Why I transfer the majority of my HP to a community

Hey there! Welcome to my casual blog, where I’ll talk about my recent power-down activities (spoiler: I’m not taking funds out of the ecosystem). I’m not entirely sure if this post fits with the community, but I figured I’d give it a shot ;)

For those unfamiliar, @DIYHub is a long-running curation project on Hive, focused on DIY content. It's a pretty active community, home to a lot of creative minds from all over the world. Like most curation projects, we rely on delegations, but our aim was to serve as a "hub" connecting curators and creators. From day one, we set up a system where 100% of curation rewards went to our delegators. While this attracted delegators, it also turned into a bit of a black hole for my personal Hive and HBD for the first few years. I poured hundreds, maybe even thousands of Hive into the project for various reasons. But my goals here aren’t financial. I’m here for the Hive community, for the creative spark, to help others, and to build things.

I originally started because I wanted an audience for my early DIY videos. Little did I know, I’d end up founding a thriving DIY community on Hive. Many would have quit once they realized how much personal investment was involved without immediate financial returns, but I believe in learning from failures and not giving up. Along the way, I’ve made some great friends on Hive who share that same mindset.

In those early years, we struggled to compensate our curators and writers, and I’m incredibly grateful for their dedication, even when we couldn't pay them enough. Things improved in 2022 when we joined the @ocd incubation program, which helped us provide at least some compensation for our curators. Still, 100% of our curation rewards went to our delegators, while contest prizes and writer compensation mainly came from the community account’s author rewards.

As many of you know, posts from community accounts don’t tend to get a lot of upvotes on Hive, likely because they feel less personal or authentic. This meant I still had to chip in with my own funds from time to time.

In June 2024, we made a big shift and reduced delegator payouts from 100% to 80%. This wasn’t a solo decision; we held a poll, and the majority voted for the change. That 20% difference now allows us to be mostly self-sustaining without me needing to add extra funds.

However, there was a time recently when I still had to contribute more liquidity. Our payout model, where we distribute rewards to writers, delegators, and contest winners, didn’t always align with the liquidity available at the time of payout. @vaultec highlighted this issue with a significant delegation, and we realized the model only works smoothly if we have enough HP to power down weekly.

I’ve been powering down 65% of my HP and routing it to @DIYHub, powering it back up immediately. Over the past seven weeks, I’ve moved around 3000 HP this way, giving @DIYHub about 328 Hive each week for distribution. This fund movement has not only increased our voting power but also made our system more resilient for the future. On top of that I know that my stake is used well and is safe because I am the founder of @DIYHub and I hold the keys to it.

Now, what about the rewards I’m missing by shifting my personal stake to the community? Well, I’ve hardcoded my stake into the calculation, so I still receive the payout I would have earned by delegating. Every week, I manually update the value of tibfoxStakeVests with the current vests.

Of course, I reserve the right to take my HP out of @DIYHub if I need it, decide to leave Hive, or for any other reason - but that’s not in my plans. This project is six years strong, and I hope to keep it going for at least another six years!

Handling all these payouts requires some serious code. I’ve developed a script, over 400 lines long, using the Beem library to manage delegator, curator, and writer payouts, along with generating account tokens in the background. It’s the result of six years of working on this project and learning from my mistakes. I’m still using Beem, though I hope to eventually move to smart contracts on @vsc.network if I can find the time to learn!

Many people are on Hive for the profits, which is totally fine. But for those of you who are here for community-building and helping others, like me with @DIYHub, I wish I had transferred more of my HP to the project earlier. I’m spending 80% of my time on this project and less than 0.1% on my personal channel, so it just makes sense to allocate more of my power to where it’s needed.

At this point, I’ll likely transfer even more of my HP to @DIYHub because I know it will be put to good use. Unlike dumping liquid Hive into the project, this approach keeps my stake safe and ensures it contributes to the community.

Now, why did I write all this? Maybe to inform you, or maybe just to put something out there on my blog. Perhaps you’ve been wondering about my power-downs? I’m not sure, but I’m too far in now to just delete it, so here it is enjoy haha

P.S. Oh, and before I forget - this post needs a unique and catchy thumbnail! Cats go well on the internet so, as a sneak peek, I’ll share something I’ve been working on for the past few weeks. I’ve been diving into Grease Pencil in Blender, which is basically 2D animation in a 3D space. What started as a quick test has turned into a full-blown learning phase and video (that tends to happen with me, haha). I’m aiming to wrap up this first project soon - even though I’m not completely satisfied with it, I need to finish it so I can move on to a simpler animation next!