Proposal to Grow the Hive Ecosystem With the Everything App and One-Click Onboarding

About LeoFinance

LeoFinance was created in July 2019 (we just had our 4th anniversary) as an individual community on Hive. The idea was to give crypto and finance enthusiasts on Hive a place to discuss anything related to these topics and earn $LEO in the process. A few months later and after getting some adoption, we launched our own condenser-forked frontend, specific to Finance, Crypto, Economics, and any topic related to money.

A few months later, we decided to self-fund the building of a new UI completely from scratch. We built the UI under our mission statement of Democratizing knowledge and access to finance through Web3... On the only blockchain that made sense, Hive.

Let's fast forward a couple of years and hundreds of thousands of dollars in self-funded development across our 12+ applications built on and around Hive to August 2022.

Remember Project Blank?

The vision of LeoFinance evolved. We talked about and hyped Project Blank for a long time. Our mission is to onboard the masses to Hive through LeoFinance and we realized that our platform was too niche to make that happen. Not only was it too niche in the sense of content subject (finance only) but it also was too niche in the content type. We needed to go beyond long-form articles only.

LeoFinance is now on a 10-year, self-funded development runway looking to go mainstream by becoming The Everything App, with our Flagship feature: Threads - Microblogging on the Hive blockchain. By this point and up until December 2022, LeoFinance has been the only frontend on Hive that hasn't decreased in monthly active users. We've worked incredibly hard to both maintain our user base throughout the bear market and simultaneously aim to grow it.

On Being Self-Funded

Being Self-Funded - and this is Khal speaking, by the way - has been extremely important to me because of many reasons. The main reason is not wanting to be a net-outflow for the Hive ecosystem. I want LeoFinance to be a net inflow for Hive - that is, bring in more outside capital, users, and attention than we ask for in return.

Bootstrapping is better
Answering to people
Being undeserving

These among other reasons are why LeoFinance has never sought outside funding for development. On top of the simple fact that we didn't need it for development. The development expenses of LeoFinance over the past 4 years amounts to more than $1,000,000 and that number continues to increase with each passing year.

That being said, our runway extends well into the next decade of development. I have long said that LeoFinance is not only a passion project, but a project that aims to build a real, economically viable business model. We aim to do this in many different ways. Among them, bringing outside capital into the Hive ecosystem.

Everyone knows that Hive needs money to flow INTO the system. There are plenty of ways that money flows out of Hive, but finding the inflows has always been a passionate point for me.

Ad revenue has started to grow into a behemoth for LeoFinance. Since the full launch of Threads, we have put ourselves on a really interesting trajectory to bring in tens of thousands of dollars per month into our ecosystem, and by effect, into the Hive ecosystem by enriching the Hivers who use leofinance.io.

May 2023 - Project Blank Finally Isn't... Blank

In May 2023, we launched our new User Interface. With each passing day, we are adding new features and fixes to build the ultimate social media experience. And it ALL lives on the Hive blockchain database.

The Everything App on Hive.

Currently Available on the LeoFinance UI

Killer dApps, Rolled into One Seamless Interface:

Twitter (X) Killer - Microblogging on-chain: https://leofinance.io/threads
Medium Killer - Long-Form content for every topic: https://leofinance.io/posts
Reddit Killer - Community Pages as a Reddit alternative: https://leofinance.io/communities
A dedicated section for Finance and Crypto related content: https://leofinance.io/communities/hive-167922
Decentralized, stake-weighted Polls: https://leofinance.io/threads/tag/polls

Also Built by Leo:

Advertisement model that benefits the community: LeoAds Protocol Which Redistributes Ad Revenue to Users
AI integration to on-chain activities: News2Threads Bot
Decentralized curation with 10+ curators: https://hiveblocks.com/@leo.voter
LeoAuth internal login protocol
LeoInfra - Twitter and Goggle Hive Lite Account Protocol
LeoCache - A Second-Layer Caching mechanism that enables the Threads indexing backend as well as speedy activities on the UI
LeoMobile - mobile app on IOS and Android
wleo.io - Multi Token Bridge - bLEO, pLEO, wLEO, bHBD, bHIVE, pHBD, pHIVE
CubDeFi.com - a DeFi app on the BSC Blockchain aimed at bringing Hive/HBD/LEO Liquidity to the multi-token bridge
PolyCub.com - a DeFi app on the Polygon Blockchain aimed at bringing Hive/HBD/LEO Liquidity to the multi-token bridge
Hivestats.io - a Hive stats tracking app utilized by thousands of Hivers per month
Hive Wallet 2.0 on https://leofinance.io with many features including DeFi integration coming
LeoDex.io - Our own Hive-Engine UI
LeoFi.io - Our own LEO POWER Leasing app
@leofinance - Hive Witness
LeoTower - A Custom JSON Watchtower backend for Polls now and eventually, future features we're bringing to the chain that specifically use JSON-enabled functionalities

Under Development

LeoNode - a highly scalable full-node for the Hive blockchain. Needed especially to scale Threads as it is resource intensive
Twitter Export protocol for a one-click button to export a Twitter account's historical content to the Hive blockchain and store them as Threads (key to onboarding Twitter users to a blockchain alternative, using Hive)
Hive Resource Credit Dynamic pool (LeoFinance has accumulated a lot of HIVE Power across various accounts and is building a dynamic pool to delegate RCs to all users as needed)
On-chain referral system
Engage-to-Mint (no sales) NFTs with in-app use cases and as a tool for gamification
Full-stack customization of Communities (essentially adding a second-layer element to the existing Hive Communities Protocol)
Subscription model as a Substack alternative
Evergreen content with a never-ending monetization model - using LeoAds protocol to reward Hive content beyond the 7-day window with Ad checks based on traffic generated
In-app Engagement Leaderboards to encourage more on-chain activity (i.e. Threads, Comments, Posts, Replies)
LeoShorts - Short, temporary videos as an alternative to TikTok/IG stories, integrating with 3Speak
Short form videos embedded to the Microblogging feature, again integrating with 3Speak
Quiz and Forms as an alternative to Google Forms

Our Vision for The Everything App on Hive is definitive and permanent, and we have a 10-year roadmap ahead of us. This vision has a self-funded development runway for expenses that will allow us to keep building and growing, no matter what.

Our mission has long been to grow the Hive ecosystem but we want to do it right. We want to bring in both capital and users from the outside into the Hive blockchain.

We didn't want to and still never intend to ask for funds to develop our project's technology. Especially considering that most of our frontend technology is not open source. We don't believe in asking Hive as an ecosystem to pay for our technical developments or to pay the salaries of our team of developers, marketers, designers and administrators.

Grow the Size of the Hive Pie Rather Than Take a Bigger Slice

Since our new User Interface launch, we've grown from 500 monthly active Users to 1,300 monthly active users

Since our new Tokenomics model and the deployment of the Advertisement Revenue model, our native token ($LEO) has increased both in # of unique holders and in average price by almost 3x

Now that Threads is officially live, we are looking to grow this existing user base by more than 3x by December 2023 and finish the year with 5,000 Monthly Active users. For added context, Hive as a whole blockchain has about 11,000 Monthly Active users (blogging/commenting).

To achieve this, we are not just looking inward to the Hive blockchain. That would mean we grow from the 10% share of total Hive social users we currently have to 50% of Hive social users. While we do expect more growth within Hive from that 10%, we are more-so looking outward. To people who are not currently a part of the 11,000 monthly active social users on Hive.

We are mostly focused on attracting users from the outside of Hive. Our philosophy at LeoFinance is to grow the size of the pie, rather than get a bigger slice of the existing one.

Since March 2023, we've had more than 20 meetings with existing and thriving Crypto Projects from outside of the Hive Ecosystem, and so far we've successfully partnered with three of them to work in collaborative marketing efforts. We are working to have 10 thriving Crypto Companies as official partners by the end of 2023.

As our partners, we ask them to start publishing their Long-Form (think, Medium developer updates) project/development updates on the Hive blockchain. We also ask them to bring their users to our interface to interact with their development updates (comment) and also post Threads using their hashtag to gain more awareness.

We leverage our existing user base to show them the power of Hive by having our users comment on their dev updates, interact with their community's threads, and more. The power of Hive is one that is lacking on nearly EVERY OTHER platform out there - especially in the crypto space - that power is in the Hive community. This community is incredibly engaged, thoughtful and intelligent. By focusing the attention on these projects’ announcements, they will go from getting 0-2 comments on their Medium articles to getting 50-100+ on their Hive articles from the Hive community.

The power in that is something they will only recognize once they see it first hand.

Our Keywords are sustainable and continuous growth by capturing the existing Cryptospace user base, and converting the web2 user base by offering an array of alternatives to standalone web2 apps like Reddit, Medium, Twitter, Substack, Bitcointalk, etc.

Marketing and Promotion

Hive's power is in providing dApps the backend infrastructure and database to build on top of. The Hive layer 0 is the community, the layer 1 is the tech stack that can enable layer 2 development - like us.

From that point, it is up to us - the Layer 2 dApps - to not only build on Layer 1, but actually market ourselves, promote adoption and make onboarding through our applications as easy as possible.

This, among many reasons, is why you see the Hive Lite Account Protocol we built (called LeoInfra) as a staple in our onboarding process. We've made it as easy as 30 seconds to create a Hive account and make your first Thread/Post on the Hive blockchain. We encrypt the keys to the Hive account and allow users to download them later, once we've successfully retained them as a user and given them a reason to keep coming back.

It is not Hive itself that will drive adoption to the ecosystem, but the standalone dApps, business owners and developers who will spearhead any potential mainstream adoption.

The value that Hive captures is both in network effect from the increased user base as well as from resource credit utilization from dApps like us - who aim to grow our user bases to the point where we need to continually acquire more HIVE POWER to ensure our users never run out of RCs to interact with and store data on the Hive blockchain.

The Everything App - DHF Proposal

This proposal covers 7 different aspects that we will focus on:

The Everything App Development
Traditional Marketing
Influencer Marketing
Collaboration Marketing
Guerilla Marketing
Adoption Campaigns
Organic Growth by TEA

1. The Everything App Development

As we mentioned above, since LeoFinance's inception, we have been fully self-funded and are adamant about remaining that way when it comes to our technology. We believe in building a sustainable, viable business and to NOT take away from the Hive ecosystem but rather, to bring capital and users into the Hive ecosystem.

The LeoVerse is an expensive project to run, but our vision extends far beyond what is possible today. Onboarding 5,000 MAUs is our goal in 2023 but what lies in 2033 and beyond is where our heads are at. We're looking to bring hundreds of thousands and eventually, millions of people to Hive through the LeoFinance Everything App.

Does that seem like a lofty dream to you? Does it sound almost unachievable? If you've been on this blockchain for a while, you probably think it's impossible to reach these goals. I've talked to a lot of people who think that way. This is understandable but I don’t share their pessimistic outlook. They are the same people who said Project Blank was an impossible vision to achieve and that LEO would die a few months after it was launched.

We strive to build an app that is not only as good as Web2 apps in terms of features and functionalities, but that it is actually BETTER than Web2 apps. This is extremely achievable. It's not easy, but I will - and our team will - be around for the next 10+ years and we will make it happen. We don't ever give up.

We strongly believe in bringing value to HIVE and not taking away from it. This is why we are asking for a whopping $0 in funding from the DHF for the development of The Everything App.

Yes, $0.

We will continue to self-fund the technological development and innovation for leofinance.io, hivestats.io, leodex.io, leofi.io, wleo.io and any other apps we build under our Everything App umbrella for the next 10 years and beyond. That's how we roll.

A Few Key Things Before We Get into Actual Budgets

Along the same lines where we believe that the DHF shouldn’t fund our own technology development, we also believe we shouldn’t ask the DHF to fund our employee payroll.

That's why all of the budgets and details below will show us asking for only the actual placements / marketing itself to be funded. The budget for our team’s time spent researching, activating, collaborating, partnering, etc., will come out of our own personal budget for payroll expenses.

Another key thing to note, and we'll reiterate this at the end: LeoFinance will 100% reimburse the DHF if we don't hit our broad deliverables. That is, if our marketing efforts are unsuccessful to actually onboard real human beings into getting a Hive account, we will refund our entire proposal budget to the DHF.

We believe that any DHF proposal has to provide clear and measurable goals. We want you to only fund this proposal if you believe that our goals are clear and measurable, and if we don’t live up to them, we will give all the marketing money back. A risk-free investment for Hive to gain itself more users. If it doesn't, it costs $0 to Hive.

Our focus is to make the pie bigger. We're not here for money, we're not here to get paid, we're here to grow the Hive ecosystem through our dApp.

2. Traditional Marketing

We believe there are two big reasons Hive has not yet been mass adopted as a Web3 Social Media platform

The social media aspect has lacked usability
Nobody knows about it

One of the biggest reasons Hive hasn't been adopted, is that people simply don't know about the ecosystem or the amazing dApps we have.

We believe that Hive advertising itself should be aimed at developers and entrepreneurs. @crimsonclad already has that on lock.

We want to advertise The Everything App in every corner of the cryptospace so that our target audience realizes there's an alternative to Reddit, Twitter, and Medium in a decentralized, immutable, censorship proof and tokenizable ecosystem.

Our ads will aim to convince these users that a Web3 social media app is now available and that it is life-changing once they adopt it. We bring them to our sign up flow where they are prompted to create a Hive Lite Account using LeoInfra and create their first Thread to earn some crypto... All in under 30 seconds.

Focus: Banners in crypto-related websites, featured articles in news outlets, small event sponsorships, and more.

Deliverables:

Full transparency with a detailed report of what we spend this budget on.
Monthly report on traffic, clicks generated, and user turnover through our referral system.

*The expenses to research correct venues and outlets to advertise on, to coordinate these sponsorships, and the man-hours to correctly onboard the new users will run on The Everything App's own budget. The DHF budget will ONLY be used for actual placements. No employees of The Everything App will be paid from this budget.

3. Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing has become one of the best ways to push products. Look at the Logan Paul's and MrBeast's of the world. They have built brands around themselves as influencers. Companies now pay them tens of millions of dollars to sell their products. Additionally, these big influencers even created their own products.

The power of influencers has just begun. In a Web3 world, we believe this is even more important. You know how this works... Think of someone that is an influencer who you follow. Maybe it's a YouTuber or a TikToker or a reality TV show star. Whoever it is, you trust them. When they push a product, you are 10x more likely to go out and buy it.

Nobody talks about Hive in the traditional mainstream social media platforms except Hivers. If you search the #hive tag on Twitter, you will just see all of the same faces you see on Hive every day.

Influencer marketing can have great results if done right and choosing the people carefully. Our aim is to bring in some small, mid and eventually large influencers who will - as an example, using a Twitter influencer - move a % of their activities from Twitter to Threads.

We're not stupid. These influencers don't want to ditch Web2 where they've built their brand and business for some unknown Web3 platform, no matter how good that platform might be.

Instead, we're going to pay them to move a small % of their activities to Web3. Not all of it. We'll have them push it to their audience as another platform to use. Not a platform to replace.

Focus: Sponsored articles by opinion leaders, YouTube videos sponsorships, Twitter Threads by influencers, Twitch sessions sponsorships.

Deliverables:

Full transparency with a detailed report of what we spend this budget on.
Monthly report on traffic, clicks generated, and user turnover through our referral system.

*The expenses to research good influencers and coordinate these sponsorships, as well as the man-hours to correctly onboard the new users will run on The Everything App's own budget. Again, our Team won't take a paycheck from the DHF. EVER. We'll prove this through all of our transparency reports showing - to the penny - where funds flow.

4. Collaboration Marketing

As mentioned above, we have 3 official partners as of today, and we plan to keep on working to clinch more high impact partnerships. So far, we are self-funding all of these partnerships and