Hive is an innovative and forward-looking decentralized blockchain and ecosystem built on the Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS) protocol. It is a highly-scalable DPoS blockchain independent of central authority that addresses the problems of mass adoption and versatility of use. Hive allows the easy storage and retrieval of immutable strings of data and information. It sports three-second zerofee transactions and is designed to store vast amounts of content and to make it available for time-based monetization. Hive recognizes that transaction fees are often one of the largest challenges to facilitating development and flexibility of use on a blockchain. Instead of requiring potentially costly and inconvenient transaction fees, Hive uses a novel stake-based Resource Credit mechanism to create a fee-less model. Hive also aims to overcome mainstream adoption shortcomings in blockchain technology and content publishing by improving on their accessibility. It leverages the coined Proof-of-Brain (PoB) concept by distributing a portion of the inflation to content creators and consumers. To earn without financial investment, individuals partake in a wide range of activities. Those include blogging, participating in discussions, curating others, building and engaging with dapps, playing games and more; their limits are only constrained by their own imagination to further the decentralization of the system. All content is always readily-available on the blockchain and retains its original integrity. Since its inception, Hive has steadily grown as an ecosystem. Myriad dapps, APIs and front-ends contribute to a general and straightforward accessibility of data, transactions and records, so that this existing diversity and utility ensure that the ecosystem is welcoming to content creators, consumers, investors and builders. Hive was created as an independent and decentralized fork of the Steem blockchain. As a community-driven fork, its intention is to continue the strong community values that have been established. The Hive network comes with two classes of cryptocurrency assets named HIVE and Hive Backed Dollars (HBD).

HIVE exists both under a liquid form (simply called HIVE) and a staked form (called Hive Power). HIVE is the liquid currency of the Hive ecosystem. It may be traded, staked, bought, and sold. Hive’s decreasing inflation rate is one of its key monetary features and reducing minting over time. The inflation rate decreases by 0.01% with every 250,000 blocks, approximately 0.5% per year, until it reaches 0.95%. Hive inflation is distributed in the following manner: (1) 65% is used to fill the reward pool (which is split in equal portions between content producers and curators); (2) 15% goes to HP stakeholders; (3) 10% goes to the witnesses for block signing; (4) 10% goes to the Decentralized Hive Fund.