![image.png](https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/aggroed/H3bRSaQ4-image.png)

Hive-Engine never stopped adding tribes.  It's been slower of late, but some people are looking back into them.  I think there's a couple of factors.  Defi is huge, and being able to decentralize your community, monetize, have staking rewards, your own website, and now also run a store that uses hive-engine tokens things are looking better.  Prices right this second are down, but as people are looking at prices I think there's a lot of hope for the future price of hive and tokens.  Lastly, I think people are seeing Leo start rising up and are thinking to themselves if they can't follow that model too.

Bee/Workerbee/Hive are all pretty cheap right now.  So, if you want to take a swing and make a tribe it's still pretty inexpensive.  But I don't know if that will last for all that much longer.

## What's a tribe?

Hive-Engine is a layer 2 smart contract platform that runs on top of hive.  The first smart contract was the ability to make your own token, and have it stake.  We added what we call "scotbot" which distributes (not through a smart contract) tokens to stakers via a similar mechanism that Hive uses.  Then we build a custom interface of hive.blog, but everything runs using your tribe token (you also get Hive rewards).

So, overall, a Tribe is a website like hive.blog that runs using your token.

## What's the point?

The magic in software is getting users and promotion.  Nearly everything is tied to "how many people are in your ecosystem."  If there's a lot of people, and particiuarly a lot of rich people, then your token system can be worth a lot of money.

The best tribe would be something where an existing audience onboards in an attempt to tokenize and monetize the attention of their audience.  However; there's not tons of businesses lining up just yet to do that yet.  So, the second best option is building up your own tribe.

## What makes a good tribe?

The thing that ultimately matters is what's the distinct usecase for your token.  Just blogging isn't enough.  It has to be used for something.  So, maybe it's a game, or for news, or a service, or for whatever.  But you have to have a service that you'll accept the token back.  Then when you accept it back for value and services that gives it value.  

So, as you're thinking about making a tribe consider "what good or service do I have to offer where I can accept this token for it?"  I'm partial to digital services and labor since there's usually not very much capital required to make those things happen.

## What's a tribe cost?

You need a token for 100 BEE
You need to making it staking - 1000 BEE
You need to distribute it - 1000 BEE for scotbot
You typically get a website (Nitrous) - 1000 BEE

Then there's upkeep.  It costs $50/month for us to run the website.  You can avoid that fee in one of two ways.  You can manage the server on your own.  You can stake 1 bee per user up to a maximum of 5000 Bee.

So, off the top it requires 3100 BEE which is like $500 right now.  If you can get a website, a token, distribute it, and platform to trade it all for that much money somewhere else then god bless and let me know about it.  Otherwise, I'll continue to think it's an extraordinary deal for people looking to build an ecosystem.

## Wen Moon?

IDK, but I know some of these will likely end up very successful.  The current marketcap of LEO is over $600k.  it cost him $600 to make it.  That ecosystem has generated 1000X returns for the people in it.  That's remarkable!

With uniswap-esque liquidity pools and more NFT options coming alive I think there's a lot of opportunity for folks to capture.

Will you capture it?