So I downvote to try to "protect" the reward pool and how it is allocated. This is something that is really hard to explain on why I do it. When I had very little HIVE, I thought downvotes were strange at best. That being said, the more HIVE I have, the more sensitive I become to how the reward pool is allocated. There is a growing number of smaller accounts that downvote or work on "anti abuse;" I believe the people running these smaller accounts are much more perceptive than I am.
HIVE is not a business. HIVE is not a for profit entity. I think people from more "free" countries that like the concept of "free" markets have a particular world view. I also think people who are not from "free" countries appreciate there is a lot of things that are out of our control and they live their lives in a different way than people from "free" countries.
For example, it is not uncommon for people from the west to go to less free countries and get arrested because they do not act in accordance with the culture norms of the country they are visiting.
I am personally very volatile and I do not like it when people tell me what to do. So I avoid less free countries and I avoid places in my own country that have become places that are no longer "free" and the government controls people's lives.
I first want to talk about what a compromise is. A compromise is a lose lose meaning neither group gets what they want. That being said, many times compromises are the best path forward when it comes to building camaraderie and getting a deal done.
It is very rare to get different groups with different interests aligned on everything. I do not believe a win win exists when it comes to downvotes because we are not aligned on HIVE; many people do not want to be aligned with other cultures and that is ok.
We also have a lot of good people on HIVE that want to operate by themselves. These people do not want to talk to anyone about downvotes, they just want to post for rewards and have people leave them alone. I think this world view COULD be reasonable but it is not currently reasonable; this is my opinion based on how HIVE is setup TODAY.
I started thinking about downvotes everyday after I started powering up HIVE. I do not think a win win solution exists when it comes to downvotes. Normally win win solutions are "impossible" anyways because most people cannot set aside their differences when trying to make a deal. I also do not like the current setup on HIVE when it comes to downvotes. Right now downvotes are a lose lose where large stakeholders are financially incentivized to downvote and small accounts are socially incentivized to paint Whales in a bad light. I know other people on HIVE that could become Whales but they do not want to. There is a reason for that. Because as soon as you become a whale people who never met you start making wild assumptions about you and then their assumptions get reinforced socially but other people. If people are wanting more people to buy a lot of HIVE I think it is incredibly unlikely for outside investors to invest in HIVE TODAY for this reason.
I think there are other reasons to downvote outside of stopping "extractors" but these reasons are mostly just noise in my opinion. Downvoting spam is ok but there are instances in which Whales are financially incentivized not to downvote spam. If someone posts "spam" but never powers down they are, for all technical purposes, a good stakeholder. If I downvote an account that does not extract but posts spam then more rewards go to this account and less rewards go to other stakeholders that are more likely to be extractors. So I am in a position today where spam can be ok but an account that posts "good" content and sells rewards is the better account for me to downvote.
One issue with how people view downvotes is they do not look at the incentive structures of HIVE. Instead people look at the incentive structure of a perfect altruistic person with a downvote button. If I downvote someone I am literally held to an unreasonable standard because perfect altruistic people do not even exist in today's world.
I am financially incentivized to downvote anyone who sells HIVE. I think that incentive is unfair.... like I do not want to be in this position. But I am literally backed into a corner. I am financially incentivized to downvote extractors while being put under social pressure by other people to be a perfect altruistic person. Good people can do bad things; I think holding humans to unreasonable standards is not fair.
So here is an IDEA for a compromise. I think people who are smarter than me should look at the idea and question everything about my idea that seems incoherent. Also, there is a chance I did not think of this first and it would not surprise me if other people have proposed this idea before.
I think HIVE is super complicated and we have at least 2 different "modes" on HIVE today:
- We have a "hardcore" mode where things get really intense; there is high levels of awesomeness and things get really heated sometimes.
- We have another mode that is basically sunshine and rainbows so "downvotes should not exist" (not my words, I think downvotes should exist based on how HIVE is setup TODAY).
So if we have 2 modes... why not have 2 reward pools without changing the inflation rate?
We can have a very small reward pool that is called HIVE Lite and those posts wouldn't lose rewards due to downvotes. The people who post to HIVE Lite should still have their rating impacted by downvotes so we can mute accounts that post "inappropriate" things. You cannot stop people from posting on HIVE and I think that is a good thing because it is realistic based on where the world is going. If HIVE was more popular there would be AI agents everywhere right now.
So my idea in summary:
• We have 1 Reward Pool that is impacted by downvotes aka HIVE Hardcore.
• We have 1 "small" Reward Pool that does not get impacted by downvotes aka HIVE Lite.
• The downvote free reward pool will be much smaller (this reward pool is VERY risky because it cannot be allocated by stakeholders).
• There is no change to the inflation rate.
Please remember, this is just an idea and a lot of people will not like it because it is a compromise which is a lose lose.
I think having a downvote free reward pool which is HIVE Lite is a smart way to allocate Reward Pool funds because it lets people post things without the fear of being downvoted and it lets us have a less complicated onboarding experience for new users.
I have a lot of "bad" ideas. Most people have "bad" ideas at first. But "bad" ideas are great when people expand on them because these "bad" ideas CAN lead to better ideas. Some "bad" ideas sometimes have hidden gems which are worth uncovering.
I hope this post does not create a lot of friction but instead points us in a direction where we can at least work towards having more camaraderie on HIVE.
Making a change like this is so far out my lane so I wouldn't even be able to do it if I wanted. Someone else would have to do it and I am not convinced it would work. This idea will hurt to try.
Cheers and Happy Tuesday!
Hurt