Premium

LEO Premium is one of the core revenue models for the LEO Token Economy. Any user can sign up to Premium at any time. It costs $10 per month and is collected in the form of HBD. HBD is a stablecoin on the Hive Blockchain that allows 0-fee transfers and 3-second settlement of payments.

LEO Premium is a development we pursued for two reasons:

To give users access to an exclusive experience
To monetize the platform in a way that drives value to the LEO token economy

When a user signs up to Premium, they currently (as of December, 2023) get the following features:

Verified Checkmark next to your username
Priority in "For You" feeds
Edit threads after you post them
Add Bold, Italic and other "Markdown Styling" to your threads
Publish longer threads
Pinned threads
Favorites menu
Themes
Ability to Create / Organize Folders for Bookmarks

Economy

As one of the core revenue models, LEO Premium collects HBD (stablecoin) which then purchases LEO and HIVE off the market in equal quantities. That LEO and HIVE is then wrapped to bLEO and bHIVE on the BSC blockchain and provided as permanent liquidity to the bLEO-bHIVE Liquidity Pool.

As the number of Premium Subscribers grows, we will continue to see this bLEO-bHIVE liquidity pool thrive. The permanent liquidity will create an ever-deepening liquidity pool and ultimately benefit both LEO and HIVE as it aims to drive more trading volume, wrapping volume and activity in the economy. Liquidity is key in building a thriving economy that utilizes various DEXes for trading.

Incentives

The incentive loop for Premium is fascinating. Due to the fact that 100% of the revenue generated by premium subscriptions purchases LEO and HIVE (in equal quantities) on the open market and then permanently deploys them into a liquidity pool, anyone who holds LEO or HIVE is incentivized to not only be a Premium member but actually reward people who are Premium.

Knowing that other users' $10 per month is going toward buying LEO & HIVE and pooling it, LEO POWER and HIVE POWER holders have a deeply engrained incentive to encourage people to sign up for Premium. One of the best ways for them to do this is by curating (Upvoting) the content of Premium users and be very vocal about doing so (so that more non-premium users desire those votes and turn Premium).

Additionally, rewards from upvotes are paid directly on the Hive blockchain. The HP portion of those votes actually pay out HBD to the user. So thinking of Incentive Loops, now picture that a Premium user is actively earning more upvotes which means they are actively earning more HBD which ultimately they can use to renew their subscription for another month. The loop keeps playing.

Example

An example of how this all works: a user is incentivized to get Premium because they desire access to exclusive UI features. They also want to earn more rewards on the platform and understand that having a Checkmark + being a part of Premium incentivizes LEO POWER and HIVE POWER stakeholders to shower them with more upvotes on their quality content and engagement. This user heads to https://inleo.io/premium to sign up for LEO Premium.

On the Premium page, they are prompted to select a payment method and then pay 10 HBD/month.

The 10 HBD is sent from their blockchain account to the @leopool blockchain account. This account is governed by a smart contract which purchases LEO and HIVE off the market and then pools it. @leopool will trigger this action each time the account reaches a balance of $500.

Let's say the account has $490 in it and then our user in this example subscribes. Now, the @leopool account triggers the buy action, using $250 to buy HIVE at the current price and another $250 to buy LEO at the current price.

Once purchased, the $250 HIVE and $250 LEO is wrapped to the BSC blockchain using the INLEO Oracles (bnb-hive and b-leo, respectively). A @leopool BSC account receives the bHIVE and bLEO and then pools it on Pancakeswap. The pool has now grown another $500 in permanent liquidity (liquidity that will never be removed).

If you are familiar with AMMs, then you'll know that there is a small swap fee each time a user swaps in the pool. A % of that swap fee is earned by Liquidity Providers. This fee is denoted in the base pair (in this case, bLEO-bHIVE LP Tokens). Since @leopool has permanent liquidity, the liquidity it holds will permanently increase from the LP Rewards. Liquidity in the bLEO-bHIVE pool will continue to grow based on monthly subscriber revenue + revenue from LP Rewards, which autonomously compound.