Another day, another tweet triggers the Hive community. Coingecko published a graphic on their Twitter titled - 15 most popular decentralized social media platforms in 2023. It shows average monthly unique visitors from January to April, 2023. It also shows 4 Hive powered Dapps - Hive Blog, Peakd & Ecency. At first glance, I was happy to see Hive getting a mention in supposedly one of the best crypto data aggregator platforms.
Then I realized that most of these platforms are controlled by centralized entities. By definition, they are not even considered web3 as you can see in the quick analysis posted by @lordbutterfly on @coingecko's tweet.
He even went to great lengths and created a framework to formulate decentralization scores for social media platforms. You can check it here.
The source of data as mentioned in the graphic is Similar Web and Coingecko Research. I don't know what kind of research CG's team has done because it is clearly fucked up. 😂
First, in case of Hive they are using data from a website that is retired. Should be using hiveblocks.com as Hive blockchain explorer. Pretty sure they are fixing it as @eddiesppino has already tagged them to let them know.
Now I will take each platform one by one and tell you the reality behind them. :)
Odysee
Odysee is not decentralized since it is built on the LBRY blockchain created and operated by LBRY Inc. Something decentralized doesn't a have CEO or company that can be sued. And we all know about the SEC vs LBRY case.
Steemit
Steemit owned by JS is centralized af. We all know that. Justin Sun knows that. People using Steemit know that. Moreover, if you compare Peakd and Steemit, you will find that Steemit has a high bounce rate of 77.79%, pages viewed per visit is only 1.63, and the average visit duration is 01:13. In the case of Peakd the bounce rate is only 41%, pages viewed per visit is whopping 4.83, and average visit duration is 04:56.
Gab
Not Decentralized At All. xD
Mastadon
Even though it's open source and you can run your own server but you are at the mercy of your service provider. Not Decentralized.
Mirror
Mirror is not open source I guess but if it is then good. But it uses optimism for transactions. It's a legit platform and quite amazing for publishers who want to use web3 features. I love it. Deserves a place in this list.
DLive
Not Decentralized At All. xD Owned by Justin Sun.
Bluesky
Again a protocol that is supposed to be decentralized but built by a central entity Jack, ex-CEO of Twitter.
Minds
Minds started off well but slowly lost its popularity over the years. There is not much being built on it. It is open-source and decentralized.
Lenster
Lenster is built on Lens Protocol and is the baby of the Aave team. The aave team built the protocol on Polygon. It's quite new and slowly getting popular within crypto twitter.
MAIN Community
This is the first time I am checking out the Main Community. It's on BNB chain so centralized, but the app looks slick.
As you can see, we are still quite early in the web3 social space. Platforms calling them decentralized are actually centralized. There is still a lot of scope for improvement. The good thing is that Hive social ecosystem is far superior compared to any other. We are growing slowly but consistently and that is the most important thing.
LFG guys!
