I thought this post may be interesting to some people to read. While I'm quite happy/relieved that we are receiving some support from the DHF, even though it's at the worst possible times and even though I'm going to try my hardest to make sure we only use what is absolutely necessary and attempt to return the rest that's been mentioned in the proposal post, I would've preferred not to ask funding from the DHF at all.
My risk tolerance for the game already started when I made it a crowdfunded project. I wasn't sure if I could fund it all myself with the way things were going and how hive has been performing in the past few years. I was also new to funding, organizing and helping plan and create games, so I wanted some leeway for mistakes, delays, etc. I did however, make sure the project was as fairly launched as possible even though this is something you wouldn't see anywhere else in web3, let alone web2. I mean, there's one stakeholder who has earned way more zing than I have, can you imagine a founder in a web2 or "web3" project having less equity than some random passive stakeholder of a L1 token? Either way, my point is, this shifted some of the risk from myself to others, I think it's a strength personally. Cause compared to other randoms, they don't know how "invested" I may be in this project from the very beginning. Even though I may not have more stake to delegate to earn zing, I could still buy it off the market from others, which I have been doing.
You can easily tell that in terms of earning zing from delegations/vial holdings I only have 35m that way:
while in reality I have close to 58m zing on my account, and more on some other accounts for safety concerns. My point is, compared to some who may just have delegated and eventually may just sell the token back for hive, which some have done over time, I've kept buying it cause I know it's not a project I'm going to give up on. The nice thing about Hive is that it allows others to see these actions and whether they trust you or not, they can copy your ways - something that's not as common on other web3 platforms where creating a new wallet is as easy as spitting on the ground. Now it is also possible to hide some of these activities on Hive, I can't deny that, but it's a one-way street when it comes to this activity, I can only hide if I'm buying more Zing on anonymous accounts, I can't hide that I'm selling zing because that'd be directly connected to my public accounts. I'm not one to hide this activity usually, there's little point to it in my eyes, I'd just buy from my main accounts indicating to others that I'm continuing to buy into the project and if they wanna support it and do the same they are open to do so as it benefits the project and why shouldn't they also in the future benefit "along with me" for having helped the project alongside me?
Anyway, back to the point of this post. With the project being crowdfunded, it did put some extra pressure on me - this is something that can't be denied. Ignoring the few small stakeholders who keep asking "when game" repeatedly as if I wouldn't wanna play myself, I have however been quite relieved that larger stakeholders have not been as pressuring about it. It seems that they understand how ambitious and large the project has become/is and with hive's performance it has not helped things move any faster or the team to grow any larger, etc. I'm grateful to not have had any weird interactions with stakeholders being awkward about things, as that would've put a lot more pressure to myself to speed things up if possible or be too stressed about the communities expectations and reaction to when we do launch.
Now that we've entered the DHF proposal however, this brings more pressure onto myself, because now even stakeholders who haven't shown interest themselves to delegate or purchase a starter pack to help fund the project are spending a small part of hive's inflation to support the project during a difficult time. This is one of the reason's I haven't considered the DHF in the past and have tried in any and all ways to add funds to it myself, even though this has in many ways been a difficult thing for me to do given hive has felt way too low to spend it to begin with. I don't know about you, but I'm quite emotionally invested in things here, it's not the same as a few random investements I have in ETH and some of it's ecosystem tokens, those are easy to sell, take profit and disregard. Hive however feels like I'm in a weird relationship where I obsess about it doing as well as it can and my own actions try and guide it towards a future where it does as well as it can. I guess trying to compare it to anything is kind of pointless as it is unique in too many ways. My point is I've invested quite a lot of Hive when it was the last thing I would've wanted to do, because I do want more hive for the future of this chain as well, while at the same time wanting zing to march on development. Zing however is an even longer project, at least the token itself, buying zing is the worst way to fund the project right now compared to delegating or buying vials which directly funds the project, the other may only get some new smaller delegations because people like to take easy profit by delegating if the returns are higher. While that hasn't been my focus lately, it may very well become my focus later on when I feel the project is doing well and my direct funding isn't affecting it too much any longer.
I'd also like to point out that I'm not just into my "own projects" on hive, I do have a history of being involved and spending quite a few hive on others, even though I may not be as altruistic there in terms of not caring about shortterm profits, there's been quite a few where I've gotten "burned" on if you will, but I consider it worth it because I did help fund the project and give it a chance to shine. My investments in WOO, terracore, rise of the pixels, crownrend, etc have not really returned me much if any hive, but I consider it worth the chance that one of them may have become a daily hive game that many may enjoy and it may hold people on hive or bring them in. I think the only investement that's done well for me in terms of projects on here has been splinterlands and dcrops. My point is, I'm not just investing in my own projects like some people have accused me of in the past, I'd like to see others do well as well because they're all involved in the same ecosystem of which we all benefit from if they do well. I do however think that more and more stakeholders have shied away lately from touching any layer 2 projects because they've been burned way too often in the past or are too down in some they're still involved in and can't find room for more projects to support. Which is understandable but it may cause less and less projects/devs/teams to give hive a go because of that.
Either way, I just thought I'd write some thoughts during this time. There's quite a lot of uncertainty out there and some fear as well I've noticed, many being overprotective of the DHF while having ignored its spendings for years prior when others have been vocal about it. It's kind of weird in a way to see certain users be very weird about it when they've been on the receiving end for years and haven't even invested anything of their own hive into the project's they're working on, in fact they're powering up a lot of hive from DHF funding from what I see, compared to say trying to use any funds they can and only when you're left with no choices look for DHF funding or ask for funding when you've delivered something or already put in a lot of work into projects.
I'll probably be posting a bit more often from here on out, partly cause the times I feel like I don't it seems that most of those rewards usually just end up on exchanges by a majority of authors when I could be using it to further fund projects on hive, whether my own or not, whether I have a selfish interest in them or not, at this point better that value stays within our ecosystem then goes out.
Anyway, I don't expect everyone to understand why I'm making this post or what may have been unsaid, but similar to some downvoted abusers over time it gets tiring trying to explain things to them they either don't wanna understand because of their own narrative or they simply don't know enough info nor care to find out before judging a proposal or activity.
