RE: A series of posts regarding Hive, Splinterlands, me, and you!
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Hopefully the tone at the end there doesn't scare people away from participating. Even now as I say this, part of me feels like I'm walking on eggshells.
Did I say this correctly? Will I be misconstrued? Will a miscommunication lead to shunning? Am I viewed as one of these "active blockers" for voting for the return proposal even though my vote was there before this all began, meaning I could have been away like so many others during summer, only to come back and discover the entire SPL crew hates me for some strange reason...
That proposal system worked the same way it did before the SPL proposal went live. Right now I see the return proposal, or the bar, moving up, inching closer to Ecency. Does this mean people are trying to block them? I wouldn't make that conclusion. Maybe it has more to do with the endless complaints about Valueplan. Maybe those people disagree with that spending so much they actually took action rather than just complaining. Hard to say what's going on, and why. Maybe they're in support of raising the bar, for everyone, since so many complain about spending in general.
Easy to see it boils down to people making choices independently. To be expected. The D in DHF does stand for Decentralized. Does each move need to come with an explanation? I don't think so. Maybe others do, and that's fine.
Products like Peakd and Ecency would receive support naturally from the community simply because so many use those products combined with owning HP. When SPL proposal went live, I was under the impression SPL was in the same boat. And I still think there's a lot of support available out there, somewhere, for SPL. Looking forward to seeing it.
I use Peakd so I've supported Peakd now and in the past. I don't use Ecency so I have not supported Ecency now or in the past. Does not mean I'm against the existence of Ecency. I'm happy people have options and freedom to choose.
I have not put my vote behind the SPL proposal but this does not mean I don't want it here. Just because Burger King exists, that doesn't mean I have to support them, even though they bring value to the community, somehow. I don't play SPL. And I think those who enjoy it are free to be in support of it. They're responsible for its success in the same way Burger King customers contribute.
I don't know enough about SPL in general. All the people saying it brings value and people and good times forever is just hearsay to me. I can't base my decision off that.
Do Burger King people try to make the lives of those not in support of their business, difficult? Of course not.
This is how I vote on proposals too, and actually in these two specific examples, the same exact way for the same exact reasons.
But when people have the luxury and entitlement to vote, they should do so fully informed and fully aware of the things they vote on, not just future looking hype, but also past performance. Of the projects themselves and how they actually did or did not help the chain community, the crypto value and/or the chain technology. (grow a healthy engaged and retained userbase, grow money value, improve infrastructure.) One may or may not also choose to consider the past performance of project sponsors as trustworthy, reliable and competent and capable. Those are the levers that move underneath "future hype" coming to fruition anyway.
I need real hard, rigid arguments for these things to win my vote, and a couple of the most controversial proposals right now, basically SPL and ValuePlan really deserve a lot of scrutiny for the size of the asks vs these criteria. (grow a healthy engaged and retained userbase, grow money value, improve infrastructure.)
Would it be rational to support something that did well in the past, just because they did well in the past?
Saddles. They did well in the past. Want to go all in on saddles with me?
I think if someone was directly asking for funds to cover the costs of productive actions in the past, I'd feel comfortable supporting that, if those actions were contributing to the future, in a way that can be observed.
I don't see thousands of people supporting that proposal. Yet one of the claims to fame was attracting thousands of people.
I don't care how much HP anyone has. They already have an account here and all they need to do is push a button to support a proposal.
Hype is useless. Why am I not seeing these people supporting the proposal!
Am I to just believe they exist? Or does this lead me to believe they don't?
Point taken on the saddles cowboy. I get what you mean by it in context.
But take this journey with me using the same metaphor differently.
If the saddle maker said, hey we realized we did well with saddles but horses are over now, and now its all about Mustang GT seat covers and we've got a market for those and can make them with our expert proven saddle makers, but we need some money to retool, buy embroidery thread and carry on, and we have some funds amassed from being successful but need a little more to get going, I'd probably consider an investment in the former saddle cum upholstery company a pretty safe bet. A gamble but one with a track record of winning
But if those selling the saddles had basically run their companies out of business and cash by making shitty saddles or selling the ones they got via a black market rustler ring, or simply making saddles nobody ever wanted to buy even if the saddle market was hot, and had no money of their own to bring to the table because they blew it all, but wanting a ton more to "continue", and their leadership had been known to be either inexperienced or downright incompetent in their roles over the past, I'd be taking my wallet and getting in my Camaro SS and leaving their Mustang seat cover company in the dust.
I think I just agreed with you, now that I read both our comments back.
Your eyes don't deceive you, all those thousands spent on 'safe travel to important conventions' and 'keynotes in ubers and fancy locales' haven't brought thousands of users, we're bleeding users bigly over the years, the community statisticians often post user onboarding charts and that line goes down and right or at best flatlines lately.
We'd be better off taking 150K and giving people $5 to sign up, that would bring us 30,000 new users, and after the cash grabbers take their 5 bucks and leave, we might actually retain a healthy percentage that jump on board, contribute new life, content, code, ideas, and investment money.
Never know? I'd rather experiment with giving out the 5 dollar signup incentive than sending 150K to put 3 dolphins up in a fancy hotel with a gourmet meal per diem, in some European city to give a slide show 3 or 4 times a year to other sponsored conference attending people from wherever, that end up just investing in bitcoin anyway.
Dude, this is Earth, and we're talking about humans. That $5 per individual totaling 150k would go to the first 100 people already here and able to create accounts faster than others.
BOOM, you just dropped a big old truth bomb.
Nonames, this is definitely one of the best responses I’ve read on this matter. I appreciate your thoughts on it.
I’m a SPL player since 2019, and recently working hard to learn more about Hive and become more active in the greater community (I just voted for my first DHF) . I hope to meet and engage with more people like you.
In terms of your Burger King comment, I think you could also look at it in this way, sometimes people vote to increase funding for their local schools, even though they don’t have children, because they feel it’s what is best for their community.
I realize I am biased, but I genuinely do feel that what is good for Splinterlands is also good for Hive. The issue is that Hive works so well for a game like Splinterlands that we have rarely had to come out of our bubble to engage in the Hive ecosystem - this needs work (and Matt has already taken steps for this with Hive promotion inside the game). We should all be one big family working together to pull each other up.
I’m here to learn and listen and do my best to bring our two communities closer together.
I see your point and respect it.
To counter that I would mention public services like schools aren't expected to make a profit. The artwork the students put all over the walls isn't worth anything aside from grades. The "profit" there is contributing to their future. Them needing help would be a common occurrence so people often accept fundraisers as being necessary.
Meanwhile SPL "students" have money for cards, the various tokens; it all holds value and stays in their wallets. They get paid to "learn."
So this would be like the profitable/wealthy private school in the rich neighborhood canvasing all neighborhoods including the poor neighborhoods, pulling up in a Ferrari, and asking for donations.
Now I want to demonstrate something. I'm going to upvote your comment as much as I can. 100%. I'm not in support of the SPL proposal. You are. In seven days you will receive some HP. The same HP you're using to support the proposal. Notice how I'm now supporting the SPL proposal indirectly?
If you were to turn around and sell that, you're making the choice to weaken your ability to support the things you enjoy.
I don't expect the majority of gamers to become content creators. That vote I gave you, in seven days, gives me HP as well. Just for pushing the button.
So over the span of several years, if thousands of players with 100 HP each were actively voting for content and engaging with their common interests, the value behind that mass of gamers with common interests would be on the rise constantly, growing at the same rate as everyone else. A large group of gamers working together to support their DHF proposal gives them a clear advantage. Could be sitting here upvoting your conversations with one another rather than sitting on Discord for example and that simple act would be contributing to your success.
SPL is just as much "The Hive Community" as anyone else here. Hive is more like the Earth and much like the planet, there are several communities. Might be a Bostonian or a New Yorker, but you're still an Earthling. Boston community members take care of themselves. New York takes care of itself.
Imagine if this entire operation grew into millions of people. Never in a million years would "The Hive Community" be on the same page, agreeing on all things. Yet all the available tools and opportunities would still be available to everyone in the same way they are today.
I'm happy to hear SPL is taking steps to remove the wall surrounding their community and now wants to open the gates and build roads.
Currently, no individual here can say they speak for "The Hive Community."
However, several can speak for SPL.
I appreciate your response. I learned a lot from this interaction.I had no idea about how upvoting worked - I clearly have a lot to learn. Thank you.
I still think that Splinterlands is good for Hive and Hive is good for Splinterlands - even if it’s a private school that helps maintain or bring the land value up and now needs support. I respect your decision to not support the proposal - which makes this whole system work.
I look forward to more conversations with people like you in this community.
#splinterlands
If you're using Peakd, you can click that. There's a little star you can select, making it a "favorite topic". Now all that content is one click away for you.
There you can see the massive amount of SPL content, and plenty of rewards. Every single one of those people is being given the opportunity to support something like the SPL proposal. They're all earning HP, nonstop. Now you're seeing hundreds if not thousands supporting the SPL proposal indirectly.
Now look closely. Notice how absent the community is? Potentially thousands of people, yet hardly any comments under majority of those posts.
Yet people will sit on Youtube, Reddit, Discord; talking about the same things, all day. Earning nothing and rewarding no one.
I always wondered why I didn't see a massive amount of people engaging on those posts. A Youtube comment section, there's comments with thousands of "likes" but here, hardly a peep and the community doesn't even have a chance to reward itself by creating legit interesting/entertaining comments and "liking" them.
If games bring value to this chain, having a solid community of people interested in games, active, engaged, and able to support the things they enjoy, that makes it so much easier for other games to find success. The attention always spills over onto other products. That ball needs to get rolling or all these games being developed locally will just sit on the shelves collecting dust.
Achieving that boils down to individuals and individual choices. The true potential of this entire system cannot be reached if people choose to not participate and instead rely on others and their votes to get them through the tough times.
If I step in to vote, all I'm doing is contributing to the illusion these products are popular here. Setting more people up to struggle down the road.
The pattern repeats. It's not hard to find other games or games in development setting themselves up to have an absent community or dealing with the consequences of said absence.
I can only hope at some point my thoughts were just as helpful or even more helpful than the act of me pushing that proposal button and walking away.
And just as a sidenote. Now that you know how to easily find all the content, where it says "trending" on the right, change that to "recent" and now you'll see several years worth of rewarded content, scrolling all the way down to day one. That all doubles as marketing SPL to "The Hive Community."
Do some calculations. Consider token values on the day of publishing as well. Notice how "The Hive Community" has been contributing to some rather alarming figures over the years?
Now factor in all the money "The Hive Community" dumped into SPL indirectly. For example someone with stake votes on a post about ducks and the author converts that payment into cards. Hundreds of thousands of posts and millions upon millions of votes, all from "The Hive Community", dumped directly into SPL.
One side-effect was several "Hive Community" members struggling to find support for their work and eventually leaving the chain for good.
The trail of breadcrumbs doesn't lead to a booming product? How?
"The Hive Community won't support SPL?" How?
"SPL is good for Hive." How?
"SPL brings people to Hive." Where are they?
"The Hive Community doesn't know what's good for business..." Clearly.
"because they don't support SPL." Huh?
It boils down to "The Hive Community," which includes SPL, mismanaging itself. Viewing this with outside perspective, it's similar to what families go through with gambling addiction. And now wants to gamble another 500k thinking that'll "fix it." "Just one more win. That's all I need."
Under that proposal post you can see me taking flak for thinking surely there's something to show for all this. Why?
I think the biggest difference is the fact that Matt is the CEO now for the past 10 months. He’s significantly more financially conservative than Aggy. And Matt is working hard to put the company in a place to withstand the next bear market and be a successful and profitable game on Hive for a long time.
I don't doubt Matt's abilities. From what I know of him, I can only say good things about him. I might be wrong but he strikes me as someone who'd rather get down to brass tacks, rather than generating hype then playing catch up.
He's just one guy though, and the supporters have the ability to do a lot for the game. I doubt the SPL community will want to give it their all. I don't mind taking flak for a statement like that either. If I'm wrong, that means they got their asses in gear.
That’s exactly who @yabapmat is, and he is only one person but he does have a significantly slimmed down, focused, solid team behind him that are pushing out weekly updates.
In the past 10 months they have moved from a mantra of hype and sell to under promise and over deliver.
100% of the focus has been and is for the next couple of months is the new player experience and how to onboard them into the game, and as they learn they will also get onboarded to Hive - the screenshots that @nateaguila has shared of the tutorials has looked great.
I ultimately want to see Hive and Splinterlands not only co-exist, but move to a place of mutually benefitting each other. How do you think we get there?
That, I can't answer. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say I don't want to answer. These aren't my problems to solve.
Coexisting? I was under the impression that's how it was the entire time. I've known some of the people contributing to development and art for several years. I know or know of plenty of the stakeholders backing the proposal, for several years. They're almost all familiar faces to me. We've crossed paths several times over the years. For the most part, always on good terms. It's funny because of all the people here, I think they would expect me to be the one guy being all like, "Nope. Not supporting it." I know they're not taking it personally.
A rift in a decentralized environment doesn't make sense. Seeing people come out of the shadows talking about how "Hive won't be good for SPL" or "Hive holds SPL back" only highlights how disconnected they are, as individuals. It came as a shock to some that SPL is a Hive-based product, making them think differently of SPL even though everything about it was fine up until that proposal came to light, and the product still functions the same way. Attempting to destroy Hive's image tarnishes their own brand at the same time. Think of a boomerang.
A decentralized environment is unfamiliar territory for majority of people on the planet. Everyone has their own say, but controls nothing other than themselves and what they bring to the table. True freedom doesn't mean you kick back and everything is done for you. It means you're free to go hunting and gathering because if you don't, you'll starve.
I thought I did a fine enough job showing, with evidence, Hive and SPL has always coexisted. Perhaps there are and were some dysfunctional moments, but Hive doesn't have a mind of its own, and neither does the SPL community.
In crypto, in general, there's a lot of tribalism. Hive is just a set of tools anyone can pick up and use. It's not some kind of business with a team calling all the shots. Anyone can step up and just start calling their own shots. So, people can use that to their advantage and work on figuring out the how, themselves. SPL marketing itself can bring value to Hive. SPL can also extract a lot of resources from Hive and leave it hanging. History proves each, so, find a balance.
No matter how well things go, there will always be people that find a way to disagree with how things are going. Could be a disgruntled SPL gamer unhappy with the game. Could be a disgruntled content creator unhappy with games being here. They only speak for themselves.
Another thing about popular products in general. The more popular something is, the more haters it has. Pick any popular game or movie or song or artist from history, and look how many people think those products are stupid. They often outnumber those in favor. People need to use that basic knowledge to their advantage. Just because you think your game is awesome, that doesn't mean all will agree and support it. It needs to develop a strong support base so it can stand on its own.
Look how many hate Burger King for whatever reason. Business still thrives. Pick any product. Same results. So don't invest much into creating the perfect image because that can't be achieved. Simply build enough confidence.
Once again, achieving that boils down to individuals and their individual choices. Not my job to tell anyone how. It's their job to figure it out.
I don't know enough about SPL to be able to suggest how. I could come up with ideas but I'm a total outsider. It's none of my business.
Yes, Hive and SPL has co-existed just fine for years. I was curious as to your thoughts on trying on how best to grow that relationship with each other. But if you don’t know splinterlands, then all good, and I will digress.
There have definitely been some people that are SPL Maxis and Hive Maxis that aren’t showing either community in their best light. And because I speak more on the SPL community, right now is a scary time for us, and our tokens and assets are down tremendously, so I believe some people are voicing their opinions that stem from emotions rather than an understanding of Hive. Anyone that is speaking poorly about hive definitely doesn’t represent the community and certainly not our leadership.
I appreciate your time and insight on this. I will continue to do my best to show the positive side of our community, and I will continue to grow my presence on Hive so that I may do a better job in educating my fellow players in the benefits of this powerful ecosystem at their fingertips.
I look forward to seeing you around the blockchain and speaking with you more on other topics as well.
Emotional outbursts/reactions are common during the lows, and the highs as well.
The common crypto culture that would define Maxis isn't something I subscribe to. The entire time I'm writing out my thoughts, I'm well aware some would ignore the points, look at what's in the wallet, then use that to discredit. I don't have time for that stuff.
I've seen arguments coming from another angle where some think those in support of the proposal are only voting to protect their assets. As if that's a way to discredit them. Realistically, they're using their HP to back their assets. That can be seen as a responsible move. Think of a house with a strong foundation. Tends to last longer. People can choose to have security.
So when those who went all in on SPL awhile back, draining their HP entirely while giving Hive the finger, now realize they only contributed to their own personal crumbling foundation and have become dependents. They had the ability to back their assets but forfeited it, seeing no value in that. Contributed much to SPL and themselves, but that well always dries up.
Some of them had huge stacks of HP. All gone. It was like a contagious disease stemming from emotions, misguidance, and tribalism. I could show examples published to this chain but I don't think shedding light directly on those specific situations and individuals would be fair to them in this setting.
People can dislike whatever they want. People can dislike Hive. It's an inanimate object and doesn't care. Even during those moments where one or some are are disrespecting "The Hive Community," I don't take that personally. They're hitting themselves. They eventually leave and everything else here remains intact.
You get used to the noise.