What is Hive? There are so many answers to this, and I don't think it's easy to explain to a newcomer what this project really is about, without them first spending quite some time using and being involved in Hive.
You might answer that it's a social network where the users are paid for contributing. Or that it's a blockchain made to support a social network. Or it's a blockchain made to support scalable, decentralized applications, including games and beyond. You could even answer that it's a Decentralized Autonomous Organization, or a new economy, economic system or even payment platform. All of these are correct answers, but there is something more fundamental and potentially revolutionary about what Hive is doing.
I've come along with Hive (formerly Steem) since not long after its inception in 2016. I was among the first large wave of users who came shortly after the first Steem payouts, worth about $1 million in total at the time, in July 2016, not long after which Steem rocketed up to #3 in market cap, just behind Ethereum. I've been to most of the Steemfest and Hivefest events, and I've seen long time participants come and go, including the very founders of Steem, and even major founders of Hive after the exodus fork. Hive goes on as the people involved change.
One thing has been a common thread from the very beginning of Hive/Steem that continues to this day, that is a large community of people from an enormous range of backgrounds, coming together and working towards a common goal. Everyone who gets involved in Hive has a shared interest in improving the network, growing the network. They self-elect to do so, there is no coercion or pressure to be involved. Everyone who is involved automatically starts to have a financial stake in the network, whether they buy in financially or not. Whether you're a blogger, a developer who work on the core node software or user facing application, a witness who keeps the network running, an OTC exchange operator who trades Hive for local currency, the people making marketing material, the people liaising with exchanges on behalf of hive.io - we all become stakeholders in Hive, by virtue of doing work for each other.
Outside of Hive, I have never seen such a large number people of such diverse backgrounds, from different countries, education levels, skillsets and even wildly different personal values, all working together with a shared common interest. Even those posting just for fun contribute to that, and still have that common interest.
Other social networks have achieved something that is almost a proto-type of this. Users on Youtube for example often self-identify as "Youtubers", and they put enormous work into the platform. However, even among the few who manage to gain monetary benefits for their work, even the largest youtubers have very little clout or involvement in governance. Decisions which have an enormous impact on their livelihoods are made without their having any say or involvement. That's because Youtube is ultimately a corporation beholden to its stakeholders, and users are not made stakeholders by default. Other corporate social networks suffer from the same problem, and most have no financial benefits for users at all.
As stakeholders in Hive, in some sense we have more in common with each other than we may have with our compatriots of our home country. Few of us have chosen our country. When we pay tax to our state, it has been under threat of force, not solely of our own choice. We have a common history and experience with our compatriots, but the success of our country as a whole has only limited impact on our own personal success, and while it varies by the kind of country you live in, we all have trivial at best say in the actual governance of our state.
Hive has no tax officially, but it has a treasury which comes from the dilution of every member's stake. Every single person, from the smallest to the largest stakeholders, has a say in how that money is spent and distributed. That say is proportional to our stake, and we grow that the more involved we are in the project.
What is Hive, truly at its core? Hive is a political and economic experiment in stakeholder governance. It doesn't roll off the tongue or instantly grab your attention, like "social network that pays" does, but that's what it is and that is the real revolution going on here. Hive is building a socio-economic system that we choose to be involved in. A system that provides real benefits and utility to its members, solves real problems for our members, where we can pool resources together and make decisions collectively about how to spend them. If you don't like something about how Hive works, your participation can change it, and your power to do so is directly related to the stake you've built in the system. At the very worst, you can always sell your stake, so if something truly objectionable happens, you no longer provide the tax that pays for it.
Hive is the nation that you choose to be a part of.
