Hive Ecosystem — part 2: The depths of hive
Dearest community welcome back to a new installment of insight into the Hive ecosystem.
Today we’re going to talk about how it’s possible to increase your reputation in line with the purest tenets of democracy and meritocracy.
Many of you have surely heard of delegation, witnesses, curation; today we are going to analyze them and see in terms of blockchain what they consist of. All this is to emphasize the genius of this project.
Witnesses — Backbone pillars of our blockchain.
Witnesses, are the fundamental part of the whole Hive ecosystem, without them most likely all of this would not exist!
Witnesses are so important because they are nothing but the validators of our transactions. We publish a post, make a comment, put an upvote, and they are so ready to keep the blockchain up to date.
Anything goes through them.
How do they work?
On the profile homepage just below one’s avatar is the button with “witnesses,” clicking on it takes you to the page for selecting your witnesses.
The system provides 30 votes to be able to elect one’s witnesses.
In addition to having the clear power to validate the blocks they also have governance power to be able to vote on certain changes to the system proposed by users. Kind of like how it works for the ETH blockchain with EIPs (Ethereum Improvements Proposal).
Not bad, right?
Now more observant people might ask: How is it possible, then, that you can delete a post from the blockchain, since the platform gives you the option?
Well, the post is not actually deleted, it is simply removed from visible content, but it remains for all intents and purposes permanently written on the blockchain.
What’s more, the interface warns of this peculiarity and alerts us when we decide to remove a post.
Up to 30 witnesses can be selected, on the appropriate page
The disclaimer at the top of the page explains generically what witnesses are, and there is a counter that informs how many witnesses have been selected out of the total available.
Care must be taken because the system, being democratically created, assigns the first witnesses on the list to write one block per minute, while those coming out of this ranking can be randomly selected to write the block.
Let’s look more technically and according to the principles of blockchain operation at the true nature of Witnesses:
As we know, the Hive blockchain is based on DPoS or Delegated Proof of Staking consensus.
If you remember, in the previous article I said that the Hives that we buy, or that are attributed to us attrraverso the tips, in order to have more reputation we transform them into Hive Power. This transformation is nothing more than the transfer of Hive coins into staking.
Now the last step: being a DPoS protocol, the witnesses are the proxies for our staking. Obviously all in keeping with the democratic nature of the system, they are divided equally for all selected witnesses.
Apparently I’ve spoiled the romantic side of the blog, but in this way we get a good understanding of the workings behind every possibility offered to us by the platform.
By knowing what underlies an action, we can manage it purposefully, with some knowledge, and, most importantly, to bring profit to ourselves and the community!
Delegations
Another extremely important point is Delegations.
We simply give, in a fictitious way, a part of our HP (Hive in staking) to another user in the network.
In this way we increase, for the duration of the delegation, the reputation of the user to whom we have sent them; thus his “strength” in post curations is greater.
In order to access delegations, simply go into the “Wallet” tab see your Hive Power balance and click on the little arrow.
Select the “delegation” item.
Next, another tab opens where we can enter the name of the delegate to whom we want to lend the tokens.
Pay close attention because you need to enter the final balance, which is the sum of the current balance plus the additional HPs we want to give.
Keep very clear in mind that this operation does not really change the wallets of the two users, but a smartcontract manages the exchanges numerically.
Let me explain further.
My tokens do not leave my wallet at all, so the staking rewards do not change, ditto for the other user, they do not increase because his wallet remains unchanged.
So what purpose do I lend my HP for curations?
For rewards: each curator bestows a certain reward proportional to the tokens we employed in the delegation.
Here I am ready like a fireman to interrupt the idyll….
You know that operation that is often used in the DeFi world, Lending?
Well here it works pretty much the same way, of course we don’t go through some DEX, AMM or other constructs purely dedicated to DeFi. Here we use a “simple” smartcontract that handles everything from wallet balances to rewards.
I will stop here for today, see you again in a few days that I start talking about the “satellite” platforms that revolve around Hive.
@arcange in addition to thanking you for the work you are doing as a witness, I wanted to ask you if what I wrote is correct as a reasoning relatively to staking and witnesses.
This is because I plan to publish on Medium and Publish0x a series of articles (in addition to this one) analyzing the Hive ecosystem in order to give as much visibility as possible to this magnificent and brilliant blog.
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Hive Ecosystem — part 2: The depths of hive was originally published in Coinmonks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
