Hello all,
As of this writing we have about eight proposals that are currently being funded with money from "the system", with possibly one or more on the way. It is vital that we insure this money is being spent efficiently and wisely.
The case of JoeCool and HiveMegaWidget5000
Since I don't want to pick on any specific person in this post, I'm going to invent a fictional person and project.
Let's say, for the sake of argument, that HiveMegaWidget5000 (HMW5000) is generally considered to be a good and helpful project for Hive, and that will make Hive more useful and increase its price, great!
If JoeCool writes a proposal to work on HMW5000, and it will cost the system 500000 HBD, we shouldn't just blindly vote on this, even if HMW5000 is the greatest thing since sliced bread and JoeCool is indeed very cool.
It's ok to haggle
In the above case, the community should tell Joe, "hey we like your widget, but could you do it for 10000 HBD instead? Please submit a new proposal." Or maybe even PaulAmazing can offer to write HMW5000 for only 7000 HBD, undercut the guy you know?
All you aspiring developers out there, want to make some money, stop complaining and underbid these guys.
What I want to see more of
What I need to see from JoeCool is a more detailed breakdown of the work:
JoeCool: hourly wage: 40 usd
Feature A: 2 weeks: 80 hours
Feature B: 1 week: 40 hours
Feature C: 3 weeks: 120 hours
Fixing Bug X: 3 days: 24 hours
Fixing Bug Y: 1 week: 40 hours
etc...
Total hours: 304 hours * 40 usd = 12160 usd ~= 12160 HBD
And then we haggle over these numbers. Too high? Too low? There would be a discussion.
Proposal workers should post weekly updates..
JoeCool should ideally write a post once per week. In that post he would say:
This week I spent 2 days working on feature A, 2 days on feature B, and spent a day debugging X.
This would be great and add to transparancy. It's not even clear to me that our current proposal workers have done anything lately.
Open source is critical
In his proposal @howo states:
All of my work can be tracked on gitlab, I assign issues to myself so you can always see what I'm working on, and all of my code is made public and open source.
This is great, fantastic. To be fair, many of the proposals are for open source projects, so anyone go there peek at the repositories for themselves. I do support many of the open source projects and am hesitant to support closed ones.
Still would be nice to see weekly updates though.
Why many are frusterated
Hive is currently run by a oligarchy where the top people just sort of high-five each other, and pat each other on the back, and there seems to be a lack of critical examination of the proposals. They just get rubber stamped in. There is no real mechanism to vote against or flag such proposals. All one can do is vote up the Return Proposal, which may hurt the proposals you actually like. It's a strange system.
Hive needs to be run like a Business, not a group of friends hanging out.
If Hive is to succeed, then proposals need to be taken more
seriously, costs and benefits need to be weighed carefully.
Maybe there should be a proposal for some sort of oversight group. Perhaps a wealthy whale who is heavily invested in the system, that has 25 years of software experience...
hmmmmmmmmmmmmm
HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM
Posted via neoxian.city | The City of Neoxian
Disagreements on proposals will always happen, like in a democracy election, you might not like your president!
However, HIVE definitely works like a company. In a company, the more shares you own, the more your votes count. Your say in the company is proportional to your stake in it. Same with HIVE.
Yes, this leads to a few people calling the shots on witnesses and proposals. But the nice thing is that these people did not know each other before, and come from different places.
Also, we have shown during the STEEM takeover that when it really matters people band together and will vote out colluding whales (like the exchanges on STEEM).
The proposal system is not perfect but is better than having nothing. Some good proposals get overlooked because no one knows the Dev, this is sad, but is also logical. How can you trust a random guy?
What anyone can do though is start by providing value for free, and then become popular because of his work. This is exactly what @yabapmatt did and how he became the top witness.
Think of work on HIVE as an investment. Once you get the recognition, you get access to witness earnings and/or SPS earnings depending on the work.
Edit - I also think that once the price of HIVE goes high enough, witnesses should all pull their proposals, as witness earnings can become huge. We're not there yet though.
I have a proposal posted.... for hivefest in Canada. I have even offered to pay everything ... no takers.
https://hive.blog/hive/@offgridlife/proposal-for-hive-swarm-2021-in-canada
Physically meeting up isn't vogue right now.
We can all be in kayaks .... 6’ apart....
Let's meet on the Bow river in Banff!
Sounds good to me. See you there.
Maybe I should propose a Shoe Deal, I mean I'll work hard everyday to bring in the Sneakerhead community and Resell Community from YouTuber and other platform Content Creatures.
Well said...
Businesses are run on logic and friendships run on emotions.
We need business minded approach and when comes the business approach, comes the accountability too.
Businesses are also run by friendships and relations that run on emotions big time :)
I think open source should be the must for any services/apps/development related projects for getting funded by the DAO. DAO is a community fund, community should have some control over the source code too. What if the project developer(s) leave for another chain (steemworld.org could be an example) or stopped developing the app, in these instances the community will have nothing they paid so much for.
But sadly the most expensive project being funded right now by the DAO is a closed source for-profit app.
The Hive community could learn from Monero's Community Crowdfunding System, which has been working pretty well for six years now. Monero donors expect regular reports, and any new proposal is preceded by a discussion which may prompt the requester to change the scope or the rate.
Agreed, there are other cryptos that handle government and this sort of things well, Dash and Monero and probably others. Good examples to mimic.
Agreed, the HDF system needs to be offer more flexibility.
Thank you for your vote and shout-out.
The issue is that sometimes we work on big features (like rc delegations) and sometimes weekly updates would be almost one liners of very technical talk "yep did x/y/z still working on it, stuck on this one bug because code works strangely on z".
But I agree, open source and communication is key
You know what? Even a simple post each week saying "Yep, I'm still working on X" would be a confidence booster.
Yes please, I want to see
please post things like that.
Well then sure :) I'll do one this week.
To me, there is more of pleasure than business in the proposal system. Also, Weekly report of work done for approved proposal is brilliant and yes maybe we need a check and balance team to supervise the cost and benefits of proposals.
Agreed, these proposals are getting ridiculous and the plutocracy is feeding the oligarchy or something like that. Basically rich, connected owners of HIVE are taking 10% more from the community and voting to distribute it amongst themselves. There are many people doing all kinds of work here, spending tens of hours a week for pennies, yet some think their time is worth 100s per day. It's a system through which friends of the rich get richer.
Voting on proposals should be fair and the system definitely needs an upgrade. I'm not going to blame anyone but the current system gives so much of looting opportunity.
Lastly I completely agree that it will be wise to support only open source projects. There are so many closed source projects. If the owner of the code stops maintaining the code one fine day, the project would just vanish after looting all that HBD from the DAO. Sad that one of the closed source projects is in the top of the proposals list.
Shots fired. I even began thinking what these supported projects are currently doing and it's so disheartening to see these people are receiving large chunks of money without us being publicly aware of what they're doing.
The problem in some proposals there are no weekly update, saying what exactly is happening with the project.
Truly said. I think most of the user (including me) have no idea in where we can ask question.
I am really interested in knowing what actually 30 developers are doing currently.
Most of the proposals are a complete waste of money. We may as well get to the point and just burn it since in this case, it definitely reduces the amount of Hive out there.
This is something really important here, w all are new but need to be well aware and critical too. I really liked the way you explained about the proposal transpiracy. I frankly speaking wasn't aware of the fact what proposal hhere means and what they do. but yea would learn more about it.
I agree with your sentiments. This is all very new, but I am hopeful we can get there in time. This was posted by @taskmaster4450 earlier today.
https://peakd.com/hive-167922/@taskmaster4450/hive-inaugural-monthly-distribution-report-through-4-30-2020-whales-are-losing-power
It is good to see the distribution continue to flatten with time. The stake of the wider community continues to grow in relation to that of the established whales. In time the collective power of the community can be brought to bear to reduce the influence of individual actors, the plutocracy, or whatever you want to call it.
In the meantime, the wider community must be vigilant in terms of holding this small group accountable, but at the same time providing incentive for continued progress.
Unfortunately, power it never given away.
How many accounts are held by the same people - seemingly 'redistibuting it', but not in the slightest.
Oligarch are gonna oligarch, its baked in.
Just look at the auto voting. 100's and 100's on autovote giving big payouts on every postto the same people, for producing boring, monotonous, drivel. (I also produce lots of silly drivel, but that's not the point)
How I so want to name names!
lolololol
There’s definitely a lot of back patting going on. Some is definitely deserved, others not so much. The proposal system seems to be based on popularity of some stuff instead of critical analysis and negotiation. I think if the proposal system worked very efficiently, we would have the mythical SMT’s that have been dangled in the chain news here since I joined in early 2018 lol.
That why is important not to invest 100% of your time and resource in one new project.
We need a concrete framework to operate a decentralized organization. Dao fund is often getting wasted on crap proposals. We also see new kind of proposals now. Any tom, dick and harry can move a trash proposal basically if he/she is from a powerful camp. Why can't we introduce downvote option in the proposal? Although I'm not sure whether it'll act as a shield or start abusive war!
It would be a great moment to see all these hapenning
Wise words. The worst you can think of is working together with your friends.
Personally I feel like we should be able to vote up or down a proposal with our stake. At least then we can show any disagreement, but it does however have its own problems with large stake holders holding all the power over proposals but then again it's not much different from now. I think we should trial such a system see how user behavour plays out and go from there.
Not being able to vote down a proposal really doesn't make sense.
I'm going to review most of the my proposal votes now.
@neoxian Thank you for calling attention to this, this is a breath of fresh air dude. Agree Hive should be run like a business, and those with proposal funding should be posting regularly on how business funds are being spent. If you look through the proposals which im sure you have, most aren't well written and in the real world would never be considered competent and competitive. We need to see better written proposals across the board, perhaps there could be proposal writing workshops held on a monthly basis... At the same time I think there are some ok ideas in the proposals list that deserve more attention, because they can attract more eyeballs to the chain from outside, and add value. Perhaps those with stake are mainly only interested in green lighting projects from friends, or maybe they expect better written proposals before they would consider putting their support behind it. A reasonable expectation..? Im not 100% sure what is going on, but my points stand. I think we need more eyeballs on proposals, and we need better written proposals with more accountability..
Amen! And yes...Hive is an Oligarchy...
For example, there's a user wanting pay for past work. You have developers coming to this user's defense saying we need somebody in this position. The proposal can be approved by a handful of whales.
So, why aren't we setting up more voting functions that involve the whole platform?
We need a new role created? Great, it and the candidates need to be voted in by ALL. If you can only vote in one direction, then the majority that disagree or don't care are not represented.
Likewise, do we vote witnesses in and they just get to appoint ppl to new roles? Not in a Decentralized Infrastructure.
And I agree, how can you ask for daily pay for two years and not update us every month, let alone weekly, like it should be. And we need PoW...
Do it. It would be good for the chain!
Sounds and looks like Steem from that perspective. Hopefully it won't turn out to be the same as what we call a wrecked ship. I totally agree with you that once Hive will be seen as a business will attract business partners and its market valuation will definitely be different. It has had a good start I would say but, on the long run I believe we should look at it from the business point of view to make it mainstream.
What has really changed since steem besides removal of the DEV fund? The problem that existed prior to the dev fund being abused are still there.
Then it hasn't really changed much.
100% Agree on that Neo sir
And yes we want a proposal from you Neo sir you are an integral part of this community. You've done so much and still doing for the betterment of the system.
That sums it up for me!
And we should have a mechanism by which people who do routine 'everyday' work for the platform are compensated without having to put up a proposal IMO.
I would vote no on something like that. All it would do would be to create a good ole boys network worse than what we have right now. No oversight group in history has stayed impartial and neutral and they always over step the bounds of what they are put in place to oversee. We can start with one of the largest oversight groups of all, the League of Nations, which transitioned into the United Nations, and has on multiple and numerous occasions overstep their charter and grabbed more power than was ever intended for them to have.
The proposal affair is catching wave.
Most hivers do not fully understand how the proposals are funding.
Please make a post to inform the community and let us make some noise so we can be all educated.
I. myself, do not understand how much an application should get for funding.
Keep it simple cause not everyone is a dev.
So we need to move and get it fix.
As a community let us play fair for everyone.
This is really important before we all fall into the trap.
Let us Decentralized the funding of proposals!
@neoxian
I agree with you and I just bought a service for the first time from a seller on fiverr.com and was impressed with how that system works:
It was a pretty good system...
But for a very thorough system that had developed over many years and millions of jobs, this is an excellent outline to emulate:
https://www.upwork.com/i/trust-safety-mission/Text here
I would love to see THAT implemented directly on-chain!
Thanks for bringing up this subject!
🕉️☀️♥️🙏
True.
Maybe some Light DAO Version with a light fund for less expensive projects and shorter Time periods.
OR some Guideline What the community want to see in a proposal.
Exactly my thoughts! Often time I lack business cases, some sort of roadmap and weekly reports as are mandatory for agile projects which Hive definitely is. I lack whales demanding those essential business practices. Sometimes I’m amazed how much money users are willingly throwing into a bin with some of those proposals. This is what we get instead of Steemit inc. we need to be responsible.
Also good point that you brought up is lack of flags in terms of proposals. We should be able to vote against the proposals (I understand why there are no flags in terms of witness votes but proposals are very different imho) In the UI there should be weekly reports displayed so users could effectively check each week whether the proposals they helped to approve are actually doing something.
Another problem I have is the Hivesigner X Keychain...Both are doing exactly the same thing. Both are being funded at the moment. Hivesigner wants disgusting 50K HBD whereas Keychain is willing to do the job for LESS THAN HALF THE PRICE. But effectively we are throwing up 75K for this which in my book is ROFL.
Anyway Im super glad that you brought this matter up. Instant reblog!
Like I said boss, I'm plannig on be very loud at this. That system is somehow flawed and we are basically paying upfront for something that is not done in it's entirely. There are many holes, and not having the option to "downvote them" in disagreement is bad, too. This is an open invitation to "legally" milk the chain.
I support this, sir. Good luck
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So you saying , after justin sun , its just bunch of justin suns's now running the hive , i will wait for few months and will see , moreover dpos consensus has this inherent flaw of cartel formation and oligarchy. Do follow my blog ☺️👍
Well said)
I agree with most of what you said here. So, the action items for the rest of us:
Link to Proposal
Funny, it was just a couple of weeks ago that you guys banned me from your Discord merely for saying something along these lines.
And now... just look! Here you are, saying the same thing as I did. Ahahahahahhah! 🤣
No whale is able to singlehandedly move a proposal that high. And if it gets the work done, well, who cares who takes the cut? The total amount given out is the same anyway, if the dev goes and buys dildos with it I don't care.
Vote when you want it funded, don't vote if you don't. Whales on HIVE are incentivized to have a good blockchain. Politicians in countries are corrupt because they don't give a shit. When you own a bag of 5 million HIVE you naturally give a shit. Making 50$ per day is like change.
The incentives make the game theory not as bad as you think, even though it's not perfect. When the SPS was originally announced I remember you being against it and we also discussed it in the comments.
I honestly hoped you would publish a proposal, I am sure you can do useful things for HIVE.