Over the past couple of weeks, we've seen some DHF-funded projects have started publishing breakdowns of where their funding goes and openly discussing transparency. This is a good thing. Transparency has been a long time coming and the projects that are stepping up deserve credit for doing it.
But as the numbers come in, a pattern is forming that the community needs to talk about honestly.
Projects are reporting that 80-85% of their DHF funding goes to labour costs. Salaries. Payroll. Developer compensation. Whatever you want to call it. The overwhelming majority of community funds flowing to these projects is going directly into people's pockets as income.
That's not inherently wrong. People deserve to be paid for their work. But the scale of it, the consistency of it, and the lack of any mechanism to evaluate whether those labour costs are justified by output, that's a problem.
What the Numbers Actually Say
When a project tells you 85% of its funding goes to developers, what they're really telling you is that almost none of the money is going to growth, marketing, infrastructure, tooling, testing, or anything else that would help the project become self-sustaining. The money comes in and it goes straight to salaries. The project survives because the DHF pays the team. If the DHF stops, the project stops.
That's not a funded project. That's a job.
And it raises uncomfortable questions. If 85% is payroll, what's the output per dollar? How does the shipping cadence compare to what a solo dev or a two-person team could achieve with AI tooling? Are these teams adjusting their headcount to reflect the fact that developer productivity has changed dramatically in the last 18 months? In most cases, we don't know, because the breakdowns stop at percentages. We get a total payroll number and a team list. We don't get hours worked, hourly rates, or per-person compensation. We don't get output metrics. We don't get comparisons to previous periods.
A percentage breakdown is better than nothing. But it's the beginning of transparency, not the end of it.
Hive Can't Afford to Be Your Employer
I need to say this directly because I think some people need to hear it.
We are a small blockchain. We are not Solana clearing hundreds of millions a year. We are not Ethereum with a foundation sitting on billions. The DHF is a finite community fund on a chain with a modest market cap, and right now the global economy is in turmoil. Oil is past $100 a barrel, inflation is climbing again, markets are in chaos, and crypto is not immune to any of it.
This is not the environment to be treating the DHF like a salary. These are difficult times for everyone. People are losing jobs at companies posting record profits because AI changed the equation. The entire tech industry is restructuring. If the rest of the world is tightening up, Hive doesn't get to be the exception.
Personally, if I were receiving DHF funding, I wouldn't expect to charge anything close to what I'd charge in the real world. I wouldn't expect a full living wage from it. That's what a job is for. The DHF is supplementary. It's there to help you build something for Hive, not to replace employment. Crypto is far too volatile and our chain is far too small to be anyone's primary income source.
If your financial stability depends on a DHF proposal getting renewed, you've built your life on a foundation that the community can vote away at any time. That's not a criticism of you as a person. That's just the reality of decentralised funding on a small chain. Plan accordingly.
I'm not saying work for free. I'm saying be realistic about what community funds on a chain this size can and should support. Take a rate that reflects the reality of where Hive is right now, not where you wish it was. Use the DHF to supplement, not sustain. And have a plan B, because the money isn't guaranteed and the world outside of Hive is getting harder by the week.
The DHF Was Not Designed to Be a Payroll Service
The Decentralised Hive Fund exists to support projects that benefit the Hive ecosystem. That includes core infrastructure and tooling that can't realistically monetise on its own. Node software, protocol-level libraries, key management tools, blockchain APIs. These things need ongoing funding because there's no business model behind them and the entire ecosystem depends on them. Nobody is arguing that this work shouldn't be funded.
But outside of that core infrastructure layer, the DHF should function more like an incubator or a springboard. Fund the build phase. Fund the MVP. Fund the first year of development while the project finds its footing. Then expect the project to start generating its own revenue, reducing its DHF dependency, and eventually standing on its own.
That's how grants work everywhere else. You get seed funding, you build something, you demonstrate value, and you transition to sustainability. The grant doesn't become your permanent salary.
What we're seeing instead is projects that have been drawing DHF funds for years with no trajectory toward independence. Same team. Same budget. Same scope. The proposal gets renewed, the money keeps flowing, and at no point does anyone ask when this project plans to stop needing community funds to operate.
If your project has been funded for multiple years and you still can't articulate a path to revenue, that's not a development timeline problem. That's a business model problem.
Labour Costs Need to Be Justified, Not Just Disclosed
Saying 85% goes to developers is not justification. It's categorisation. There's a difference.
Justification means showing that the team size is appropriate for the scope of work. It means demonstrating that the team has adjusted to account for AI tooling that has genuinely changed what a small team can ship. It means publishing what shipped versus what was planned, and being honest when the cadence doesn't match the spend.
Blocktrades said in a recent community call that he's seeing 10x efficiency gains from AI and expects projects to be shipping weekly. Whether it's exactly 10x for every project is debatable, but the direction is not. Tools like Claude, Copilot, Cursor, and Codex have changed the math. Block cut 40% of its workforce and saw a 40% increase in code shipped per engineer. This isn't theoretical. It's measured and it's happening across the industry.
In the latest Keychain DHF transparency update, they mention spending $440 a month on AI tooling and acknowledge the gains of 5-10x are what they have observed (I'm seeing the same thing with my own development and also at work and in other open source communities).
If a DHF-funded project is spending 85% on developers and hasn't reduced headcount, increased output, or at minimum explained how AI tooling fits into their workflow, the community should be asking why.
What Sustainability Actually Looks Like
There are funded projects on Hive doing this right. Some have voluntarily reduced their funding. Some have mentioned letting team members go, which is hard but honest. Some are actively building revenue streams, whether through swap services, premium features, or external partnerships, with the explicit goal of reducing DHF reliance over time.
That's the model. Build with community support, then transition to independence. The DHF covers the gap while you find product-market fit. It doesn't become a permanent line item in your personal budget.
For core infrastructure that genuinely can't monetise, sustained funding makes sense. But even those projects should be adjusting their budgets to reflect the reality that developer tooling has changed what a team can deliver per dollar, the falling price of HIVE and HBD should also be a consideration too.
What I Want to See Going Forward
Every funded project publishing quarterly reports with actual detail. Not just percentages. Team size, roles, per-person compensation, hours worked, what shipped, what's planned, and what tools are being used. If the project is receiving community money, the community deserves to see where every dollar goes.
A clear distinction between infrastructure projects that need ongoing funding and product projects that should be on a path to sustainability. The expectations and accountability frameworks should be different for each.
Funded projects being asked directly: what is your plan to reduce or eliminate DHF dependency? If the answer is "we don't have one," that's a conversation the community needs to have before the next proposal renewal.
And an honest conversation about what the DHF is actually for. Because right now it's functioning as a payroll service for a small number of people, and the community is footing the bill without the tools to evaluate whether the spend is delivering proportional value.
The DHF is one of the most powerful things about Hive. A decentralised funding mechanism that lets the community direct resources toward ecosystem growth. That's genuinely valuable. But it only works if the community holds funded projects to a standard that matches the privilege of receiving those funds. Until recently, I don't feel as though projects have been held to the high standard they should be.
Right now, 80-85% going to labour with limited accountability isn't that standard. It's a starting point. Let's build from here. And let's not take the foot of the gas, let's keep discussing this. I am so happy we are seeing this at the forefront of Hive from the very top. It feels like we're seeing the beginnings of positive change.