it's so small of an issue but people make it a big one because money.

You have so misunderstood my perspective and mischaracterized it.

You say you want the perspective of newcomers, then you dismiss it.

This is perhaps more distressing to me than the problem being discussed.

giving up on everything Hive is because of a few people in their eyes being unfairly downvoted

I see this as a power dynamic that is severely flawed. This has nothing to do with money per se. When you have a system that enables powerful whales to target and abuse people and ideas they disagree with, I view that as a flaw that must be fixed before this platform can genuinely take off.

It is a flaw serious enough that it causes me pause about continuing to be a Hive evangelist. @dwinblood has characterized this extremely well and has explained how he, too, is unwilling at the present time to evangelize on behalf of Hive because of this problem.

When the 'solution' to malicious upvotes penalizes the earnest curation efforts of hundreds of 'little guys', the problem is systemic.

In summary, there are two problems here:

• the system allows powerful stakeholders to easily target and abuse others simply because they don't like them or don't like their ideas
• the system inherently punishes dozens (and oftentimes hundreds) of neutral and good actors every time one genuinely bad actor is being targeted.

Either one of those systemic problems is enough to give me pause. Fortunately, I believe they both can be creatively solved. Otherwise, I would have already checked out.

You are clearly heavily invested in this project, both financially and emotionally. I respect that. I also acknowledge that your prior investments in this project (especially the blood, sweat, and tears) makes it extremely hard for you to accept or support any major changes -- especially changes that undo prior 'fixes' to other systemic problems. That is why I am focusing my efforts on a Layer 2 solution.

I am willing to work, for a time, to try to make this a more inviting place and to try to fix what I see as underlying flaws. If I am unsuccessful in my efforts, then I will move on to something I view as more productive and more meaningful.