The DAO funding raised divergence of opinions about how well the funds are used and many projects that didn't even see the day of light after years of receiving serious money says many things about it. The influence on getting funding from DAO doesn't see to always be objective or as a reflection of all participants in this ecosystem, thus it easy to question if the DAO funding became a totalitarian mechanism on the Hive blockchain. From the side lines and as a regular user on the Hive blockchain, I can tell that at least that's how it looks like. I will not direct this at specific projects or users from the Hive blockchain that got funding without delivering, but that's reality that chips at the wellbeing of this ecosystem. And if something isn't changed about it, I feel that this long loved ecosystem might continue on an unrecoverable downpath. And to make it worse, the whales that control the DAO funding, control also the future of the Hive blockchain so it is hard (at least for me) to see a solution to the current situation.
Projects deliveries and financial impact
In my view funding projects through the DAO without clear deliveries is like throwing money out of the window. In the same time these projects should provide a marketing impact on the Hive ecosystem as if these don't bring value they shouldn't be funding just for having another useless app doing same thing as others or no use at all. Maybe this should be the upmost criteria for choosing where funding should go: WHAT MONEYTARY VALUE DOES THE FUNDED PROJECT BRING It doesn't make sense to fund a project with $100,000 and for it to bring back few thousands. This is a catastrophic net lose and we end up all paying for it. And such choices and missing economic criteria for funding is what got us where we are today.
Infrastructure that brings values
As an exception from the economy factor it can represent infrastructure. But even when it comes to infrastructure we are talking about its usefulness and impact that it could bring by supporting the development of a new wave of specific apps. Doing another analytics app funded form the DAO is just useless as how many of these apps do we need when we are losing users simply not doing what this blockchain purpose is? We should think to support the scope of this blockchain and not build things that bring no value or that maybe just 0,001% from us will be really using. Follow trends, be there with fast delivering and support in infrastructure and we might capture some value until it vanishes.
AI development decreases costs x100, funding should also decrease
And above it all, I think that the AI agents that are use now more and more in development bring the cost up to x10 or even x100 down. Thus also the DAO funding need to be adjusted and not spend hundreds of thousand like we are in the 90s. We need to adapt to the new reality and any delay towards it will cost us more in the long term that we can imagine now. Crypto space is now a survival space and if you don't take action at the right time, you have all the chances to fail big. And maybe I am not connected enough to the Hive blockchain and good things are happening, but as I see it for now we simply don't do enough or don't do anything. This needs to chance if we want tomorrow to still be in the crypto space as at some point also the infrastructure might not make sense to keep it up, case in which everything falls down like domino pieces.
For me the DAO funding looks like a black hole where so many projects vanished away. And for some reason we seem not to wake up to the new reality and simply being incapable (or don't want) to react. I love this blockchain, I am here since 2017 and barely sold anything and even more invested and I would hate for it to vanish away. So if anyone up to the top still wants to do good and has a moral compass, maybe will think to take some action and put the shoulder to MAKE HIVE GREAT AGAIN! Without initiatives from those with real power, things will not turn for the better and what has been built in time might disappear and be abandoned in no time. WAKE UP HIVERS!!!