For anyone following closely, I think it has always been clear that the funds established in the DHF were for future develop/marketing/etc. The code for converting the Hive to HBD has been discussed repeatedly for a long time, including in the public dev discussions and onchain posts.

From my point of view as an investor, I think it's attractive that there are funds available to make sure develop continues regardless of who is doing it. I'm aware that some people disagree, and there was a proposal to "burn" the initial development stake that Hive was established with. It's never got much traction. I think that's because many investors share my opinion that it's good to have funds allocated for future work.

As for the "retroactive" proposals for the work that BlockTrades makes: I've always been very upfront that I mostly plan to make proposals after we complete a task, rather than before we do it. That gives stakeholders an opportunity to judge the completed work, and make a decision if they think it was worth the funds we request. It's a huge benefit to stakeholders, and not one that many developers can afford to offer. I'm willing to operate under such conditions because I believe that stakeholders will recognize the value of our work and be willing to pay for it.