I'm not really sure how to begin this post, some times the disappointment can really get to you when you rely on others to do the right thing and keep on doing it. This post is also not really directed at anyone nor am I going to try and victimize myself, it's just some things I thought I'd take the time to rant about that I've thought of lately.
Why are you on Hive, Acid?
I mentioned in the Hive Thrive interview recently how I stumbled upon hive, I think there's an old post on chain where I shared a screenshot of a discussion with a friend I had before Steemit was created, although it was in Swedish I think people got the gist - I was basically discussing a reddit-like blockchain with a friend before Ned plotted to centralize his idea. Having been an avid reddit user and into crypto for a while it made a lot of sense but without the technical know-how or the funding nor contacts to get something going I was happy someone had done the work already so I may as well just jump in and use it.
Before that I was quite into shitcoins you might call them, I mined dogecoin within the first hour it was created. Even though I only had a couple GPU's to play with, I remember earning like 72k tokens per minute/block back then and seeing the rewards drop in that mining pool as hashrate increased along with the difficulty. Naturally I didn't hold many long term, kind of crazy to think what these markets have accomplished over the years - for better or worse, that me, a random student at home on a PC with 2 AMD GPU's was mining close to $60,000 per minute for a short period then and at dogecoins all time high. I was quite experimental, would mine some random coins here and there as they launched and seemed fair enough. I could name some you've probably never heard of before like worldcoin, earthcoin and bellcoin (which funny enough were created by the same guy who created dogecoin if I recall correctly) and as many random points or in-game currencies in some old games or save files are now gone to never be recovered again. I could tell you how many Dash I had at some point before they were called X coin or when they were still called Darkcoin and how much that would've been at the ATH. I could talk about ETH's first clone called Expanse and how it pumped only once just as I went into the city to convince some friends not to buy into onecoin and pick up ETH for under $1 instead or many other squandered opportunities.
I do wonder some times what shit I would've gotten involved in or how many other lost opportunities I could've had or maybe succeeded for once on if I hadn't ran into Steem and focused all my attention there. That doesn't matter however, in this simulated universe I chose to focus on Hive, and why Hive? Well, because of how it distributes tokens through curation.
Why did I focus on curation? Well, I guess it came from Reddit where I liked voting up what I liked and commenting on stuff and thought that'd be the best way forward to build up my account here on an immutable chain and do things right along with hoping everyone else would as well given the opportunities this chain enables.
Sure some times I wonder if we're on the right path, if the way inflation works is the most efficient, if the way how inflation is reduced is the best way forward or if the leaders in this decentralized ecosystem are the best for it. I some times even wonder if I'm good for this place, maybe it's my streak of bad luck in the past that's keeping this chain from getting the attention it deserves, maybe if I stayed away it'd finally bloom into the thing it deserves.
Having worked here for a long time and constantly trying to do the right thing is kind of tiring. It's almost been 9 years now, that's longer than I've ever hyperfocused on anything else in my life. Every so often I get a sense of accomplishment when I see certain communities grow, people empower themselves with stake and spread it well around with others. People being able to use Hive as a way to not only aid their daily life with some extra spending money but also learning and growing along with it. If I took a look at some of my old posts and comments I'm sure I'd cringe at most of them not just cause of how naive I may have been but also cause I've grown a lot since then.
Every now and then some things happen however that bring out some kind of disappointment in people. I'm quite frankly not sure how to react to it and it makes me wonder how I'm going to take it if my own yet to exist kids in the future would do something that'd make me disappointed. Not sure I'm prepared for it but maybe I've learned enough by then not to take it too hard and understand that everyone's different and changes over time as well.
What was it I was going to post about again?
Oh right, so there's a few things that happened recently that kind of caught me off guard. Again, this isn't about anyone in particular but mostly the interactions and ideologies that made me feel a bit like I may have wasted time, effort, voting power and hope on some users.
There was someone who quite openly and directly pointed out to me saying I'm one of the main reasons the price of Hive is where it is today because of my actions. This was in relation to an account I had downvoted recently as they wouldn't stop buying votes and had been doing so for over a year already. The thing is that this wasn't just a random account I hadn't interacted with, and I'm not saying what they said had much meaning or truth behind it, I still stand by my actions and they probably just wanted to vent and blame someone for the decline in price, but. Imagine you're doing what you think is right as a curator, spending quite literally every day for the last 9 years voting on your feed, voting on community feeds, etc, not just on people and content you're interested in and have a friendly relationship with, but what you think is best for the platform as a whole. I follow quite a lot of accounts, many probably not active anymore or any stake left - as was this account in question - and most of these accounts I wouldn't follow anywhere else. By this I don't mean they're bad or anything, but the things they post about is not something I'd generally consume, it's just what I think and see others are consuming and seem valuable to the chain that I want to continue following these users so I can throw some inflation their way every now and then in hopes they'll do the same. The account saying these things was someone I had tried to interact with when they had some issues with another account on hive and may have been the reason they left. I had spent time interacting and getting involved to find a solution to protect and continue supporting this user as I felt the actions upon them may have been concluded wrongly. When someone you follow and have voted on many different occasions all of a sudden reappears and says you're one of the main reasons the price of Hive is down it hits you differently.
Again, they have no basis for saying what they're saying - it's not like I'm believing they're right or that they even had any truth to it, but the sense of disappointment in people still gets to you somehow. How did this user get it in his head that after all my quite transparent activity here for so many years would think that just because I'm trying to protect the rewards pool from unfair voting schemes I'm actively "destroying" hive? It's quite weird to me.
The bad apples are often the loudest.
This isn't something new, over time those who've been abusing the rewards pool have often shown their true colors when it comes to downvotes entering the scene. They often play victim, blame everyone else and lastly blame the platform and shame it because it hasn't lived up to the expectations of many - all the while they were doing close to nothing to help it get there. Similarly, those who are affected by certain actions also cry loud. If my actions to try and avoid letting vote selling grow are causing a number of people to miss out on earnings, naturally this is going to spread like wildfire and even though I don't hear about what's being said you can tell that things have been said by the actions of others that randomly hit you.
Again, not trying to victimize myself, I'll be fine, it's just disappointing to me when you start seeing downvotes, witness unvotes, undelegations, vote removals based on certain things that make sense to you and you think majority of people would agree with. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I'm living in this bubble where whatever I think is best is what I'll always believe, I'm open to discussions and debates and letting others change my mind - it just needs to make sense to me or else I can't force myself to agree with you.
I also know that getting out there and doing what I feel is right when it comes to downvotes or making things fairer for others is going to backfire and affect me - that's just how hive is for better or worse. Did I need to downvote that user cause he kept buying votes? No, I don't get anything out of spending countless hours trying to get them to stop or casting big downvotes once they reach a certain limit of what I can tolerate. Did my downvotes have any affect on the outcome and what I wanted to accomplish? Not sure, but it seemed like discussions weren't doing it any longer.
I am however happy that many of the projects ceased to continue their operations and are pivoting towards curation. I'm happy some others are still around making sense and backing me up on the whole ordeal and that their words also carry weight. I'm generally happy that we put an end to some of that activity and what the curation may lead to for the authors affected and hopefully new ones too. The way some people have reacted about it however is not so great.
"We're only this few active users left, why you gotta start doing this now?"
"It's just very little hive power, let the poor projects do what they need to survive."
"Why don't you go after the big earners earning hundreds daily instead from auto/blind votes?"
"You're running people off of the blockchain with your downvotes."
"It's a decentralized platform, why do you care what people do with their votes?"
"Why are you doing this, what's in it for you?"
These are some of the few things I guess that stood out and I cared to remember that have been said out loud or asked of me privately. I don't know how many of them really need an answer, but, what do you think curation is?
If we give up on curation just because it's not perfect, we make it worse instead of trying to make it better. We know selling votes is worse, we've seen it before, we can see it still on the dumb chain and we can see on the dumber chain what not having downvotes at all does as well.
You guys realize that if we don't have curation, Hive isn't Hive anymore. There's countless of DPOS blockchains out there, some I've invested in early on when they launched even before Steem like Lisk. If you want to earn a percentage off of your stake you don't need to bother with content if that's so stressful to you, just go use Ada.
Curation returns are quite easy to earn, right? You can trail someone or set up an auto-voter or delegate to a project you trust that gives you hive returns and you're going to quite safely make 7-9% APR and another 3% from your hive power. Why do you also want easy author rewards? Why both? What's so special about earning a higher APR and trying your hardest to get there with the lowest amount of effort?
A week ago or so there were some redditposh comments that had done extremely well so I gave them an extra vote with my main account after a curator had voted it with @poshtoken. Since these things take time I try get to them like 2-3 times a week which means that after POSH votes for them they sit there idly for a while and the bigger votes don't arrive until a day or two later. With the way curation is set up right now, this means that whoever that account is that votes it later will be penalized because he voted late. I realize just by saying this here I'm going to invoke some accounts to start voting on whatever posh votes as it's currently earning a high curation APR because of my actions of not voting daily, but I'm saying it anyway for a point I wanna make. Since posh and my own account had voted these comments on day 1 or 2, and the big account ended up voting them on day 3 or 4 before payout, posh and my own account received a substantial amount of higher returns. I think a few of the votes gave me 300% return on my max vote at that time, which wasn't high as my voting power has been quite drained lately but still, I spent only 40% voting mana to 100% upvote a comment early and the late voter, in this case @ocdb ended up losing 50-60% of its returns that went to posh and my own account instead. It felt wrong, I realized what had occurred and I decided to stop voting the comments with my main account. Not just cause @ocdb is my own project so it hurt the delegators but because it profited myself personally unfairly just cause I had the opportunity to vote earlier knowing ocdb would vote later. Why should I get 300% returns on this upvote at the cost of delegators? Sure POSH is going to continue earning a higher APR on curation but it's a nonprofit project meant to do good for hive and its stake is not that big so it's fine for now (until more maximizers appear trailing it soon).
Okay so with that example, why do you think it's fair that a project that has set up a voting bot should earn a higher APR on their votes than you do? Are they doing something valuable to Hive? Are you okay with losing out on curation and author rewards so that they can get it?
A lot of people don't "feel it", similar like I doubt anyone noticed their author and curation rewards may have slightly increased cause I decided to downvote that one account that week. Just cause you don't feel it doesn't mean that it's not happening, however and just cause it may not be a lot right now doesn't mean that it's not constantly growing and taking more and more from you. Worst part is that a lot of these projects are doing it with other people's stake, they may not even have skin in the game and any risk by doing this and ya'll are feeding into their schemes to get guaranteed votes mainly consisting of your own voting power patting yourself on the back at the cost of your neighbors.
Yes, Hive is barely worth anything. Yes, there's barely any active authors left. Yes, selfvoting here and there isn't that big of a deal if you have a small account, but guys, we're here for the long term, right? Are you just here to make as much hive until the next alt season to try and time the market to sell as much as you can and hope to earn it back later? Or do you want to grow alongside others with a clean slate and your head held high that you didn't succumb to some lousy schemes or didn't let lack of autovotes or curation hold you back from the real curation eventually that didn't ask you for a delegation or liquid hive or to buy their shittoken to get it but you got it because you earned it?
What are you going to tell the AI overlords when they come knocking metal on wood and judge you for your hive actions?
There's too much to say about all this, no one's perfect, curation definitely isn't, autovotes get abused, blind votes are annoying, trails can get corrupted, delegated stake can be misused, but buying votes is also up there as one of the worst of them all.
Anyway, not really sure where I went with this post, it's a bit all over the place, sorry for whoever decided to read all of it but also thank you if you did. Luckily I can curate your comment as a reward instead of delegating all my voting power away so I can get that big guaranteed vote from pimpmypost or upmyshit bot that I'm entitled to because I'm here. Good night.
I've definitely noticed that a lot of these types of discussions aren't about people learning, compromising or figuring out a shared solution... but instead people will have their end goal in mind ("I want to make as much money with as little effort as possible") and then will say anything to try and justify that position.
Firstly, I truly don't think the Hive price is actually correlated to the actual activities on the Hive blockchain. There is multitudes more trading activity in 24 hours of Hive than daily rewards - I honestly think of it as two separate economies. So, I do think it's impossible for any actual users to affect the price positively or negatively.
Which is good and bad... but it does give us freedom to build the Hive content ecosystem that we want. If we want to onboard new content creators - we definitely don't want them to see that their content is completely ignored while other less-effort content gets high rewards through vote buying. That will turn off way more people than we ever know.
Men of courage reap scars.
Do you know any entrepreneur who welcomes everyone?
I see things from another perspective: if these divisive reflections had not happened, perhaps the price of HIVE would be lower.
Continue. Newer users who have long-term projects need this clarification. Because they might be doing something stupid without knowing it.
I definitely agree the bad actors yell loudest. I've downvoted some active spammers and vote farmers. They never admit wrongdoing, and project their behavior on their accusers.
I still think HIVE matters more than the market price trends suggest. I'm here for the long haul. Tokens aren't everything. Censorship resistance matters. It mattered during the worst of Biden's COVID policies and it matters now with Trump's shenanigans.
Damn that is a bunch of insight right there. I am trying to guess the names and figure out the offenders but have not payed close enough attention over the years to get them all.
Being a tiny fish, my stake is negligible in the grand scheme of things but it is the community growth that I want to see and contribute to most. I love discovering those authors and community members who have cut their teeth to the point of having a few thousand in stake, and manually curating. I wish I had the bandwidth to comment on all of their posts but I have created my own real world chaos to get in the way of that sometimes.
Anyhow, nice of you to correct the error but I don't begrudge you leveraging your stake for a little more. You use that stake to help and build and reward the little people and I think that should be rewarded. Leading by example is the way to go and calling out the abusers is not fun work. Thanks again.
I'm trying to figure out the names too! I don't need to go nuts but just want to find the people I may have known that have quit lol
Who said your stake is negligible? Don't berate yourself.
Compared to the movers and shakers, I have no delusions of grandeur for my stake. I am proud of the people I know here and have organically grown all my Hive power so no berating at all.
Hey, your stake isn't that little any more! I remember back when things got crazy price-wise people valued orca-level stake quite a lot back then too as it came with quite a powerful punch then! Let's hope we see that here soon again!
Hive can never be perfect and different people have their own views of how it should operate. I've said many times that we need to be wary of driving folk away when the community is already so small. Those who leave have a habit of telling others.
I agree that curation is a wonderful thing. Anyone can earn without even having to post. I would recommend following the votes of someone you trust to support good posts. It definitely should not be about hoping for reciprocal votes from the big accounts.
Things have changed a lot over the years and some will not have seen how some people made thousands on a post in the early days. It's a good thing that rewards are spread more evenly now. If/when Hive gets massive then it be very different and fighting abuse will get harder. It is better to set the right expectations early on.
I think it’s important that we see the forest through the trees in a lot of things in life.
Hive has its issues; every platform does.
Hive also does a lot of things really damn well, so well that many can’t compete with it. There’s an amazing and dedicated community of people like yourselves and lots of others who do and build lots of things and features on it. They are the backbone of the chain as much as the users are. Without features what the fuck is the point? We could buy and sell shitcoins on exchanges that have no utility. The features, combined with the community, is what makes hive, hive.
I sadly still don’t know who this person is who cried and powered down because they got caught buying votes. I’ll eventually figure it out, I’m just curious because I don’t get to keep up with the various things going on in the many corners of the chain. I’m just curious if it was a friend of mine or not, as I’ve seen many up and leave over the years for one reason or another.
I think the important thing is that you are passionate about the chain and the community above many other things. We see that so many people do not have that same mentality.
Well that was a long read, I get your disappointment, after you help a user you get told that, but if you have to take hard every negative word you gonna get out of your head, saying hive is low because of you is just lol... You made ocd for curation, sniper love for new users, posh initiatives and probably other stuff I don't even know
The thing is, you are exposing yourself with the vote buying counter, so who is affected points at you, gets mad and so on... If you have done it silently, probably you wouldn't have gotten that much whine against...
Yeah that's how it is, imagine also all other witnesses or curation projects or general active stakeholders who just keep their head down and allow this to happen because they know it may affect their witness ranking or delegations, etc. Is it okay that they just ignore these things?
They should not ignore, at least the top20 users/witnesses... I guess in the short term they are not affected by the abuse, like "oh ok, we have that issue, but I'm fine with my witness earnings, curation rewards, i just won't bother now" but then the further we go the worse is and they would decide to do something just when the house is burning, users leaving and token crashed... Hive is like a house in common, someone needs to keep it clean, it's full of kids (all users) and with some adults (top holders) who need to slap the kids if necessary or it's a mess
I saw #1 witness start autovoting redditposh comments today to get some extra curation rewards cause @ocdb votes them late... not surprised at this point that people don't really give a shit unless it affects them directly.
Yeah I noticed that aswell on my last shares yesterday... And what a coincidence, as soon as you wrote
You overestimated people dignity when writing... I can't think on any workaround for this... I changed witness vote, for the little it matters
It's bad in a few ways, not only are they leeching off rewards from @ocdb that votes those a bit later to let the shares mature before being curated and POSH being a nonprofit project I run. But at the same time they're now incentivizing anyone to come and share whether or not the shares are good they're voting them all the same.
I did tag him in a chat to ask if he could stop, but them latching on to this to begin with is quite gross IMO. I'd get it if it was some random accounts, of course someone would eventually, but did not expect this from a well respected witness.
Now it's going to require way more work from mine and x-rain's side to also downvote some shares that get overrewarded as to not have all kinds of abusers join in trying to make some easy rewards and put hive in a bad light on reddit through spam attempts.
Yeah that incentives spam, as every comment gets more and also encourage others to do the same and vote before ocdb... If other big accounts starts doing the same to copycat it's gonna be a mess and you would need to heavily downvote stuff and waste time... Beside the leech on good shares remains... Way to interfere on other people project 😑
I have come out with an idea, not a fix but better than as is I suppose, if talks fail... I will drop you a dm
I did read it all. At times you sounded very disappointed almost disillusioned, cheer up! You are doing a great job continue doing what is right and what feels right no matter what anyone says.
Hive is not perfect, life is not perfect, but it doesn't mean that you should not fight for what you believe in. I for one learned a lot from you and others like you and have changed my behavior on Hive and invested a little bit in Hive. Will invest more if prices stay here for a few more months.
The price of HIVE was affected by what affected everything in crypto, stocks, etc. That is the tariffs, and more than that, the unpredictability, which is even worse for business than tariffs.
While DVs have their psychological effect, it's not why the price of HIVE went down, even if a big account decided to power down and sell as a result of them. That is unfortunate, however, to lose users...
I wonder if we would have better defi platforms involving base layer tokens directly or in a wrapped form, if those interested mainly in profit would continue to try to milk the reward pool, or they would find those alternatives more to their liking.
As you said, you don't have to worry about what other people say because you're doing what you think it's the best for the Blockchain and I strongly believe you're doing the right thing.
You've been around here since the beginning and you've worked so hard for Hive, so you know what's the right way to do things and I second you.
I'm new here and I still have a lot of things to learn, but if there's something I'm sure about, is that you're a role model for me and I'd like to some day work for Hive as hard as you do.
Also, if someday I fail to do things the right way and start to make "malicious" activities that prejudices the Blockchain, I'd like you to tell some words to correct me, to make me stop of doing it and to make me come back to the right path.
This comment is getting longer than I meant, so I will finish it saying thank you for all your work, and again, you're a role model for me. Keep going.
I understand this frustration when you put a lot of effort into something but moreover, when you invest in it emotionally...
It's like me, with my food prep business... I put not just my blood, sweat and tears into the business (METAPHORICALLY SPEAKING - THAT IS VERY UNSANITARY OTHERWISE LOL)... but my heart and soul too...
It's can be very disheartening to hear someone say "I didn't like the food because..." or lets say we mess up an order...
So I refund their order and comp them a new set of meals... only to see a bad Google Review saying we messed their order up but now how we fixed it :(
Remember - you can make a lot of things out of Iron... but even Iron must be hardened into Steel before you can make GREAT things...
It's ok to get down... just don't choose to stay down.
Cheers 🍻,
I appreciate you reaching out to me yesterday. You have made some good points here and I enjoyed our discussion. There are definitely a lot of different facets to this issue and I see your point. I'm not a fan of the victim mentality either. When I mess up I own up to it. It's just the way I'm wired. It's too bad more people aren't that way.
Keep being you. All of us are needed on Hive for it to be Hive and worth it.
I'm not saying things are not going to hurt because they will. People will always be people, and there will always be ones who do not try to understand the whole and just want to complain.
That’s a long post and I read every single word of it cos your words got me captivated. Humans beings will always be human beings. Sorry for what that guy told you, that’s very insensitive of him to have said that ..guess he was just looking for where to pour his aggression on…you are doing a great job for the greater good of the community and should continue. No matter what you do, you’d never please everyone ofcourse but keep doing what you are doing…someone’s gotta (remember like you said in one of your posts)
Wow! This is quite a very lengthy post, can't believe I read it all. But it was quite the time spare, because you kept uncovering each Gem which made me want to continue reading and reading. I'm not really gonna say much about this post, but I just wish everyone on the chain should reason and do things like you, that way Hive will be a better place.
Not saying you are perfect. Like you said above, you are open to ideas and debates on maybe things you have suggested, which is what a good person would.
You are a good person Sir 💯
Care less about what anyone says about you, as long as you are doing the right thing 🙂
Cheers 🥂
There will always be greedy people trying to get the maximum profit no matter the consequences for the platform. However we as a community can (and must) take the proper measures to stop them. It is not easy, it takes time and effort, but I hope the projects success will eventually make that work worthy
People always complain when someone tries to keep things fair. You’re doing good work, even if they don’t see it right now, keep it up man
Thanks for sharing your story with us @acidyo Keep on, keep on. 💪 This is just the beginning. Thank you for all your effort.
I've read everything, but I think I'm too new to fully understand. What's true is that I'm in Hive for the long term and I'm working on it, putting in the best effort I can. Greetings, friend.
I think we all should pay proper attention to the Hive. Your initiative to share posts on reddit and curate those posts is really appreciated.
Your post is powerful, it speaks volumes about integrity, persistence, and the struggle of staying true to your values in a decentralized world. It’s a wake-up call for the Hive community.
Why did you delete the original comment you left? Did it sound too AI-y?
Not really, It was too too long, sometimes a very long reply deepens the wounds, it pushes the issue, it pushed the person your writing to to reply and makes the person you replying to push the issue with the person they are complaining about, being short and brief helps, Sometimes peace is more valuable than being right holding on only deepens the wound. Letting go isn’t weakness; it’s wisdom knowing not every battle is worth the scars. In silence and distance, healing often finds its way. Sorry for being more brief but I felt the original message wound deepen you healing wounds my brother. May God be with you in this time.
ah okay, my bad then thought maybe you're just another new account trying to just post AI generated comments pretending to spend time consuming others content
That’s life my brother, life will teach you a lot of things, and who am l we live in a huge world with very many diverse cultures and communities, where everyone is entitled to his or her opinion. Through am kinder also dissapointed and it makes me feel bad for reading that heavy very very long post and took time to summary and reply it all raw and get call out but its all good ”No worries” at all I totally get where you’re coming from. There’s been a flood of those lately, and it makes things feel less genuine. Through I’m here to actually talk and connect, not just drop generic comments. Appreciate you calling it out, keeps things real. Through my brother I know you were going through a hard time and hope you were able to find your peace
My brother sometimes it’s best not to argue or make complains because emotions can cloud judgment and make resolution harder. Time allows people to cool down and see things more clearly. Not every situation deserves your energy or response. Choosing peace over being right can protect relationships and show maturity, like the example you were going through if you actually just ignored that person and let it be there would have not been a reason to annoy you and make you make a very long post on it, but anyways that is life, maybe i would have also done the same but Its always good to just ignore and chose peace my brother. Happy weekend
By the way are you a soccer fan. I will be dropping alot of soccer related content, hope you can check out and have fun with current football news
Congratulations @acidyo! You have completed the following achievement on the Hive blockchain And have been rewarded with New badge(s)
Your next target is to reach 96500 replies.
You can view your badges on your board and compare yourself to others in the Ranking
If you no longer want to receive notifications, reply to this comment with the word
STOP!PIZZA
That's a long post, I also recently realised my mistake that making a lot of content is not necessary. My mind was like if you make a lot of content, you get easily famous, and earn as much as you can. I used AI to fool others, but now, from 2 to 3 days, I am focusing on making quality content and want to be qualified as a good author. I liked that you addressed the real problem in the last. I just want to tell everyone sorry, and from now on, you will only get great content from my account. @acidyo thanks
It may be long, but it was necessary. You have covered so many genuine questions.
Yeah! why not? Let's discuss and debate in depth why this doesn't happen and has never happened?
Just showing the obvious downvotes doesn't even say anything, what a waste of account hopping to comment.