A few months ago, I wrote about the return proposal. Today I want to bring it up again, because I think it is important. Let's see if I can put things a little differently than I did in that post.
The DHF
Many of you are well aware of what this is, but I am always amazed by the number of people who don't know. The DHF (Development Hive Fund) is a store of money on Hive that is used (or suppose to be used) as the name implies, to fund development of Hive or of things that will be of benefit to Hive.
How it works is that people will write a proposal for funds, then this proposal will be placed for a vote. If it gets enough votes, it passes, and the requested funds are handed over.
There are numerous problems with this, but we'll get to those. First off, if you've never explored this before, let's go to the Proposals page. On Peakd you can get there by pulling up the menu from the upper right corner of your screen, then clicking on "Proposals".
Or click here (and bookmark it).
On Ecency you can reach this place by pulling up the menu from the upper left corner of the screen (clicking on the 3 lines), then clicking on "Proposals".
Or click here (and bookmark it)
This proposal screen is divided into 3 parts.
- The funded proposals—these are the proposals that have gotten enough votes to secure funding.
- The unfunded proposals—these are the proposals that haven't yet gotten enough votes to secure funding.
- The upcoming proposals—these are the proposals that are available to be seen, but haven't been voted on yet.
I encourage you to look through the list and vote on any that you think sound good. Votes are base on stake, so if you have a lot of Hive Power, your vote will carry more weight than someone with very little Hive Power. Don't let concerns of a low HP prevent you from voting; as we say in the real world, every vote counts, and that goes for Hive as well.
The Return Proposal
Now, look at the very end of the funded proposal list. The last one there is the return proposal
This is the baseline. Anything that receives more support than this will be funded, and anything that receives less support will not be funded. The unique feature about the return proposal is that it is a moving target. We can vote on the return proposal and our votes determine where it falls. To put it another way: our votes determine the level of support needed for a proposal to pass or fail.
Looking at the photo above, you can see that as of this post the return proposal sits at 34,598,962.063 HP. If you go to the actual page (again, here for peakd's version, or here for ecency's version) you can click on any proposal to see who is voting for it and what their vote is worth. Here is the list for the return proposal:
Now you may think 34.5 million is a lot, but I'd say it is very very little compared to all of Hive. In my opinion, this places the barrier of entry far too low.
Opinions vary about the DHF funds. Some, like @blocktrades, think spending the DHF money is not a bad thing. Many others, like @themarkymark, feel the reverse, that it should be as hard as possible to spend this money. Regardless of how you feel, I think there is one big point that we might all agree on: There is almost no accountability to this system.
That is to say, there is no requirement of proving that the funds are being used as intended for passed proposals. Now in theory if someone were to abuse the funds or just not report on how they are being used, their proposal could just be unvoted. While true, this ignores the bullying and collusion that takes place behind the scenes. For example, every time the return proposal gets high enough to unfund certain proposals, the pressure starts being applied to anyone with a substantial vote to unsupport the return proposal. Unfortunately, where money is involved, corruption appears, after all. Despite the high-minded rhetoric of the blockchain, we have seen that it is no different from the real world. Money = corruption, online and off—and on Hive too.
There should be a requirement of at least weekly expense reporting, the lack of which would mean that the proposal would be instantly unfunded. There should be random audits, the failure of which means the proposal is instantly unfunded. We should require proof that the funds are being used as promised. The absence of this proof should mean instant unfunding.
We have none of these things (yet), meaning the return proposal is our only defense against abuse. That in mind, I think it behooves us all to vote up the return proposal and make the barrier to entry as high as possible. This, of course, won't stop abuse. Not even the failsafes I list in the paragraph above would stop it, though they may temper it. But a high return proposal will at least ensure a wide initial support, which is something we don't have now, where just a few people with a high stake can pass almost anything they want.
All that in mind, I strongly suggest all of you upvote the return proposal and don't unvote it when proposal authors send you a DM on discord begging you to do so so that their proposal can pass.
If you agree with me, don't wait another moment: go upvote it now.
(Your turn @silverstackeruk)
❦
David LaSpina is an American photographer and translator lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time and searching for the perfect haiku. He blogs here and at laspina.org. Write him on Twitter or Mastodon. |
I always vote on the return proposal, just to set the bar a little higher!
Glad to hear it!
I am powering up so my vote counts. There are some great projects out there that don't have the support. I remember the case of splinterlands proposal and the drama that cokes along with it. I am glad that finally it passed. This shows the power of community. That's the essence of hive. All the best !BBH !LOLZ
With witness votes and proposal votes I believe it takes 30 days before the hive power counts towards it. This was a safety measure back when Steem split and became hive. Keep that in mind!
Keep powering up! We won't see change here until more of us take a seat at the table and force it.
Absolutely agree but sadly aa waste of breath yet again. Valueplan, regardless of the endless complaints by so many people continues to be funded. I also disagree with Splinterlands funding, and don't get me started on Leo finance or whatever they're calling themselves these days, but I can do nothing about it except NOT vote for it.
The DHF would be much improved if we could vote against, as well as for a proposal. I would also ban proxy voting. People should have their own opinions and votes rather than lazily let someone else vote for them.
The whole thing is little more than a few whales trying to find concensus but I will keep voting.
My hope is that someday, the people building applications to run on the chain will be paying rent to use it, not being paid to develop for the chain and that someone, anyone might actually create a profitable business model and that communities might be funding their users with their own tokens.
The whole economic/business model and structure of Hive is poor from top to bottom but there will be no major changes so people like me will just carry on doing a bit of blogging and engaging with friends whilst collecting a couple and trying not to become too triggered by the bollocks in the background.
Excellent post. Thank you. Hopefully one day the proverbial brick wall that many are banging their heads against will come tumbling down.
I know, I know. Sadly, it is a waste of breath. But I refuse to give up. I continue to believe that most Hive users are ignorant of the fact that they actually have some power here. It's sadly not much unless they have a big stake, but it is some. Every time I make one of these posts I see a few people added to the return proposal vote, so even if it isn't for much HP, it is heartening to see people act on the message. What I really should do is do one of these spam memos to everyone like the witnesses do when they are begging for votes (such as therealwolf did recently when he fell out of the top20). I hate that kind of thing (I'd be a terrible politician) but I know it does work.
Anyway, thanks for reading. I'd encourage you to make your own "vote the return proposal" post. Even if it only reaches a few open ears, that is a few that we didn't have before.
Couldn’t agree with you more dude!!!! Fucking basic damn business sense is completely disregarded with the damn DHF and it drives me nuts. Value plan is the most egregious example of straight up money laundering. Absolutely no accountability, zero receipts and outright refusal to provide evidence of where the funds were going. It’s so frustrating!
Value has improved their latest handout request but it’s still not sufficient for the 200k HBD they siphon off every few months.
I encourage EVERYONE to support the return proposal!
Absolutely. The "value plan" is the absolute worst offender. My biggest motivation in powering up is voting against this stuff.
I'm heartened that every time I post one of these "vote the return proposal" posts, I get comments similar to yours. I continue to think most people just don't know about it and would vote on it if they knew. That in mind, I think all of us should try to make these kinds of informative posts every now and again.
Yeah dude for sure. I've been pestering some of my friends on here to make me their witness proxy which also does proposal votes I think. That way we can root that damn thing out lol.
DHF is always a talking point I feel and will always be since people ha different opinions on it.
I vote the return proposal because I think its good that there is some cap on what gets funded. But are several things we fund I'm so hapöy with.
These resources should only be spent on what is best for Hive.
Question people have different answer to is, what is best for Hive?
The great thing about the system is that we can vote for anything we agree with. But I think voting for the return proposal should be a base thing for everyone.
Haha I understand what you mean, but if all voted for the return would nothing get funded right?😂
If everyone on Hive did actually vote on the return proposal, than yeah, sure. In that hypothetical case, the best we could possibly do would be give a proposal the exact same vote as the return proposal. I'm not sure how the system would react to a tie... would a proposal tied with the return proposal pass or fail? Hmmm 🤔
But it's a moot point, since all of Hive is very very unlikely to vote on the return proposal. Blocktrades, for one, with his enormous vote, will likely never vote on it. So I think we are safe from that situation.
It's a great idea, we need to set the bar much higher because there is no accountability at. No need to provide weekly receipts, no audits, etc. I definitely support it!
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Good to hear!
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