A few weeks ago, we had some Hive drama. Not unusual, I suppose, so I should specify. The specific drama I am talking about is the Splinterlands proposal and some of the backdoor politicking done on behalf of that proposal.

People were somewhat split on the proposal itself, with the main complaint being that it didn't give enough detail to justify the large funding requested. I'm not going to get into the specifics of that. I will say I have been in Splinterlands since alpha, I was very involved in the beginning, and I still own a substantial amount of cards, though the total value of those cards has slipped substantially in this bear market. Despite the fact that the proposal could directly benefit me quite a bit, I am not voting on it, for the reason I list above. Take from all that what you will. You all please make your own decision about it.

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Anyway.

Then the somewhat distasteful backdoor politics entered the scenes and that is where the drama started. Again, I don't really want to get too much into the weeds here. Start with this post if you missed the drama and want to catch up. That will give you an idea anyway.

The real result of that drama is that the Return Proposal has gotten a lot more attention than it once had and many more people are becoming aware of it. Judging by how it keeps increasing, as people become aware of it, they are agreeing with it and voting on it. So I thought we'd look at just what that is and what it means in this post, for anyone not aware. The number one lesson here is that You Have The Power!. The lower classes are often more powerful than they think, and that is true of Hive as well as society. But we'll get to that.

The Proposal System

What was once not as well known has recently been given a lot more attention. This is the Proposals. If you've never looked at them, you can see them here. On Peakd, click on your name in the upper right corner, just scroll down and see Proposals.

Here is a list of things people want DHF money for. You can scroll through the list, clicking on any proposal to read more. At the bottom of each proposal is a "vote value" which lists how many votes the proposal has gotten. To the right is the daily pay the proposal is asking for (and/or receiving) from the DHF, and how many days remain on the proposal.

Just browse through the list. You will see some pretty crazy numbers.

You as a Hive user can vote on any of these proposals. The value of your vote is based on how much Hive Power your account has, but even if you don't have much HP, your vote does matter. Enough small votes add up to a pretty big vote.

One thing the Proposal system doesn't have is a downvote button. So then, how do you vote against any proposals you disagree with? You don't. It's support or don't support. However, there is one additional thing you can do in addition to simply not supporting things you don't agree with.

Scroll down the list and near the bottom you will see this:

This is the return proposal. Any proposal that has fewer votes than the return proposal will not receive DHF funding. The return proposal used to hover around 20 million votes, sometimes more sometimes less, but after the Splinterlands brouhaha it shot up to 30 million and it has been climbing since.

There is a lot of that previously mentioned distasteful politicking going on behind the scenes and people with a lot of HP are being pressured to remove their votes from the return proposal. It was up to nearly 36 million a few days ago and the LeoFinance proposal fell below it, losing funding, but since then the return proposal has lost about a million votes. You can be sure there was a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes to make that change happen.

You Have the Power

The key take away here is that you have the power. Regardless of what your HP level is, you do have power. If enough minnows vote, even @blocktrade's massive vote can be countered.

Personally I think the Return Proposal should be high, even higher than it currently is. I don't say that out of malice to any proposal, I say that simply because I think it should be pretty damn hard to get a proposal passed. I don't think there are nearly enough checks to the system. Far too many past proposals have simply not done what they claimed they would do, so they basically walked away with money for free. In lieu of a better way to check that people are actually using proposal money as intended, I think the bar to entry should be as high as possible.

For that reason, I think everyone should vote on the Return proposal. If there is a proposal you especially like, vote on that too.

Anyway, your choice, so please make one on your own. But whatever you do, I would suggest you go vote on things on this page. You are a part of Hive and you have power here, so use it.

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David LaSpina is an American photographer and translator lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time and searching for the perfect haiku. He blogs here and at laspina.org. Write him on Twitter or Mastodon.