My thoughts about Hive.io

It seems it may have started with the Honey Badger of blockchains, and at the looks of it, we end up producing our own honey by forking into our own Hive. Cheesy? If you think about it, it makes sense, whereas honey is equal to the real value that we offered on Steem.

However, chances are great that this may only be logic to people who are actually active on Steem or have followed the meme and news. On the other hand, Hive.io provides us all with enough chances and opportunities to make it absolutely great.

Here are my thoughts about Hive.io, without getting too deep in honey/bee relating buzz. My concern is that if we were to dive too deep in bee-related topics, we probably end up into sticky situations that limit the options of our new blockchain.

In my opinion, some things shouldn’t be in a fixed state, this way we can open many more doors to new users as we individually can relate in our own way that we may find more valuable than when choices are being made in advance. To make it clear, it is necessary we do need to have some fixed references applied to specific subjects and topics. It is important that these specific subjects and topics are only covered globally and as minimalistic as possible to create room for other (creative) initiatives that run on the blockchain.

My aim with this post is to objectively address and explain what a Hive is to me. I will try to see if I can open up new perspectives to those who are concerned and plan to launch dApps and interfaces on the Hive blockchain. I’m sure that there are many opportunities and chances that arise when we seek a global understanding of the word and construction of hive.

Construct

If we take a look at the structure of a Hive, we can learn a lot about how something strong was being built from scratch with hard labor and mentality. Objectively boxing and referring these elements may potentially offer new focuses that may give us a better understanding of how to approach further. Deciding on such an approach is very important in the early stage where we need to determine the course of branding of the Hive blockchain.

Here I will label the 5 identified elements that I think are important to complete a real hive and could be translated in our blockchain-related subjects and topics. I think it is important to be able to approach these subjects and topics as global as possible as we can. As in result, communities (for example) have the possibility to zoom in as much as they want on a specific theme as they wish.

Therefore, I find it important to refrain ourselves from using words that fill, specify and limit our options beforehand, as it will result in less room to work with/on from a blockchain perspective. This is mainly because we will have a lesser risk of the blockchain being labeled, and it prevents duplicate themes, and it allows a theme-focused initiative to create a stronger product/service since the blockchain itself didn’t label topics/subjects in a theme-based manner.

• Hive -> Blockchain
• Colony -> Community
• Honeycomb -> Applications and interfaces
• Honey -> Content and transactions
• Brood -> (Onboarding) Userbase

The queen is dead, long live the hive

Decentralization is a key factor to make any blockchain a success. We’ve witnessed an unexpected takeover. Long story short: Ned sold Steemit, Justin replaced him and our community-chosen witnesses that raised huge security concerns. While that caused all of this, we might get the best out of it while we at it. It gave us time to re-think about how our blockchain was structured. I believe it is for the better to continue without the ninja-mined stake, and to rely on people who are chosen and picked by the community, where it is okay to differ from our decisions to one and another.

I praise and thank those who volunteer to work and continue to develop the Hive blockchain. While the most important factor (to me) about decentralization is communication, Hive being a social blockchain platform is a huge benefit, as we have shown that we are a strong community with many various voices and opinions. However, the challenge is to listen to all of them and continue to communicate with the entire community, so everyone their voice is being heard (big and small), in order to make balanced decisions. I think this is a great chance for us to build something together with and by the community now the queen is dead.

Global proposals and decisions

Another thing that I’d like to find out is how proposals and decisions are being made and by whom. For example, who is responsible to spread the word if important decisions were to be made based on voting by the community?

Personally, I am hoping to see more communication between initiatives that run on the Hive blockchain, the community, and the Hive blockchain team itself. I think that the people that run initiatives on the blockchain are responsible for their own interface, and can choose to participate in such events or not. Steempeak has done a great job thus far in my opinion. Perhaps, with all the changes that need to be made, an easy add-on could be implemented as well during these changes to make sure important notes are not being missed.

Quick thought: have a hidden top bar reserved for important blockchain-related posts/polls/surveys that serve as a funnel to push all traffic to one place regarding the subject. The information/URL displayed could be automated when Hive.io publishes such a query so it is automatically updated and initiatives do not have to update that top bar manually.

Thinking outside of the box

With all the above into consideration, I strongly believe that with such an approach (whereas presenting/branding Hive as minimalistic and open as possible), many (new and old) initiatives have the opportunity to change their branding and fill in the blanks for themselves. This is a huge benefit from my perspective towards new investors as well. Keep in mind that Steem already provided us with a similar sentiment. Steem basically gave all of us a white canvas, where we could fill in that canvas ourselves. This allowed many dApps to think outside of the box. That being said: I challenge all those dApps and initiatives that choose to move from the Steem blockchain to Hive to think even more outside the box. I hope to have provided you with a perspective to start with and wish you all the best.

If any initiative requires assistance regarding branding or concept creation, feel free to contact me as I am required to work remotely from home.

Wax on, wax off,
Ruben