Why are apps on hive struggling?

in #hive11 days ago

Why are apps on hive struggling.jpg

Hive is a great blockchain and offers a lot of opportunities. If you have an idea, you can realize it pretty quickly if you know how to. That's how most projects are born on this blockchain. Somebody has an idea and simply realizes it. This is also the base for most of the problems.

In most cases apps on hive are run by one or a few people

First of all, the creator of the project probably finances his idea by himself and works more or less without remuneration. He won't employ other people because he doesn't want to generate more costs. This means that he often does everything, the coding, the ui, the marketing, the support and all the other things that go along by himself. In the best case, the project is built around a little team but again a lot of the things that are done are unpaid time investments.

Then the project comes out and only in few cases the hive world learns about it. Most of the time, these people are maybe good developers but they lack social or marketing skills. There are some projects that go on for a couple of years but most of them kind of die a couple of months later.

I have been on this blockchain for a long time and I have seen so many apps, games or others come and go. The problem is that most of these projects might be nice as such but they are often not finished products. The sides of the project that is maybe less dear to the guy running the show, is often neglected.

What we end up with is a lot of half finished and not long living apps and games. Of course, there are some exceptions but the big majority falls into this category.

Need for profitability

The biggest problem in my opinion is that the projects that are created don't have the ambition to make a profit. They are often not financially oriented and therefore sooner or later, they run out of funds. People are not willing to work ages for free or they simply can't.
For apps to succeed and grow, they need to be profit oriented in my opinion. If they generate a revenue, they can pay for development and labor work. They can finish their project and takle with all the aspects of the app.

The problem with the DHF

At the moment, the only solid way of financing a project on hive is to get payments from the DHF. Once these payments are secured, these projects then face the problem that they start to depend on these payments to continue their service. It's therefore not really surprising that a lot of people are not so happy with how the dhf funds are used. They more or less pay for existing services and there is not much available for new stuff.

Using the DHF as an investment partner

I think that the money of the DHF should be used in a way so that all contributions others than for the core development of the chain need to be returned sooner or later. If a project wants support, it has to submit not only a proposal but a business plan how it plans to generate a return and how it plans to pay back the loan from the DHF. Based on the credibility of the project idea and the project owners, people could then vote for the proposals.

It's actually the projects that generate a profit that bring most to the chain. Splinterlands is a very good example for that. It has a financial incentive to bring new people to the chain. They want to get paying customers that buy their stuff. This means new account and incoming money which both are what hive needs...


With @ph1102, I'm running the @liotes project.

Please consider supporting our Witness nodes:

Sort:  

Great idea!

Thanks for the feed-back!

LEO ain't struggling ;)

Come over to the good side of the force man!!!!

But then LEO also gets money from DHF :-). I like the fact that leo tries to generate income. It's not easy but they are on the good way in this respect.

yeah but LEO would thrive and survive with out without the DHF. I'm glad they are being funded again though. An actual project that brings in outide people to Hive...Come over man, the water is warm!!!

@tipu curate

Thanks for the curation!

Hmm Splinterlands... I felt that the game/finances could have been managed better over these years, I know of so many people who have either played less or have stopped playing altogether, and I don't think it's just about monetary rewards.

I felt that the game/finances could have been managed better over these years

I totally agree with you on this. I think they did a lot of mistakes and saw everything too big. They grew too fast and I'm somewhat surprised and happy that the game is still around.

PIZZA!

$PIZZA slices delivered:
@fjworld(3/20) tipped @achim03

!BBH

Posted using The BBH Project

@achim03! @fiberfrau likes your content! so I just sent 1 BBH to your account on behalf of @fiberfrau. (3/20)

(html comment removed: )

I came here through Splinterlands and I think it does this role well. Other projects need to be born, or go beyond the embryonic phase, and for this a financial focus is essential because it brings professionalism to the management of resources and processes (I hope).

That's exactly the point. Splinterlands brought you here because they wanted you as a customer. Then they had to offer all kind of services that you trust the app and stay there. That's the image of professionalisme and it works only if the project can generate enough money to keep it all up.

The DHF seems to give the opposite incentive to projects and then many (not all) then seem to stop developing and just relax with their new funding.

First DHF is considered as a help, then project rely on this income and then they realize that they can touch the DHF only as long as they are developing. If they finish their product they have no argument for ongoing DHF payments. That's the problem in my opinion.

Yeah, its not an easy thing to resolve. I do think the DHF should be supporting the blockchain development, but the DHF governance has been a failure in this regard.

I agree that the DHF is a cunning approach, but the problem can be in the details. Also, DHF does not guarantee funding for the whole project duration because one option is that it has to reach a certain limit, which someone, a whale, can quickly melt down if they don't like your project. On the other hand, as @mypathtofire mentioned, some who have reached that limit are just living on their laurels. It seems to me that we still have a lot to learn in this decentralized world.

You are right to point out that at the moment, the dhf has two weaknesses. There is no guarantee that full funding is provided and it offers no incentive for a project to be profitable. If projects start to rely only on dhf funding, I don't see it as a sustainable solution.

Maybe there should be a statement (like on EU projects, haha) that the DHF provides 50% funding or something like that, and the initiator of the project has to provide 50% himself (he can collect donations in some special fund or Hive account opened for this) as Liotes has... but here we are back to trust

Well said. Good advice as per business plan. !LOLZ

I mean it should be the minimum for getting funding. I don't know any other instance in the business world where you are not asked to pay the money back when you get some.

Absolutely if you run your operation as a business. Fair to say most people who convert an idea to a profit making machine on Hive are not true business owners.

After all, you just have to create a meme coin with no real objective or deliverable except the hope to make a lot of money from selling to someone who things the buying momentum will make more money. Mind you, the world is such that easy money is more plentiful and so are losses.

My current project focus is #veridiPASS where success is tied to the value of a #TooFuckeh token. So my banker account, #PEPT transferred/loaned my veridiPASS account 3 million tokens which I expect it to be paid back in full. The loan value is $100 US so the operation of veridiPASS will generate some revenue streams that will be used to pay back the $100 to PEPT. No more no less. The bonus is on the future value of our TooFuckeh token. Capital appreciation. Use ongoing profits to reinvest and build additional capital.

Once again you stimulated my grey matter. !LOLZ

Have a great day and lots of #FUN
!LUV
!BEEP
!PIZZA

@achim03, @fjworld(1/10) sent you LUV. | tools | discord | community | HiveWiki | <>< daily

Made with LUV by crrdlx

What do you say when a Southern person stabs you in the back?
Betray'all!

Credit: reddit
@achim03, I sent you an $LOLZ on behalf of fjworld

(1/10)
Farm LOLZ tokens when you Delegate Hive or Hive Tokens.
Click to delegate: 10 - 20 - 50 - 100 HP

If you’re feeling paranoid...
You’re not alone.

Credit: reddit
@achim03, I sent you an $LOLZ on behalf of fjworld

(7/10)
Farm LOLZ tokens when you Delegate Hive or Hive Tokens.
Click to delegate: 10 - 20 - 50 - 100 HP

Excellent thinking! Even though to be honest, I don't really know much about the DHF aside that it gives a ton to Splinterlands and to maintain the HBD peg.

Feels like now the DHF just acts as a cash cow which dumps the price more with not much in return. It would be nice to see some stake in the product that is developed and funded by the DHF that afterward give some kind of return.

The way the DHF works at the moment is a kind of free money for the people who can collect enough support to get it. There are some things that are good for the chain and some that I don't really know their utility. However, it's never good to give money for free. This brings up the worst in people in the long run and it gives no incentive to present a finished product or app.

I think that would be a nice change to the DHF. As it is right now, I do think that there is a lot of spending and not much being added to Hive. It makes me wonder because of how hard Splinterlands's DHF proposal failed until some compromises were made alter.

The problem about the DHF is that the money is distributed for political reasons and not practical ones. It's more important what connections the creator has than what he is building. The way it works now is not fair towards all the users of hive who don't get the support. The dhf belongs to all of us and we should put some checks into place that the dhf really pays for things that bring value to the chain.

This is a brilliant post - thank you !

Something I've been pushing for a while now is that any proposal should need a proper business case explaining either how they'll return the funds to the DHF, or how they'll deliver a benefit to Hive that is greater than the cost to the DHF, together with an objective measurable criteria that defines what success looks like. The DHF should be more like a lending bank than a grant-giving charity !

I've always wondered if there's a way to create a central directory of projects. I've seen a few half-hearted attempts but they've alays been very incomplete.

Done well (and promoted well !) it would help people find projects that would otherwise be unknown. It could also identify those projects which aren't working well or have stopped altogether; this might provide an avenue for similar projects to band together, merge their work and continue with a larger team, or for those with the knowledge to step in and help out (or even take over) projects that need help.

I agree with you that projects need to think about profitability. Either by bringing in users and investment from outsdie Hive (like Splinterlands) or by gaining funds from within Hive for services delivered. Hive has a reputation as a place where "everything is fee-free" (even though it isn't). So perhaps an answer instead of charging a fee would be to use delegations; a user would delegate funds, and in return would receive credits (maybe a Tribe Token) which they spend to use the service.

Posted using The BBH Project

The DHF should be more like a lending bank than a grant-giving charity !

I also see it like that. The fact that money is given without any counterpart is first not fair towards all the people who don't get it and it's also not providing a good incentive. A project can argue that it needs DHF money only as long as development is ongoing. Where is the motivation to offer a finished product?

So perhaps an answer instead of charging a fee would be to use delegations; a user would delegate funds, and in return would receive credits (maybe a Tribe Token) which they spend to use the service.

That's a good idea. We basically have plenty of options in this respect. It could be delegation, it could be monthly payments, or paid to go. I mean we have the infrastructure in place.

When I see a front-end like peakd or ecency that allow me to create posts, interact and actually earn money, I wouldn't be totally abnegated to pay for their service.

This post has been manually curated by @bhattg from Indiaunited community. Join us on our Discord Server.

Do you know that you can earn a passive income by delegating to @indiaunited. We share more than 100 % of the curation rewards with the delegators in the form of IUC tokens. HP delegators and IUC token holders also get upto 20% additional vote weight.

Here are some handy links for delegations: 100HP, 250HP, 500HP, 1000HP.

image.png

100% of the rewards from this comment goes to the curator for their manual curation efforts. Please encourage the curator @bhattg by upvoting this comment and support the community by voting the posts made by @indiaunited.

Thanks for the curation!

I think apps here are looking too inwards for support. What they need to do is first gather support from outside, and then build on HIVE. Always depending on the DHF fund leads to the same pool of people you are marketing to, ie, existing Hive members. There will not be any meaningful growth this way.

There will not be any meaningful growth this way

That's also what I fear. It's nice to have a tool like the DHF but it should aim to bring in new people and new funds rather that support existing projects on hive.