Hive & Other SocialFi Platforms Against Bots

When you look at the new Web 3 SocialFi platforms, they tend to reward their users with crypto. Most of the time, these platforms distribute rewards that are collected on the posts’ reward pools. For example, on Debank, you receive stablecoin rewards in around five days while Sociogram has a three-day window to distribute the earnings of the users.

Although this type of reward mechanism is also interesting and attractive to people, they are, inherently, vulnerable to bot attacks. When a post has a certain amount of crypto in the pot, it is distributed evenly according to the contribution of the community members. However, the easier the reward system gets, the more manipulations have been on the platforms. If a platform goes viral, one of the first developments around it is developing a bot by a developer.

Friend Tech, Sociogram, Stream and Others

For instance, Friend Tech was accompanied by bots that instantly by the shares, also known as keys, of crypto influencers. As the bots conquered the whole platform, the real users were forced to buy the shares for higher prices and they faced the problem of getting dumped on themselves by the bots. This was a huge problem that made many people stop using Friend Tech.

I observed a similar case on Sociogram as well. While the reward window is open, lots of bot accounts have been created to drain these pools. As a result, the earnings on the platform decrease drastically and it will be a huge problem in the onboarding activities. Debank dealt with the problem by having a social rating system that determines the amount of allocation a wallet gets according to its total value.

Although the system of Debank sounds like "whale friendly", it's somehow fair to protect the sustainability of the incentive mechanism.

Hive Against Bot Attacks

When it comes to Hive, we are not facing such problems thanks to Hive Power, so do Resource Credits, which directly affect the distribution of curation rewards. Thus, there is no way for a new wallet to drain the curation rewards of a post. On the other hand, when a person starts blogging on hive, s/he starts with 25 reputations on the ranking. By looking at the rankings, the community members be more cautious against possible AI or bot usage. Eventually, neither curation nor post rewards can be drained by new wallets created with bad intentions.

Another good side of Hive is that the new wallets need resource credits to initiate activities on the blockchain. So, if someone wants to do some operations on Hive blockchain, first of all, they need to invest some hive coin or get delegation from other users to generate Resource Credits. At that point, along with the technical side, the community members would not let such bots harm the ecosystem.

Remember, signing up on Hive and initiating some transactions are not free. you are paying them with your resource credits. You may always see your resource credits at around 99% because you don't use them for transactions that require a higher percentage of credits but they are vital to control the new wallets created and the transactions of these new worlds to protect both blockchain and users efforts. Some may criticize Hive blockchain for its complexity but they are getting more benefits from these on-chain operations than the issues that are put forward.

Security and sustainability are two big concerns that cannot be neglected. I personally believe that this is what makes Hive a long-lasting project in harsh crypto conditions. Maybe Delegated Proof of Stake is the best fit for SocialFi projects.

Posted Using LeoFinance Alpha