I am seeing a number of posts and comments lamenting Hive's price or the failure of its social media / content aspects to achieve wide scale mass adoption. Recent posts by @acesontop and @khaleelkazi and comments thereupon come to mind.

These concerns fundamentally misapprehend what Hive's unique value is.

It is NOT to become a blockchain Facebook, Twitter or Youtube. That ship sailed with the crypto ad ban.

Hive doesn't need mass adoption (and frankly I wouldn't want that mass of idiots on traditional social media to come here).

### Mass adopted Social Media is inherently dangerous

Indeed mass adopted social media has caused such immense damage to human society and civilisation itself that it is a Ring of Sauron that needs to be permanently destroyed in Mount Doom.
This includes:
- facilitating and promoting the global [mass formation psychosis](https://rwmalonemd.substack.com/p/mass-formation-psychosis) over a minor virus of the common cold family;
- by allowing mass secret government directed censorship (as revealed by the Twitter Files) of crucial information (such as the Hunter Biden Laptop and alternative views on COVID) destroyed democracy, freedom of speech and rule of law in the United States.

## What Hive is really for

Hive's blogging and it financial aspects are secondary to its unique role as a self-sustaining decentralised public database and notifications mechanism. Hive's community is crucial, but it does not need to grow massively.

Splinterlands, eXode, PodPing and Keychain show the way to Hive's true future.

**Hive is the base layer for Web 3.0.** 
This is not trite - it will be explained in detail later in this post.

Its user base and token values will grow as those use-cases grow.

This was always the plan.

Rewards for content (Proof of Brain) was only ever intended to widely and fairly spread the Hive token to create true decentralisation.
This was actually Ned Scott's original vision. 

We don't need or want the morons of TikTok or other mindless "influencers" here.

We don't need speculative "investors" either.

We only need people who are genuinely committed to the vision that Hive provides and more developers to come and build dApps on Hive, because of Hive's unique advantages.

## Hive's Unique, Revolutionary Utility

And they will come, because Hive offers certain functionalities and utility that are valuable, revolutionary and unique. Marketing is best done by the success stories that Hive already has (like Splinterlands).

### Why Blockchain?

To properly understand this, one must take a step back and understand a number of core truths:
- blockchains are an inherently inefficient form of database;
- the only unique advantage that justifies this inefficiency is the ability to create networks of decentralised trust;
- all blockchains require substantial resources to operate that increase with scale;
- External funding to provide those resources will always run out.
- Every blockchain which has not become ***self-sustaining*** before the external funding runs out will fail.
- the test of true ***decentralisation*** is whether it is practically possible for external forces (governments, corporations) to sue, arrest, threaten, bribe or otherwise coerce enough of the individuals running the blockchain to destroy or compromise it

### Are Bitcoin Maximalists Right?

Based on the above, and the view that the only use case for decentralised trust is money, Bitcoin Maximalists think that only Bitcoin has any value and every other cryptocurrency is valueless rubbish that is destined to fail.

While they are substantially right, they are not completely right because as Hive proves:
- there ***are*** other valuable uses cases of decentralised trust beyond money; and 
- self-sustainability and true decentralisation ***can*** be achieved by other blockchains.

At present, Hive is the only blockchain, other than Bitcoin, which has achieved the 4 essential and self reinforcing requirements for long term survivability:
- genuine uses cases of decentralised trust beyond money;
- self-sustainability supported by these genuine use cases;
- true decentralisation to guarantee decentralised trust;
- a sufficiently large community and token spread to allow true decentralisation and self-sustainability.

It is possible that other blockchains will also achieve this, but it is a hard road that involves fair and wide distribution of your token, the creation of a substantial loyal community and then the overthrow or disappearance of the founding entrepreneurs and their stake.

### What are these non-money use cases of decentralised trust?

#### A. Permissionless, Uncensorable & Cheap, Centralised Notification Systems

The internet itself is a decentralised network (notwithstanding the substantial centralisation caused by Big Tech).
The problem with any such decentralised system is that you can't find stuff in an efficient or timely manner without centralised oracles - a central point where you can look for pointers to the location of what you want.

This problem occurs all over the internet starting with the base layers of DNS servers, time servers and right up to search engines and content platforms.

It was a problem for Podcasting, which had become increasingly reliant on mostly Big Tech run podcast lists that required tons of expensive processing power to maintain (by pinging millions of RSS feeds to check if anything had changes dozens of times a day).

Then one day @brianoflondon realised that if, instead of having to check ever RSS feed all the time, notifications of new podcasts could be posted as custom jsons on Hive then a $5 per month server could do the job of $5000 per month worth of servers.
As a huge bonus, the feed of new podcasts would be uncensorable, extraordinarily robust and available to everyone without gatekeepers and with the only entry fee being a Hive account and some HP.

The result is @podping and https://podping.org/.

Brian was able to get Adam Curry, the founder of Podcasting and his Podcasting 2.0 Index behind this and many podcasting hosts have adopted this new system. The economics and growing network effects make it too compelling for even Big Tech to continue to use the old system for long.

There are many applications for such a system, well beyond podcasting.

Another one @brianoflondon is working on is Platform Independent Live Notifications.

Currently content producers are locked in to particular platforms for going live and notifying their followers.
If you go live on Twitch then only your Twitch followers are notified. The live nature of things means there is no time to go to all your other platforms and tell them to go to the Twitch feed and it may well be blocked on other platforms. If you want to change platforms you can't take you followers with you.

But if you instead direct your followers to the centralised, platform-independent live notifications system then your followers can follow you whichever platform you choose to broadcast from.

The applications are endless and can save tons of development time and ongoing server costs for all sorts of projects.

**It solves a fundamental computer science / internet problem in a unique and revolutionary way using Hive.**

#### There is nothing else out there that can do this.

Any centralised solution is expensive, less robust, more difficult to scale and will be platform locked and subject to the censorship and potential failure of the centralised entity.

Bitcoin is too expensive for this application and can't do custom jsons.
No other blockchain is fully decentralised and self sustaining. 
Other blockchains are less efficient and have more expensive real transaction costs than Hive.

This is a genuine, valuable and widely applicable use case of decentralised trust and only Hive can do it.

#### B. True ownership of in-game items combined with community

Computer gaming is a huge industry.

Gamers spend large amounts of time and not insignificant amounts of money acquiring items that have value and utility within that particular game. Be it the latest Vorpal Sword +6, Legendary gold foil card or ring of invisibility, these virtual items have real value to people and have been acquired with time, sweat and treasure.

They are assets in many senses, but with most centralised games they are locked in the game and lack core characteristics of true ownership.

In many games it is not even legal (within the game's T&Cs) to trade or transfer them.
Even where allowed, the item is just an entry on the database of the game company. It can be modified, deleted, suspended at whim by the developer or the whole database can disappear if they go out of business or are acquired and the acquirer decides to deprecate the game.

If there is an in-game market it is controlled by the game developer. You can't sell your asset on another market.
The ability to delegate and rent your assets to other gamers is almost unheard of.

Splinterland and other Hive games use the Hive blockchain to provide all these core characteristics of true asset ownership to in-game items.

Now it is true that many blockchains can do this, but none that can are fully decentralised or self sustaining and thus the risk of asset confiscation or loss just passes from the centralised game company to the centralised blockchain.

Without true decentralised trust NFTs are worthless.

Moreover, community is important for gamers and Hive offers a one-stop shop for community building, game related content creation, rewards and finding early adopters (Alpha and Beta players).

**This is the second genuine, valuable and widely applicable use case for decentralised trust that only Hive can deliver on.**

### C. Secure Single Sign-In to all online services

It is no secret that the security model of the entire web 2.0 internet is broken.

Any system that has people's usernames and passwords held by millions of centralised entities and which involves human beings who will inevitably re-use passwords is as weak as its weakest links. Those weak links, performing functions which are not important or financially valuable will never be able to afford good security and will be easy to hack. The password for your old video shop account will be used by hackers to hack your finances.

Moreover keeping track of thousands of online accounts and passwords is a huge pain, even with a password manager. That pain is increased by insecure SMS authentication and Authenticator type security.

What users need is a highly secure system where their one, uncrackable and encrypted "password" for *every* online service they need never leaves the physical security of their devices and is only biometricaly accessible by the user on that device. Even better would be if there were various layers of "passwords" that only the least powerful one would be used in every day use.

That system is the Hive ecosystem and the Hive Keychain.

After experiencing the Holy Grail on Hive, I HATE interacting with Web 2.0 security systems and I'm sure most Hiveans feel the same.

I will try out new Hive dApps that I would never try on the broader internet in the knowledge that its one click to log in and my keys are safe.

You can even securely log in to Hive apps on a completely insecure computer (eg in an Apple store) using your phone with mobile Hive Keychain as @brianoflondon demonstrated to me last HiveFest.

I'm not aware of any other blockchain that has this capability and lack of self-sustainability and true decentralised trust opens up other security weakness.

**This is the third genuine, valuable and widely applicable use case for decentralised trust that only Hive can deliver on.**

https://cryptologos.cc/logos/hive-blockchain-hive-logo.png

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