For the first time in almost two years, I'm using my ~~Steem~~ Hive account. Here's why.
I'm a software developer who fell down the crypto rabbit hole in 2012. I co-organize a blockchain meetup here in Philly, and through that was connected with @yabapmatt. He set me up with a Steem account, and I spent some time learning about it. I found the community impressively vibrant, but was skeptical of the technology.
Could DPoS really work? Wasn't Steemit Inc a huge centralizing force in the ecosystem? These doubts made me lose interest in the project, but I've continued to be impressed by what @yabapmatt (and @aggroed, whom I met later) have built on the platform.
Fast forward to today. Frankly, my skepticism of DPoS remains. But I believe Justin Sun did the community a favor by motivating it to get a huge monkey off its back: the Steemit Inc ninja-mined stake. Furthermore, the Hive fork demonstrated the impressive bottom-up resilience of the community.
Do I believe that Hive is as censorship resistant as other PoW networks? Honestly, no, I don't. Do I believe Steem can compete with Bitcoin as digital gold? Again, no. Sorry!
I'm not sure, though, that these are the right questions to ask. After all, I'm not a maximalist— projects exist on a spectrum. I believe in tradeoffs.
Has Hive made a set of tradeoffs that result in a system with a unique set of properties? Yes! Do those unique properties make it a valuable system in the broader decentralized ecosystem? Maybe! I'm not sure. But I think it has a much better chance now than it did before the hardfork. So I'm giving it another chance.
I write a weekly, technology focused blockchain newsletter. In issue number 91, which will go out on Sunday morning, I'm writing about the Hive hardfork. If you're interested, you can subscribe here: