funding same old front-ends still baffles me

I approved some proposals because I use the products, I onboarded people and I think they are useful, but funding ANYTHING right now baffles me. I am considering removing my support and approvin the return proposal to do my little part to help defund even more projects. Note, it is not because I approved their proposals that I support them blindly, Ecency for instance is asking too much for current market conditions and I strongly dislike that.

The big problem is that big frontends are guilty of their own influence and power. They have the contacts and the support to get funded by a few big enough whales even if people think they are asking too much.

I built the whole front-end again

I get your point, what the big frontends are doing could be done with much less than the 6 figures they ask. If they want 100k+ they must figure out their own revenue strategies.

They circle-DHF vote each other.

Totally agree with you that that is a much bigger problem that small fish circle voting each other. Recent proposals have had huge backlashes, like the girl asking to be reimbursed for expenses of past years, and they still finance that kind of stuff. They do not care what people think.

That is the fallacy of DPoS we believed. We thought that whales would have an incentive to look for the best interest of everyone, because if people lose trust their own stake is devalued. What happens in practice on Hive is that the big whales seem to not care about the worries and needs of the small people, at least not enough, as long as they can keep funding themselves.

It actually reminds me, didn't we fork off of Steem because we were afraid Justin Sun would do exactly that?