Sorry I missed that, very good question ! It is very healthy to question if proposals are overpaid or not and it's something every stakeholder should do !

There are a few reasons being this pay: Scarcity, risk, skillset and marketcap Scarcity being the fact that there are very few devs who are knowledgeable enough to work on the chain, and even fewer who are willing to work hive. This means that I am part of a very limited pool of talents which obviously makes my skillset more expensive. Then there is the product we are maintaining, this blockchain is now worth hundreds of millions, you don't want to have unskilled people when the stakes are this high (chain freezes, bugs, or worse a security attack) could make these hundreds of millions worth 0 quite quickly.

So you want very qualified people to work on it, and qualified people are expensive.

Then there is the risk, and this is a reason that can be compared to the real world, why are freelancers paid so much more than people with jobs ? The reason is risk, you don't have the security of being paid all the time. Sometimes you are juggling between contracts, For hive that would be dropping out of the pay zone which can happen sometimes for weeks (from my experience with previous proposals). Then there are tax reasons, an employee costs a lot to the employer whereas a freelancer takes all the costs on himself, same applies. For every HBD that goes into my pockets about 30% to 35% goes to taxes.

FYI in France I for such a specialized job (blockchain development) I would ask between 800 and 1000 euros a day for the same task. Full time obviously, but brought back to the hour it's between 110 to 135 dollars an hour. Which is about the rate I'm asking here.

Finally on hive there is an additional risk being HBD, I am quite certain I won't be paid 100k USD because the price of HBD fluctuates constantly, and at times it can drop significantly, perhaps one week I'll be paid with hbd worth 1$, the next I'll be paid with hbd being worth 60 cents, you get the idea.

Taking all of this into account, I hope you understand how this number came to be.