In which I talked Hive with the Podfather Adam Curry again
On Friday evening I had my second appearance on the Podcasting 2.0 Podcast with Adam Curry and Dave Jones of @podcastindexorg.
The main reason for the appearance, alongside the official Podcasting 2.0 Consultant, @alecksgates, was to discuss the work he and I have done on the latest version of @podping.
You can listen to the whole episode on Curiocaster and if you use that app or any other Podcasting 2.0 app you'll find handy chapters.
Alecks and I join the show at the "Welcome Alecks & Brian" chapter and we talk about Podping and the latest updates which cover "reason codes" allowing us to start to put out a little more information about what is changing for a specific podcast. The first extra use of this will be the "live" tag to signify that a live show is starting.
https://curiocaster.com/podcast/pi920666/6788136469#t=1062
At "The Hive Application Framework" I explain a little about the work @imwatsi and the whole @blocktrades team are putting together.
https://curiocaster.com/podcast/pi920666/6788136469#t=1899
I really thing the section which starts with the chapter "Misunderstood and overlooked: Hive Stake" is where I really take a stab at explaining how the staked Hive Power we use in Podping is our investment in the entire Hive system allowing us to do what we do.
https://curiocaster.com/podcast/pi920666/6788136469#t=2214,7367
Adam asks some good questions and hope this part might be interesting outside of the Podcasting discussion.
Pushing back on Lightning
At the "Pre V4V Crypto Chat" chapter I took a bit of a chance and gave some criticism of the Lightning network system which Podcasting 2.0 Value 4 Value is built on. With all the work I've done on @v4vapp I feel I have significant standing to discuss both the advantages and disadvantages of what Lightning is being used for here.
https://curiocaster.com/podcast/pi920666/6788136469#t=5223
The chapter kicks off with Adam and Dave discussing the issues of managing their own node and the capital investment in liquidity they need to have on their node.
As I say on the show, the lightweight phone wallets are great, but the back end, what you need to receive sats as a podcaster, is not a system which will ever have large numbers of people using it.
Real world Lightning
As a perfect example right now, following our appearance on the show, both @alecksgates and myself are listed in that epsiode's value block. Since the show was published my lightning node has seen a steady stream of sats and messages (boostograms as they're called).
My system (in use for all @threespeak video channels which are also podcasts) receives the sats and converts them to Hive. I'm forwarding all sats for this appearance to the @podping account. Overall this is a beautiful system!
Alecks, on the other hand, has his split going to his own self managed Lightning node. For the first few hours after release, his node was offline or had some other liquidity issue meaning payments were failing.
Lightning is not like Bitcoin, it's not a blockchain at all. If you try to make a payment and the destination is either down, disconnected or doesn't have enough "inbound liquidity" in the right channels, the payment just won't happen. Whether a specific podcast listening device will cache that and try to make the payment again later is completely a function of the specific app developer but one has to assume that most of the time, with these small 10 to 100 sat payments, if your node isn't online, that payment will not be sent (it isn't lost... these aren't like lost packets, the payment never leaves the senders wallet).
Hive is a much better place to receive value
Because I've made it my job, and been compensated by the Hive DHF, I take the task of running my node very seriously. I want it to be up and I have a financial incentive (mostly from you people here on Hive supporting this) to keep it running.
Anyone can receive sats, converted into Hive day and night, rain or shine, without having a Raspberry Pi in your cupboard and making sure your internet works and worrying about which side of your channels all your sats are on.
And if you want to turn your Hive back to sats, you can do that easily at lnd.v4v.app just like someone did a few minutes ago sending sats to a Chivo government wallet in El Salvador!
And even now as I type this, I'm realising I need to do some work to make sure I have enough outbound liquidity!
I want Lightning to succeed. It really is a good solution on mobile and especially with non-custodial wallets for small amounts, but who wants to trust and non-custodial system for more than loose change? I don't. For the sending side of Podcasting 2.0 it's great. For the receiving side, not so great.
And the answer "yes but there's tons of VC money in Lightning" is exactly what I don't want to hear!
I'll continue working with it, and I'm a few days away from launching my Lightning to Hive service which will make it super easy for anyone with a Lightning wallet to send real value direct to anyone with a Hive account. That was the promise of the Hive Tips service but because this is an interface to Lightning, which Cash App and Strike and Jack Dorsey's Block (formerly Square) are all diving into, it's putting Hive right at the centre of what's coming.
Wrapping it up
I hope you can take the time to listen to the whole podcast episode, and I hope I did Hive proud. Once again I do want to thank you all for the support from the DHF and for all the votes and comments.
