We plan to publish a post in the future specifically related to the topic of reputation-protection, but here is a quick sneak-peek.

We specifically requested some modifications to the Hive-Engine token-rewards smart contract to assist you and others like you in your quest to maintain your Hive reputation in the face of those who would like to tear it down by upvoting then downvoting.

And, our request was granted!

So, with that said, the VYB token will ignore Hive's 'decline rewards' feature. This means that you can create your posts (and/or comments) from any front-end, choose the 'decline rewards' option, yet still earn VYB tokens if you use one of the VYB-specific tags ( #vyb or #verifyyourbrain ).

Your above post seems like it will be the first real-world test of that feature.

Adding this feature to the VYB smart contract does mean that posts that clearly need to have their rewards declined (e.g. spam or other intentionally low-info posts) will need to be manually muted by the @vyb.vyb account in order to retain the 'spirit' of the 'decline rewards' feature.