A long long time ago in a blockchain far far away, there was something called the "ninja mined stake". It was a large pool of tokens that were pre-mined and distributed to various users. Those users then powered up those tokens and wielded immense power over the entire blockchain.
When the hardfork happened and Hive was born, those ninja mined tokens were handled a bit differently. Seeing the folly of the old ways, the new witnesses redirected those tokens that would have been air dropped to the same accounts and moved them in to the Decentralized Hive Fund.
This fund is a core part of the Hive ecosystem and it provides funding for development of projects and other tools on the blockchain.
What many of you may not realize, or fail to remember (including myself), is that you have a say in how those funds are used. Just like you can vote on content and you can vote on witnesses that run the blockchain, you can also vote on the proposals that people submit to request funds.
If you are using PeakD, you can find the proposals in the section shown below.
It's your vote, use it!
Like I said, I am pretty horrible about remembering to check out the proposals section on a periodic basis. That's my loss honestly because there are a lot of great projects that deserve to be funded just waiting to get enough votes.
The way it works is there is a return proposal that as of right now has a little over 14 million votes in HP. Anything that gets more votes than that gets funded. Anything that gets less votes than that doesn't get funded.
As you can see in the screenshot above, the next proposal below the return proposal only has 13 million votes, so it isn't funded. Likewise, the one just above the return has 21 million votes, so it is funded at a rate of 280 HBD per day.
As you can imagine, there is a ton of money flowing out from this fund. It has helped to fund many of the projects that we know and love over the past year or more. For the most part, it is a really good thing. It encourages growth and prosperity in the blockchain and is a heck of a lot better than the whale wars we saw in the past with the ninja mine stake.
Sometimes not voting is just as powerful as voting
I know I said that "It's your vote, make sure you use it", but the opposite is also true. As you can see, there are many projects that are getting funded. Some of them are really great and then again some of them might be missing the mark for you.
I was in a discussion the other day with someone complaining about how some of these projects are getting funded and virtually no development or progress is being made. Basically, some groups are just raking in the rewards each day and not delivering on the promises that were made to us as the stakeholders of the chain.
Unvote Them!
It's your stake, it's also absolutely your right to remove your vote, or vote on the return proposal, or just not vote for that proposal at all. The problem is, many of us are apathetic or in my case completely absent minded about our proposal votes.
Maybe you know about the proposals, but you placed your votes so long ago that you don't even remember what you voted for. I encourage you to weekly/monthly check your proposal votes and see if the projects you voted for are living up to the expectations.
Defund the projects!
It might sound extreme, but part of this whole decentralized community thing means that we get a vote and we have a say in the community. It's absolutely your right to not vote for something. It's also absolutely your right to demand answers when something that has been supported by the community isn't living up to the expectations of said community.
I think many of us are afraid of retaliation or losing upvotes. While that may happen, you have a choice in how vocal (or not) you are about your proposal votes.
I can't tell you the last time I saw a post from someone talking about the proposals that they are voting on and why. I think education could go a long way towards helping people use their votes effectively. It also serves to hold the projects accountable when their progress or lack of it is discussed in an open forum.
I bet there is a fair chance that many of you didn't even know this section existed. If you did, are you voting on any of the proposals? Are you purposely not voting on some of the proposals?
TL:DR
There are some groups getting a pretty penny from the Decentralized Hive Fund. It's our right and privilege to make sure they are being proper stewards of those funds. Make your vote count!
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