EARN MONEY WITH LIGHTPAINTING ON THE SOCIAL NETWORK

I am not a financial advisor. My statements on the subject of cryptocurrencies are for entertainment purposes only and do not constitute financial advice. Any liability for capital losses is hereby excluded.

I do not get any commission or anything like that when you sign up with HIVE.

Because there is real money involved, you should take extra care and never share your keys.

REASONS FOR NOT HAVING AN HIVE ACCOUNT HIVE

Anyone, yes anyone, including the tax office, can access your hive wallet and see how much money is in it, when you sent money where, when and from where you received money, etc. You don’t need an account with HIVE to do this. The registration under a pseudonym offers a certain protection. But this protection is not very useful at the latest when you post articles that have already been published elsewhere. Besides it is a good idea to use your “good name”, which you have built up in other networks.

If you don’t want that you can stop reading here.

INTRODUCTION

This article is intended to help you get started with HIVE. All aspects cannot be covered here. Some questions will remain open at the end of this post. On the one hand, I can’t explain certain aspects because I don’t see through them yet. On the other hand, that would go beyond the scope of this post.

HIVE is a decentralized network. It is based on a blockchain. Just like in other blockchains (Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, etc.), new coins are generated through transactions, HIVE and HBD (HIVE backed Dollar). But don’t worry, to join HIVE you don’t need to be or become a crypto expert.

HIVE is not a company. There is no boss. There are no shareholders lining their pockets. HIVE is the sum of the people who are on this network. There is no censorship. No one can block or delete my account or posts. HIVE is free of advertising.

There are some things you should avoid at all costs, at least if you want to get rewards in significant amounts:

• Posting of other people’s content. There are several highly effective bots in the blockchain that detect such posts and then block them for upvotes. If you want to use other people’s images in your posts, you must indicate the source with a link.
• Posting content that is already part of the blockchain. Also something like that will be found and blocked for upvotes. So like Facebook sharing the memory from 5 years ago is anything but a good idea. Under no circumstances should you use one of your cover images for another post as a cover image.
• Spam and Phishing
• Most people who have been around for a while and have a lot of money to spread around don’t like it when someone does an upvote on their own post. If you can’t resist, you should do it after 5 days at the earliest. The best thing is not to do it at all. Especially since you will have hardly any HIVE power at the beginning and this will only bring in a few cents.
• HIVE is a social network. So it only works if you behave socially. To make fun of other people and to disparage them like it is common in Fratzenbuch is not a good idea if you want to have some money in your wallet. You should always make the effort to reply to comments under your own posts. A simple thank you is certainly a good start, but it’s better to reply in more detail. But if you made it to my site, and this post here got you interested, I don’t need to explain it to you.

HIVE works on the “surface” like other social networks. There are groups for every need. You can follow other people, post messages, write comments, share messages and upvote messages and comments. In this process, on the one hand, another ❤️ is counted and money is added, more about this later. In addition, there are other functions and values that are displayed, such as the reputation of the user or the current voting power. The system of upvotes is quite complex. But don’t let that scare you off. You don’t have to understand it all right away when you get started. Nevertheless, I’ll try to explain it below in the simplest terms possible. You can always look at the HIVE network, even without having an account or being logged in. https://ecency.com/

WHERE DOES THE MONEY COME FROM?

Just like most FIAT currencies (€, $, £ etc.) there is no “real” equivalent for HIVE and HBD. There is not a machine somewhere producing useful things for every euro. There are no precious metals to back up the money supply. With FIAT currencies, the money supply is arbitrarily set by central banks as needed. With cryptocurrencies, it works a little differently. For most cryptocurrencies, it is a foregone conclusion how many coins there will be when the entire blockchain is fully calculated. In the case of Bitcoin, that’s exactly 12 million. It is technically impossible to subsequently increase the amount of 12 million BTC. So a BTC always remains a BTC, just like 1 kilogram of gold always remains 1 kilogram of gold. With HIVE it is similar. A HIVE is always a HIVE, completely independent of the rate at which it is exchanged into € or $ at the moment. This rate depends solely on “outside” supply and demand. Within the HIVE blockchain, the same thing always happens. New coins are generated by transactions. Let’s take an example: I put my EC card into the ATM, type in some numbers and out of the machine comes a bill with a certain value. A transaction of different numbers takes place. Account number – number of the card – number of the ATM and number of the banknote. This transaction incurs costs, production of the card, production and maintenance of the ATM, printing of the bill, operation of the computers for secure transaction, etc.. So through the process of withdrawing money, new money is generated to put it simply. And in the same way, new coins are created from “nothing” in blockchains. Not so abstract, is it?
The entire HIVE system works like a cycle. I post a contribution. A user likes it, clicks on “Upvote”. This upvote has a certain value in the cryptocurrency Hive. The value depends on the Hive Power of the user, the Voting Power as well as with how many percent the user votes. And through this transaction new HIVE Coins are generated. 

THE HIVE ECOSYSTEM

The HIVE blockchain runs a wide variety of apps from different categories. This post is primarily about the social network and the corresponding apps for it. Necessary apps like the wallet or services for exchanging and transferring the HIVE and HBD are usually already included in the various apps. For the presentation of the Lightpainting pictures the following Apps come into question:

Ecency – https://ecency.com
Hive.blog – https://hive.blog
Peakd – https://peakd.com
3Speak (for videos) – https://3speak.tv

For all apps you have to log in with the same username and key. I can’t contribute much enlightening to 3Speak here. So far I have not posted any videos. The content is the same for the apps Ecency, Hive.blog and Peakd, it is just displayed differently. The three apps also differ in features. Peakd, for example, offers good statistics, which cannot be found in the other two apps.

I can’t say much about most of the other apps because I don’t use them. I would like to mention HiveBuzz https://hivebuzz.me/ and Hivestats https://hivestats.io/ . At HiveBuzz they give out medals for special achievements top post of the day etc.. That is so like hero of the work in the GDR, actually useless, but for the one or other perhaps completely interesting. Hivestats leifert, as the name suggests, statistics, and for each account and not only for their own. This looks like this: 

I will explain the meaning of all the values below.

(Probably) all projects are listed here: https://hiveprojects.io/

REGISTRATION

The registration process is very simple. The easiest way, and without invitation or costs, is to create a new account at Ecency. To do this, call the following link, choose a user name, type in your e-mail address and you’re done. https://ecency.com/signup At “referred user” you can enter “lichtkunstfoto” or another user who has been on HIVE for a while. It is not necessary, but if I remember right, you will get some HIVE power delegated and some Ecency points after the registration. Both are a relief to get started.

There are also other ways to create an Acoount. But either you have to pay something or you need an invitation from a whale or at least a dolphin.

After you are successfully registered the four keys are generated ( Private Posting Key, Private Memo Key, Private Active Key and Private Owner Key). Furthermore a Master Password will be generated. With this password you can reset the other keys in case they fall into the wrong hands. UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES SHOULD YOU PASS ON THIS MASTER PASSWORD OR ENTER IT IN ANY APPLICATION! The master password cannot be changed or reset. You should immediately back up all keys and the master password multiple times. I consider at least two digital copies and two analog copies advisable. However, you should not store the printed slips of paper near the computer on which the digital copies are stored. In the event of a fire, all copies would be lost. There are also fireproof safes for storage. These are quite expensive at around 100€. You can think about such a purchase if you have several thousand euros in the HIVE Wallet.

You should then upload a profile picture, briefly describe what you do and link to your homepage if necessary. I don’t think it’s advisable to put links to Facebook or Instagram in your profile. This can easily give the impression that HIVE is only your second or third choice and not your “main business”.

.

FIRST POST

After registering, you should first look around a bit, follow other Lightpainters and other interesting people and look for suitable groups and join them. After two or three days you should write your first post. The best way to do this is to use Ecency. More about this later. The reason for the waiting time is the low resource credit you have at the beginning. More about that later.

In the first post you should write something about yourself and what you do. A picture of you is also good. It is important to use #introduceyourself as the first tag. The post will end up here: https://ecency.com/trending/introduceyourself. Your post should contain several pictures and between 300 to 600 words. I think it is a good idea to write this post and all other posts in two languages. If you post only in german it will limit the reach very much. You should mention friendly Lightpainters at the end of your post. They will get a message that you have posted something and will not miss your posts. However, you should not tag random people who might not want to.

You can find my first post here: https://ecency.com/introduceyourself/@lichtkunstfoto/first-post-of-a-light This is certainly a good starting point for your own first post. Once you have published it you can look forward to your first upvotes.

ECENCY

When using Ecency, in addition to the Rewards in HIVE and HBD, you get Ecency Points as a reward. You get these points for different activities, reading posts, posting posts, writing comments and more. These points can then be used to boost posts. The corresponding post then receives an additional upvote from Ecency. In principle, this also works with your own contributions, but you should better refrain from doing so. Many whales and dolphins do not see that so gladly and then often do without an Upvote on the appropriate contribution. For this reason alone Ecency is in my opinion the first choice to be on HIVE. The operation is mostly self-explanatory. The only hurdle could be that there is no German translation of the site (yet).

Furthermore, Ecency provides the only app for mobile devices.

WRITING POSTS

Your posts should be of high quality. First of all, they should be reasonably structured, meaningful title, H1 heading, cover image, well-formatted text, more images and text and a footer. You should avoid spelling and grammar mistakes. Overall, it should be recognizable that you have invested effort and time to create your post. The post should always tell an interesting, new story. The images should be 2048px wide and of good quality. Also understandable explanations of your own working methods and pictures of the tools are certainly helpful for the inclined readers of the posts. Something like this will be rewarded with higher upvotes. In addition, knowledge increases when it is shared. Simply post a picture, like on Facebook or Instagram, and write underneath it “Grandma Uschi operated the camera and I waved around with the super great Led Lenser sparkle in front of the same” certainly does not bring high rewards. But then everyone must decide for themselves how much work he puts into his contributions and what expectations he has for the level of rewards.

After clicking on the pencil in the header of the page, the editor opens. At the top you will find the formatting tools. Below that, the field for the title of the post. In the next field, you first specify the group in which the post should be posted. In this case “Photography Lovers”. Clicking in the empty field opens a selection menu with all groups in which you are a member. Afterwards you can enter further tags. These should be relevant, so in our case #lightpainting #photography etc.. In addition, I usually use #creativecoin and #photofeed. Creative Coin is an additional coin on the HIVE blockchain. If you use the tag there are a few of these coins for each post. Photofeed is another photo group. Even if you don’t post there the tag is taken into account and you get an upvote and get pormoted via a curation post if the pictures are good. In the big field you write the text and upload the pictures. To do this, just drag the image into the window and it will be inserted at the cursor position. In the edit window you only see the link. The image itself is only visible in the preview window (right).

Einige Formatierungsbefehle:

• # – H1 Überschrift
• ## – H2 Überschrift
• ### – H3 Überschrift
• <div class=”text-center”>TEXT</div> – Text zentrieren
• <div class=”text-justify”>TEXT</div> – Blocksatz
• <p>TEXT</p> – Absatz
• <div class=”pull-left”> & <div class=”pull-right”> – Text in Spalten links oder rechts ausrichten

Um also beispielsweise zwei Spalten im Blocksatz zu formatieren wie im Bild oben formatiert man den Text folgendermaßen:

• <div class=”pull-left”><div class=”text-justify”><p>TEXT ENGLISCH</p></div></div>
• <div class=”pull-right”><div class=”text-justify”><p>TEXT DEUTSCH</p></div></div>

Diese Formatierungen kann man als Vorlage, als sogenanntes “Snippet” speichern und dann in jeden Beitrag einfügen. Auch komplexere Abschnitte lassen sich so auf einfache Weise speichern. Hier mal mein Footer als Beispiel:

A good, more advanced guide to formatting can be found here: https://ecency.com/hive-153349/@jason04/how-to-format-your-blog-in-an-epic-way-or-a-guide-for-beginners

At the top right of the preview window, you will see the number of words as well as the reading time. Below that you can see the preview of the post. The button “Advanced” leads to further settings. There you can change the preview text, set the title image (by default the first image of the post) and specify in which form and to whom the rewards should be paid. The default setting is 50%HP/50HBD to the user. You can also have everything paid out in HP as well as send some or all of the rewards to another account. This could be useful if several people have worked together on a lightpainting. Then everyone involved gets HP and HBD in their wallet.

After 7 days the rewards are then paid out. So voting on posts older than 7 days is pointless, even if it increases the number of votes anyway.

As frequency for the posting of contributions a period of 30 to 48 hours has proven itself for me. Shorter time intervals I do not consider meaningful. Most of the time the post of the second day brings only very low rewards. Longer intervals, however, do not pose a problem. Even after several days or weeks you are immediately “In The Game” again. Whether a regularity brings more rewards in the long term, I can not say.

PROFIL

There are several things displayed in the profile. The number in the profile picture is the current reputation. This value gives an indication of the trustworthiness of the user. If there is a value of 20 for a user who has been registered for three years, you should not necessarily have him in your follower list, and if there is a negative value, even less. This value increases with time. If you have newly registered there is not after a week 70, as with me. If you move the mouse over the menu in the upper right corner, the vote power is displayed. In my case currently 93% for upvotes and 80% for downvotes. On the left side below the profile picture you can click on “Available” to display the current resource credits. This window opens:

This value indicates how many activities you can perform. In my case, very many post, votes, etc.. This mechanism effectively prevents any spammers from posting some filth every 2 minutes. Shortly after registration this value is quite low. So you should always keep an eye on it in the first days and weeks and possibly limit your activities a bit. All other things are self-explanatory, I think.

VOTING

Now it gets a little more complicated. The value of each upvote is determined by several factors:

• The value for the effective Hive Power (HP) in the Wallet.
• The current Vote Power (see above)
• The percentage value used to vote.

By clicking on the symbol next to the $ value (or €, if you set it that way) the voting window opens. With a slider you can set the percentage value for the vote. The value in $ is displayed accordingly. By another click on the arrow on the left the upvote will be executed. Clicking on the red symbol on the right side will execute a downvote (see below).

The rewards are then paid out as follows. 50% goes to the author, no matter if it is a post or a comment and 50% goes to the person who made the upvote. Condition is however that the value for the Upvote is still divisible. At 0.001 hive is the end, this amount can no longer be divided. The whole amount goes to the author. For this reason, the total amount paid out is often not exactly 50%.

I am not able to answer some questions that will surely come up quite soon after registration. I don’t know why whales like Appreciator, vote on my posts. So not on all posts, but only on some. This has nothing to do with the length of the post or the number and quality of the images. But that’s actually also relatively inconsequential, whether I get 90$ rewards for one post and then only 7$ for the next. With Facebook and Instagram, I would get exactly nothing.

VOTE POWER

With each vote the vote power decreases so that not infinite money can be generated from nothing. In addition, there is always a pause of at least 5 seconds between two votes. The lower the vote power, the lower the value of the vote. You should make sure that the vote power does not fall below 80%. It takes some time until the Vote Power is back to 100%. Roughly said 1% per hour. So if I start at 100% vote power and make 5 upvotes with 100% value within one hour, the vote power drops below 90%. It then takes about 10 hours until the Vote Power is full again.

DOWNVOTES

The corresponding amount is deducted from the downvotes. If the post has upvotes worth 1$ and someone makes a downvote with the value of 1$ the rewards are 0. Also with every downvote the vote power decreases. This is displayed next to the downvote arrow in red letters.

This instrument should not be used because you do not like something or you do not like the user. Such behavior pleases no one there and massively damages the reputation. The instrument of downvoting should only be used to punish copyright violations, spam, fraud attempts and the like. If someone steals my Lightpainting picture and posts it as his own, he must not earn money with it. Usually the system works perfectly. However, some psychopaths with fat wallets use it to annoy each other on the backs of artists like me. Wal 1 makes an upvote with 20$, Wal 2 makes a downvote with 20$ because he peed all over his shovel in kindergarten or something. I don’t realize what I and my lightpainting art have to do with this bitch war of mental four year olds. But anyway, you should ignore unwanted behavior, just like you do with petulant four year olds.

WALLET

One thing in advance, everything is displayed with three digits after the comma. The point represents the “German” comma. So I have 3885 HP and not 3885204 HP. When hovering on the triangles in front of the numbers, all available options are displayed, such as Transfer, Power Up, Trade, etc..

The following is displayed in the wallet:

• HIVE – The sum of liquid HIVE tokens. These can be transferred without delay. Either as a power up into the HIVE Power, into Savings, to another crypto wallet or to a crypto exchange to exchange the HIVE into another cryptocurrency. The price of the HIVE often fluctuates quite a bit. The low was $0.08 in March 2020, and the high was $3.41 in November 2021. Currently (March 2023), the price is $0.45.
• HIVE POWER – Indicates the clocked HIVE. As mentioned above, this determines the value of the upvotes. In order to convert the HIVE back into liquid HIVE, a “Power Down” is triggered. In this process, a certain number of
• HIVE are transferred each week. The process lasts 13 weeks and can be stopped at any time. Example: There are 1300 HP in the wallet. After the start of the powerdown, the HP is then reduced by 100 HIVE every week and moved to the HIVE Wallet. If I want to have only 200 HIVE now, I stop the process after two weeks. A power down can also be set up for only a partial amount.
  The grey value with the minus sign in front of it are delegated HP. You can delegate your HP to any account. On the one hand, this is useful when someone is newly signing up and has no, or very few HP in their wallet yet. On the other hand, it is a useful tool if you are not on the platform every day. In this case, the active user then votes with my HP. In any case, one gets HP in case of delegation. In the picture above you can see that. I delegated 300 HP to Lightpainters.com. I got 3,279 HP “interest” for it.
• HIVE DOLLARS (HBD) – This is the second currency on the Hive Bockchain. This one is stabilized. One HBD is always worth approximately one US$. The rate usually fluctuates between $0.95 and $1.05. HBD can be exchanged for HIVE or other cryptocurrencies. When doing so, you should briefly take a look at the current rate and then wait a bit with the exchange if necessary, if the rate is currently unfavorable.
  SAVINGS – This is comparable to a safe combined with a savings account. You can hold both HIVE and HBD there. For HBD there is currently 20% interest, yes, you read correctly Twenty percent. The interest is paid out monthly. In my case in again in Four days (Claim in 4 days). Keeping HIVE in the Savings Wallet makes little sense in my opinion, they are much more useful as HP. Currently I am getting 2.854% interest on my HP (APR interest rate).
• Estimanet Wallet Value gives the approximate current value of the entire wallet in US$.
• HISTORY – all transactions are displayed. You can filter them using the dropdown field.

SWAP HIVE IN EURO

Although this is certainly not important for the beginning, the question should be interesting for every beginner. After all, I can’t buy a new flashlight or fill up the car with HIVE and HBD. To do this, the HIVE or HBD must be exchanged into currencies that the gas station attendant or the flashlight dealer also accept. In most cases probably € or US$. There are many different ways to do this. Basically, one should only use crypto exchanges that are licensed in Germany, i.e. operate according to applicable German and European law. In this case, one has to identify oneself, just like at the bank. Any profits will be reported to the tax office. There is no risk of making oneself liable to prosecution by using the crypto exchange.

I use the crypto exchange Binance. You can sign up with my referral ID via the link in the image. I get a commission and for you the fees for the exchange decrease permanently. If you don’t want to do that, you can of course register at Binance without the link.

To be able to use all the functions, it is necessary to identify yourself after registration. A video call is started via the smartphone app, you then hold your ID and face up to the camera, and that’s it. If you wish, you can be connected to an employee who speaks German. You are asked at the beginning in which language you want to do the verification.

A good tutorial for Binance can be found in this English-language video:

OPTION ONE

The first option is to transfer HIVE to the Binance wallet. To do this, first go to Binance on Deposit then on Deposit Crypto. A new window opens in the search window and you type in Hive. An address will be displayed (deepcrypto8) and below it a MEMO. For every transaction of HIVE you have to enter this MEMO, otherwise your HIVE will end up in nirvana. In the second step you go to your HIVE wallet and click on “Transfer” at HIVE. This window will open:

At the top is automatically your account. The address deepcrypto8 is now entered in the “To” field, after which you type in the amount you want to transfer. In the last field you have to enter the memo. After you have clicked on “Next” you have to enter your “Private Active Key” and then the HIVE go on their journey. After 5 to 10 minutes the HIVE will arrive in your Binance Wallet. After that you can exchange the HIVE into a currency that you can spend with Binance Pay or the Binance Visa card. These can either be FIAT currencies like € or US$, or cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin or many more. These will then be deducted according to the current exchange rate. There are fees of 1% for the exchange, then when registering via my ID (above) the fee is always 0.75%. If you pay the fees in BNB they even drop to 0.6%. It is therefore recommended to always have a certain amount in BNB in the wallet.

So if you use the card to withdraw 100€ at the ATM, 100€ worth of Bitcoin or other cryptos will be deducted, depending on what is in your wallet. There are no fees when using the card, there is usually even a certain amount as cashback.

OPTION TWO

Via Blocktrades (https://blocktrades.us/)it is possible to exchange HIVE into other cryptos and send it immediately to a wallet, either your own software or hardware wallet or also to Binance. Blocktrades, meanwhile, also requires identification. Blocktrades is part of the HIVE blockchain.

After registration and identification, exchanging and transferring is very easy. On the left you choose HIVE or HBD, on the right the target currency (BTC, ETH, etc.), then you enter the address of the wallet and the journey begins. I recommend the exchange in Litecoin (LTC) because there the fees are by far the lowest. Currently, regardless of the amount that is exchanged, 0.1 HIVE (currently about 0.04€). To do this, click on “Deposit Crypto” again at Binance and then on LTC and then use the displayed address. No memo is required for LTC. The transfer of LTC usually takes a bit longer, 20 minutes or longer is not uncommon.

Alternatively, you could also exchange into ETH, but the fees are quite high. For small amounts, you should look carefully to see if half of the amount is not eaten by the fees. I advise against Bitcoin. The fees are depending on the load of the network at 20$ per transfer or even more. Another option is Monero, but I don’t know how high the fees currently are.

AND THE OTHER WAY?

You go to your Fiat and Spot Wallet at Binance, click on Withdraw for your HIVE listed there, then type in your HIVE account name at the address and that’s it. After a few minutes the HIVE will be in your HIVE Wallet. If you want to exchange Euros into HIVE, this is not possible directly, but only via BTC or BUSD.

ECENCY POINTS

You earn points for almost every activity you perform on the Ecency website or app. You can then use these points to boost your, or someone else’s, contribution. This means that your contribution gets an upvote from Ecency. This upvote is usually worth twice as much as the points used. In addition, you can also give the points to another user, who will then use them to boost your post. I don’t think boosting your own posts is a very good idea. Many users are bothered by it and then do not make an upvote on the contribution.

If necessary, you can also buy points with HIVE or HBD.

ENGINE TOKENS

Additional tokens are generated on the actual blockchain. These are then distributed for certain actions or contributions. Suddenly, pizza, beer, wine, cents and the like all end up in your wallet. You can stak the tokens or convert them into Hive or HBD. To do this, go to https://hive-engine.com/ and log in there.

You can find a good overview of the prices of the different cryptocurrencies and more information about each currency either at CoinMarketCap (https://coinmarketcap.com/) or CoinGecko (https://www.coingecko.com/).

I hope this article makes it easier for you to get started with HIVE. HIVE is quite complex. I could not consider all aspects here. It must have taken some effort to read this article to the end. I will gladly answer your questions in the comments, if I can. There are still some things for me, too, that I haven’t understood yet. I’m looking forward to the growth of the lightpainting community at HIVE, which is still quite small at the moment.

Until then I wish you all the time good light
Sven

Sven Gerard

Sven Gerard, Jahrgang 1969, geboren und aufgewachsen in Berlin. Er fotografiert seit frühester Jugend mit großer Leidenschaft. Neben dem fotografischen Erkunden zahlreicher beeindruckender verlassener Orte, widmet er sich seit mittlerweile 10 Jahren intensiv dem Lightpainting. Sein umfangreiches Wissen teilt er auf seinem Blog „Lichtkunstfoto.de“, weiteren Publikationen und in seinen Workshops. Darüber hinaus organisiert er Veranstaltungen zum Thema Lightpainting, wie „Light Up Berlin“. Gerard lebt gemeinsam mit seiner Lebensgefährtin in Berlin und hat einen erwachsenen Sohn.

Sven Gerard was born in 1969 and grew up in Berlin. He has been a passionate photographer since his early youth. In addition to photographically exploring numerous impressive abandoned places, he has been intensively involved in light painting for 10 years now. He shares his extensive knowledge on his blog ‘Lichtkunstfoto.de’, other publications and in his workshops. He also organises events on the subject of light painting, such as ‘Light Up Berlin’. Gerard lives in Berlin with his partner and has a grown-up son.