well be the key, the more users, I guess the more potential for people buying Hive, either as users, or as investors.
9. User Retention - probably our biggest weakness? Actually keeping people here?
10. Numbers of transactions and types of transactions - are all transactions equal? What's better for Hive? Posts and comments, or more gaming custom Json style transactions?
11. Social engagement (comments/ votes etc.) - A few of us think this is important, and I guess there's two elements - internally, in terms of engagement, and externally, in terms of outward 'marketing' - I think @abh12345's efforts with the engagement league are about as good as you can get to track the internals, but measuring the 'quality' of external engagement? That's a tough one.
12. Number of communities - @leofinance, @splinterlands and also the art communities on Hive (I'm not part of them, but I 'get it', have convinced me that there's a future in Tribes, side-tokenised, so I guess keeping an eye on this is important.
13. Number of new users coming to Hive - this is pretty basic, we need basic growth for the price to moon.
14. Alexa rankings - I've never really paid too much attention to this, but I guess if we are to remain a social platform, which I think we should, this matters!

Hive Dpps ranked, from 'State of the Dapps'. Not too shabby.

Tracking Progress

There's a number of tools available to track 'progress', I keep an eye on all of the following:

• I like @coincgecko's charts for tracking the Hive Price - I like the way it just displays Hive against dollar, rather than CMC's display which seems to insist on showing me the Hive to USD and BTC prices simultaneously.
• @penguinpablo produces some useful posts a week - the weekly Hive and DAO stats posts especially
• @dalz produces some great stuff, typically monthly, tracking various aspects of stats on the chain.
• @arcange's stats of course - the distribution stats are my fave!
• @abh12345's League Tables, for engagement.
• ATW it can be quite gratifying to head over to State of the DApps and look at how well Hive is doing, for such a young chain.

Are any of these more fundamental to success than the others?

Probably 'core development' and even if you're one of the noble few who isn't interested in money, the price of Hive is crucial for ensuring that continues.

Maybe some of the above are functions of others? Maybe better Alexa rankings is a predictor of new users coming in, maybe number of new users predicts the future price of Hive (maybe that's why it's flatlining atm!)

And maybe some of the above just aren't that important - perhaps the Engine tokens are all doomed to just broadly follow the Hive price, and perhaps low user retention doesn't matter because they'll be back when the other indicators tick back up?!?

Or maybe there are more valid indicators still, and on that note, time to go slaughter my daily chicken and read the entrails.

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