I try to avoid making Hive related posts these days because I’d like to focus more on writing for people outside Hive and building an audience that isn’t necessarily part of the chain yet.
Buuuuuuut, I’ve been pretty active on Leo threads these days and have done a 180 on Leo in general, from totally uninterested to completely involved.
For those who don’t know, Leo threads is short form content and Leo, now Inleo is no longer Finance exclusive content.
I was not that into Leo for its first few years, mostly because most of my content is not finance related although I have posted some finance or economic content from time to time and I read a bit of macro stuff. I was also a bit turned off in the beginning just because I am ultra skeptical of defi, although I am not accusing Leo of anything, and I know there are legit projects out there, I just knew that defi was way more hype than anything in general and wasn’t looking to get involved with it.
Leo has evolved to the point where you don't need to be into finance or defi to see just how much potential they have though.
INLEO’s new business model and user interface has made me a true believer in their product. There are many aspects of the project which I think are extremely well executed and could potentially fix a lot of what has been broken at Hive.
Short form
Short form on Hive has MULTIPLE benefits.
First of all, it’s easy to get to know new people, perhaps not on a deep level but you get a sense of who you might be interested in or have things to talk about with.
You can engage even if you don’t have time for writing articles. Sometimes I don’t. I love writing long form and I never run out of things to say but sometimes I just don’t have 30-90 minutes to put something together that I want to share. Leo Threads let me keep using Hive even when I am busy.
One of the weak points with Hive has been the way people feel encouraged to write blog posts even if it’s not really their thing, and let’s be honest, it’s not most people’s thing. I love it but many people just do it as a daily task to earn rewards. I don't think this is really ideal. Ideally people will do what they are excited about doing and earn money from challenging themselves but it won't turn into a routine for mining tokens.
Things like threads and shorts on 3speak and images on liketu have the potential to discourage people from writing blogs which I think is actually a good thing. We have sooooo much content here and much of it is never read, some of it is written without the intention of being read. I think the people just writing to earn should move to thread, it’s easier and more casual.
As more ways to earn from different kinds of content, we are more encouraged to put only serious efforts into blogging and get off the hamster wheel of churning out posts.
With fewer posts per hive user, it’ll make less competition for eyeballs on higher quality posts. Of course it might not end up this way but it’ll be much easier to build a culture where there are actually more readers than there are writers and the serious writers can reach more eyeballs.
I believe this has always been one of the main hurdles of Hive...too many writers, not enough readers.
Those who would rather read long form than write it can do so and still earn through threads, even if they don't have a large stake for curation rewards. You can easily earn a few dollars from joining a threadcast chat, and right now $LEO is extremely low, so anything you earn on a thread is likely to multiply in value over time.
Growing the Second Layer of Hive
So far we’ve all tried to promote Hive, which, let’s face it, is an uphill battle. It’s not intuitive at all for someone who is new to it. “So you use ecency or peakd or Leo but it’s all hive, you have a password but it’s different from your PIN, and you can earn hive or other tokens but you have to trade those other tokens for blah blah blah”. It’s too much, and most people get lost even before they figure out the difference between Hive and an app.
Many of us are realizing that it’s the second layer apps that will be where the onboarding happens, but many apps haven’t really been easy sells. Splinterlands has been the most succesful, and one day 3speak will get there (haven’t checked out acidyo’s project but I am guessing it will be also). Ecency and Leo are now set up to be easy sells to anyone starting out in this space. Threads, and Ecency’s waves can attract a lot more people too, because it’s so much easier to start off writing 280 characters than a blog post, there’s less of a time investment and that is important for people just starting out.
I believe that with a push from these 2nd layer app teams, we could finally have some successful outreach at Hive. It’s been an utter failure up until now.
From now, when I want to invite friends to the chain, I don’t even mention Hive until they’re committed. If they like phone apps, I invite them to download Ecency and talk about ecency and if they don’t mind using a browser, I tell them about INLEO and focus on INLEO.
This is the way.
Ad Revenue and Changing Incentive Structures
You earn 3 times from threads and (soon) posts at INLEO. You earn Hive and Leo from upvotes but you also earn Leo from views.
There are ads on INLEO.
Gross right?
Yeah, some people hate it but the way I see it, we need money coming into the system and we don’t have enough new investors or marketplace activity on Hive yet. Money has been leaking from the ecosystem because so many people rely on their income at Hive to live. There is nothing wrong with this, that’s kind of the ultimate goal, but the more money coming into the system, the better. It needs to be able to sustain itself long enough to build onchain marketplaces.
If you don’t like ads that much, you can use another app to access the blockchain, but the way INLEO does ads, I LOVE ADS AND WANT TO SEE MORE OF THEM.
A large portion of ad revenue is distributed to users based on how many views their threads (and soon posts) get. The rest of the ad revenue is used to buy Leo and Hive and put into a liquidity pool.
This means the more money Leo makes from ads, the more money it’s users make and the more upward price pressure is put on Hive and Leo.
In addition to all this, the potential from rewards from ads means that we no longer have to rely on upvotes to make money. If you have an audience elsewhere, you will be incentivized to being them to your Leo blog because you can earn per view.
This changes the game, as many people with existing audiences had no reason to come over to Hive when they'd have to start over with such a steep learning curve. Now they’ll be able to keep making money from their existing audience.
Soon (possibly this month) INLEO will roll out subscriptions which makes it even easier for people to use INLEO as a replacement for things like Patreon.
It also encourages us as a community to write more for an audience which is not Hive exclusive and share our work with friends and followers off Hive. Maybe people like @whatsup who is starting to do pretty well over at X will be able to double monetize by bringing some of their X following over to read their long form.
For someone like me it encourages me to write posts with my students or real life friends in mind and rather than shoving Hive down their throat, I can just send them a link to an article that is meaningful to them and leave a tiny 3 sentence invitation to INLEO at the bottom of my posts.
Essentially any youtuber who is demonetized but has loyal supporters on Patreon could use INLEO instead and unlike Patreon, there’s a social aspect like twitter tied in so there is much more of a potential network effect.
For too long the writers and creators have been trying to turn other writers and creators into readers while meanwhile we haven't really brought many casual readers over to the community because everyone's been focused on trying to attract people through monetary incentives, rather than specific content that they want to follow.
We are seeing a shift though.
Circular Economy
One of the coolest things about INLEO and a reason why I am super excited the direction they are moving in is that @khaleelkazi and team seem to understand tokenomics better than most and realize that a token needs buying pressure coming from somewhere to stabilize it and let it grow. They’ve decided to attack this on multiple fronts.
As I mentioned, part of the ad revenue goes to buying back LEO and HIVE and putting it into a liquidity pool. This puts constant buying pressure on both tokens for a virtuous cycle of liquidity.
There are also premium subscriptions for INLEO, and while that may bother some people, the money isn't going into the founders pockets, it's going towards buybacks as well. That Hive and Leo gets locked in the pool.
I don't think I can emphasize enough how important these kinds of buybacks are for the ecosystem. If you want the price to maintain itself or to go up, you NEED buying pressure, and while more and more of us see the value of stacking and buying Hive and Leo, there are still too many of us who don't have other incomes and rather than demonize them for selling we need a way to compensate.
With Leo and soon SPK network and others buying up Hive as part of their own tokenomics, it creates a very very strong support base for the token, and really solidifies us as something that can compete at the highest levels of the larger crypto space.
Community
As threads grows, I see more and more variety with regards to topic, personalities and writing styles. I feel an excitement which I haven't felt since the Great Hive Fork. It's a feeling that this really has a future.
I had never intended to buy so much LEO but once I saw where things were headed with threads I put half of my loose Hive into LEO. I'm at 80k Leo and aiming for 100k in the next 2 or 3 months.
Just like I got into Hive in the early stages of the fork when the price was super low, I see the opportunity right now with Leo bouncing between $0.05 and $0.07. If you look at how much liquid Leo there is, this is so insanely undervalued, assuming the project survives and gains any traction whatsoever.
There are already over 1000 active users on INLEO, so I urge you to check it out if you haven't already. No disrespect or lack of love for PEAKD and ECENCY, these are also great projects and I hope they all keep pushing each other forward!
Check out the new Leo here :
https://inleo.io/
If you are interested in blogging here and earning some change while sharing ideas and making friends, send me a message on Instagram or Twitter (@ ipluseverything)
ブログで自分の思っていることをシェアしながら小銭を溜まったり新しい友達をできたりすることは興味あれば、InstagramやTwitter（@ipluseverything）でメッセージを送ってください。 英語のオンラインレッスンの興味ある人もどうぞ、メッセージをください^_^
Novels/music/merch/social media/patreon:
https://linktr.ee/selfhelp4trolls
Untangled Knots podcast:
Japanese Upbringing Explained (interview my Japanese student)
Confessions of the Damaged 1.1-1.3 on Amazon
Posted Using InLeo Alpha
