What is Hive SBI?

Hive Stake Based Income (Hive SBI) is an account-based curation program. You sponsor accounts for regular ongoing curation, and then you receive back curation rewards as upvotes on your own content. This empowers both accounts to earn a sustainable crowdfunded basic income.

Pending Balance Conversions

A few weeks ago, we quietly released Pending Vote Balance Conversions. We announced it in our Discord server, but we chose to hold off announcing on chain until we could monitor it in operation and observe the actual interplay between conversions, VP Management, and HSBIDAO market impact.

The release timing is readily apparent in our HSBIDAO Issuance History, now available in the new reporting dashboard.

What is this and how does it affect me?

We set a target maximum pending vote balance target for each member. For all members with >10 voting units (either regular Hive SBI units or bonus units), the target is 10x our maximum deliverable upvote value. The maximum deliverable vote varies with HIVE pricing, but is currently about $3.67, with HIVE at 0.098, so roughly HIVE price * 37. The multiplier would theoretically grow as our stake grows, but there are other reward pool factors in play.

For any members with <10 voting units, their maximum target is maximum deliverable vote times number of units. This lower target level only impacts members that previously had more units and opted to tokenize or otherwise transfer their Hive SBI units. If they now have voting units, their target pending upvote balance is $0.

These automatic pending vote balance conversions are currently applying to less than 100 members. For everyone else, there is no impact aside from how it impacts VP management.

For those above their pending vote balance targets

For each member, we identify their target, calculate any excess pending vote balance, and then convert the 'author reward' equivalent into HSBIDAO at the prevailing non-dilution rate. The portion of excess converted in each cycle was originally set at 1/910. We will gradually increase the portion each cycle to target a rate of pending balance conversion where HSBIDAO token inflation is ~ 1% daily. Since the program takes out curation equivalent first, and then converts at the non-dilutive rate, none of this token inflation actually changes the value proposition of HSBIDAO tokens.

Since only a portion of excess is converted, and not the entire excess, each member above their maximum pending vote balance target will see a unique equilibrium emerge.

1. Members with 0 voting units will see a daily decrease in the total HSBIDAO they receive from pending balance conversion. If they are still posting, they will see a blend of upvotes and HSBIDAO issuance until their pending vote balance eventually decreases to 0. If they are not still posting, it will very gradually peter out over an extended period of time.

2. Actively posting Hive SBI whales with high pending vote balances will see regular upvotes as well as HSBIDAO issuance. Their excess pending vote balance will stabilize at the level where their pending vote balance accrual roughly matches their pending vote balance conversion. You can tell this is you if your daily HSBIDAO received has been roughly the same for at least a week. If you are in this category, you could potentially receive more HSBIDAO tokens by converting some of your Hive SBI units into HSBIDAO and receiving curation dividends directly instead of letting it route through the pending vote balance accrual -> pending vote balance conversion cycle.

3. Inactive Hive SBI members with high pending vote balances will only receive HSBIDAO tokens (unless they resume posting, in the which case they switch to category 2 and start receiving upvotes again). Since they are not posting at all, members in this category would earn more HSBIDAO by converting their Hive SBI voting units into HSBIDAO and receiving curation tokens directly. Skiplisted members also fall in this category, regardless of whether they are posting.

4. Fully inactive members (no posts in more one year and no comments in >90 days) are limited to one year of pending vote balance accrual, and any pending vote balance excess is trimmed without conversion into HSBIDAO tokens. Whether their total pending vote balance is limited by pending vote balance conversion or by inactive member pending vote balance 'trim' will depend on their individual Hive SBI voting unit levels.

VP Management Impact

Opening new avenues for inactive and semi-active members to receive their pending vote balance decreases their incentive to post low-quality output. That removes VP pressure (less whale votes delivered), and improves curation (big votes on low-effort content attract downvotes).

Reducing VP pressure helps the pending vote balance accrual levels to normalize, which will improve vote value per unit for everyone (in HIVE equivalent, of course. The impact of HIVE market price changes far outweighs all the changes we have made to the program in the last year.)

We updated our targets so that VP will range from 80 - 98 instead of the narrower 90 - 98. The tighter range is crossed much too quickly when no Hive SBI whales are posting, and having a wider range will lead to more stability in our upvote values.

When we are at the top of range, we will continue to run our cycle at greater frequency until all accounts are below our top target. During these intervals, the pending balance conversions will run at increased frequency as well. Sometimes this will mean issuing HSBIDAO 3 or 4 times in an hour instead of once every 2-3 hours.

Management Units

We have historically issued management units at 5% of total Hive SBI unit creation. In practice these have been almost entirely distributed out to members of the ecosystem for various reasons. These are now in the process of being 'bought in' gradually. As funds become available, holders of these management voting units will be sponsored by non-program accounts controlled by Hive account@josephsavage and the equivalent amount of bonus units will be retired.

New management unit creation will be disabled, and HSBIDAO will be issued instead. This issuance will be visible in the HSBIDAO issuance reporting as 'Management'. Management HSBIDAO issuance will be capped at the level of management bonus units bought in until management voting units are fully replaced by management HSBIDAO tokens. From then, management HSBIDAO issuance will be limited to a maximum of 10% of total HSBIDAO issuance (excluding units held on market by the Hive SBI account that maintains the buywall).

Cross-Chain Transfers

While we continue to support cross-chain conversion of member voting units, we will no longer support cross-chain transfer of pending upvote balances.

You can request a cross-chain transfer by sending 0.003 STEEM to Hive account@steembasicincome with Transfer Refund Request in your transaction memo. These are processed manually at significant delay, since all incoming units on Hive need to be properly funded. Any pending upvote balance on Steem will be zeroed at the time that your voting units are converted across.

Hive SBI Enrollment

To curate accounts using Hive SBI, enrollment is pretty straightforward:

Just send 1 HIVE to Hive account@steembasicincome. Include the name of a Hiver to sponsor in the transaction memo (preceded by @). You and the person you sponsor will each receive 1 voting unit in the program for each 1 HIVE. You can sponsor any active Hiver (except for yourself); it does not have to be a current member.

This is an open-access program. You do not already have to be a Hive SBI member to enroll. You just have to sponsor another Hive account.

The official currency for enrollment is HIVE. HBD transactions are only accepted for auto-transfer functions, not for member enrollment. Enrollments are processed automatically every 144 minutes.

To tokenize your Hive SBI voting units, send 0.001 HBD per voting unit to Hive account@steembasicincome, with sbi-tokens in the transaction memo. There is a minimum transaction size of 0.005 HBD, and anything smaller will be ignored. This will transfer your voting units to Hive account@sbi-tokens and it will issue HSBIDAO tokens to you in return. If you send more HBD than is needed, the excess will be refunded to you by Hive account@sbi-tokens.

If you have questions, please ask in the comments section or join us in our discord channel.

You can check your member level at https://www.hivesbi.com/ or view our new reporting dashboards. The new dashboards also include your HSBIDAO token holdings.

Nothing in this post should be construed as financial advice. Hive SBI is an account-based curation program, not an investment scheme. We designed it to provide additional incentives to support others with ongoing vote support. If you're only looking for 'returns' there are lots of options on Hive that outperform.