The first time I heard you say we should do away with blogging rewards, I thought that would be the death of Hive.blog. Now I see what you're talking about. By transferring the value, and the judgment of it, to the communities, new users to the blockchain could join a community the moment they set up their account. With the [3 types of communities](https://peakd.com/hive/@howo/communities-is-getting-an-update--what-to-expect), anyone on the blockchain could join or start a community of any of those three types. If each community distributed its own rewards by either creating a Layer-2 token or using one already on the market, then all types of content could still be rewarded.

On staking, HIVE could always transition into a governance token where anyone on the blockchain could trade Layer-2 tokens for HIVE to increase their governance stake. The staking mechanism wouldn't necessarily need to change. Although, there may not be a need for HBD anymore. 

Interesting.  I am still trying to form my opinion on this but first I would like to see better content discovery and search options on Hive and possibly a revision of the 7 day payout window to allow for rewarding evergreen content from the reward pool.

If content has possible value into the future I believe people will be more respecting of what they put on chain and the reward pool may even get better dispersed.   

Perhaps we should task the curators with increasing their diligence while curating?
Instead of voting it mostly to those that drop it like it is hot, those curators could cultivate the authors that do other things outside of blogging traveling food posts that helps bring attention to us?

Rather than blindly voting rewards to people, perhaps relationships beyond 'me big vote, you lick boots speak corporate speak' could be developed?

Hivewatchers has been a source of friction all along.
It exists because curators can't be bothered with not voting rewards to scammers.
The anti-abuse community, few that we are, has had to chase behind the people complaining about dilution while voting rewards to people that dump all they get as quick as they get it.
Wtf?

Rather than being responsible curators, many curators expect hivewatchers and sundry volunteers to keep the mess tolerably cleaned up.

Scammers get more support than dissenters.
Dissenters at least make examinations of what is likely truth more plentiful.
Scammers are who are diluting the complainers.

I agree with what you say about rewards migrating to the 2nd layer, but I can't see that as a realistic occurrence before rc's have value.
Once rc's can be rented out the need to distribute the hive token can be dialed back.
People will move to the second layer because the first is more expensive to maintain a presence on.

Until then, it looks like we get what we got because that is how it is and nobody that could change it will change it, imo.

The adage is just as true now as ever, 'If you don't like how hive is being managed, buy more hive.'

In the movies they usually send in a robot to kill the other robot. 

didn't expect the AI twist in the argument. still, i like how the mining of hive is done, the idea that you can get your part of rewards only if you distribute it to others is unique and it made this blockchain more decentralized than most (is it perfect, no, is there a lot with better distribution, no).

if there is no curation the only reason to hold hive would be RC and witness voting. So 1k hive to be sure you have enough RC and that is it. Why hold hive to vote for witnesses to help them make hive? hive would go from DPoS to PoS. 

And Elon Musk said that in few years we will have Digital God so... And he is always right. 

Yeah, AI is a conundrum. Actually, there is no AI, (Artificial Intelligence). It is just code made by Humans that scrapes every bit of its information from the internet and spits it back out.. Not one thing is original in its raw form, in my opinion.

We are the intelligent ones with the ability to use this code ethically.. Of course, most won't if they think it will give them "an edge".. So, somehow, we have to all become equal with no "edge". No need to manipulate. How we do that, not sure but it needs to be done. We are either here to lift each other up or to shove each other down. Pretty simple really, that part..  Just planting a thought seed.. something to think about and consider as we move forward. 

While i recognize the threat of AI to the hive reward pool and humanity in general. 
I could not disagree more.  
If this idea gets traction and happens, it is the immediate death of HIVE imo.  With AI it will at least be a battle, that may very well be lost.   But what you propose is Suicide in my view. 

I commented on this on MM, but I'll also put it here on the chain.

I could not join the Town Hall today, but I'll share my opinion.

I don't think Hive is ready to remove the reward pool. Look at the tribes or tokenized communities; I can count the successful ones with one hand and have many fingers left.

When we have 10 or 20 successful tokenized communities, maybe we can start to talk about removing the rewards on L1. We also need better layer 2. Hive Engine has been having issues for weeks. I think it would be worth first trying to improve HE and help develop the other L2 before trying to remove the reward pool on Hive.

Removing it now would be a death sentence to Hive because many users will leave. Damn, maybe many would consider going to Steem or trying other options (like that new one that is going to be launched on Koinos).

I agree with making the investment in Hive Power more attractive; investing in HBD shouldn't be more attractive. A nicer APR on holding Hive Power without having to vote would be nice, in my opinion.

Near the end of 2023, Hive is still grasping at the questions from 2016.

Did you come up with some more thoughts or insights since you wrote the above text? 

I've been here since 2017 and the really exceptional content I find actually tends to be on posts that point to content taking place outside of Hive. Authors and books that are not found in the usual search engines, for example, or are very difficult to find. The idea of earning money with your own content has made all content mediocre in my opinion. The fact with all platforms on the Internet is that mediocrity is rewarded. The second fact is that people find reading tiring and the habit of reacting to headlines and snippets of text is widespread. In my view, these are impulse reactions. 

Individuals like to think of themselves as exceptional and are mistaken in their self-assessment of the quality of their content. "There is nothing new under the sun", yet people generally always post exactly what is nothing new, hence the expected. The expected, however, is the dissemination of ideas that are already thin in the first step. The wider you spread these thin ideas like butter on bread, the thinner they become. The paradox is that the more superficial attention they receive, the more important they appear to be.

The same thing happens in the film industry. Once outstanding, and therefore successful, scripts are copied and each new copy loses quality and the only thing that hypes such poor content are the budgets of people who are actually completely uninterested in the matter. 
In order to be highly interested in something, you need people who are really into it and are well trained and experienced in their profession. 

I agree to the extent that getting voted and collecting the rewards is basically a hindrance in wanting to become excellent or an expert. It's too easy. I don't mean that it's easy to get high payouts. Rather, I mean that it's too easy to build loyalty with people you basically don't know. Anyone can easily become a flatterer, all they have to do is say what someone else likes. 

It's a "wanting to please culture" that has more and more difficulty recognising what real criticism means. The well-meaning critic who criticises another is always interested in seeing the other person develop, grow beyond what they can already do, but can become even better at. Flattery and unconditional confirmation is the death of improving skills. Though it's a booster for posting. 

Concentrating on the voting button allows direct communication to slip through the lack of commentary, for example, and the unwillingness to really engage with an individual challenger in a sporting manner. How many challengers can you actually handle per day? Communication via the wallet, for example, has fallen by the wayside (including me too). At the beginning of my time here, I directly tipped a lot more often or slipped a few tokens to someone else. If one wants, one can reward others via your wallet, for example to give more than just cents via a vote. 

There was a time when I bought art with HBD and the artist agreed to send me a work of art by mail. The fact that Hive has not become a place where matter is still seen as a trade commodity is a question I ask myself. .... I don't know, maybe I got blind and lazy, myself.

I think AI can be used for both good and bad. Currently the content on Hive DOESN'T really bring value, because it's not bringing views and new users in. What's considered quality isn't cutting it for growing the platform.

How can AI help? Well, it can help improve the accuracy of the information being shared across the platform. People want information and they aren't getting that here with any relevancy. AI can change that.

I'm brand spanking new on Hive and can't find any content I like or even that helps me with anything. Part of that is the lack of good content discovery tools, but it's mostly content that is TOO personal. Maybe InLeo can help with that with their better search tools they are developing. 

How can it hurt? Well you've already covered what seems the common argument. 

Now I sit back and take all the perspectives in, because that's the best way to come to sound decisions.

Now for what's really needed; Hive has been glitchy as heck and that needs to be fixed ASAP or none of these side conversations will matter anyway!!! The nodes suck, all of them and need to be stabilized.

> Honestly speaking, there has never been a consensus on what is "good" or "valuable" in terms of blogging.

The value of content is actually black and white.

Does it make money? Yes or no.

Just none of the front-ends choose to monetise their content and the DHF continues to subsidise the garbage we see now.

Good write-up.
We do really need the "twitter/X spaces" of Hive. Something where people can quickly distribute info to their followers. Not sure if anyone finally did that?🤔

We need again an initiative like utopian was, they used to upvote heavily original and useful content. To this day when I google something I find tutorials that were sponsored by utopian, sometimes even my own

Correct me if I am wrong @r0nd0n but are you sure that you are not playing rodeo clown for the plans that @jarvie has to remove the Reward Pool?

Also Happy New Year and I sincerely hope that you are doing well.

Much Love & Respect.

Thanks for clarifying your thinking on this topic. 

Gonna mull it all over more before forming any sort of opinion or conclusion.

For now though, I see your points and still think that dissolving the pool would do more harm than good. Even 'simply' restructuring it to 'Layer 2' would (in my perspective) be harmful given the extra 'trust' (in the tokens and token creators) that it would require.

It is worth noting that I see the same problem ahead with AI generated content... but I feel confident the tools (and systems) can be built to thwart the bulk of it in its current form. 

In the future it will be even harder to detect and thwart but honestly there will always be bad actors to contend with... and I am unsure that 'burning the house down just to kill the termites' is the solution that is needed. 

Getting rid of the reward pool will result in a mass exodus of users.  **This needs to stop being brought up.**