I have been shocked and appalled at the responses of Valueplan administrators to accusations of theft by fraud of the DHF funds belonging to the Hive community and disbursed by Valueplan. Instead of responsibly providing proof fraud did not occur, defensive scheming, raging, insults, and attempts to handwave it all away were their responses. To date the Valueplan proposal has disbursed >$2M through a variety of initiatives to improve Hive's market share and position, gain investors, support token price, get listed on exchanges, and grow the user base. Two administrators, @guiltyparties and @lordbutterfly, that spend a lot of that money have flatly refused to provide receipts for expenditures. This is utterly unacceptable and is certainly not best practice for operations spending other people's money. It's an affront to the folks whose money is being spent, especially in view of credible allegations of theft by fraud of that money.
I have recently learned of a less well funded group and reviewed it's practices documenting it's expenditures, work, and achievement of, or failure to achieve it's goals. Cold Beet Root Soup is providing renovation and improvements to a school to enable kids to learn about Web3. With a limited budget and personnel they have carefully and thoroughly enabled folks to review their spending and work, as you can see from the link. CBRS exemplifies how that should be done.
In contrast @lordbutterfly continually obfuscates what funds he has received, what those funds are for, how they are spent, and what they have achieved. It is hard to imagine a worse example of preventing oversight of the massive disbursements of the Hive community's funds than the vile mistreatment anyone that has had the temerity to ask @lordbutterfly any questions about the tens of thousands of our HBD he has spent. He is deliberately misinforming people asking how their money is being spent and what it is achieving, making a mockery of professional business administration, and Valueplan itself. When I asked him "Then what happened to the money?" he replied "I bought stuff with it. Not that its your concern what I do with the money I earn."
While @guiltyparties has maintained professional standards of communication, he has been no more forthcoming, nor less obfuscatory, regarding his administration of the funds he is responsible for to the Hive community. Indeed, it is a program he has responsibility for, SWC (Street Workout Community) in Venezuela, that has been accused by participants of theft by fraud. He has continually claimed it was just a misunderstanding, making every effort to simply discourage any discussion or investigation into those allegations, and - just like @lordbutterfly - flatly refused to verifiably document those expenditures with receipts.
His most recent statement to me here
"Whatever you imagined isn't happening. LB paid a vendor last month. I have the agreement sitting in front of me right now.
"Receipts have to be so heavily redacted to be posted publicly that they would be almost useless, similar to the one linked here about the car sale..."
I spoke to someone on the ground in Venezuela who denied receipts present any kind of security risk there. Cold Beet Root Soup doesn't redact receipts in Venezuela. I've never redacted receipts when accounting for material purchases to my clients. None of the accountants I've ever worked with have redacted receipts. None of them has ever heard of anyone redacting receipts. Have you? There is no sound reason for that line of crap. No rational person will take the word of two guys refusing to show receipts and just claiming everything is fine, especially after the remarkable obfuscation, guilty conscience, and vile abuse that has been @lordbutterfly's response to everyone that has dared to ask him questions about how he has spent the money he received, and @guiltyparties valiant efforts to shoo away the allegations of theft by fraud.
I'm not imagining anything. I'm not speculating. I'm not making any accusations of anything other then their reprehensible behaviour towards me and others that have demanded they account for their expenditures of our money. There are credible eyewitness allegations of theft by fraud and all I am demanding is proof there is no fraud, the receipts. The claim that I am imagining anything is fake news, and mischaracterizes the problem that is: Valueplan is alleged to be allowing DHF funds to be stolen by fraud, and @guiltyparties and @lordbutterfly are refusing to provide any evidence beyond 'trust me bro' and 'OMG you're an insane person!'. The harder they weasel out of direct, factual answers, refuse to provide documentary evidence, and resort to abusive ad hominems the more guilty they look, and everyone that has ever had to deal with a thief knows this damn well. They are creating the problem and making Valueplan look like a scam.
Valueplan is currently seeking approval for more than $100k for the next month, having spent all the funds they had been approved by voters ahead of schedule. About the only communication Hive gets from Valueplan is requests for more funding or raging vituperation of those that ask where the money is going and gone. This contrasts sharply with Cold Beet Root Soup, whose linked report leaves no question whatsoever as to who did what with what money, makes it impossible to credibly allege fraud, and thoroughly documents what they have done, intend to do, and how they intend to do it. They did this for a budget of <$2k, and none of that money came from the DHF. Valueplan has spent >$2M dollars of the DHF that belongs to all members of the Hive community, and has heretofore only obfuscated and misinformed folks that asked how that money was spent. Instead of preparing thorough reports that make asking questions unnecessary, this abuse is how they prevent accounting for those expenditures of our money.
Looking at @blanchy's posts discussing Valueplan's funds and their use, almost every comment on those posts expresses dismay at the lack of accounting for these expenditures. I could link dozens of such comments here, but anyone that cares can and should go and carefully read those posts and the comments, in order to independently verify my statements here. I have run on enough to make my point: Valueplan is begging to be stolen from at best by undertaking no accounting whatsoever for the $M's of our money it is spending, and administrators of those funds are spending hours and days preventing disclosure of their expenditures rather than documenting and disclosing them as CBRS has done for less than 1% of Valueplan's funding.
The very least we should expect from Valueplan is a complete accounting of how they've spent and are spending our money, following the exemplary model CBRS has provided. I have spoken with other parties besides @guiltyparties and @lordbutterfly that have administered expenditures for Valueplan, and they also affected outrage at any questions or criticism, and accompanied their defensive protests with vitriol, not even acknowledging they were spending money that didn't belong to them and had a responsibility to report what they did with it. Valueplan has an endemic culture of arrogance, posturing as above having to account to mere Hive users whose money they are spending, and excoriating anyone that inquires what is happening with our money with generous heapings of scorn, derision, and insults more suitable to a middle school child than a professional marketing manager.
I'm sure there are good people that are doing their best for the Hive community in their work for Valueplan, but none of them have stood up to ride herd on their abysmal administrators, nor to provide any answers to the questions 'what is being done with our money?'. For whatever reason, they're not stepping up to resolve this execrable situation, and leave themselves open to being accused of flocking with birds of a feather. Given the theft by fraud being alleged, that appears unwise.
On a matter fundamental to the DHF itself, I suggest that each proposal have it's own return proposal, rather than the funds of the entire DHF be only protected from any one undesirable proposal by only one return proposal as they are now. This makes smaller, even very well managed proposals unable to be funded without overcoming a hurdle that may be necessary to prevent Valueplan from wasting money on rally cars and art shows. CBRS couldn't gain funding from the DHF for <$2k without surmounting a barrier necessary to restrain Valueplan's proposal to spend $M's the way the return proposal works now. Coupling each proposal with it's own return proposal enables each to be evaluated on it's merits, and painting a schoolroom won't be required to surmount barriers to funding a rally car.
A few dozen whales hold the absolute majority of Hive stake, and absolutely can vote themselves our money to spend as they wish. Prudent folks will not find this situation acceptable. Were the DHF stock in a corporation rather than a commonly held fund, they could withdraw their funds from being risked against their will by selling their stock. The vast majority of Hive users have equity in the DHF but cannot prevent others from spending their equity against their will because we can't sell our equity in the DHF. This is because of how the DHF is coded, and not a reflection of the actual interests or desires of the individual stakeholders that don't happen to be whales. Stop being poor isn't a rational or just argument for denying their right to determine how their equity is managed. Gangs with guns often take property that isn't theirs and spend it as they see fit, and it is no more just to take people's property through a flawed voting process than it is by force.
Great products market themselves, and social media that provides valuable content from authors happy about publishing that content on Hive is all the marketing Hive needs to gain users. A growing user base inherently solves most of the challenges that Valueplan is trying to solve by funding rally cars, art shows, and gymnastics exhibitions without substantial results. Valueplan can't solve the lack of interesting content published by happy authors with wristbands, hats, and pens.
Recommendations:
Defund Valueplan. It's misguided conceptually and can't market a social media platform without happy users. Make each marketing effort, such as recruiting investors, gaining users, and getting listings on exchanges, standalone proposals. Eliminate any 'dual use' proposals, such as funding a rally car and holding a hackathon. Make each plan separate and administer them separately.
Accompany every DHF proposal with it's own return proposal. Don't make the resistance to funding a rally car the level of resistance painting a schoolroom must overcome.
Enable each Hive user to protect their equity in the DHF, such that their proportional stake in DHF equity cannot be spent on a DHF proposal they do not vote for. This requires accurate accounting and calculation of proportion of user stake to the DHF, reflecting funding of successful proposals to the DHF, and proportion of that funding each user that votes for a proposal represents. As the DHF is spent down users that have not spent down their equity in the DHF become a proportionately larger percentage of the DHF remaining. Those that vote for proposals have their proportional equity in the DHF reduced as they expend it by funding proposals. This prevents anyone's equity from being spent against their will, and is necessary for DHF proposal funding to justly be based on the votes and will of equity holders in the DHF.
Require ongoing and complete documentation of successful proposals' expenditures, work done, and achievements completed. This is a bog standard business practice, as CBRS shows. Wherever any lapse in such standards is allowed, it facilitates fraud, as we observe is alleged to be occurring now.
Audit Valueplan's expenditures to date. There are credible allegations of criminal theft by fraud, and Valueplan owes the people whose money it spent forthright documentation of every Hive disbursed, and accurately assigning guilt for any crimes or malfeasance to the criminals involved.
Fire incompetent and mendacious administrators like @guiltyparties and @lordbutterfly. They have utterly failed to administer funds entrusted to them in a responsible manner, enabling credible allegations of theft by fraud, acting like schoolchildren picking on other kids rather than business professionals, and failing to manage their administration of these programs to prevent these questions from having to be asked to begin with, as CBRS shows is easily done. I'm sure there are 100 better qualified and more competent administrators willing to do what needs doing on Hive right now. Were these guys picked because of their incompetence? The question has to be asked if their real job was indeed facilitating fraud and enabling kickbacks to be paid to whales voting for this pig of a proposal. It's hard to look at what they did and not come to that conclusion, but I'm trying.
We should setup a real Hive marketing program that creates authors happy they published great content on Hive. The Stewards of Gondor program arranged for several curators to be delegated modest funds (5000 Hive IIRC) with which to upvote posts they found worthy. For $2M we could unleash 4k Stewards of Gondor. That's probably more actual users than there are on Hive, so I'd suggest a much lower number of Stewards, maybe starting with 20 and growing as experience is gained. This also wouldn't spend DHF funds at all, but would only provide delegations for curation purposes. It was necessary to require the Stewards to account for their curation, because some of them tried to profit from it, but that can be done. Authors happy they posted great content on Hive is the best and only marketing plan we need to gain users and keep them. That would require that no one flag their posts and comments and prevents them from receiving the value of the upvotes. Maybe the flaggots could restrain their greed and let Hive grow. But that's just, like, my opinion, man, based on reason and silly things like that. We could hardly do worse than Valueplan, and it wouldn't cost a single HBD from the DHF to do it.
This guy thought he was a windmill too.
Defund the DHF
How would you do that? The DHF was reproduced because the Founder's stake Ned sold to Sun was said to have been dedicated to development and improvement of the platform and code. Going on what I've been told, there's something like $20M in the DHF. If there's 3k actual human beings on Hive presently there's ~$6500 per user in the DHF. Clearly the actual equity in the DHF is proportional to the stake each user holds - and may actually be proportional to each account, including the hundreds of thousands of bots and socks that have been created on Hive.
Anyway, who wants to just burn $20M? It seems obvious that VP and other proposals don't. They want to extract it, which is what they're doing. So, defunding the DHF requires considerable thought.
I would burn those tokens and any new source in the future.
I'll uncritically take your word for it, but it's hard to believe you'd burn $20M.
BTW many chains have done this on the past including EOS and Ethereum.
https://beaconcha.in/burn
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The best audit is to defund it. But it doesn't matter whatever blocktrades votes on gets passed there's legit nothing decentralized about hive anymore.
Maybe he shouldn't vote at all.
It doesnt suprise me. I dont know LB and GP a lot, maybe I talked to both quite briefly but not enough to get an impression.
I generally expect anything cooked up by our Elite/Government to mainly benefit the Elite/Government, like the 20% APR on HBD which makes hive look like a scam.
Curation rewards can reap ~23% ROI. This also deranges curation by substituting pecuniary interest for the subjective values by which people judge great content. Folks that have very high interest in financial returns can forego all the work of calculating which posts will pay the best curation rewards and just park their stake in an HBD savings account and get nearly the same return. This also removes their stake from voting for governance by voting for witnesses. Every bit of their rapine financial interests that can be prevented from impacting curation and governance benefits Hive by reducing their derangement of curation and governance by the amount they park in HBD savings. This makes the rest of us have more influence on curation and governance, which I think is very beneficial to Hive by reducing the rabid focus on profiteering in those areas.
I'm greatly in favor of 20% interest on HBD. Every HBD collecting interest is a win for organic voices on government and curation.
Thanks!
I think you are neglating that we earn our share by working, while they earn their share by purely investing. A stable coin has also much less risk than hive itself.
I see your argument, but just because whales normally have rather deranged voting patterns does not mean they have the right to milk the blockchain passively.
I recently reblogged a post I think will make a lot of sense to you.
https://peakd.com/hive/@khrom/why-downvotes-contradict-decentralization-a-mathematical-perspective
I don't disagree with you about rights. I'm just trying to find a way forward from where we are that ends up with a vibrant Hive platform and happy community.
I would just disagree that the funds belong to the Hive community. The DHF is designed to allow those with the biggest stake to give themselves extra funds to do with as they please and this is how they wish to disburse and spend them.
I am quite shocked they bother involving us at all. They are so benevolent to we mere plebs, whose only role is to create the content they monetize. Perhaps we really should just stick to our knitting and let the real stakeholders take care of what's theirs.
Thanks!
It's fiat but with new kings.
Where there's royalty, there needs to be a nobility, a court, bureaucracy. Knights and Dames, like Sir Jimmy Saville and Dame Jacinda Ardern, to pick a couple of worthy, recent examples of royal recognition for services rendered to the crown. Maybe we can come up with some equivalent on Hive? It would be impossible, of course, to match the ability of Jimmy Saville to bring new and entertaining company to King Charles, Prince Andrew, and Prince Harry (although I hear Diddy, a mere commoner, seems to have provided such opportunities to meet and mingle to Prince Harry), or Dame Ardern's firm guidance of the crown's New Zealand estates to 95+% mRNA-ification with diligent application of friendly police persuasion, and clever reminders that jobs and homes were privileges plebs enjoyed by royal benevolence - that depended on their Covid obedience - but there must be similar roles enabling the Hive royalty to rule so continuously focused on their royal prerogatives.
I guess guilty and butterfly might be the closest we could get to such erstwhile servants. Would it be too much to expect BT to drop a sword on their neck in appreciation for the careful accounting they have assured us they maintain, and call them lord and lady? After all if they hadn't minded those accounts with such care, he'd be finding the most Hive misplaced as a result. Maybe this would be a good place to find anything misplaced?
Valueplan no longer sending HBD to marscrea but still supporting SWC through swc-oficial, swc-oficial is an account created by Manuel Ramos but now owned by swc-recupera, swc-recupera is an account created 24 days ago by aliento and I suppose owned by aliento, aliento is an account owned by Eddiespino and theycallmedan, theycallmedan one of the keyholders of valueplan.
All this with the coincidence that at same time, Manuel Ramos and his secondary accounts (or at least some of them) are in powerdown mode with the Withdraw Vesting Route to Eddiespino.
So the question is, after 155k HBD from DHF manage by Manuel Ramos, what is going on with SWC and why the hell the SWC's Hive Keys were stripped by means of coercion from Manuel Ramos?
I think it is too late to save Hive, the damage has already been done to its reputation. Even without the Hive Grifters, the HBD tokenomiics are going to crash Hive, especially now that they removed the debt limit.
I still intend to find out, but some things are hard to stomach along the way.
I think you already know the answer. It is the same for all PoS chains and many PoW too.
I was not aware of @cbrsphilanthropy before this post ... it is indeed an admirable model of transparency. I have given them a follow and will watch their progress with much less consternation than the drama at hand gives me.
I suppose I was just raised differently than others ... I'm not even going to the store for you without bringing a receipt, your change, and a solid accounting for anything that costs more than was expected on that receipt (which sometimes happens in these inflationary times) that can be independently confirmed. So, it is incomprehensible to me that any project leaders should think they are entitled to $1M a year without providing at least the basics. I have read enough comments to know that part of the rationale is that some money is being spent on getting into conferences where leaders of said conferences don't want everyone to know who they spend on and how much ... but that's to me ANOTHER red flag ... so, we're spending money with people who don't want to do things above board ... but we're above board? It just doesn't make sense to me.
It also doesn't make sense from the viewpoint that Google is sometimes our friend, and therefore the best information in the English-speaking world on how to spend money to get Hive adopted is readily available from Chainalysis -- we know what the top 20 countries are. In that light, Venezuela makes sense with proper accounting, but the geopolitical realities mean that without proper accounting, that can be incredibly dangerous for all involved. Without proper accounting, trouble will arise from everywhere.
To me this is truly sad, because VP has funded some wonderful initiatives that I think many people would vote to see preserved ... but those same initiatives will be sullied with suspicion if this cannot be resolved with transparency.
To your points ... Nos. 2-3 and No. 7 I think would have massive purchase going forward, but I think a challenge we have on Hive is that many people in high places don't want to accept that Hive is largely a social media platform and that content creators are needed. I think some want to pivot to get more people here developing apps and games to bring in revenue ... the problem is, people like that can handle numbers quite well, and can quite quickly determine that some things aren't adding up.
There is a lot of information to digest in your post, individually and for the community as a collective ... there's a lot I wouldn't have ever guessed was being alleged. I already am voting the Return Proposal, with deep regret ... again, there are some initiatives in VP I want to support ... but can't. I've been down these roads in the real world in relatively high-stakes asset and finance matters; I already know this has to be cleared up before we can safely move forward.
That's how its done, and that's sure expected in business.
This is an excellent point. They're claiming they can't show receipts that prove they're not stealing our money because they're doing shady deals they can't reveal in public. How do they not recognize this only makes their claim the weaker, they're threat to our financial safety more marked, not excused?
Without proper accounting you're begging for crimes to occur.
Here's a quote from Vigilant News:
I think there are so many things in the VP because then everyone will find something in it they like and that gains it support. This is why I reckon it needs to be broken up into individual initiatives, so we can support what we like and not get saddled with things we don't - like rally cars.
You're absolutely right this needs fixing, or it's going to get a lot worse and do terrible harm to Hive, and the good people that aren't doing anything wrong in Valueplan, but are flocked with the wrong birds.
Thanks!
Have a look at this ... I spend time on Hive talking with people who love to talk ... when people don't even want to be doing the good they are doing for the sake of the good itself, but just as a means to an end, well ...
https://peakd.com/@lordbutterfly/re-deeanndmathews-sn9vdu
(@verbal-d, should you ever see this, the linked exchange confirms why I can't be involved with certain things any more ... and @mcsamm and @collinz, better look out. It's also in the Sept. 22 proposal from VP: any good being done is only being done as long as it gets attention. The minute the people at VP don't think they are getting sufficient press to attract the people they are really aiming for, it's over. It's explained in the Sept. 22 proposal, but the relevant quote is also in my response).
A point you made right off with your first comment to me was that fundamental principles matter, and this truth is apparently very elusive in some quarters. You made every effort to enable them to succeed, and prevent what's likely to happen instead.
Keep fighting the good fight!
I will keep fighting it -- even if the best I can do is make sure "we didn't know" is not a valid excuse!
I realized there are no excuses. There are only reasons. This changed how I think, and gave me greater peace of mind.
You are right. Most people do not see that, and so they think ... but no. We choose what we do for various reasons, but there is never an excuse for choosing to do evil.
@guiltyparties and @lordbutterfly you two cocksuckas better sort your SHIT out
@valued-customer, I paid out 1.177 HIVE and 0.316 HBD to reward 11 comments in this discussion thread.
Scam bag's my friend exposed them long time ago but no one was listening 🎧
We must deal with the downvote abuse on Hive it just makes Hive look bad 😔 @tipu curate 👍🏾
The curation trails and the automated upvotes are probably much worse than that.
Many so called curators do not even see the content they upvote (curate).
This is one of the multiple reasons behind the general lack of real content consumers.
And honestly most people do not even care about the content.
Often not even as a content creator.
Most people focus so much on the monetary aspect (rewards) that they forget (do not care) about the content.
Most people focus on their own posts (or rather to get upvotes on them).
There is a general lack of real content consumers.
Most of the Hive posts are ignored/overlooked.
This is how most people socially ruin an otherwise technically revolutionary platform.
I agree the curation trails if you can even call them that I remember when I first started on Steemit when you meet people they was like I will put you on my curation trail 😂
Many curators have not got any ideas how to curate and most of them are spammer's themselves
On Instagram and other places I get many people asking for a tipu curate vote in exchange for likes by curation trails 😂 I always say the same thing if I like your content I will like your content and maybe even give a tipu curate vote I don't like for like
If better people was in control Hive would be a better place
Right now you have more freedom on blurt and Steemit which is bad for Hive
I've spoken to many people who are powering down to go to Steemit and blurt
The downvotes are hurting Hive
@tipu curate 👍🏾
Upvoted 👌 (Mana: 0/48) Liquid rewards.
I strongly agree. That has dispelled the massive crowd that jumped aboard in 2017 when I came. Almost all of them have been flagged off the platform, whatever stake they had sold off or sucked up by the whales. DV's concentrate stake in the largest wallets, increasing centralization and decreasing distribution.
https://peakd.com/hive/@khrom/why-downvotes-contradict-decentralization-a-mathematical-perspective
@khrom agrees too.
Thanks!
Yes i know some of the first people who used Steemit in the test stage.
Downvotes won't fix Hive and as you say downvotes increase the centralization of Hive
Same whales voting the same people over and over again 😔
This is why I proposed the Stewards reprise. It diversifies curation.
Thanks!
To be honest I think some of those whales should just power down and F Off 😤
Hive would be a better place I mean you have more freedom on Steemit and blurt you even have more freedom on centralised platforms 😂
Obviously the censorship and predatory taxation, infestation of bots, and other problems have degraded Hive to the point that many people find centralized platforms preferable. This isn't caused by the people that have come here. The code has caused those people to come here, and that's why they're here. These problems are fixable, but they aren't problems to the people that could fix them. They're why they came here.
They try not to call it censorship but it is 🤔
I've tried to promote Hive in the past and I got quite a lot of people to join but guess what happened most of them got downvoted and others just gave up. It's seems like they made Hive so they could have full control 🤔
As you say the one's who can fix the problems are not bothering because it is not a problem to them and the one's they support 🤔
Upvoted 👌 (Mana: 0/48) Liquid rewards.
Well said!
Well, thanks!