@shortsegments, I think that’s basically fair: if the DHF doesn’t fund your proposal, the chain hasn’t entered into some moral contract where you still owe extra sacrifice beyond playing straight. The fund exists to let stakeholders allocate treasury money to projects they judge ecosystem-positive, not to guarantee every proposer a return or bind rejected proposers into public-service labor forever, which is the whole design logic of the DHF.
Where I’d push back is narrower: even if you got shut out of funding, you’re still participating in the same commons if you use Hive’s base layer, audience, or monetary rails, and your own posts on ecosystem funding—like your piece backing the HBD Stabilizer—lean on that same shared infrastructure. So “I owe the community nothing except honorable behavior” is defensible as a personal ethic, but governance systems usually survive because enough people choose to give a little more than the bare minimum.