Background: I've been a Hive witness for quite some time and have been sitting around the 21-22 position. Recently, I received two votes from folks related to Splinterlands. As always, I was happy to get the votes, but this time, it was not an appreciation but to force me to vote on the proposal.
Being in top20 witnesses has financial and governance advantages. Top witnesses decide on network parameters and get significantly higher reward for their jobs (roughly 3-4 times more than top21 and lower). Read montly earning reports to get more information about this
This has become a way to intimidate witnesses and "convince" them to do what some folks with high stakes want.
For your information, I'm not voting for proposal 315 and even voted Return Proposal to increase the funding threshold (I did this before I got the message as this is the only way to "vote no" for proposals). I'm not voting for it for many reasons and I don't want to touch this topic now.
Vote for your witnesses
As a community, you have the right and privilege to vote for witnesses who align with your vision. Do it. Consider who you want to vote for as a witness and review your votes now.
I will always be happy to receive your vote (even the smallest one), but it won't influence my decisions.
Worth reading @pharesim statement on the same situation from his side: And there I was, thinking i could avoid politics
I am very sorry that you got involved in this, or that there is even anything to get involved in. I responded to pharesim's post with a similar message that Aggroed does not speak for Splinterlands nor for me. I don't want any part in what he is doing and wish he would have just stayed out of it.
I am not posting this to try to get anyone to support the proposal, I would not go asking or certainly not trying to coerce people for votes, but I feel like my character and intentions are being attacked as a result of what Aggroed has been doing and I just wanted to set the record straight.
No hard feelings. I'm not voting for the proposal because it sounds like a threat and lacks details on how you want to spend those funds. Other stakeholders also expressed similar opinions multiple times. I could consider a different one. It's just about this one being bad, nothing personal.
This post is not about the proposal, it's about how someone wants to enforce their vision.
Isn't aggroed the CEO of Spliterlands?
No, I took over as CEO last year. Here is the announcement post about that for your reference: https://peakd.com/splinterlands/@splinterlands/staff-reductions-and-restructuring-announcement
Didn't know about that change, thanks.
I believe and consider that before acting on behalf of Splinterlands, asking on behalf of Splinterlands, launching proposals or seeking funding, as a team you should have had a conversation and defined the methods to be used.
Expose attempts at tyranny at every opportunity! This is a prime example of the kind of vapid, distasteful behavior many have come to know and expect from that particular source. It's slimy and gross, been calling it like I see it since over half a decade ago now. And I am pleased to see more and more of this sort of thing being brought to light by people now currently in the kind of influential positions on the platform I once enjoyed here as well.
Fight for good, for the good of the ecosystem and expose systemic cancers when you see them.
Just like you have done here today. Much respect for your backbone. I'll keep an eye on you as I return to the platform and consider my witness choices. My vote these days is irrelevant, and small, but my voice is loud and clear. Choose your witnesses wisely folks and pay attention to the ones rooting out the contemptuous ones. They are the ones you want governing. Not the vapid bullies and platform abusers, and believe me, this is shining a light on just such an example.
I saw the slimy and gross part as well. There is a reason I pulled Fiction Workshop out from beneath his influence all those hundreds of moons ago and regardless of the train wreck that happened later because of egos, I never regretted what I did. He and I went head to head publicly as well and he sicced his batallion of perverts on me...not naming names, but it's all still on the blockchain. Turns out that, like Cork, I was right about him. I'm glad the truth has finally floated to the surface.
Well of course that truth floated. Its made out of ... brown material that floats after all.
That is some dirty move and pathological way to push the proposal, I'm wondering how many whales got hooked into that bribing system. Even meta social media like for like has better attitude. We are not talking about hundreds of dollars we talking about half million dollars for game played by bots - to make you understand it this is around 100 boreholes in Africa.
I'm not a bot and I play the game. As many others do.
That's fine, I tried it as well. This post is not about the proposal, it's about how someone wants to enforce their vision.
I've been close to web2 gamedev industry for a long time, and I know the development costs, so I'm not shocked by the amount asked. It's just the WAY it was requested and, apparently, the way they enforced funding.
This is the case! I fully understand the amount is needed for the gaming industry but we not in 2021 where anyone and anywhere splashed the money into gaming industry never mind web2 or web3 , Of course surely it would be nice to have some plans regarding the game and its development but with this attitude i'm very sceptical
This is so silly that reminds me of something... :D
!LOLZ
lolztoken.com
At dive bars.
Credit: reddit
@hallmann, I sent you an $LOLZ on behalf of pompe72
(1/8)
Farm LOLZ tokens when you Delegate Hive or Hive Tokens.
Click to delegate: 10 - 20 - 50 - 100 HP
Wow... corruption at its finest. We consider ourselves so much better on Hive than the government, yet we (I'm using "we" generally, obviously) engage in the exact same corruption. That message you received promising a little quid pro quo is disgusting.
Thank you for being honest and stating your beliefs. I just checked to see if I vote on you and I do so you already have my support. .
"We" is used correctly here. We all need to remember that whatever happens on Hive is on us - thanks to us or our fault. We are responsible for the reliability and security of the platform, and by "we" I don't mean just witnesses, but all users. Everyone with non-zero HP is responsible for how Hive operates. What happened to @pharesim and @engrave shouldn't have happened, and it's really a shame to see this after everything we have been through. Hive is better than this.
Not to mention that it also undermines the efforts of those who sincerely campaigned to get votes for Splinterlands proposal.
I want to believe Hive is better than this. I am not naïve and I know as soon as money enters a system, corruption follows. But I had thought and hoped that the people attracted to Hive might be more morally upstanding and not give in so easily.
Absolutely! I wasn't voting on the Splinterlands proposal because I share @engrave (and others) questions about the lack of details. Not to mention the entire proposal reads as a threat to me. That may because it was badly written, but there it is. Regardless, even if I had been supporting it, seeing this kind of old boy network politics would make me instantly remove my support.
That was my first thought after reading it, tbh :D
@gtg please notice the hive logo and message on SL landing page. This was one of your request.
Thanks
powered by Hive
nice one!
Thanks, appreciate your vote. I will most likely quickly lose the top20 position, but I prefer honesty.
I wish more people held your attitude. I think Hive would be in a much better position if those on top did as you.
I am such a contrarian when it comes to corruption that just reading that message you received makes me want to somehow power-up my account even faster to push up the return proposal more.
I support the proposal, mainly because we're deep into splinterlands. But I support this attitude. I tip my hat to you that you weren't swayed by greed and stuck to your priorities. We need way more of this around here.
I believe the game is important for the network, it's just this specific proposal is no-go for me. It just says "we will hire marketing guy for half a million bucks and will see what happens next".
Fair, and this is what the hive experience is about. Being able to make your own decisions.
except if they rub some whales the wrong way.
Or did you mean to write "what the hive experiemce should be about"?
@azircon, who I considered a friend, told me it would've just been the consequences of my own actions.
I mean, I already knew I'm shit in selecting friends, but that was a super unpleasant surprise.
Yes, fair. I am not up there yet but that's what the hive experience should be about lol.
It's the same play down in hive-engine. We all play these games but on a lower market cap level. I try to stay above it, but sometimes you just have no choice.
"consequences" of not giving in to bribery and bullying... smh
I'm not a witness, but I have had people DM me about my proposal votes. I make my own choices about those and the witnesses I support.
I don't see anything wrong with getting a message regarding any proposal. This is a way to spread awareness and potentially get votes and funding from people who might have missed a post on the chain (although I'm reading all proposals by myself). But there's a huge difference between a message asking for a vote, and a message bullying you to do it because not doing it might have "consequences". Ask @pharesim.
I had someone suggest I withdraw my vote from a proposal as they thought it was lacking value. There was no obvious threat in what they said, but it made me a little uncomfortable. It seems that when you have a substantial vote then you can get more attention of various forms. Power brings responsibility, as someone said.
Well, I guess that's one way to get support. Could always try the organic approach too. Thousands of players. Thousands of votes. I realize it's easier to talk to maybe a handful of large stakeholders but, one memo written several years ago, explaining things to thousands of people, could be considered efficient as well. Probably just as effective. Minus posts like these.
Appreciate your attitude!
That message is unbelievable!
Right?
Absolutely!
I'm not familiar with proposals and I'm discovering Return Proposal with your post (among other things).
I hesitate to vote for it, as it would disadvantage small projects that don't have the support of those who consider themselves masters of Hive.
Thanks in any case for your article.
Yes, voting for the Return Proposal has its downsides, as you said. It increases the threshold for everyone. That's why I'm changing my vote depending on the current situation. In previous weeks, I wanted @deathwing's proposal to pass, so I haven't voted on the Return proposal. I temporarily changed it to prevent Splinterlands one from getting funded. Fortunately, Deathwing's proposal got some votes lately, so it got funds either way.
Maybe I don't know what's going around regarding this proposal, and I don't want to jump in between any heat but democratic views must be appreciated. I think for these things only we moved away from our predecessor chain.
It seems like the team might have bought some votes. This is not democratic approach.
And that's unpleasant, I believe the team will come up with their accountability on this end and clear this hastiness.
You just got my vote! That is a slimy move on Aggroed's part and knows it. That is straight up corruption. It's dirty moves like this is what got him basically shunned from the top20 witnesses and majority of the community in the first place. Pretty sad and needed to be called out!
I'm a support of Splinterlands and I'm voting for the SPL Proposal, but it's really sad that there are people demanding votes like this.
Every proposal should earn the liking of people in as honest way as possible.
This kind of shadieness is hard to beat. Aggy has always been like that.
Well at least there are still people with beliefs around! I still can see good things in humanity! And thanks to bringing this new piece of information!
This lets me know Hive still has hope.
I have supported your witness before and have used some of the things you built on Hive.
My witness selections are sometimes too simple. If I use a product of a witness, I support them. That's why you might see some of my witness votes unused. I have a lot to say, but I am holding myself back from speaking further. Good luck with the rollercoaster ride.
You did avoid politics. I think you must have missed something. You stood your ground on morals. there is no politics in morals.
I'll go vote your witness.
I voted for the proposal as I have a decent stake in SPL, I don't want it to go under, but there are ways of asking and ways not to. I should have talked to you on the boat in Amsterdam, I was right next to you.
Lets talk this year in Split ;)
Possibly, I was going to veto it..,but @bingbabe is trying to convince me to go (with her of course). Anything for a free holiday 😀
It's too bad you "suddenly" got bumped out of the top 20! It's nice to see someone looking out for the good of Hive!
I wasn't expecting anything else after publishing this post.
Keep up the good work, I'll keep you as witness on all my accounts!
Thank you, appreciate your support!
This is the shady stuff I don't like but it comes from BOTH sides. All these DHF proposals create division and exiting of funds out of Hive that never get replaced. I'd say for a few exceptions like core development work and I'm almost 100% sure Splinterlands has brought in a lot more value then the $500,000 they are asking for. That should be grounds enough to get it to pass IMO.
That's your opinion. I have a different point of view, and we both have the right not to agree with each other. I believe spending 0.5M USD on a plan to "pay someone for marketing" is a waste of funds, regardless of how much they did in the past. I'm not against the game; I wish them all the best, and I'm happy to review other proposals from the team.
Agreed that there should be more details or simply to say to help cover operational costs or something other then "Pay someone to run marketing" is not the best choice to ask for funding and for sure could be written up better lol
fuck aggroed, that greedy cunt.
xd
Sums up how Hive seems to work
It's stuff like this and the fact that I don't rub elbows with many of the top 20 whales is why I have never submitted a proposal for Hivelist, BlockTunes, or any of my other Hive based projects and just bootstrapped them, which hasn't really worked the best either. The corruption level in the DHF is kind of mind numbing.
lol I just wanted to find out for myself where the powers that be on hive are at with hive and marketing and truly building a community and supporting well proven dedicated hivians…. We will see I guess
I think we HAVE seen at this point.
lol maybe
Sadly
It sounds like politics, which is the same everywhere, but I hope we (as a community) are not that corrupted in general.
It's everywhere unfortunately. I have seen it by working in different chain ecosystems over the years including having projects on Hive. Most users are all 'what can you do for me' when is should be 'how can we help?' kind of thing. Again I have seen it across the entire space. I never did anything with the DHF because of all the political crap I saw. But I am glad you held the line!
😍 your integrity
Hi @engrave . You have to agree that most of the transactions on the chain are due to Splinterlands. That is, if it moved to the dead Steem, they could even surpass us in market capacity. I'm not saying that the current developers here don't have magnificent projects, there are glorious builders here like @pharesim, @arcange, @good-karma, @therealwolf, @howo and of course, I can't forget to mention the guy who deserved a statue for his bot ARTY creation @ausbitbank.
What I'm trying to say is that, although you may feel this way, not everything is as horrible as it's made out to be, just as in politics you have these “vote buys”. Aggroed may just have been trying to get allies to support a proposal that could favor the majority of the Hive community.
I must remind you that I'm sending out a daily message on your Splinterlands Discord server, Hire more staff, or by December we may only see two staff divided between the SoulKeep, Genesis and Splinterlands projects. Yes, they still haven't managed to make Genesis League work on iOS.
It is true that they are responsible for a lot of transactions on hive. But do those really benefit the whole ecosystem? They use 2nd layer tokens issues by themselves, fees go to hive engine. They're basically using the hive blockchain as a database, without utilizing the native tokens at all.
I could send a bunch of custom_json transactions every day, but how would that benefit hive?
That was just a point about transactions and sending custom_json. But we should agree that a good part of the movement in the HIVE community, from posts, comments and curation, is due to Splinterlands. Even if some of them are a big vote-getting farm.
I have many friends who, like me, are Brazilians who got to know the HIVE ecosystem through Splinterlands.
Unfortunately, I do not agree with your statement.
I understand, we may have different views.
You got a new little vote
:)
The amount of drama to get a Dapp marketing funding on HIVE has been exhausting.
We can’t even do something simple like promote a game already built on HIVE.
I don’t understand what the goal is for HIVE.
Do you think the behavior described in this post is ok?
No. I think you did the right thing and frankly, it’s really refreshing.
The big bummer though is after you posted this someone upvoted the return proposal and the SPL DHF proposal is not getting funding again.
I wish Hivians would get back to supporting each other instead of people constantly bickering.
https://peakd.com/hive/@pharesim/closing-statement-regarding-the-current-spl-proposal-and-all-others-for-the-future
I only learned about HIVE through Splinterlands.
I would like to see SPL and HIVE work together.
I really hope you change your mind but at the end of the day it’s your decision.
Cheers!
As I said, happy to re-evaluate a more detailed proposal.
It's also not just up to me. Even if I voted for it now, it wouldn't pass.
You just earned my witness vote.
Thank you, appreciate!
I praise you for standing your ground and keeping to what you believe in.
I'm a hive witness supporting the blockchain.
I like the way you are handling things. I voted for the Splinterlands proposal, but I do not understand Aggroeds behavior. I am not even sure, if he wanted to help SPL, because he should know, that such behaviour will damage SPLs reputation more, than it would help the company and the game :-(
That is a shady move from aggro
And Great that you dont let your voice be bought and voted 4 your witness 2
Hello engrave!
It's nice to let you know that your article won 🥈 place.
Your post is among the best articles voted 7 days ago by the @hive-lu | King Lucoin Curator by szejq
You and your curator receive 0.0213 Lu (Lucoin) investment token and a 7.86% share of the reward from Daily Report 371. Additionally, you can also receive a unique LUSILVER token for taking 2nd place. All you need to do is reblog this report of the day with your winnings.
Buy Lu on the Hive-Engine exchange | World of Lu created by @szejq
STOPor to resume write a wordSTARTSTOP
that is not good, but there is a lot of stress on both splinterlanders and hivers these days and some mistakes are inevitable.
its just aggy is doing aggy things
This is nothing new. Just business as usual.