Oh my poor forgotten community.
Well it's been a while since I've posted here in Hive Think Tank, but it's also been a while since I've had a Hive idea. Mostly I'm still concerned with UX upgrades, and since honestly it feels like Condenser is frozen in its tracks, if I have an idea I just talk straight to the PeakD peeps.
Anyway, if you're new to Hive Think Tank, I made this Community back in the day as a place to brainstorm ideas for the improvement of Hive. Things don't need to be fleshed out or technically feasible. Just a place to bounce ideas around. Which brings me to this idea.
What if we structured the proposal system a bit differently
In its current iteration I think it's insanely hard to get a proposal funded. Especially if you aren't really well known on Hive. I don't think this is because of a lack of interesting things we could fund, but more that the design is a bit clunky and requires too much cooperation and attention. It's like the whole community needs to be on board to fund something and I think that's not the most effective way for us to get valuable work done and maximize our resources.
So I had the thought what if the proposal system worked a bit more like upvotes. There is of course a pool, where inflation goes that is for proposals. What if instead of us voting on proposals in the current design, we each had a stake weighted allocation of the proposal pool that we could distribute or un-distribute.
For example, based on her stake, user X generates 1 SBD of proposal funds that they have to distribute to proposals per day. She also, based on that stake can un-vote 1 SBD per day. She can also vote on proposals with a percentage, so 50% to one and 50% to another.
This way she or a group of users can fund proposals on their own. If they use this to farm, it can be un-voted by other users.
Abuse Vectors
Off the top of my head, keep in mind this isn't super well thought out, I'm just spitballing...
Toxic whale A has a huge stake and votes for their own proposal or for the proposal of an alt that adds no value.
(Solution: This is a complicated one, easy thing is, have good distribution, but that's not really sufficient because humans gonna human. Maybe a certain amount of stake unvoting a proposal automatically kills it. Like there is a return proposal now, there is a kill threshold or something along those lines)
Toxic user or users spam thousands of proposals to make un-voters fatigued with unvoting all their fraud proposals.
(Solution: It's still costs money to create a proposal. Maybe more than the current price?)
Proposal gets funded, does what it says for a while then tapers off or stops meeting expectations, but people are still voting for it because of different variables. Dormant accounts, laziness, not paying attention etc.
(Solution: I think the kill threshold would work here too. As long as there is a group of users that remain vigilant that there isn't money going to useless things, and these users collectively have enough to trigger the kill threshold or somewhere around it with a bit of lobbying could trigger it, I think it could work)
Hmm, I can't think of anything else. Maybe you can. Let me know in the comments what you think or poke a giant hole in it if you can think of one.
There should be a rule that recurrent infrastructure costs cannot be funded by the proposal systems. Having infrastructure funded by it doesn't contribute to the development of the platform at all. (If witness rewards can't keep the nodes running, then there's something fundamentally flawed with the token price and the chain's sustainability.)
Unfortunately it seems that people need to be incentivised to vote.
With Hive as with any Dpos system there are things with we rely on the good community spirit of the users to make happen with no cost or benefit to themselves.
I know paying people to vote would bring lots of abuse but maybe a Hivebuzz badge saying you have voted could increase turn out.
Or a decrease in your Hive power interest rate if you are not using your stake to vote.
I am also just spit balling.
As a simple solution right now, I’d actually be in favor of a bit of “centralization!” I’d look for a small group of established and trustworthy users, with the following and clout to get a proposal funded; to come forward with a proposal specifically to award grants & funding to smaller projects. There’s plenty of worthwhile small endeavors, both developing and marketing that could be asking for as little as 15HBD a day. Fees and overall engagement with the proposal system are huge obstacles. I’d rather see one proposal for 450HBD daily that disburses to 30 small projects like these. I realize the overall goals of blockchain are loftier... but there’s a reason most of the real world runs on representative democracy rather than putting every law & budget line item in front of every citizen to vote on!
Decaying votes please and I love your idea to be able to vote negatively on a proposal.
We also need to find a way to keep the HPS system in front of our eyes. Like they say, "out of sight, out of mind."
The current structure of the HPS and Hive in general defaults as an Oligarchy and definitely needs an overhaul.
If a good new system isn't worked out soon, Hive is not on the path towards decentralization. I truly hope to see more topics addressing governance and project funding going forward.