Shakeout in Governance: DHF enters Savings Mode // EDIT: ok not anymore

2025-02-16T18:46:12
{ Sorry for the imagebait, it's not accurately true, blocktrades has a strong weight in gov but by no means his vote is 100% decisive. Just enjoy the meme. }

Last night I was doing my business around here and I got a screenshot of the current status of the DHF.
WOW... what a rush.
My girlfriend won't take me seriously when I tell her that seeing a gentleman's vote on my favorite blockchain got me all worked up. I recognize. I got a little horny.
Don't get me wrong.

This blocktrades move is great news in my opinion.

For a long time now, the use of DHF has been strongly questioned. Mainly due to a deliberate lack of accounting, breakdown of expenses and of course lack of clarity on the part of the DHF workers.
This move from blocktrades generates a small earthquake.
  • Suddenly no one is funded (only ecency but the funding ends in ~27 days).
  • Being funded it's still possible but requires mobilizing much more voting power.
which is something I personally appreciate very much. You can articulate the message as you want, but the funding by DHF has been a constant selling pressure on the price of HIVE with no tangible results (so far*).
** Development is needed, Marketing is needed. But accountability with a CLEAR plan is ALSO needed. The DHF shouldn't be treated as a charity. In 99% of the cases people in power in this scheme end up being complacent and little by little corruption eats us.
Which SURPRISE!, that is exactly what is slowly happening to us.
Price does not matter in the short term. But we cannot ignore it forever and play the ostrich game putting our head under the sand.
This is why we desperately need things like VSC...

My Take

In my opinion the best marketing is a number going up.
And most if not all of our funding should be allocated where it generates more value (talking about organic value, not P&D schemes).
  • Building a Bitcoin Reserve?
  • HIVE/HBD AMM + yield from the DHF?
  • Wrapping HIVE to other chains in a decentralized way? (In the works with VSC)
  • Getting HBD listings?
  • Borrowing market for HBD?
I don't mind what, but others tried this before and (somewhat) worked.
Make HIVE attractive to users, developers and investors (better if it is a combination of all of them), and the number will go up.
Number going up will attract more users, developers & investors and with them their talent which will result in a self-reinforcing cycle (with again more human, mental and financial capital).
Anything other than this means isolating ourselves on our island and gradually becoming more and more irrelevant.
Hard? Yes, since value it's subjective but... we will have to be better then.

Some (Gross) Governance Numbers

We often complain that there is not enough involvement in the governance of our chain.
Out of a total supply of ~500M HIVE...
  • 180M HIVE exist in their staked form, which is a ~36%.
  • From this amount, ~60M are needed to approve a proposal and ~70M to place a witness in the top 20.
So, in the worst case scenario 70M HIVE is the figure needed to dramatically alter the governance of this chain. And I'm not counting HIVE supply locked into HBD which are like 50-100M additional.
And it's a problem of blocktrades for having too much stake? Bullshit. It's the rest problem for having nothing comparatively speaking.
Too many users selling too much... or buying too little... I don't know.
It's very easy to talk about governance, responsibility, justice and duty when you have nothing at stake.
And it's exactly what I demand on proposals & witnesses: SKIN IN THE GAME.
If not, I cannot take seriously on your word, sorry.
Fuck it. If the DHF stake keeps being a problem why not burning it all?
We could rely only on the 10% of freshly created HBD every year from new inflation. Want more funding for proposals? Increase the number and make this 10% worth more.
Talking about inflation...

A little Governance Suggestion:

Why don't we incentivize governance in some way?
Participating in it has no reward per se for the user who engages in it.
We have the tools available to do it. Look HIVE inflation is distributed as follows:
  • 65% Used for the reward Pool
  • 10% for the DHF
  • 10% for witnesses
  • 15% for HP Stakeholders
Look, 15% of all the new supply is distributed to HP holders. This equals to approximately a ~3% yield for everyone staked.
My suggestion is, why not distribute this inflation ONLY to HP which is actively involved in governance?
And what does it mean to ''be involved in governance''?
To vote for a witness, proposal and/or proxy in the last year.
We have the ''governance voting decay'' which is already live and implemented in HF25.
Why not use something like this.
~3% APR is negligible for 99% of users. No one buys HIVE for this 15% distributed to stakers. Why not making it useful for governance?
0 cost for the chain (no changes on current on inflation absolute numbers). Only potential upside in the form of more decentralization and more involved HP holders.

Conclusion

I am completely in favor of the latest changes in governance (hopefully they last and proper discussion happen). Although some proposals such as VSC and the Stabilizer are necessary IMHO.
I'll follow very interested how all of this topic unfolds.
Thank you for reading this far. Very appreciated. Have a good start of the upcoming week.
EDIT:
LMAO, exactly the minute I hit publish (pls sir...)

You're not voting for my witness yet and love what I do? Don't ask me more:
(100% of witness rewards are reinvested weekly into PWR).

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