Project Description

This project represents the anti-abuse efforts I have been doing on Hive beyond the Global Blacklist API.

Currently, I am one of the few stake holders researching, identifying, and countering abuse on Hive. This is a very time consuming process, and it is not something that can be done just with time alone. It requires a significant amount of stake to be able to counter abuse and the willingness to use it.

I have spent a significant portion of my time on Hive finding and countering abuse through the use of tools and techniques I have developed and with the stake I have.

I did this as a stake holder to protect my investment. I am looking to give my effort a name, and move away from the BuildAWhale branding. I have come up with Hive Vector Defense as a way to move away from the confusing BuildAWhale name.

Establish a more formal process to enable users to be removed from my blacklist. A process that was always available through my old Discord but rarely used. I plan on providing a more formal process to get removed off the blacklist. This potentially means paying for additional staff members to help maintain this process. It is widely thought there was no way off my blacklist, but I have reviewed every request in the past and have removed some members from the list as I felt fit. I just didn't spend time responding to those who did not get removed.

Part of this project involves my Global Blacklist API. This is a service I have provided for a good portion of the time I have been here. I did have a proposal for the Global Blacklist API in the past that got partially funded. The Global Blacklist API will be changing soon as Decentralized Blacklists and Mutes become available.

My Global Blacklist API still does something this service cannot replace for Hive Engine Tribes so I may still keep that functionality online if anyone sees a need for it.

I will how ever be migrating the blacklist and irredeemables to the new blockchain level lists. I plan on providing multiple lists that offer different use cases.

I will of course maintain a list for abuse, but I will also have other lists users may want to subscribe to, for example a muting list for bots and a muting list similar to the current irredeemables which is rarely updated but mute the most extreme abuse. All these lists will become optional with the new change and you can choose which lists from me or anyone else you want to subscribe to.

To be able to counter abuse, you need a large amount of stake. Something that can't easily be obtained without a large investment. I currently have access to over 6M Hive Power, this is enough to counter most forms of abuse.

Proposal Costs

The only foreseeable costs for this proposal is labor, my own and compensating others who assist in these efforts. If the amount of effort to assist in appeals exceeds my ability and time, I have already talked to other users that will be willing to help out.

Benefits

Hive is one of the few cryptos where an investor has to downvote abuse, become a blogger, and spend hours curating content to maintain their relative stake compared to others. I realized this early and decided I would devote my time to minimizing abuse.

I feel my efforts resulted in a majority of the larger abusers to quit abusing and forfeit their rewards.

Multiple regularly maintained mute lists would be provided to the community as well as a core blacklist.

Costs

I am asking for 100 HBD/day for this proposal.

This will be used to compensate for the time involved in:

Identifying Spam, phishing, plagiarism, and other abuse
Coordinating with others to identify spam, phishing, plagiarism, and abuse
Countering rewards on spam, phishing, plagiarism, and other abuse
Maintain public blacklist and multiple focused mute lists
Providing a formal appeal process for blacklist and muting

This proposal will be set up for 2 months and then a new proposal at the same rate will be created to continue it if it gets funded.

This process is the result of the new change in hard fork 24 which encourages an initial shorter proposal to judge interest and a long term one to replace it when it expires. This is due to a 1 HBD per day fee for proposals over 2 months.