Harkfork 28
I've been a bit out of the loop on this one which is rare for me. Yesterday I found out about two pretty significant changes to how inflation has been changed on Hive. Previously I thought it was just Hive Application Framework and other layer 2 adjustments, but the way voting works and inflation is calculated has changed.
This is a great example that is the double-edged sword of Hive. Changes can be made on the fly without the need for full communal consensus. That could be a good or a bad thing depending on the net effects of the changes. It's also a good reason to always hold a bag of Bitcoin because Bitcoin can't make changes like this at all. It's the safer choice in case shit really hits the fan... although I can't really say I disagree with the changes that have been made thus far, it doesn't imply that it will remain so on future hardforks.
Change #1: 100% upvotes no longer have diminishing returns.
It is now possible (and easy) to reduce your voting power on Hive to 0%, whereas before it was not really possible. Today if your 100% upvote is worth $1 it will stay $1 until you run out of power. Before the recent hardfork if you were at 50% power your upvote would only be 50% strength. 25% power would reduce strength by 75%, so it was basically impossible to ever run out of voting power. The more your vote power diminished the more your vote would diminish to match.
Your vote power refills 20% per day and expends 2% for every full upvote. Before this change if you were at 50% power a full upvote would only reduce power by 1%, allowing an account to full vote 20 times a day instead of ten (but at half strength). Now you can cast a full vote no matter what until you hit zero.
I think this change is pretty cool because it gives the user more flexibility when distributing votes. Users can essentially spend inflation in a way that they could not do before. We no longer have to worry about being low power but not being able to reward high-quality content with a max vote. Now every max vote counts just the same no matter where our voting power resides.
For someone like me this will also make it a lot easier to avoid hitting 100% voting power which happens way more often than it should. If I want to get down to 50% voting power and take a couple days off I only have to cast 25 full votes, whereas before it was a bit more than that and it could be difficult to find stuff I even wanted to updoot.
https://gitlab.syncad.com/hive/hive/-/issues/609
Apparently this change was suggested by @miosha and then coded into the blockchain literal years ago... but it's been years since we've had a hardfork so it hasn't gone live until just now. Crazy to think it's just been sitting there and I had no idea it was going to happen all this time. Need to get my head out of the sand I guess.
https://peakd.com/hf/@acidyo/happy-28th-hardfork-everyone#@sanjeevm/re-acidyo-t5zc0n
I also learned about these changes from the comments in @acidyo's post on the subject yesterday. At least someone's paying attention amirite?
Change #2: inflation reduction
So apparently HBD in the DHF is no longer used to calculate Hive inflation, so inflation is potentially 26% lower than it was before. Witnesses get paid less. Reward pool allocations are smaller. The DHF itself will get less inflation allocated to it... etc.
This change is arguably unfair because HBD inflation is static and remains unchanged (although witnesses can change that whenever they want without even forking). The biggest reason why it might be unfair is that it makes the DHF even stronger because it contains the ninjamine which is just a bunch of tokens printed out of thin air that never really should have existed to begin with. Less inflation on Hive could just create a vacuum that allows more DHF ninjamine money to be dumped on the market... but that is yet to be seen and more something to be wary of going forward.
Overall I'd say this change is fine and is potentially a sneaky way to justifiably lower inflation a little bit when price is sweeping all time lows. Could a change like this help number go up and completely negate the negative affects of lowering it to begin with? Maybe... especially at a price of 10 cents which has traditionally been rock-bottom for our network.
The biggest reason this change makes sense would be if the DHF was actually making money and banking more and more HBD in the coffers. We wouldn't want to print out more inflation just because our on-chain investments into devs and infrastructure was doing well.
https://peakd.com/@hive.fund/wallet
The DHF is stored in @hive.fund and I haven't looked at it in a while. If memory serves correctly the last time I looked at this account it had 50M Hive within it. Now it has about 33M so that's quite a bit of the ninjamine converted into HBD since then. I for one will be happy when the amount of Hive in this account hits ZERO and I no longer feel like there's a boot on top of the neck of the network... but it's taken a lot longer than expected.
Conclusion
I wasn't expecting for major changes to the inflation schedule but here we are! Luckily I view these changes as a net positive and don't really view them as a huge deal either way. Hive has a lot of work to do and isn't going to sink or swim based on small changes such as these. I look forward to seeing what our layer 2 can accomplish because that's a far more pressing issue than anything else. Cheers!
The change to votes is fantastic, as someone with a small upvote even at 100%, I hate giving less than 100% votes because it always feels to me like it's not worth it for the receiver. So being able to dole out the full value each time is a big win. Very cool changes.
Ah yeah that makes sense I haven't been in that position for a while my 100% is always over $1.
in 2021 I was up to $10+ upvotes that was insane.
Man, I can't even imagine a $10 upvote for myself haha, that must have felt awesome to toss around!
Wow, I feel shortchanged now, lol.
Not really true, Bitcoin can make changes like this. It only requires 51% of the mining power to accept the changes. Will they ever do it? Unlikely.
Also regarding @hive.fund how does beneficiary rewards that it receives work?
hm beneficiary is Hive (not HBD) so I assume this change means nothing
although I'm not sure exactly how the DHF converts Hive into HBD... so unclear
In theory that's what it means, yes, but the first Bitcoin hard fork in 2017 to BCH (and every other hard fork after that) showed that it's about what the market wants, not what miners want. The market votes on the price of the token that they prefer, and then miners go where it's more profitable for them.
It is because BCH did not have the support of the %51 of the miners. That is why it is BCH and not BTC. If they did, BCH would have been BTC, and BTC of today would have been something else.
You can have Bitcoin at 1 million dollar, and its profitability could stay as it is now. Because market price does not determine profitability solely by itself.
Thanks for the summary it’s hard to digest all this stuff lol I know there’s lots more changes but these are important to call out.
yeah I feel like I should have paid more attention to the dev posts over the months preceding
The problem is a lot of these groups should be making efforts to be self sustaining on the chain, but they keep putting out proposals and pilfering the DHF.
Voting feels a little more modern now.
Based on my own observations, which stem from reality, consumers aren't interested in signing on to become curators. There’s nearly ten years of history proving this to me. They wouldn’t even take that job if it paid. The state of the content is a direct reflection of their efforts. That business model is like attaching a gas‑powered engine to a revolving door—it makes the door spin faster. It’s nearly impossible for independent creators to build a truly supportive audience; the model actually discourages them to do that by default because of its flaws. Rewarding people merely for showing up pays them to set themselves up for failure and entitlement issues.
Consumers are interested in supporting the things they like directly, though. The rest of the internet proves that, loud and clear. That’s the direction things have gone for the past ten years everywhere else. These users want to put a dollar in the jar because they like what they see and want to see more—supporting the entertainment of their choosing with a basic business model proven effective for thousands of years. Compare the quality of content today to that of ten years ago: independent creators are thriving and will continue to do so. Supporting things we like while not caring about everything else is rooted in our biology, FFS.
Consumers would feel ripped off if they dropped a dollar and only 60 cents went jingle jingle. The more they "spend" the less they can "spend?"
So this is a nice step for Hive, moving toward actually getting somewhere,by adding an extra layer of fairness for the consumer. If this ever catches on, we’ll be that much more prepared to handle it.
Just my opinion...
I’m skeptical about this change because it could potentially lead to new unforeseen issues or abuse, but I’m skeptical of all changes and we do need some changes.
If the benefit to such a change were bigger, maybe I’d be more optimistic, but diminishing value of votes felt more natural to me, a runner in a 100 meter race can’t run that speed forever.
But I mean let’s see! Less inflation feels like it might be needed right now considering how hard it’s been to grow, although what would be even better is finding more ways to offset inflation with buying pressure.
I’m not sure how to do this, I’d love if all our behaviors created buying pressure on the hive token similar to what Leo has experimented with (preferably less aggressive in its approach for a smoother experience) but a front end can do things that a larger proof of brain protocol can’t do with regards to how it operates. Fee-less transactions is a pillar of hive and I’m not sure how "Hive" as a protocol or community could create a product that led to buying pressure on the token. I guess project on Hive would have to take on the role of creating the product and finding a realistic way to benefit from putting continual buy pressure on hive….
Make the token pay more. Raise inflation.
Me too.
🫡 thanks for the rundown edicted! This helps a lot of users
https://inleo.io/threads/view/askrafiki/re-khaleelkazi-1763667845?referral=askrafiki
Thanks for the rundown, I was mostly oblivious regarding the hard fork until all these articles started showing up, so I'm thankful for your content (and @acidyo 's as well)
Thanks for pointing out these differences in the latest hardfork. I’ve been out of the loop on hive news for a bit, I wouldn’t have known what was going on without this…
!PIMP
!PIZZA
!BBH
That was a very interesting change, I would say. Let's see how it behaves over time.
Thanks for this heads up, @edicted. Nice post!
Great information... thanks for sharing 👍
What really happens is I blow all my VP on dank memes and then can't spend any on masterpieces, like this post. At least when I work all day it's likely I'll have VP left while I'm chain smoking cigars and shooting Glenmorangie at 2 am. But, I get tired Boss. Real tired.
Nailed it in one.
LOL
You just took a 25% cut in pay. For some folks that's an existential catastrophe. I'm glad it's not for you. It don't confront me personally one way or the other, because I avoid money like the mpox, but not everyone can live on charm and good looks. This is gonna hurt most the people that can least surmount the hit.
Thanks!
helpful, thanks!