This is a reaction post to Solominer's Is it okay to stake the bare minimum HP and withdraw everything else? poll.
Let's start a new content meta here where we make content reacting to react content and so on. Below are just streams of passing thoughts that branched out from the original idea.
Disclaimer:
This reaction post is limited to what the main post tackles on. The comment sections under that post raised new perspectives on the issue which merit their own exploration so I hope you read these too. I own and stake Hive. I buy Hive/HBD with a 9/10 ratio via peer to peer. I'm hobby blogging so my concerns at getting exposed to this token shapes my Hive experience which will matter later.
The poll at the time of this writing according to votes. Let's just assume that each account that voted is a real person and not sock puppeteering the results. It seems like a few points leaning on to No.
But when we measure the votes by HP staked from the accounts we get this:
It's kind of expected that those that said Yes would have low staked HP than those that said no but this imagery yields a strong messaged about the mindset of the Hive holder. Now which camp do you think is able to give other users value?
I don't think it requires rocket science to tell that an average user would opt to take opportunities where they can get more value elsewhere if they can. BTC is a popular token and you can see from the chart below how much Hive has performed. One could make the argument that other altcoins suffer the same thing too so it's not just Hive but we're just limiting the discussion to why an average user can't be motivated to sell their Hive in exchange for USD or BTC which opens them up to more opportunities elsewhere.
If you say HBD interest rates attract more users to buy Hive, well, they probably are going to buy Hive to convert it to HBD instead of staking Hive. And we've seen the steady trend of staked HBD rising in savings while there is an increase in net power downs. HBD interest gets you more value than Hive staked interest and it's even more apparent as Hive trends down while mechanisms to keep HBD at 1$ pegged value with HBD Stabilizer proposal. You're better off staking HBD than staking Hive as what the charts and interest rates shows.
I would argue that winners in Hive's downtrend are the one's benefitting from the regular payouts DHF hands out to their project because regardless of the Hive price, their regular HBD received is still being kept close to 1$ by the HBD stabilizer. Hive goes down at 0.17$, the project still gets 100$ in HBD. Hive goes up 0.2$, the project still gets 100$ in HBD. Those payouts from DHF contribute to the selling pressure on Hive. And as much as I like to see some breakdowns and receipts on how those funds are used by the project, we just have to trust the people running the project are spending it on things they claim and the one's capable of deciding whether these projects are worth funding are voting on the proposal in good faith.
When the HBD interest rates were raised to 20%, this incentivizes more users to powerdown and buy HBD to stake. As more HP is powered down, there are now more accounts less capable of making changes in the position of witnesses or which projects DHF funds. And the large stakeholders that never powered down have more say in proportion.
HBD trended up while Hive trended down and increased in net power downs.
The reason I mentioned DHF is due to how apathetic the average user can be when it comes to governance and their say on proposals. If you tell me my 100HP has a voice in the whole ecosystem's governance, that gives me a mood boosts that last for seconds right after I see that it only takes 1 or 2 accounts with a large stake to actually make something happen. For an average user, there's less point worrying the future directions on the blockchain's governance as their small stake doesn't really permit them to make a say on anything. Not only does this make an average user less empowered speaking out also invites possible backlash to speak out an unpopular opinion about politics. So why bother getting involved for the greater good when you can just mind your own business earning on the sidelines selling whatever value you can extract.
There's a disconnect in how large stakeholders and small accounts view their Hive experience when it comes to their current life circumstance. People living in a developing country would worry more about surviving like putting food on their table or a roof on their heads using the income they have from Hive. It's not a surprise to see majority of these users avidly post even during consistent downtrends in Hive price because it's a staple necessity to do so. 1$ has more purchasing power from these developing countries and users are faced with constant financial uncertainty that they just can't bank on the future that Hive will value up when it's been chronically shown that it's been valuing down. If you see the currency (Hive) trending down often while on survival mode, you are more incentivized to spend (sell) the token now and convert it to something of value than wait for it to devalue.
For people who don't rely on their Hive income to live, good for you. I get it. I'm in this category since I'm well off not thinking I'm pressured to sell my holdings to live. But there are people that can't even afford to think about investing or future value because they are surviving in the moment. I'm not trying to appeal to pity and convince long term holders to just be ok with this mindset. While it's true that people have their own circumstances that prevent them from building their HP, those that chose to stake their HP shouldn't be guilt tripped to support such mindset of just selling as they earn something. Your stake, your say. And the reason why the sellers are able to sell anything is partly because there are users that have stake and enable these users to sell.
Some users are able to earn and sell is partly because there are users that chose to stake their HP and risk the price going down and stay for the long term game while everyone else remains on cashing out mode. Everyone wants to earn from the ecosystem but we're all employing different strategies to make it happen and this causes friction between users and their mindset on how to approach the game. It's all a game and some people play it better.
With regards to content creation and rewarding authors for good content, a little bit of disillusionment would help. If proof of brain values rewarding good content over mediocre content, how is it that mediocre content which generates no view, no viral potential outside other platforms, and yet still gets well compensated on Hive be a thing? the answer is inefficiency and subjectivity in the curation process as everyone here is made a curator. You can tell me it's unethical to vote on a post a friend made because their post sucks compared to this random stranger's post that is well made but I couldn't bring myself to give a damn, and I'll still vote on my friend's post. Why? because the average user has no strong incentive to go out of their way to support strangers whereas supporting their friend group empowers these accounts and in turn potentially reciprocating that value back to you. It's human nature.
There is an incentive in place for having a community curator status, like being that person that goes out of their way to promote others because they get compensated for their efforts in some form. Remove the compensation and you'll see less volunteer work for it, though I'm sure some would still do it for free but not many would. There's also a concept of pity votes, that's when people vote on posts because the author is nice but their content not so. They don't really have a consistent amount of good payouts therefore by the power of pity, let's reward them. A curator votes out of pity not out of merit under this circumstance.
The concept of diminishing returns. As more users get onboarded, the reward pool of support diminishes as curation efforts lean on to users that have yet to achieve a certain rep value. It's nice to have some competition for attention as this supposedly drives people to improve their content but in practice, it's not like people's content get better when they were posting while Hive was valued at 0.17$ versus their posting style while it was 0.5$ or more. There's an invisible threshold that a user reaches when their consistent stream of rewards stop because they are no longer classified as new despite how much effort they put into better their content creation effort. Because the system leans on favoring new users to grow while old users are left to find their new struggle to make ends meet (they still can provided that the limited voting power and reward pool is able to afford it). Remember all users play the game to earn but it's taboo to openly admit this to be the case because we're supposed to be above this.
Why did I bring up the diminishing returns for content creation? because this is generally the concern of casual users trying to earn by putting more effort posting. If you were a large stakeholder who has a lot of money on other investments elsewhere, it's counterproductive for your time to be thinking about posting here as you could earn more for your time if your efforts were somewhere else while the common user posts here because this is the most value they can make for their time. Had they have the option to earn more elsewhere posting or doing something else for their time, they won't be posting on Hive. My own life hack in this scenario to keep posting somewhere else for my art hobby because whether Hive exists or not, I still got a hobby and the Hive payouts are just a bonus. But this mindset isn't universal because again, we're not playing the same strategy most people will take what they can get and if they can shorten the power down time for their Hive rewards, they would do so.
If you can get it for free, why pay for it? and this is probably a great motivator to not buy Hive because people are already incentivized by the content creation system not to stake up. The promise of more curation and staking rewards is good because the selling point is it's good for the community and others also benefit from your votes but this is too optimistic when human nature can be greedy and doing the bare minimum possible while maximizing their potential income is rewarded. If there are more people staking up while users that just cash out constantly don't get affected, the net losers are those that take in the bags while they get dumped on.
It's actually efficient if you just use the bare minimum amount of HP like 15 to 25 HP for RC costs in posting and commenting while the excess amount handed to your by the ecosystem is free real estate. You only need a hive account to get started getting a piece of the grand pie and if your objective is to earn with the least costs as possible and no politics involved, this is being smart. Not saying it's right, but it is being effective if our metric is just purely for profit taking.
It really boils down to a user's preference if they want to support the lifestyle of accounts that opt to cash out with their stake. I generally follow the you do you approach to life because whatever people do with their money is their business.
Thank you for your time.