I haven’t posted for 3 weeks now since I have been extra busy trading my assets due to the latest Hive pump and Hardfork that empowered me after full long year of a downtime. I will probably write a separate article about my thoughts related to trading in general…but not yet. There is so much happening in our lovely ecosystem, therefore I feel like I should throw my 2 cents out there too. So here we go!

Hive Proposal System

I cannot sufficiently stress how happy I am that Hive account@neoxian has immediately started discussion about the importance of conscious proposal voting and how we could learn from other decentralized projects that already have similar systems in place for quite a while. I strongly encourage you to read the original article AND the discussion below here.

Current proposals

I will be more specific in an effort to push the discussion a bit forward and hopefully enable community members (me included) to learn more about decision making processes (of whoever will choose to respond to this article) regarding proposal voting and proposal creation. Please keep in mind that I’m not trying to blame anyone, target hate on anyone and that my perspective can be wrong. Feel free to educate me below if you feel like it is the case!

Small proposals

Currently only few proposals are being funded. Some of them at negligible cost (Hive account@themarkymark’s Blacklist and Hive account@anyx’s API). From my perspective both those tools are super handy to have and very cheap at the same time. There also seems to be no real movement against those proposal - thus, from my perspective, there isn’t much to talk about. Does anyone here have something to say and would beg to differ with me?

Key managers

I personally perceive the current proposal battle between “key managers” as one of the most controversial at the moment. Hive account@yabapmatt, Hive account@aggroed, Hive account@nateaguila and Hive account@stoodkev have been working on Keychain since the Steem days. Keychain proposal has lasted for about 170 days (meaning it has went through the fork…therefore some of that money could have easily been multiplied) and the team has asked for 18 200 SBD/HBD in total. I do not know how long the downtime was, thus said I don’t know how much they truly received. But we as a community have paid for a product and that product is currently functioning and I bet that many of us are frequently using it. It seems like the proposal has been voted off of the funding ones for the last 10 days (which makes the total payment worth 17 200 SBD/HBD at best). I am no expert but according to my calculations and feelings the payment for such a needed product seems reasonable to me.

What I don’t like though is that there is another proposal from them asking for DOUBLE THE MONEY (37 000 HBD) vowing mobile version and improvements. This to me feels like the DLC and micro transaction system in games that I’m not really fond of. I was voting for the original proposal and expected a good product (that has been produced). I will never vote for DLC proposal vowing improvements and mobile versions (that’s what I kinda expect from the original product). I understand that there has to be continuous development, but i would expect much lesser ask for that. Any thoughts about that?

22 days ago Hive account@good-karma has proposed his solution. Key manager called Hivesigner, asking for about 50 000 HBD. I personally don’t know Hive account@good-karma and I didn’t manage to have a talk with him during Steemfest 2, I only know that he has been around early Steem days, have been witness for quite some time and produced Esteem mobile app. I am only judging this proposal and I think that it is a total rip off and that it’s providing very little information as to how exactly is the money going to be spent (the info that i would expect is stated below where i tackle Hive account@blocktrades proposal). Our DHF currently has 487,332 HBD. Easy math inclines that we would be paying 10% of our current DHF HBD holdings for a product that we already have in place in form of Keychain. I am all in for competition, but that doesn’t mean that we should support it with 10% of current DHF’s HBD. That’s just feels so ridiculous sorry for saying that. What exactly does Hivesigner bring onto the table compared to Keychain? Can anyone explain? There has been a battle between the Return Proposal and Hivesigner – during the time of writing it has managed to get approved and disapproved several times already. At the moment (of writing this very sentence) the community has decided to fund this proposal.

But I would like to know what those of you that DO vote for Hivesigner and DO NOT vote for Return proposal think. Why do you choose to support that proposal in its current state? What am I missing in my thought process? I tag only those that I either spoke with face to face, or those that have previously interacted with me on the Blockchain and that have enough power to influence the battle. Hive account@theycallmedan, Hive account@smooth, Hive account@pharesim, Hive account@roelandp, Hive account@therealwolf?

Blockchain core developer proposals

Another Proposal type is “Blockchain core developer funding”. As Blockchain development has previously been mainly done via Steemit.inc back in the days, it seems only natural that Hive account@hive.dao is taking over the funding responsibilities. As of now, we are funding 2 core developers, namely Hive account@howo and Hive account@netuoso.

I have met Hive account@howo at Steemfest 2. To those who don’t know him personally he is super sympathetic and most importantly trustworthy guy. On top of that, since the Steempress times until now, he has proved time and time again that he listens to feedback from both small fishes and big whales. Lately he adhered to Hive account@neoxian’s call and decided to post weekly recaps of his contributions on Hive which is huge step in the right direction. Massive thanks for that!

Hive account@netuoso is the second developer that is being funded. I don’t know him personally. I recall him from ancient Steem days as a sort of controversial user (no negative connotation intended). Lately I had to acknowledge his huge contribution regarding the Hive Hardfork which hasn’t fallen off even after the fork itself. On top of that he too is posting monthly recaps about his contribution. He has also decided to continue where Hive account@jesta has started. Hive account@netuoso is porting Vessel to the Hive Blockchain (which is another proposal that didn’t really fit any of my categories :D).

What do both those guys have in common? Hive account@howo is asking around 100k HBD yearly and Hive account@netuoso around 70k HBD yearly. Is it too much? I frankly do not know. According to my math and knowledge they both ask for a payment that matches 2-6 developers’ monthly payments in Czech Republic (which generally has lower wages than the rest of the western world). Blockchain core development is essential. On top of that the Hive’s market cap (currently at 116 mil. USD) is no joke. If there are no equally good developers that would be willing to underbid then we truly have no decision to make here. Also we have to keep in mind that there are other developers (such as for example Hive account@blocktrades) that as of yet do not ask for any direct payment for their services and are only receiving witness rewards which have been greatly reduced in the past.

As it seems one can’t just take two days to finish an article because everything will change during that time. Hive account@blocktrades have also asked for payment through a proposal. I have read through the disapproving arguments (mostly circling around the premise that “You’re wealthy why the fuck would you ask for more”). You have been around since the early Bitshares days and have a team of “Graphene Blockchain hardened developers” which is valuable on its own. Labour has to be paid… there is no problem with that in my book.
BUT I think that in your position you should be the one setting a good example for the rest of the proposals. I think that your approach “the labour is approximately worth 50k HBD according to my calculations” (pretty much Hive account@good-karma style) is objectively wrong way to do it. How can any sensible investor (that would want to judge this proposal without knowing who you are and what you have done for most of the DPOS communities in the past) make an educated decision that would lead into an approval of such a proposal? Each investor should be interested AT LEAST in questions such as:

• “How many people are we paying?”
• “How many man-days/man-hours did it take”
• “Therefore how much do you charge for a man-day?”
• “Have we studied other options and is this one truly the best? Which options have been declined and why?”
• And so on.

After all “Image server cluster” is being worked upon for one month and will take roughly one more to finish correct? 50 000HBD for 2 months seems like a massive overkill in my book provided I don’t know how many people for how many man-days we are paying and whether there aren’t cheaper and equally good alternatives (that could be hidden in crypto projects too).

We as a community should ask ourselves questions such as

• “How much are we willing/can we afford to pay for maintenance (witnesses) and development (partly witnesses, partly Proposals)?”
• “How (into which sectors) do we want to distribute the money that we have at our disposal?” etc.

Which brings me to…

Economic whitepaper

During the time I worked for Hive account@starkerz at D-core and during my heavy commitment into the crypto ecosystem 2 years prior to that I reviewed hundreds of crypto projects. All the projects that at least tried to establish professional outlook had to have a meaningful financial roadmap. Why was that so? Well EVERY business that wants to be sustainable and bring something which is meaningful and needed (from market perspective) onto the table has to have it (more specifically it needs a perfect “business case” – financial roadmap is just a part it).

Since we are a forked community, we are already running and have to make hard decisions “on the go”. What Steem had is mostly outdated now. It would be all fine and dandy if we had business case in place with all its essentials. But that is not the case (and never was) and we need to improvise. We need to set up priorities as a community and execute/solve the most pressing issues. From my perspective the most pressing “issue” that needs to be solved is our economic roadmap.

I love the way where Hive account@roomservice is going with his Brave ad campaign proposal. He basically suggests that a fund strictly for marketing purposes should be established. Which in my opinion is the right way. We can rely only on our intuition and approve/disapprove individual proposals while having all the funds at one place, or we could make an educated decision such as (for example) we want to spend 10% of all Hive account@hive.dao funds for marketing purposes and move 10% of all newly minted Hive account@hive.dao funds into that account + we could issue proposals like Hive account@roomservice’s to move additional existing funds into our marketing account.

This is of course just an example. I literally just said the first number (10%) that came to my mind. We would need to put in some serious work if we were to come up with logical money distribution. This post is already too long to tackle that here and it was never meant to convey that message but I will try to come up with my vision of how we should distribute the Hive account@hive.dao money in near future. As I try to never publish unpolished (thought-wise…I guess I will never get rid of my typos:D) articles, I will try to dedicate lot of my free time during the next 2 months and I’ll try to come up with something that could become the “the roots” of our economic whitepaper.

Twitter

Finally I want to announce that I will try to do at least some marketing for Hive and I will follow the #POSH initiative. I will repost each new article on Twitter too. If you found my article meaningful and want to help my new account get some views feel free to retweet me too:). 2 full days of work on this article are finally at the end. Let me call it here and thanks for staying with me! I’m looking forward to see you in the comments!