I know you changed your comment because there's just SO much swirling around this post, so I'm going to be a bit of a jerk and use the technology to go back to the original one to try to craft a response since you deserve one either way. I'm also starting a lot of the comment replies with a bit of copy pasta now as apology; I was initially attempting to reply to every comment from oldest to newest, but I've given up on that now to try to make sure that all negative or mixed comments are directly responded to since they're the only feedback mechanism someone who isn't making a supporting vote has. It's... well, it's an attempt anyways, if not particularly successful.

Firstly, thank you for your condolences and accept mine; I can tell immediately that we share some common ground in this. I have no idea when it gets easier, and I assume it will probably never be "easy." While I have been accused of sharing just a hint of those things in my posts as some form of fishing for sympathy, I choose to share only a little of them as part of what it's like to be human and to navigate life under the weight of public perception as well as private reality. I want to be less angry, and I'm trying. It's a thing that lives in me, separate from here, but I understand how you feel and I'm sorry. If you want to stay divorced from this whole thing as your comment edit suggests, I fully respect that, so stop reading here because there's a whole lot below that should not matter to you or pull you back in.

Otherwise, I do in fact agree almost wholeheartedly with your entire original comment, which is why I'm upvoting this one very highly even though I realize you've changed the content for privacy and peace with how much context there is around this whole topic. I also do wish that more people were as very clear about their purpose in why they invest and how they let their investments guide them as you have been. It is absolutely absurd for people to feel threatened or like they need to performatively pretend that don't they want to only support things that make them money. I would extend this to the fact that, our dapps, products and services should actually be WAY more open to directing their own behaviour through the lens of making enough profit to be self sustainable and to pay their teams— the world is able to have MORE altruism when people are not concerned whether or not the structure in which their lives exists is actively going to collapse on them. There is a form of self-preservation that leads to creating enough personal abundance that you can then pursue lifting others into abundance. Wanting now (especially as someone who bought in more recently,) to see the price increase and having that be your main motivator in your actions around the platform is both valid and honestly, the smartest way to operate in what can only be considered a dumpsterfire of a socio-political market.

The next thing you point out basically aligns directly with that: I didn't do these things for myself effectively enough to hedge said flaming trash heap 😂 While my habit is to be jokey, I've been open and honest about this in person and here for my last as least three annual updates. I have a job that pays me really well and has been as flexible as they can with the work hours I do here, but I've been hitting the wall harder and harder on how to balance their requirements with the growing asks/needs of Hive and we are now at "Is it time to believe hard enough here in Hive to put all other work aside?" The proposal topic has been asked about (and literally even have had proposals made for me for HUGE amounts in the past) since before summer of 2023. I've spent years trying to keep all the plates spinning while actively soliciting preferences on what to do, how to do it, and engaging with stakeholders top to bottom on what's needed and whether or not I should try to do it. That's 100% my choice, as is everything done up until now, and the blockchain owes me sweet fuck all for it.

I've been well caught in the really, really difficult place where a few unique circumstances exist and that's made this all have been put off for much longer than it should have been: I have built up an immense repertoire of work and goodwill, which has led to being very concerned about the perception of anything I make passing being twisted as "she's just good at making friends." The DHF is often considered a popularity contest for who can kiss the most ass, and I know that just by existing as someone who's put in the work to be accessible and accountable to everyone, it could look like more of the same and perpetuate that harmful idea.

Someone who worked with me on initial listings (though none of the comms, announcements, socials setup, coordination between core/dapps/devrel, etc) made an immediate proposal for $30k taking credit for everything, dumped it all the second she got it, and then disappeared to other social media to brag about building a new house. Absolutely her right to do with her money earned as she pleased, but really, really harmed morale, perception of this kind of work, made people gunshy, and always sticks in the back of my head as the type of potential outcome I'd gnaw off my leg to avoid.

I have taken on stuff that no one stepped up to do from before Hive even existed that is necessary to the protocol that doesn't really have an employer or an end game for recompense like it would have in any other chain with a company/foundation or VC money, like exchange listing management and maintenance, devops and devrel with partners, NDA and contractual work for listings, etc. It helps everyone and the protocol, but is massively undesirable to pursue because it's not really contributing to a dapp, game or opportunity to make money, and it doesn't have any guarantees or metrics provided by an entity to base reporting on, and it's not really something you can report on beat by beat on chain because most exchanges would flip their everliving shit legally if you put all their contracts and inside operations on chain. So why would anyone volunteer for that? Almost anything else has a better "return" on effort and investment, and it's also easy to spin as "well, she's just making up work to get cash to leave with," so I can't really blame anyone both for not wanting to do it and also being salty about there being no defined metrics. Again, my choice balanced against what I could give. I've spent years overthinking, analyzing, listening, adapting, and still arrived at this conclusion based on the rough consensus, and you can see how it's still essentially a powderkeg, with a lot of my original concerns I tried to head off still present, lol.

I don't want to write an entire new top level post to you (too late!) but I want to really underline that the blockchain has no debt to me, and certainly not a bad one. I will include one or two links to even MORE that I've written above while working my way down as part of some final clarity, but I do want to thank you for being both supportive and critical in turn in your original comment. I respect that, and hope that whatever path you take in your Hive journey it's one you define for yourself. I know all too well how much information and opinion will get thrown at you for ANYTHING you do on a public chain. That's part of the value prop, but human nature is always human nature. I would always rather be part of a chain where someone feels empowered to speak their mind or challenge the "ruling class" (I don't feel I am, but we return to the above privilege) than one where it's all permissioned and you don't get your chance to be critical. It's super uncomfortable, but I have to do ALL of this in public, because that's what this whole thing is built to do.

See:
@crimsonclad/re-gtg-tcxv1p

"Recognition" per se is secondary here, and I think this is probably at the absolute heart of a lot of the really knee jerk concerns which are pretty justified. Instead of spending years and the last... four? annual updates discussing at length on and off chain what the best approach would be to creating a way to push this work into full time and create standards for things that don't quantify with MAU/DAU/PRICE targets, it should have just been "Do you want me to throw aside all other work and use and funds allocated to focus on Hive full time for the next 2 full years, Y/N?"

The vast majority of that feedback for years basically has been "salaries are impossible, do the work, get paid for it after, then define more work." Now we're here, and people are rightly concerned— it's becoming obvious it's less about how the pay is defined, and more about the perception that every proposal ever made just gets bigger so more people can sit on their heels (and the proletariat.) What I do with the funds in public and what comes next as I define and execute the exponentially growing pile of tasks to support dapps and "the brand" of Hive matters a lot, and we simply won't get there, back or forwards pay, without people being brutally critical of me and me creating new standards. It absolutely sucks to follow the advice/desires of consensus, actual needs of the chain, and a lot of the less visible tasking and have it actually be shaped by the collective actions of previous proposals into "the face of extraction," but come the next few months and stretching into the extended timeline, it's mine to change

and:
@crimsonclad/re-acidyo-tcxxaf

The real takeaway is that if the proposal weren't for backpay, but for an amount going forward, it would have the exact same reactions. If I'm super careful, do Hive full time, and work through the four pillars of task categories I lay out in the post and a lot of the sub-work under them, record hours and create summaries and things like knowledge posts and transcript on my account as burn posts while working on the other invisible stuff (bd/exchanges), [...] I think I can stretch this amount for about two years. [...] This is about saying, "does Hive want me to try to fill even more gaps for the next few years and step away from the corpo job?" Then at least I can create the baseline for standards which don't already exist

I have the responsibility of doing that in public, because there is no app that will make a revenue to pay me, foundation to set a salary, no future token or game or revenue model that can take off other than the main value of Hive itself, and a lot of that comes down to the fact that we are missing a lot of stuff the VC/foundation chains can pay for. I don't think I can move the price of Hive myself. What I DO think I can do is tackle a LOT more than what I already am full time to fill in a ton of our gaps, set a lot of new tasks in motion, and support the needs of core and builders and users in a way that lets them all do their parts more effectively. In every other iteration of some form of belief or work organization structure, someone pays for this type of thing and hires someone to do it, but here that's just not how it is. So, I have to a) keep doing stuff that I've always been doing, which is realistically saving us a ton of money via exchanges and BD and devrel/integrations etc. that isn't just ✨GoInG tO hIvEfEsT✨ as a lot of people want to paint it b) listen to and define what dapps and users need, identify what we're missing among our competitive cohort trying to pull opportunities out of the worst market that's ever existed into self starting, self appointed tasks and c) try to create new standards, tracking, and reporting over the course of the next few years. Just being good at what I've done for more than half a decade isn't enough, but it is the proof of invested stake that I have to back up a minimal amount to try this next bit to push DHF culture/expectations forward.