Normally I agree with you. But using the conversions can also be a bet on a certain direction of the price of HIVE during the delay between the initiation of the conversion and its execution, resulting in more HIVE being printed than one gets from a swap on the internal market. At the state of the alts in general, at this point in time, I would think less about the personal gain and more about the network. There is time to think about the personal gain and taking profits in the alt season.
One is inflationary for HIVE, the other one isn't.
People will not put the network first, regardless of season. Any time there's a chance for personal gain, even if the decision has a negative impact on the network, majority take it. Especially if its convenient.
Unfortunately, this is often true.
Enough people forfeit their HP nowadays for personal gains, even if they're holding it. The value is extracted from Hive and placed somewhere else, on Hive. So even those projects contribute to crumbling the foundation they built their projects on. That's a prime, obvious example. And it seems like there's a new offer to continue down that path every week. It's convenient. No work involved. Auto votes are another obvious example. Paid to be absent, but people pay attention to the state of Hive posts, not because they care about the network. Most likely concerned about the state of their personal gains.
Building the network requires first taking a good honest look at the network, then trying to do things that'll counter the issues so eventually things balance out. Opportunities created in that direction are rare, plus people won't change. Can't expect them to either.
We can debate if Hive means only base layer or does the ecosystem built around Hive basically on Hive-Engine, for now, brings value to Hive or not. I'd say... it depends. I know many if not most of these projects are dead on arrival, which is pretty bad, if you think about it. BUT... there are a few which aren't. The problem is finding them and that their success lasts. It then matters how are they managed and how you channel gains, partially or totally: from the base layer toward projects having their own tokens, or vice versa. It can be a win-win, but generally, if the base layer loses in the long term, everyone loses, unless they jump ship.
Regarding autovotes I have mixed feelings. I understand we need manual curation, and I do my share of manual curation daily. But I failed to be a good full manual curator for different reasons, and I do believe a share of autovotes or following curation trails is ok if your voting mana goes too high.
Regarding this aspect, automating votes may prove to be less necessary after the next HF, when the value of a vote won't decrease based on the level of voting mana. A full vote would be the same at 100% voting mana and at 50%. So, someone who isn't as active daily, could deplete their voting mana more and come back in a few days.
I'd also prefer if the first slash in curation rewards doesn't happen after 24 hours. Maybe I'd remove it completely. And only have a slash in half at 3 days. But certainly 48 hours seem better. I vote manually once a day. And I often miss the window on some posts I would have voted on. And sometimes I still vote on them, even if that hurts my curation rewards. But most people won't. I don't either, in general. I'd rather vote on something inside the 24h window instead. Yes, this is driven by personal gain, but also by how curation works. This is how the game is, you can't be among the ones who play to lose.
I can agree, some automation can even be beneficial. I'm merely pointing at how often it occurs compared to manual voting, showing how more prefer convenience and will take it. The downside is less consumption, leading to more leaving due to lack of interest in their work.
I can agree some of those projects can also be beneficial while at the same time many are instant flops. Same mistakes are made too often. A problem that could be solved with innovation.
I wasn't aware of upcoming changes to the voting mana. Thanks for that info.
I'd settle on 48 hours. Some posts are still "trending" after a day so it only makes sense to open that window a little more. Sometimes I'll be sneaky and just leave a comment under an "old" post, then upvote their response, if I want to support it. Hard to call upvoting a personal gain though, since you're paying for half. Technically it's only a personal gain if that money sticks around forever, but I never make that conclusion. To me it's money out the door. I'm okay with that because the value I got was in the content I consumed.