Unless you have been living under a rock this weekend, you probably saw the news that BlockTrades(BT) has upvoted the return proposal in the DHF(Decentralized HIVE Fund). This effectively defunded all proposals except the one by Ecency that has enough votes to surpass the return proposal.
I know a lot of people have a lot of opinions about the DHF and the current state of it. Personally, I think this is a good thing. For too long, we have seen how individuals or groups have taken advantage of the DHF for personal gain. Don't get me wrong, I do believe in some of the projects that are asking for money. I also think that many of them have their heart in the right place. Projects like PeakD, Ecency, HIVE Keychain, VSC, and some others have a vested interest in making the chain better and easier to use.
I also know that development comes at a price.
That doesn't mean you get a blank check.
Then there are others who are blatantly pilfering the DHF. Nonsensical proposals with buzzwords and faux humanitarian initiatives that are nothing more than shell companies laundering crypto from the community of HIVE to the pockets of a select few.
The news may have actually passed me by if it hadn't been for @steevc, I don't spend my time with the proposal section of HIVE open. @mrsbozz and I woke up on Saturday morning to our vehicle covered in ice. We spent a bit of time with our great niece and her sister and then we figured we should get on the road to start the 4 hour drive home. Due to rain, snow, sleet, and ice, it took us an extra hour to get home and we saw a fair number of accidents.
When we pulled into the driveway and I was finally able to check my phone, that's when I saw the news from @steevc on Discord that BT had upvoted the return proposal. Some people are skeptical that this will hold and they have a feeling some back room deal will happen to reverse things. Myself, I am hopeful that this is a new dawn for HIVE with a renewed oversight and accountability.
You should care about this.
I mean, I'm not telling you what to do, but this fund is controlled by the community and we have every right to say what we think should be funded and what we don't think should be funded. Groups in turn should be open and honest with us to prove why they are needed, not bicker and retaliate when people ask the tough questions.
Part of my job as a technology administrator is to write and apply for grants for my organization and department. I've been doing this for a fair number of years and I have written a large number of grants in that time. Do you want to know what they all have in common?
If you guessed oversight and accountability, you win. In many cases, we have to show receipts and measurable outcomes for the project. If you don't use all the money or meet all of those requirements, you have to give the money back.
In fact, I just applied for a grant the other day and they had this bit of wording in their application that I felt fit really well here.
"When it comes to grant proposals, funders care about outcomes, which are different from activities and outputs. An activity is a specific thing you are planning to do as part of your program. An output is the number of times you do that activity, or the number of people it serves. An outcome is the broader change that occurs as a direct result of your program activities."
And then this just to clarify a bit more:
"In short, activities are plans; outputs are counts; outcomes are changes. Here is an example:
An activity is hosting a series of workshops to teach seniors how to do chair aerobics at home. The output is hosting six exercise workshops for 30 seniors. The outcome of this program might be an improvement in balance and activity for 80% of the participants within the next three months."
I don't think it's totally unreasonable that we have some kind of metric by which to measure what is being accomplished by these proposals that might potentially get funded. Sure, I know in the past there have been proposals that have claimed to have onboarded a bunch of users or introduced HIVE to "x" number of users, but if the data isn't supporting it, then the funding should go away.
Just like vote rewards aren't yours until the post pays out, these funds aren't yours either. You are stewards of these funds to help grown and improve the HIVE blockchain.
If that isn't our goal anymore, then maybe we have bigger issues...
As many others have said, I think we need to have some kind of oversight with these proposals and along with that some kind of rubric with which to measure them and determine if they are meeting the expectations that were promised.
If you read many of the proposals, they have the Activities and Outputs parts down, and then they fall short when it comes to Outcomes.
I'm interested in outcomes!
- Edit, It appears BT has already removed their vote from the return proposal, so all previously funded proposals are back in the "green" (for better or worse). I still stand by what I wrote here today. We need oversight and we need checks and balances. I'm actually sad to see this didn't last a bit longer, but many people expected this would be the ultimate result.
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