Every day I check the stats for percentage chang and either:

• HIVE when down more than STEEM
• HIVE went up less than STEEM

If this trend continues eventually we will be worth less than STEEM.

And I have a theory why:

NO ONE IS LIVING OFF OF STEEM. At the same time we have a caste of (seemingly) unemployed people that run the show. We should have elected people based on their jobs, not on how much they are willing to commit to Hive.

On Hive we have projects and people living off of HIVE because for the longest time we have had more liquidity, were worth more and had DHF financing.

On the other hand STEEM has always been trending down with significantly lower liquidity, making it unreasonable to live off of it.

The worth of being worthless

STEEM has not a lot of "public infrastructure" (if any?) that needs to be maintained. Devs (if any?), witnesses and users have little incentive to sell because they know their currency has neither value nor liquidity.

Turns out that is their edge isn't it? We solved problems and it costs us perpetually, they decided to not solve anything and it costs them nothing.

We can't keep funding stuff perpetually, they can keep not funding anything perpetually. In terms of proposal of value they win for not proposing anything for free, we lose because our proposal is financially unsustainable.

Off with the DHF, on with reward pool

Different sources, same sell pressure. Our problem is NOT JUST THE DHF. It is that our infrastructure and our "employees" depend on selling HIVE, regardless of the source. If they have HIVE because they have gotten it from the DHF as HBD or because they posted project updates, in the end it is still HIVE that they still have to sell it to keep doing what they do. Best case scenario they sold long ago and are living off of past sold HIVE.

The DHF is a source of inflation, a horrible one, but most importantly a source of sell pressure, but it is not the only one. Selling is selling, isn't it? And we built an ecosystem that relies on selling, didn't we? But who is buying? Can they keep buying forever?

Side note: I deeply respect the projects that couldn't get financed by the DHF. It PROBABLY means they are not pulling their strings and their friendships with top witnesses. I hold a deep SUSPICION OF ANYONE FUNDED RIGHT NOW. If your project is funded, I am suspicious of you, if your project is not funded, my sincere respects, you rock! Keep going, you are valuable and you aren't wrong for selling, but...

Screnshot of Ecency daily posts because it is the app I like the most and use daily. Nothing against them. Love Ecency. Ecency is valuable. Their work is important. Without Ecency Hive would be less valuable IMO. Still I have to use them to illustrate it beacuse it is the easiest for me as a user and a fan.

Ever since we became more strict with the DHF financing some projects and people started posting updates, guides and etc much more often. That is likely because they can't keep running without funds. They can't get DHF funding, so they must get post inflation funding. It is natural and IMO the more morally correct funding source.

It is as natural as it is problematic. Because when projects get a bigger piece of the inflation others get a smaller one. It is a problem because others would possibly keep powered up their piece of the inflation, projects and employees need to sell to keep things running and I can't blame them, but do you realize that the result is the same? DHF was cut, they keep selling from other sources.

It is absolutely their right to sell HIVE made from posting and possibly the most morally correct source of financing, but still it is selling, it still has the same impact as the DHF financing. One can be absolutely right in all ways posible and still be hurting Hive. Selling is hurting Hive and our economy depends on selling.

Unemployment in disguise

Our problem was that we (by we I mean the stake needed to make it happen) thought that market price and liquidity were substitutes for income. Turns out it is not.

So many important people, from devs to witnesses APPEAR TO not have a job outside of the blockchain.

Remove Hive and they are unemployed. Hive is not a job so they are unemployed.

On Hive's discord one witness once acknowledged they may need to start selling their stake just to survive. I am extremely sorry, but why did we elect someone without a proper job and source of income?

Those people without external income can't buy HIVE, only sell, swap or live off of what they sold early on, they have no job nor income to support Hive, they can only to be supported by it. Why do we elect such people?

Many projects also do not have a source of revenue that is not inflationary and does not rely on selling HIVE one way or another, DHF or not.

That is our problem. It may be too late to say it now, but if we were rational we would have elected witnesses and supported projects from people that make it clear and pride themselves to have a real job or business outside of Hive, instead of people committing 100% to Hive. What sort of people have we "hired" for Hive?!

People with real income, fiat income, would be the reliable people to keep things running indefinitely under pressure, not even to touch on the aspect of skills. Someone with a job has their skills attested by the market, someone living off of Hive and whose whole career is developing Hive stuff... Not so much...

The people that claim "their skin is 100% in the game" as in Hive is their livelyhood think that sounds good, they are right that their "job" depends on Hive doing well and they are incentivized to do so. Still that is not enough to keep things running, to prove their technical capability and all of it may even cloud their own jodgement.

For thos people without jobs outside of Hive it all ends when other people's money end because they don't have their own outside of the blockchain.

If we were rational we would have rewarded and promoted and used projects developed by people with real jobs and businesses outside of HIVE, for their income and for their market proven skills. Even without a business model that generates income, at least we would trust they would be able to keep things running forever, financially and technically. Those are the only ones that can keep things running after all.

Anything else is us using ourselves as leverage, and leverage eventually ends in liquiditation.

Benefit of the doubt

It is possible that some witnesses and projects actually do have businesses and jobs outside of the blockchain but are just low profile.

Because some have been on the blockchain for 10+ years old I suspect some are Bitcoin millionaires.

It would be reassuring to know they have a job though. This is the kind of things we may only find out after months, maybe years, of not financing them. Job means income, job means skill.

What could come after a collapse and an exodus

The risk of this crisis is that we may lose all infrastructure we have built. We pride ourselves of having more devs, projects and better witnesses than STEEM, they have nothing.

Right now it looks like their nothing is worth more than our everything precisely because they can keep running nothing forever, we may not be able to keep our everything running for much longer.

Is our model better than Steem? Are we legitimate?

I am saying this out of distress, if we end up worth less than them it would effectively mean they accidentally had the right, sustainable, model.

It would mean our fork was in the wrong, proven by time. It would cast doubt on our legitimacy. We forked because we were afraid Justin Sun would use the stake he bought, did he? I think not. Well, we did, we turned that stake into a fund didn't we? Have we broken the promise of not using it in the end? Was it legitimate?

I am afraid our fork can be seen as either ill intended or naive and I don't know which one is worse.

The bottomline

So the question is, what witnesses are buying HIVE? What projects are buying and powering up? That is the only valuable thing in the end.

Do we have representants that believe and buy or sell to survive?

Do we have representants that support Hive or that are supported by Hive?

Does your witness have a job outside of Hive? Do the founders of your project have other sources of income?

I know projects and devs can't work for free. It is natural to think "if I need to put my own money in it without expecting a return then why would I be here, host a witnesses/API node or keep my project running?"

I expect someone will read this and think "does this guy really want me to pay to work?" and you know what? The answer is yes.

Needless to elaborate further but I will.

Beyond the bottomline

Many projects are not working for free, they have been funded with 6 figures a year for many years, they had years to save and get an income.

They may have started from scratch, risked a lot, worked hard, even sacrificed a career for Hive, they proved their commitment to Hive, they proved their value, thy onboarded people, we use what they built... But if getting funded with 6 figures a year for multiple years is enough for them to forget that LIKE EVERYONE ELSE they are NOT ENTITLED to anything beyond risking their own money and spending their own time and effort, then maybe... I will leave your mind to fill in the blank.

We are facing the real possibility of a collapse. Why would you keep running things?

Are wintesses, devs and projects running because they want to and can afford to or are they running only as long as it is publicly financed? Because right now people are angry for forcibly financing stuff publicly since at yet another all time low everyone who has ever bought is at a loss.

If we don't get assurance that things will keep running and the "important people" have jobs and don't rely on Hive and don't expect their projects to be financed by the public then it is fair to assume that we are at the brink of infrastructure collapse.

Note, to ASSUME we are at the brink of infrastructure collapse is not to be at the brink of infrastructure collapse. Assuming we are is just the logical conclusion anyone can reach by thinking that people running things don't have a job outside of Hive as HIVE keeps going down.

Hope in small employed amateurs

If our much valuable frontends, devs, witnesses and projects in general leave Hive and get shut down then a new ecosystem may emerge.

Don't you think small devs will be able to vibe code their own frontends, run their own witness nodes and make their own PRs to replace the old devs, witnesses and projects? They will. They can today but with current better more professional projects they are overshadowed because truthly what we have today is very good.

Quality and profesionalism will CERTAINLY not be the same if we face infrastructure collapse, it will all be much worse if ran by "smaller people", but we will have something more valuable: reliability. Not reliability in terms of code or infrastructure because those will suck, but financial reliability and commitment reliability.

They will be doing what they do because they want to, they know they are spending (not investing) money and time and they don't expect to make it back, they are using their income from outside of Hive and because of that things will keep running badly but running regardless. Small devs will know they are paying for others to use, instead of the current model where others finance, indirectly, and that is what would make it sustainable.

That is what will make other small teams valuable if current ones for whatever reason can't afford to keep going. Lose quality, earn commitment sustainability.

That is what open source contribution means. People with real jobs spending their real money and free time on what they like. Not professional publicly funded teams.

If we keep going down more than STEEM and going up less than STEEM then we will be worth less than STEEM.

If it is true that we maintain a caste of unemployed people living off of Hive then we may lose projects, devs and witnesses.

We need one of those premises to be wrong.

If both are correct at least while losing everything we will win something valuable after the decimation of devs, witnesses and projects: Trust.