Thanks, because there's no requirement to say nice things! To be honest, I mention the few people who have been clear and open in not supporting any form of payment back or foward only because I think it's fair to have that stance included here where I am inviting everyone to discuss it. I have never been subject to the full weight of the brunt of downvoting etc. on any personal level, and while I know I would likely shrug it off, it doesn't mean it wouldn't be immensely tiring and a disincentive, as many others have experienced.

More realistically, including those opinions is because I understand there are people here who are well known and who have done their own work, who also believe a lot differently about what's valuable to the chain and what the resources of the DHF and beyond should be used for. I don't take the feedback personally, as it wasn't delivered personally: I can confirm that when they said, "we will NOT support this" it wasn't directly followed with a statement like, "because you are a poopyface and we hate you".

There are plenty of reasons to develop a certain sentiment about chain-wide resources because we are all ultimately developers and protectors of them. However, I've been bandying this about for years, and doing full time, corporate level work for free is actively eroding the overall valuation of all work around the ecosystem. The trick is understanding and creating some form of balanced position or task list with compensation, that meets in the middle between "free and grassroots community owned" and "slave labour". What was given was freely given, and should the majority decision be to only say, pay going forward, or say, only pay for what was already done, then that's okay and it doesn't change my overall passion for Hive.

I'm just taking this past year especially as the tipping point for really actively acknowledging that I should have done this from the start. Journeys are defined by how you get somewhere and there's no set goal, so it is what it is. People like Gandalf or Howo or Martibis or even Joel/Thedesertlynx have been overwhelmingly correct in my need to build a sustainable base to work from, and so this feels like a good time to start that next leg.

Many ValuePlan projects are symptoms of the DHF culture I mentioned before, and they will continue to spiral if they aren't changed slowly inside of our own societal mores— small initiatives with hard working volunteers do a bunch of stuff that takes a shot at putting our names out there with a fraction of the hype style things that other chains can afford to out of pocket. But with our system, a small proposal is unlikely to get passed, or someone making it sets it up in a subpar fashion and doesn't give it enough runway, isn't able to make enough noise about it; you name it, the paths to failure are myriad. So VP was this intermediary that could basically create the opportunity to try and still be overall accountable to the wider stakeholders as a place where the funds could be viewed and the participants identified.

For me, ValuePlan was a way that I could basically take on a lot of talks and conferences, sometimes more last minute, as I was still fully forced to do transparent sourcing and resource provisioning for our teams, but that made the burden of carrying these things on my personal funds/credit cards less dangerous because an entity existed to pay me back that didn't have the potential to disprove the reimbursement payout before it completed. But I also recognize that since so many opinions on what should be funded exist, there is a feeling of "choice" that is removed when funding by this setup happens. Nevermind that it is the only way that other chains get anything done and often requires corporate structures; we are different, and trying to find a way to do this that overall respects the ethos of Hive is no easy task. VP is still a pretty good option for this, and can continue to get better.

One unexpected problem that's arisen from it though is that VP and GP have become the defacto funnel for which all complaints hit first. It highlights some of the really intense fair criticism, but also, a ton of really shitty internet only faceless bully behaviour that can likewise be mixed in. People see that, and it makes them even LESS likely to try for a DHF proposal, which in turn makes VP even more needed. Meanwhile, VP is looking for ways to create tools and rubrics that will make people more confident in trying to do things themselves, and only have VP as a voluntary oversight body. It's not there yet, and in general, has really just become a place where a maelstrom of people are frustrated about what they can get, what's being given, where they want a job or want a job taken away, where they want to receive funds but not be controlled, but also where they want to be told what to do so they can earn without having to think or shoulder the tough responsibility of being the boss. A beautiful mess.
Lots of potential for it to get worse, or better. I think it can get better, but I also see it as something that is really helpful from the perspective of what I need to do day to day (liquidity provision for a listing, for example).

Anyways, I don't want this post to be overall taken as a complaint of a lack of support. I think I'm someone on this chain who could never, ever say that I've experienced that. I get my share of really shitty behaviour tossed at me, but that's being out and about on the internet, not related to anything Hive specific. I'd like for it to be a place to know me for those who don't get to other than these big yearly dumps, and a place for everyone to say, "WE WANT YOU TO GO DO THIS" so I can take all of those responses and see if I can't cobble an ideal outcome from them for all of us, and yeah, myself too.