Weird things have been happening on Hive in the past week or so. But then, Hive isn't a normal community, it will feel odd if things sail smoothly all the time. I have to confess, most of the time I live under the rock and aren't aware of Hive news as much as I should.
However, it's not easy to stay under the rock all the time if you really care about Hive.
Value plan
This has always been a big sticky point for many. How do we quantify how much value does a project add to Hive? In fact does it even add any value is debatable. How do we know how much of the funds were really used to promote Hive? Are we just funding people's passion or hobby? This was finally discussed at a round table in KL this year with a follow up post where the wider community gave their views on the matter. It remains to be seen what changes or improvements will be made to the value plan to make it more accountable to the community.
1 million HBD is a lot of money to spend a year with little governance or accountability.
Hivewatchers
The other night when browsing on discord I noticed the Hivewatchers server had lost all but one general channel. I'm not part of the Hivewatchers team and have not supported their proposal as I disagree with the way in how they handle some things. That said, I believe they have their value on Hive and I see our goals align to a certain extent with regards to anti abuse.
It seems this may be the end of HW, this will be great news for the hundreds of abusers out there but not so good for the genuine users on Hive. There are other individuals doing anti abuse stuff on Hive themselves, but I think we need more people who care enough to keep Hive abuse free. It doesn't matter if you have 100k stake or just 10k stake. You can still do your bit. I see a lot of brand new accounts milking rewards, those can be stopped easily by many....
Vibes
Earlier in the year, I noticed the trending page was often full of singing competition entries from Vibes. It had over 1000 HBD prize every week, again funded by the VP. Week 43 of the competition was launched a couple of weeks ago and I noticed something quite odd. There was a change for entries, from 5% beneficiary to the community to a mandatory 5HBD monthly subscription to the Vibes account on InLeo....
Since then, Vibes has been shut down. Apparently,the single judge for the competition was receiving kickbacks from the winners. I heard a review and update is due and I shall look forward to that.
The BRO drama
As far as I'm aware the Bro community started off as a guys brotherhood thing so it was never on my radar. I knew of Ray, the community leader as he was a fellow Brit and quite a few reputable users I knew were part of the community. It seemed a solid community. I got involved with Bro via another user when we were helping out with anti abuse work. We were rewarded with Bro tokens. Later on I bought some Legion when that was launched. At one time I think my Bro and Legion tokens were worth a few hundred $.
A few months ago, the Bro server seemed to have changed direction. Weird cryptic messages kept on popping up about the future of the community. I didn't take much notice of it because I wasn't active there. And frankly , I have a low level of comprehension. In the past 24 hours shit has hit the fan in Bro. It seems Ray has gone off the rails, pulled the rug and taken community cash out. I caught up with over 1500 messages on Discord this morning to understand what's happening. The convo is still ongoing. I don't know if anyone has the full story, in particular, why? Why would someone do such a thing to his own community?
It hurts, both financially and emotionally when you're betrayed by someone you trust. I'm in a more fortunate position as my Bro and Legion were either gifted to me, or I bought with earned Hive. To me by that's all "free money" and not my own invested fiat. It seems others aren't so fortunate.
During these couple of years, I got to know Ray a little bit better. He seemed like a fair and good guy and wanted the best for Hive. But what pushed him to do what he did? The whole thing is such a mess I guess the Bro community will never know why.
To post or not to post
I spent a whole day writing this post as I want to get the facts clear in my head and I think others have the right to know, if they don't yet. Then I figured not many live under the rock like I do, and this post may not add much value.
Then I remembered today is HPUD. I've been buying up some cheap Hive to grow my stake, and I haven't written a post for over two weeks. I'm just going to push this post because I feel like it.
Don't be put off by all the crap that's going on. If it makes you feel better, there's always someone who's lost more than you on Hive. Power up!
