I've been thinking about this for a while and want to put it out there. Not as a finished proposal, more as me thinking out loud.
What if we pointed Hive in one direction?
Hive has more going for it than most chains. What we've never done is point all of that in one direction at the same time.
Every project on Hive pursues its own goals, and every stakeholder funds what they think is best. What if for six months, we all backed one clear strategy with a named goal: the funding, the builders and the stake behind the same thing, measured the whole way.
Maybe it works, and we find out what Hive can do when it moves together. Maybe it doesn't, and we've lost six months of something we can easily undo. Either way, we'd learn more than we have from years of doing what we are doing now.
So how would we actually do it? The first question is who can set a direction at all.
Hive isn't leaderless, its leaders are dormant
Witness elections and DHF outcomes are decided by stake, and stake is concentrated in a small number of accounts. That authority is real. It's just used only to react, never to lead.
When I post an idea, I'm one account. It gets read and forgotten. I'd need a thousand accounts my size to move anything. Those accounts don't exist. When a few large accounts back something, everyone notices, because on Hive everyone watches stake, not arguments.
What's missing is one signal
The obvious answer is "whales should just say what they want." It doesn't work even in the slightest. 20 whales each posting their vision for Hive is noise: 20 directions, no clarity, no commitment, nothing a builder can plan around. And generally people dont even do that. They just click vote on proposals or on return proposal. What's missing isn't opinions. It's one direction with stake committed behind it.
The council idea
My first thought was an elected council. Five people, voted in by stakeholders for six-month terms. They publish a program and a scorecard, decide DHF votes, get an operational budget, and set a strategy. If they fail the scorecard, stakeholders elect someone else.
There's precedent: with witnesses, stake already elects a small group to run something important. Witnesses run the chain. A council would direct funding and strategy.
The case for it is coordination. Today every funding decision waits for dozens of large holders to each notice a proposal and decide alone, with nobody able to commit in advance. Demand signals non-existant. Five people with a mandate can say:
"We will fund this, if you deliver that."
The objections are obvious. "This is Steemit Inc. again." Steemit Inc. held its stake permanently, answered to no one, and couldn't be voted out. A council would be elected, term-limited, measured against published targets, and gone in six months if it failed.
"I know better than five people."
Maybe some of you do. Can you say that of everyone? And how has everyone deciding alone worked out for us? Power is concentrated today, while responsibility is nobody's. When nothing moves, nobody is accountable, because nobody committed to anything.
Where the council stalls: power
Without real power, any such body is worthless. We might as well call it the Hive UN.
Real power would mean stakeholders proxying to the council. But a proxy on Hive has major security issues, and five people can be phished, bribed or pressured. Doing it safely would take a hardfork, a DHF-only proxy that leaves witness votes alone. That's never going to happen. :)
A council that only recommends has the opposite problem. Without committed stake, it's a glorified blog post.
Either way, it comes down to the same thing: stake has to commit to one direction. So whats reasonable is the smallest version of that.
A strategy proposal
One named strategy, as a slate. Not a vision statement: specific proposals, teams, amounts and milestones. For example: one goal (retained new users from outside Hive, measured on-chain monthly), one front door for newcomers, one target audience to market to, and milestone-based funding instead of mind numbing decade long maintenance proposals.
Endorsement with one click. Voting for it means committing to vote for the named proposals this term and the specific efforts named. NOT VISION, actual efforts. The total stake support becomes a public signal:
"this direction is backed by N million HP."
Builders now know what's fundable, what we collectively want to achieve, and which direction stake chose to back TOGETHER.
Renewal every six months, against a scorecard.
Why?
Because having no strategy and direction is also a direction. When nobody sets a direction, Hive defaults to the direction it already had that was set by those other guys.... You know, STINC.... That's the direction we're drifting in right now, whether anyone chose it or not.
What if, for six months, we chose?
What if we decided where we are going and how we are going to get there?
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Lets try some pings. See if this has any legs.
@blocktrades, @gtg, @azircon, @themarkymark, @solominer, @yabapmatt, @pharesim, @theycallmedan, @stoodkev, @elmerlin, @acidyo, @neoxian, @balte, @lazy-panda, @smooth, @tarazkp, @engrave, @stayoutoftherz, @xeldal, @coininstant...
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