Not really a summary
Hello everyone. For those not aware of who I am: my name is Deathwing, and I am a consensus (top 20) witness on Hive. As consensus witnesses, our goal is to maintain the stability of the Hive blockchain as a whole. This includes the "tokenomics" of Hive and HBD.
Since early last year, we have significantly increased the APR on HBD savings. This was mainly done to stay competitive with some of the blockchains out there offering high yields on stable cryptocurrencies. However, the market situations then and now are totally different (on top of that, those platforms have also succumbed one way or another)
HBD during this time has risen to prominence. Previously seen as a relatively safe way to keep some of your funds, HBD was already the main crypto to hold for many - even more important than HIVE for some. Low-risk, 20% APR returns on a stable currency resulted in quite a lot of additional HBD being deposited into savings.
In case you did not know, the total HBD in savings as of this post is 7523227.548 HBD. That is 7.52 million HBD (7.52 million dollars US). At 20% yearly returns, even if we assume that no one else is depositing and no one is compounding their returns, it results in $1.5m HBD printed every year.
Now, is this unsustainable? Not really. We can certainly sustain it as we have in the past. But do we want it? I don't.
Our main currency, coin, token, whatever you want to call it is HIVE. We want people to utilize HIVE, stake them for Hive Power and take part in the governance of the blockchain. I personally do not want our blockchain to be known as "write a post or two, get an upvote, share a photo, get an upvote and you get paid $100, Bob's your uncle". Rather it should be known as a platform that is technically marvelous, where you can freely develop any sort of app that you'd like on top of Hive - be it a massive game, a sidechain, or even a travel map. The freedom is here.
What is my proposed solution to increase Hive and Hive Power importance?
Reduce HBD APR
Why would anyone invest in Hive when you can simply get HBD, lock it up, and get an easy 20% every year? To increase the importance of HIVE, I would like to propose to our community that we reduce HBD APR to a maximum of 12% (as I am signalling right now). The reasoning behind 12% is that even if you actively participate in curating content on Layer 1 on top of receiving passive inflation, the approximate yearly APR you're receiving on your Hive Power is about 10 to 11%. I am hoping that these numbers reinforce the aforementioned notion.
Also remember, HBD is backed by Hive - not the other way around.
Reduce Posting Rewards
Another proposed reduction is to posting rewards. A random number I came up with (that would significantly make Hive more appealing) is decreasing posting rewards by 10% and moving that 10% to Hive Power inflation. In other words, while posts would earn 10% less, the Hive Power people have staked (powered up) or earned over time would have an increased inflation rate. In short, Hive Power would have a higher APR. That should incentivize users to buy, power up, actively participate in governance and participate in curation to earn more Hive Power with compounding returns.
While lowering from 20% seems nothing but reasonable on the surface - 20% is a treat beyond what anybody could ask anyway - I personally don't think making something stable worse in order to make something unstable better, is a sound business decision.
It's gonna turn off the vast majority of people and if we're talking outside investors, we should treat them as having two different purposes for people to hedge their bets according to their own business acumen.
In my UK bank, I get a 4% APR on a savings 'pot' I can withdraw immediately, which increases the longer I agree to keep it locked up so the banks can use it to do their insider gambling or whatever in the meantime. This is pretty standard across savings accounts in most or all banks. I found it odd that the 'savings' here doesn't do the same, but this seems like something more marketable to outside investors, making it appear more like an actual bank, but better in all the decentralised ways.
Ultimately though, people are only not coming in and investing because as far as I can tell the only marketing efforts that have ever happened are people spamming twitter with 'hive is the best for the following reasons' on their personal accounts.
Why don't I see Hive logos pummelling my facebook page or bleeding into medium articles as a better alternative, why aren't people going out there and spreading the word like they are in cool little projects around Ghana and Nigeria? Is hive fest even advertised? I'm not sure but I'm certainly only vaguely aware its happening at some point, or did it already happen? I just got barely any exposure to it. Maybe people are doing more than I know for marketing, but even though I'm part of the ecosystem, I just never see Hive anywhere, not even when I google it (I get other Hive-named companies).
That's the issue, really. You could have a blockchain that offers 17,000% return per day and nobody's gonna come if they don't hear about it.
Grass roots movement
We should not be discussing changes to emissions at the tail end of a bear market. The end of bear market is legit the worst time to be messing with core code. We can't tame the market cycle and will get wrecked even more if we try while tilted on the backfoot trying to make number go up. What does it say about us as a network if every single bear market we pitch ideas to change the rules? It's not a good look.
Luckily HBD emissions are variable by design so a reduction there is a much more valid idea at this time. However I hope you realize that lowing the interest rate will cause Hive to get dumped and crash the price even more. Manipulating inflation rate has a delayed reaction. Printing more money is good in the short term and bad in the long term, while cutting yield is bad for the short term and good for the long term. HBD yields should be high during the bear market to give us a boost and low during the bull to decrease volatility. We should not try to lower the yield to make number go up. I guarantee the opposite will happen. Assume that APR is measured yearly and thus has a year delay before cutting rates would actually increase hive price.
I second this. Reducing HBD interest would get the hot HBD out into HIVE and dumped, crashing the price of HIVE. Surely not something we want now.
Your own witness is set to 15% though.
And if we were in the top 20 I'd have a lot more to say about that.
Although ultimately it would be very rude of me to go in there and change it.
It's not "my" witness node.
I have 2 witness partners and it is definitively a little more theirs than mine.
Just based on work done and value offered and whatnot.
If rates get reduced to 15% that's fine just let me know in advance so I can short Hive and make some easy money.
Fair enough, I was just going by the records in the Witness league table.
Yeah honestly I didn't even know we were signaling 15% which is sad.
Rishi does a lot of things I don't necessarily agree with at times.
I choose my battles carefully.
I think the answer is to post, game, delegate, etc. Hive's volatility makes it unappealing from a strictly investment perspective, but I keep growing my stake slowly with earnings from delegation, so I have more to delegate. Taking advantage of the 20% APR from HBD, however, keeps me dropping more money on chain. I also think it's the hottest thing we have going for anyone interested in crypto solely for the purpose of investing. Play2Earn gaming has plenty going for it, but I've encountered virtually no one who is interested in breaking into crypto by spending thousands of dollars on a single game and still play in the bottom tiers.
I had more to say but I'm getting a bad case of the weed brain and need to fuck off, get my bearings, and re-read this to figure out wtf it was. Until next time...
Hey, thanks for the comment.
Apps that encourage people to "put more in" are always nice, games are one of them on Hive, even if it isn't in the thousands range. You also mention the point in the end, people prefer HBD because of Hive's volatility, so why should Hive be riskier while having less returns per se? That's the sort of dilemma I am trying to portray.
Hive will be risky regardless of returns, as it isn't designed to have stability. HBD is safe, so I think that's the way to attract new blood. Once they get here, and see what else Hive has to offer, particularly regarding social media, but not excluding DeFi, gaming, etc., they'll start growing a presence here, which will add to the overall value of Hive, making the rewards we get now worth more.
I've been watching HBD gain acceptance in less developed places, which leads ne to believe that's our bread and butter. Have a reliable stable coin that earns a good return and watch everything grow as more people adopt it.
Having said that, I'd like better returns on Hive, too, but don't want it at the expense of HBD. Maybe we could just divert some of the interest earned from the DHF to bolster Hive returns, somehow?
shrug I am not sure, this is certainly up for debate.
Eventually, we would ask for people to contribute in more than one ways to the chain, governance and curation being two of the most important that a lot of people usually ignore, and they require Hive Power.
Currently, its sort of in a way where if Alice or Bob joins Hive, they'll certainly prefer HBD since they can get 20% no to low risk returns while if they get Hive Power, they'll get at best, 11% overall. So there is no financial incentive to get Hive Power for a lot of people, even if they know governance and curation, they'll still get way less than just holding HBD.
HBD is also something we've been trying to get on exchanges for years at this point, but as far as I know, some legal issues (it being a stablecoin) prevents it a bit.
In an ideal world, I would have similar APRs -- this would mean that if you want, you can technically hold HBD, but if you want to benefit from "other earnings and features" (such as governance and curation) you can opt in for holding HP instead.
Volatile assets are attractive to long term investors who make repeat buys. Higher volatility in general means higher returns, so to anyone with a longer term timeframe it is preferred.
This is one contributing factor for Hive Power actually having been a very good investment in the last 3 years.
Source
I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed...But this is what I've noticed of my 6 years here.
Tokenomics will never attract people to Hive...The apps will.
The applications that are built here is what matters most to users, and that HBD savings pot was very attractive to users. Sure, 10% HBD savings is a lot better than what is out there but taking away post rewards should be treaded carefully.
Regardless of what people may think, anytime you 'take' away from people...It never works out.
With respect, these are both terrible ideas. We can sustain the 20%, and reducing rewards is not the carrot/stick you think it is to force people to buy HIVE with fiat.
It wouldn't work, and would net hurt the chain.
We are making good inroads in various countries as a w3 site that you can a) earn from b) pay for actual physical goods with & c) optionally increase stake/returns with fiat purchases. These things work in our favor, long term.
Y'all be up here with short term thinking, ignoring the long term path that is an easy win.
Punishing users (which this does, no matter what mental gymnastics you want to use) to force them to throw fiat at the problem is a 0/10 idea and will absolutely not do what you hope it will.
Further, HIVE locked into HP is a 3 month wait to capitalize on. HBD is a 3 day wait. The type of folks looking to buy into a coin are either not going to power up the hive, or are going to put it into hbd anyhow for the 10/12/16/20 whatever percent it's giving.
The only incentive to stake Hive into HP is governance and curation, and anyone who isn't already here for other reasons is going to see that 3-month destake as a complete barrier, and there is 0% interest on liquid hive.
This doesn't work on so many levels if you stop to think about the actual incentives for like five seconds.
Here's a better idea literally off the top of my head that would solve hbd lockups and incentivise hive purchase and HP locking: cap HBD savings at 50% of staked HP(personally staked, no delegation counted).
But then you'd be forced to move some of that 58k hbd you're sitting on in main and a full 50% of the 28k in your cold wallet earning hbd would be forced into hp and so would a whole tone of other whales so, far chance something like that ever gets passed.
I remember when I first joined in steemit days, the 13 week thing was a huge moment for pause. I felt a lot of discomfort about it and I hadn't even bought any, just rewards from blogs.
It's one of the biggest turn offs and physically unattractive elements to the entire project that isn't gonna be overridden by more Hive incentives - it's just too powerful a deterrent
Hey there, thanks for the comment.
Honestly, you are not wrong, no one is. I do agree that 13 week, while it might be a good thing six, seven years ago. I do think that most people are used to "give it a shot, didn't like it? Take it out" mentality in the cryptocurrency world nowadays. It is not something that's not changeable though, we also have discussed that on and off to encourage people to have "less risky" (in a sense) investments towards Hive Power since they can take it back easily in a relatively timely manner, as opposed to 3 months.
We can sustain the 20% today and even tomorrow, but every HBD is technically a burden on HIVE, since it is backed by it. If the market moons, we're golden. But the important thing is the worst case scenario.
It also works a little for if we tank. 10c Hive again? Every cent I've got in savings (all paltry 1,600 of it) is going to get swapped to Hive so I can power it up. I'd bet I'm not the only one thinking that sub 20c would be a great time to do a switcharoo either, since almost everyone around here knows that if the price hits 10-19c again it's NOT going to stay there and is an easy 2-3x within a month or two.
Rather than lowering the Hbd interest rate directly to 12%, it may make more sense to gradually reduce it over six months. 17%, 16%. A sudden drop in APR will greatly reduce the price of HBD.
Hbd's high interest kept the Hive price stable. People had bought Hive from central exchanges to own Hbd. When the generous Hbd interest disappears, they will convert Hbd to Hive and sell Hive on centralized exchanges. Thus, the Hive price will decrease.
This is one of the ideas, gradually lowering it to a certain point, but we'll see.
For the initial investment, you're certainly right, people did buy Hive to buy HBD (since most major exchanges are still adamant on not supporting it due to various legal reasons) so there would potentially be an initial selling spree (HBD > Hive > Sell) but I would not necessarily call that "HBD is keeping Hive alive" in itself.
Lowering the HBD APR is one thing (the first thing that comes out of my non-crypto friends is PONZI) but then hammering the people who write posts as well... Is that not a bit of overkill?
So what is Hive ...? Am guessing not a place for content creators.
And the games etc on Hive are technically marvellous?
I have been here 2 years next month, and people keep going on about mass adoption of Hive.
If the aim of Hive blockchain is to solely attract devs to develop apps on top of Hive then that is fantastic, but it sure as heck is not going to have the masses trying to knock on the door of Hive's sign-up process.
An informative post, and it is great that consensus (top 20) witnesses on Hive are taking the time through Hive posts and Discord servers to engage with Hive users.
We know we have comparatively no stake and therefore no say in what happens on Hive, so to be given the opportunity to voice our opinions is cool and what good governance should be about. Whether any notice is taken of course is a matter for another day.
Good luck with it all and kudos to you all for keeping Hive on the straight and narrow.
Hey there, thanks for the comment.
There have been various discussions about posting rewards over the years, some advocated for their removal altogether, some advocate for moving them into an alternative token later down the road. I completely agree with you in terms of onboarding and how tedious it is. Most of us are still trying to think what would be the best way to combat that. Unfortunately, most of the "free account" systems that were introduced ended up being abused in the end.
The end goal of my post would be trying to find the most optimal way to, while keeping HBD adoption, also increase the adoption of Hive and especially staked Hive. In the end, no one prefers a risky investment that returns less than a low risk investment that returns quite a bit monetarily.
If 20% is currently sustainable, then I think it should stay at 20%. Why not? If signs start to suggest it isn't sustainable then let's reduce it. There does need to be a lot of HBD if we ever hope to have it widely used as a stablecoin.
If HBD interest IS reduced, I think it should be more gradual.
I think reducing post and curation rewards disincentivizes those things, and I'm not sure that is a good idea. The Hive blockchain needs more participation and I think rewarding posting and curating encourages that better than interest on stake. A slight shift could be ok though.
In addition to reasons already mentioned for buying/holding hive, it also has a vastly larger potential upside than HBD. Its value could easily rise 100% or more. Thats better than 20%.
I will put together an article in the morning on this.
Posting rewards is one of the main characteristics of this blockchain attracting content creators, something that makes Hive stand out, and still there is not many solid, attractive apps built on top of Hive. Lowering post rewards right now seems like a dead end to me. However taking into account long-time perspective it seems to be a good idea, we lack any numbers to support it now.
As for lowering HBD APR it seems to be secondary issue as we didn't see massive outflow from HP to savings, it seems rather there is more assets coming from the outside of ecosystem. 20% only seems scandalous ;)
Others say it far better than I can, but wouldn't lowering the HBD APR be bad for Hive, especially right now in a bear market? We would very quickly lose a lot of investors who are only here for the 20%. The value of Hive would drop. I think we want investors to notice Hive, right? We want to attract investment in Hive, right? We don't do that by eliminating what is frankly the only thing that makes Hive visible to many people.
Look, I've been here for 6 years, and I traded all my HBD for Hive back when Hive dropped to a quarter at the end of last year, so I don't really directly benefit from the 20%. So if the APR goes down I will still be here. But I'm looking at the health of Hive itself. I see the 20% as a very good thing for attracting people. I think @taskmaster4450's numerous articles on this topic show just that.
It would be a different matter if the 20% was not sustainable and was hurting Hive, but from all I understand from Taskmaster, not only is this not the case, but it is very much helping Hive.
@taskmaster4450 I believe you can articulate better why reducing HBD APR would not be a good thing, if we want HBD to be used. So that is why I am tagging you.
Seconded
Lmao! Release the hounds!!
He said he will write an article on this.
He did already write it. This tag was before his repsonse.
I also am going to wait for @taskmaster4450 opinion. After looking at your wallet why on earth would you propose lowering APR.. obviously I'm missing something here.
I see that as the most sensible option in the long term for Hive as a whole. It may seem like I am "shooting my own foot" but why not have our main currency, Hive, be more popular than HBD, which in turn would give us more long-term sustenance for HBD backing.
But the only way to get HBD is with HIVE.. so people buying HIVE to get HBD makes sense to me.. and looking at my wallet your way sense too.
On the face of it, reducing posting rewards by 10% is a very bad idea for content creators. But if they are on Hive for the long run, and not just here to post, claim rewards, and withdraw off the platform, then it would make little difference to them if they stake their rewards. Currently there are too many people who do not have a long term view of Hive and are only interested in short term gains
I doubt that with such low rewards there will be many left. In fact it is getting harder and harder to adopt because of the low rewards. Most of us are in for the long haul.
I have been here through two bears. There are only 11,000 of us left, and if we did not believe in it, there are plenty of other places for us to be. It makes a difference because everyone does not have the standard of living we enjoy -- that ten percent is the margin of hope in the world, around the world on Hive. It makes a difference because in a world in which web 2 has platforms with two billion users, 11,000 is too few to be throwing ANYONE overboard over a ten percent reduction in rewards!
Some say that the change to 20% caused the death of volumes on hive-engine.
I like the hbd savings being higher than what one can get from curating, it encourages investment without diluting governance.
I've long advocated a voluntary 1000mv voting limit in the pool.
This gives new outside investment a level playing field.
They get just as much chance at the inflation as anybody else.
While the top 5 accounts are taking 10x that much, nobody gets a level playing field.
And, hive power centralizes.
Day after day.
While still signaling 20%, I'm in favor of gradually decreasing HBD APR to 12% over a longer period (like 8 months, for example, 1pp each month) with a clear and public signaling of such a move. Mostly because it looks silly, in other words, it's "too good to be true", rather than being a treat to HIVE or HP. I don't think we could convert HBD investors into HIVE investors by just changing some figures. Stablecoin gives a different promise. While keeping a steady value, having a fat interest rate, it also almost guarantees no price surge. The first one is especially important during the bear market. If we hadn't set it to 20% back in time, we wouldn't get those people who bought and withdrew HBD from exchanges. They would go for a different stablecoin, not for Hive. HBD does not cannibalize HIVE.
Making HIVE attractive is a totally different thing. I don't think decreasing posting rewards might help in the long run. This might discourage some authors from selling all the rewards, but it will most likely discourage authors from posting at all eventually. I would like to see more active users than more passive investors. We can't mess with posting rewards as we don't offer anything meaningful but this atm. Maybe we should pivot from blogging chain, into a fast, cheap, efficient and easy to use blockchain for gaming. We could get rid of the rewards from L1 and prepare a solution for content monetization with L2 for existing frontends. It would be easier to encourage other devs to develop dapps/games on HIVE if we market ourselves as a non-app-specific chain. This would also make an RC mechanism meaningful. We need users that broadcast many more transactions daily and it's only possible with gaming. Instead of restricting newcomers, we should limit hyperactive users, but we must have such users in the first place. We could offer an awesome user base for every app that decides to develop on our chain and great apps to interact with everyone after powering HIVE.
I typically shudder any time one suggests reducing posting rewards or eliminating them. Percentages are fun though. Dock 10% all while increasing demand. If token value increases, so does the value of the pool. Hard to notice that ten percent is missing at that point, provided token value goes up and stays. If a content creator wanted to make up for the 10% loss, they could hold.
I don't see it working out though. It's just cutting one end of the rope off and tying it to the other end in order to make it longer. Okay it's not that ridiculous but that's just how my head works.
Majority of the people on this planet are not investors. Content could be creating demand for the token, not acting like an expense. Consumers could be holding it in order to support creators like they do elsewhere online. Huge market to tap into there. Those people are throwing money around like its going out of style, and don't seem to care they'll never see that money again and have to work for more, just to throw it away again. Staking tokens in order to tip creators with votes is a good deal. I'd go for that pile of money to create consistent demand. "Consumer rewards" rather than "curation" rewards. Millions of those people, holding. That's the direction I'd prefer to go. Of course anyone who knows me knows I'm just repeating myself and getting nowhere. I could say a lot more. "Curation" nowadays is set it and forget it. Not many actual interested paying consumers around. It's like everyone is buying season tickets for football but nobody shows up to the games. Everyone's getting paid but nobody cares about the product. Defeats the purpose of having a stadium. Everywhere else online the paying consumer is there, front row, every day, enjoying it, and enjoying spending their money. Yup. Rambling...
A woman goes in front of the camera, streaming, as she acts like an NPC. It makes the news as if this is shocking. $7000 per day from the consumers, to the platform, then her pocket. And here we are on Hive not even telling the world there's no real need to throw money away like that anymore. Consumer's money here goes a lot further, they accomplish their goal of supporting the things they like while their money stays in their wallet and grows. That's a big deal. People should know.
Decreasing HBD APR: I give two thumbs up.
I kinda love the idea about lowering the post rewards and "give" it to the HP staked.
Its coming from someone who doesn't post a lot, but still. 10% might be a bit to be as a jump to begin with, 5% might be better as a trial.
But I dig it!
I actually thought this might be okay.. but so many front ends are charging a percentage for using their platform. Anymore percentages and I'm gonna start to feel like a US citizen..
That should just make people run away from those platforms.
3speak takes 10%.. but they do upvote my content so it works on favor.. for now
Its a weird circle if you ask me when something like that happens :D
I an lowering the APR of my witness node but I don't have a target. I was voting for 18%, now I am voting for 16%
I absolutely think that it does not matter in terms of HBD supply, because the supply is low, but I think it matters in terms of signaling to possible investors that HIVE is the focus of the Blockchain, not HBD.
We (as a community) knew it when we raised it to 20%, but back then we were expecting HIVE price to be either stable or even up.
Now with crypto markets going down all around us it makes HIVE not appealing to new investors. HBD may be a gateway to HIVE, and even at low double digits APR it still is, but still HIVE needs to be more appealing.
Second this, and voted for your witness in support.
Good to see you lowering your HBD%.
I agree to eliminate that 20%, it creates a lot of inflation.
Now, implementing 10% to HP would probably be very bad for the token.
If there is 7 million $ in hive, does not generate more than 700k per year? It's the same inflation.
This change greatly benefits certain wallets, and the hive will be devalued, with this it will be caused every time fewer users enter the Hive
My opinion is that Hive needs to grow and expand, not that it serves to put money in and collect it as you have said in this post.
The option to remove 10% of the votes could be good, as long as that 10% is burned
But generating 10% + 3% of Hive is the death of the tokens and the entire ecosystem.
I guess you're not understanding how it actually works. I believe you're misunderstanding how the inflation is being distributed Vs how much is Hive inflating atm.
Hive projected inflation for 2023 is 6,5%.
This 6,5% is then distributed as follows:
65% allocated to the reward pool (authors and creators).
15% Hive Power APR
10% Witnesses
10% DHF
The APR on Savings comes ON TOP of all of this. this means there is 'extra' inflation on top of the 6,5%
Assuming 7,5M HBD in savings, this equals to 1,5M HBD printed out of thin air every year.
Assuming 150M mcap and 1,5M HBD printed, this equals to 2,25%
So the 'real' inflation of HIVE would be approx 8,75% yearly (at 150M mcap).
It's assumable, as long as Hive trends up and not stagnate for too much time IMHO.
New Comment On Removing Post rewards.
Would it not make more sense to change little and instead if someone selects to power up all of their post rewards at 100% then they earn 100% of the rewards because they are betting into hive and showing commitment for doing so. (They can always power it down but it's a lower term thing of 13 weeks of which each week they get a small payout)
If they select the 50/50 option it would simply pay out 80% of the reward while the other 20% of the reward would get burned. The UI would have to be updated however to truly reflect a change like this. Or something along the lines of this where a fully powered up blog post with no liquidity would hold more of the reward then one taking 50% liquid.
Applications are also a huge thing for hive of which there is a massive lack there of.
Right now people see hive as a social media / article marketing site of which you cash out from. It pays you to write articles, threads and videos. That's what people expect from web2.0 social media that they get paid for creating the content and cash it out.
So unless you change that mindset (which I don't think you will because it's been branded so hard) then hive needs to figure out a reason as to why people WANT to hold hive in this cashout ecosystem. That might come down to applications. There still no real good NFT market for everything like games etc. There no ad revenue like a social media platform would do to boost revenue and growth for their stock (which honestly the hive token could be looked at as owning a share of hive) so unless those fundamental things are address hive is ALWAYS going to have an issue with a constant draining of funds. It's seriously not that complicated. Those two core things need to be figured out and then addressed.
It's definitely a move in the correct direction. To have a sustainable situation HBD market cap needs to grow at the same pace than HP market cap. Now HBD grows but HP not really. So it's just a matter of time until we reach the haircut and I honestly don't want to see what happens if we reach it... Especally at the second stage where HBD is not worth 1$ anymore. I'm not sure many understand that on hive and if suddenly HBD is worth only 0.85$, it could lead to panick sales that would not only impact HBD but also hive. By lowering APR on HBD savings we move towards stability and incentivise people to hold more HP and less HBD.
You make a good point about Hive power being the weaker option between the two, and this is something that's crucial to figure out. Why power up Hive and work at curating for approx. 12%, locking it up for 13 weeks, when you can get 20% in HBD, mitigate the volatility and unlock it in a fraction of the time?
Why Power up Hive? should be the question on all of our minds if we want this chain to be prosperous. Right now the only real reason is for RC, but the delegation system has made that abundant resource even easier to get. RC will play a significant role if we attract a large user base though, since RC is based on network bandwidth. Having thousands of people power up Hive to transact is better than having a few people power up thousands of Hive.
Do people care enough to spend thousands of dollars on Hive just for governance? No, by and large they really don't.
Are staking rewards going to set us apart from other opportunities in the crypto charts? Not at all, especially when the power down is 13 weeks.
So far the best utility for powering up Hive seems to be RC, and if we want that to have an effect we really need to empower outside developers on this chain. I've mentioned before that we need good documentation and work on the libraries. The fact that this isn't one of the top priorities makes me wonder if either I'm working with bad devs, there are higher priorities that I can't fathom, or there's a nefarious plot by the good-ole-boy club to keep outsiders away from the chain. We need documentation and libraries on par with Discord, so easy even a non-dev like me can write a bot and deploy it. Until that happens, enjoy being irrelevant.
On a final note, I've kept quiet about the HBD interest because 1.) People seem to really like the idea and 2.) I know enough about tokenomics to know I don't know shit about tokenomics. I have kept my rate at 10% and never moved it because the 20% seems too high, but that's only based on a gut feeling and nothing more. I don't want to over-leverage Hive, and magically printing money that is backed by Hive seems like a good way to do that. Does that mean 10% is safe? No, but it's safer IMO.
P.S. Hive blog rewards should be eliminated completely.
I challenge you to a duel.
I need to write a whole post about this for transparency, but here are the cliff notes:
People are looking for a place without censorship, a place where they can build their foundation on solid rock. Hive is that place, but the brand has been tarnished by bad word of mouth, confusing UX, and an antagonistic atmosphere that has driven many away. People go to twitter, FB, etc because they can build a sizable audience there. We don't have that luxury, and while we have gotten much attention from various communities over the years, the fact none of them have went anywhere should tell you that we must reevaluate the entire system.
All of these points and more can be expanded, but for now that's my thoughts.
I could spend some time debating now, but if I'm going to have this discussion I think it would be more efficient to wait for the post (so you can't counter my points in the post lol).
There have been rumors of pulling the rug out, forever. I'll use humor right now. Imagine you're performing and everyone is holding up a lighter (you've seen that at concerts). It's beautiful, right? Until you realize some of those people out there actually want to burn down your stage and watch everything you've built go up in smoke. And they come to every show, for seven years.
Moral of the story, you either quit, or go crazy.
AI in general is interesting. Published some thoughts a bit ago and have plenty more I keep to myself.
I don't really enjoy coming here and debating these things but it's still an interesting discussion. Perhaps I'll read your post and the discussion as I react quietly and make some important decisions.
I'm not sure about reducing the reward pool but I don't see the harm in lowering the HBD APR, even at 10% it's still better than a lot of what exists out there, especially web2 things.
I think the proposal to reduce posting rewards and allocate that to HP inflation is interesting but I'm not sure it is the way to go. Is there any way to estimate the actual impact on the APR?
I did a small calculation on my last post which might answer your question.
NO. It is a bear market, there are 11,000 of us, and people are surviving through three years of Covid and economic downturn because of Hive and singing Hive's praises in the world, and you want to lower curation rewards AND mess with the interest? In a bear market, in which NOTHING Hive does is going to raise major interest until the Bitcoin halving? NO. Do you READ the stories of people who have paid medical bills, obtained life-saving resources, changed their neighborhood businesses to prosperity in a BEAR MARKET here on Hive, and you want to mess with that when all we have to do is leave it alone and by the bull, people coming and having reasons to invest will come from every place?
By the way: I am a crypto investor as well as a regular creator here. I happen to know: the next bar for stablecoin interest has a marketing team and even has people talking about it on Hive, and that bar is already at SIXTEEN PERCENT. HBD beats that, but GUESS WHAT? Lower that to 15 percent IN A BEAR, and see what happens to that HBD people are happily leaving here while going about their business on and off Hive. As an investor, SIXTEEN beats FIFTEEN every day. Lower posting rewards at the same time and see what happens to the mere 11,000 daily posters you have left as the word gets around that the big stakeholders have figured out how the rich get richer and the poor stay poor on Hive just like everywhere else. IN A BEAR, in which we are BARELY hanging on as it is, but all we have to go is focus on getting Hive's story out in time of the halving -- but instead we want to take more from those that keep this place looking fresh and alive, versus web2 and its BILLIONS OF USERS?
NO.
Legendary comment. What is Hive all about at the end of the day? What's it for?
It may not be "the same thing," but I just wanted to toss out there that when Hive's oldest Layer two token — PAL — disincentivised rewards for posting/curating in favor of focusing on dApps... the token lost 99% of its value over the next couple of years or so. The token was about $0.06 and had an active community before the announcement... and today can be had for $0.0000497 and nobody cares.
Something to keep in mind here — since we're always fond of the idea of "broader adoption" for Hive — is that there are millions of people who post to social media, but at best hundreds who care about building dApps on a blockchain. Or, to be more specific, building something on the scale, follow-through and success of a Splinterlands that would actually make a difference to Hive's future.
As for HBD Savings, that might be something best saved for when we have the next sustained growth in Hive, price wise, so people are caught up in positive feelings about Hive going UP and will be less inclined to descend into a cesspool of discontent at losing the one positive thing we have going in the middle of this Bear market. That would be more of a psychology based choice, as opposed to a functional one.
I'm all for lowering HBD interest, Keeping it close in APR to hive feels like a good thing overall, neither are better you can do on or the other or both.. HBD as it is now is the best way to get a return on the HIVE blockchain overall.
As for the second proposal. I assume this doesn't effect the 50/50 split on post and curation rewards?
It wouldn't affect the split, it would reduce the rewards for the curator and the author. Curator would make the lost amount simply by the virtue of holding more HP, as now that lost amount goes to passive hive inflation.
Cool, figured that's how it was, wasn't 100% sure.
But to get HBD, HIVE must be burned, no?
Not necessarily. You can get it from savings interest, posts and so on
Not really, you can sell HIVE for HBD on the internal market.
That is one way, but interest itself prints it out of thin air.
Interesting ideas and glad people are continuously thinking of what is best for Hive. Would that mean HP getting a boost of another 10% APR if it was approved?
Is there a way to roughly figure out what Reduce Posting Rewards at 10% would do for the powered up APR currently would be we looking at something crazy small like 3.25% from the current 3.10% ? Or would it be more drastic like 5% APR at current numbers?
IMO and what I've been saying since the first day of 20% APR is it's not really sustainable it would crash at some point. But to me it also feels like it sucks the power out of hive. I feel HBD should be more around the 5% - 7% APR range. That feels sustainable while still proving a little more value to holding Hive and being active with it compared to just sitting around on HBD.
From a comment above
I think it would be important to do an analysis of things prior to this implementation. While I agree with what you've said about HBD. I'd be interested in seeing the amount of Hive that is powered up by the average content creator vs. investor. I believe that reducing rewards for posts would further degrade quality. (I know this is subjective.) That said, we could quantify everything by having two defined groups: "investor" could be a person who doesn't really post, vs. "creator" someone who at least semi-regularly posts. Then we could look at the total value invested into Hive by both groups. Just a thought, but I think passing judgement on this anecdotally isn't always the best way as Hive is a complex ecosystem and there are many different factors at play.
I personally feel that we need to keep the core people on Hive happyish while finding some form of compromise to also entice new users, although I mean there have been so many initiatives and we still haven't found the sweet spot where critical mass happens.
Lowering HBD APR to the same value as Hive's is not a bad idea and seems to then not favour HBD as a holding. Lowering the posting rewards is possibly going to not be conducive to anything positive, I tend to second what @edicted wrote. While I have no idea how long the devs have been discussing this, a knee jerk reaction in a very sensitive time of the market cycle may look like a bit of a rug pull and may scare people into worse case scenario thinking.
It is good to see the top witnesses putting the focus back on to holding HP rather than HBD. Now is a good a time as any to rebalance the incentives. Thanks for that.
I don't know about the other issue, but the options where it would be more important to keep Hive as HP make a lot of sense. People can power down their entire Hive in more than 3 months, but they can pull their HBD from savings in 3.5 days. This is a big advantage for HBD.
In fact, it there wasn't %20 APR for HBD, I would convert some of them to HIVE and power up. However, I am not sure if it would be easy to keep the price of HBD around $1 then.
As far as the numbers go, HBD can absolutely sustain the the %20 APR rate, even if we forecast the numbers of locked-up funds doubling from now. But I understand where you are coming from. You want to shift the spotlight back to HIVE.
While I understand you want to bolster the the dApp development side of the Hive to the outside world, breaking perhaps the most important bargaining chip we have to attract new users to our platform is not a good idea. You may get away with setting the APR to something around %15, but any lower than that and you lose momentum, especially as the markets are all gearing up for volatility
It's far easier to attract potential developers by incentivizing them to deposit their funds as the first step in their pathway to becoming a developer on hive, than it is by simply telling them about the great perks and benefits of developing on-chain. Hell, this is how I ended up touching any sort of code myself! I developed a plugin for PeakD when 2 years ago I joined HIVE because I loved the sleek Leofinance frontend, and wanted to try it out lol
Do you get what I'm saying? When you consider that every new user that joins hive could POTENTIALLY become a developer, that first step/bargaining chip seems so holy so as to tamper with.
I don't think shifting the %10 around is a good idea, but I don't necessarily think its a bad idea as well. Keep in mind that you are gonna be giving curation services being delegated millions of HP even more power this way. With the %10 increase in inflation, who's to say people who were raking in the %20 aren't gonna delegate their stacks to these services?
I would also add that this will probably affect coin distribution negatively, where blocktrades can pass a proposal almost single-handedly. This will give much more governance power to big holders, and fuck over small holders. My 2000HP stake getting a 1% extra due to inflation and someone holding a million HP getting 1% extra due to inflation is not really the same.
And I would say there is a conflict of interest aspect as well, since Witnesses get paid in Hive. So giving more to staked hive, basically means they are paying themselves more.
This is the other thing I'm afraid of. They are gonna get even more powerful as time goes on. This also essentially punishes content creator who deservedly should receive a proper stake in governing the chain. %10 to Hive inflation simply steepens the ramp
I fail to see a problem and adding a utility to an already utility rich function(staking) does not necessarily increase its importance, nor even its value.
I feel reducing the APR to 12% is a little too much, though. But great idea you got there.
Good to see witnesses are altogether Talkin on this and hopefully will come to a better conclusion.
Most of people don't believe 20% APR on Stablecoin is possible or legit at all... If it's being lowered it should be something that's not too much but also not too low.. so, it can still attract people.
I wonder if HBD Apr is reduced to let's say 15% than will there be a raise of 5% Apr for Powering up Hive to HP or not?.
i am fine with HBD reduction from 20% to 12% or what ever.
I don't like the idea of reducing posting rewards. One thing i like on hive is that big accounts are "forced" to distribute hive to others if they want their stake to grow. It is a nice distribution, not found a lot in crypto (if any)
i know a lot will say people just sell Hive they get, some do, some don't. sill better distribution than most.
@tipu curate
Upvoted 👌 (Mana: 0/57) Liquid rewards.
I agree with some of the comments that reducing the APR would turn away current investors. While i think 12% is still very good, the potential pf hive crashing is really concerning. I think that the focus now should be more on how to make Hive grow into the mainstream. Make hive nad hive power become more attractive with lesser reliance on the HBD.
I am no one with measly 1500 HP
And neither I'm as smart and knowledgable of finances and crypto as I would like to be, but what would you guys think of the following:
Variable APR for HBD depending on your activity and HP growth?
it can all sit on a base of 10% or 12% and then it can grow further for those active users that actually contribute to the blockchain in one way or another instead of just rewarding buying a shit ton of HBD and let it sit there reaping interests
I'm a sure this idea has a lot of shortcoming and would very much like to hear them so I can learn more :)
I hope one day I will get to understand all those tokenomics topics,
Why not increase HP APR at the same time?
Edit: Sorry yeah you talk about a way to do that, though kind of indirectly? I should sleep
Capitalist realism is in control here
What if, for example:
I guess that will be technically feasible? Not a tech person. Hope the general idea is clear. Ty