Nobody is disputing your importance to this community or the work you've done. So this isn't personal.
Hive is below 6 cents. Sitting at $0.057 and down 14% this past month. The ecosystem is bleeding and the token is at historic lows. I think this proposal and honestly every other active proposal should be under serious scrutiny right now.
Taking 90k HBD out of the DHF right now, roughly $81k USD, while the chain is in this state would be a terrible look. It doesn't matter how justified the work was. Right now it looks like people grabbing silverware off the Titanic while it sinks. The optics are awful and they reflect on everyone involved, not just you.
Nobody is doubting your intentions or if you deserve to be compensated. But I think it would be fiscally irresponsible to support this proposal at this point in time, especially considering we've already had other funded projects voluntarily take a funding cut and the controversy around the DHF right now. The DHF needs to be preserved, not drawn down, when the ecosystem is fighting for survival.
That's totally fine, I understand why anyone might feel that way, but I do think it also reflects poorly on their belief that the chain has any hope at all. Either we go even harder at doing some of the really difficult work to correct where we stand since there's been little support into it, or we coast. I don't think it makes sense to explain how I plan to actually use the funds since that's not really an important aspect of a proposal, but I think it would be pretty fair also for people to be concerned that it would just be immediately dumped and I assume that will continually be brought up and thrown at me regardless of that not being the case. I also don't think it is in any way personal. I have given everything in me to have delayed even thinking about this for more than half a decade, I don't have anything to prove that isn't already visible and certainly don't feel like anyone is adversarial to that without reason. We have a feedback loop specifically for feedback, and there's no need to pretend to like something you do not.
Either way, I see zero problems in people actively campaigning against me. To say that other projects (where some should already be sustainable or have revenue models) have taken funding cuts after being funded for multiple years, while simultaneously doing solo work for them and the entire ecosystem for six full years with easily quantifiable money saved in just listings alone simply doesn't work as apples to apples here, but I'm happy to agree that it is contentious and I knew it would be. I just unfortunately can't continue to pay fully out of pocket to support the chain for another 6 years with full-time c-suite adjacent work, so I either take the big swing and try to go even harder to help change things, or I consider it all as lost as apparently the majority here do which is not really on my dance card. I also have no problem with the terrible Titanic metaphor... however where you may see the hubris of the builders and an inevitable iceberg outcome, I don't. Part of that comes from understanding that I'll need to throw myself at it pretty much full time for a few more years if I want to make it happen, so I've spent a long time helping keep everyone afloat and thinking about finding a way to carefully stretch my ability to do that. I don't think it makes sense to weigh myself down with silverware when the bulk of the rest of the chain is hiding in the lifeboats and that this proposal is the equivalent, but that will be up to each of you to decide individually.
I've been thinking about this more and I think the real issue isn't your proposal specifically. It's that the DHF was never designed for this kind of work.
The DHF is oriented toward development. Code, infrastructure, technical projects with defined deliverables. That's what it was built for and that's what it does reasonably well, debates about accountability aside. What it doesn't do well is compensate the operational, relationship, and bizdev layer that sits around all of that. And that's the work you've been doing.
So the question I keep landing on is why hasn't blocktrades stepped in? They're the stewards of the chain and have the funding to easily fund something like this as a proper role. They understand better than anyone that shipping code without someone handling exchange relationships, conference presence, and external partnerships creates a gap. You've been filling that gap for free for six years. If your work is as interconnected with core development and ecosystem health as it clearly is, then it makes more sense for it to sit under an entity that already has structure, funding, and accountability.
I think you deserve to be compensated. I just think the path to that runs through the people and entities who already have funded infrastructure and who benefit directly from the work you do, not through a treasury mechanism that's going to struggle with the precedent and the optics every single time.
This will open up a Pandora's box of people who feel like they've been doing work for free and deserve to be compensated retroactively too. But if blocktrades actually stepped in and funded you directly and committed to paying you in an ongoing role capacity, it would allow you to do even greater work and avoid the messiness of the DHF (which is quite a touchy thing lately).
My question is: has blocktrades ever offered to bring you on in a more official capacity? Because in many ways you've been the face of this chain for a long time.
He has not ever offered to pay me, nor has he ever discussed this being a position under the wide umbrella of his funding. I would hesitate to say that any of this should fall under that given the amount that the team already shoulders, cost-wise, on behalf of the chain in entirety. In previous years, he and others actually were indicative that they would be okay with me potentially doing the legwork on a proper legal foundational mechanism with which to potentially transfer developer or salaried payments under. For a number of reasons that wasn't something that was widely appreciated as viable, so creation of a DUNA or similar wasn't something that was pushed heavily as the community's desires for me to pursue.
I think what a lot of this comes back to is that I put off making a proposal for many years, including literally shutting down ones that were made by others on my behalf and listened to the bulk of people who said they'd much prefer funding someone who shows up and does work afterwards in terms of shaping how I then committed to approaching this all. Quite a few really wanted me to do yearly proposals with an arbitrary salary number. In hindsight, that would have been very easy fund collection on my behalf with even less accountability than surfacing this now, so for those who are feeling all I'm doing is some form of revenge ask on Hive it sort of takes the wind out of the sails a fair bit.
There's a perception being spread by a few quietly that I'm hysterical, extractive, have never accomplished anything, or actively trying to abuse the DHF, which seems to have the desired outcome of causing me to crash out or leave over whatever happens or is said here. That's simply not what will happen, and I'm gathering that it comes heavily from both previous people doing exactly that, and some personal insecurities being projected on me. I'm being open and honest about my current capabilities, what the road ahead looks like, and how hard I can push for the next say.... two or so years with the full time effort people are very happy to ask me for behind closed doors, but not publicly on chain. I see absolute no issue at all with anyone of any stake size coming here and being absolutely incensed that I dared to make this post and reading me to filth over it— that's the entire point of the DHF. None of it is personal (well, maybe it is for one or two people, lol) and if it doesn't pass, then that's okay.
The bulk of reactions now are about the timing, and they're valid reactions. The timing for me is also valid, so we're all justified in hashing it out publicly. If the proposal had been the same amount but for a one year salary of some sort, I don't doubt the responses would look similar because the issue at this point is very little about pay, and more accurately about the fear and market sentiment. I can't do much about that, other than to state "hey, I genuinely can't meet the increasing expectations and asks people have of me going forward unless I go full time, so rather than try to demand a salary, I can use what I've done to lay groundwork for another few years. If not, I go back into corpo world and do my best to keep my output here at the level it is with no guarantees." And both of those things are a-ok to be committed to the chain and part of the discussion!
I feel like asking @blocktrades to pay for anything is weird.
I agree with this. It would be a pretty weird thing to ask of him/the team.
This
is that not how the DAO is designed?
The DHF is fine, and we've suppored other devs at a similar wage, only we pay them upfront for work to-be-done. In both case, its worth it.
Nobody on this team controls the market, and when btc tanks all to hell, so do we. We've ridden along the same waves for years, this isn't new and waiting to match better market conditions is dumb.
The folks who've done the work, deserve the pay, full stop.