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There are many sides to a shared wallet

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@tarazkp
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My shared wallet

Imagine you have a group of 20 people and 5 of them put varying amount into a wallet to reach a total of 1000 dollars and the group has to decide what to spend it on. Each person can propose an idea about how to allocate the funds and then people can decide which ideas they will support, but all will be spent, meaning if one idea is accepted by all, it will all be allocated to that one idea.

If all 20 people have an equal vote, that means that it is entirely possible and perhaps likely, that the decision is made by the majority of the 15 who didn't put anything into the wallet at all, or each vote for their own proposal, no matter its merits. If only those who filled the wallet make the decision, then the 15 will have no say over the allocation, but they do have a say over what is proposed. The group are able to discuss what they think has merit to spend the wallet contents on and reach some kind of agreement. Not everyone is going to get their own decision supported, not all support decisions will get the same value and there will be sacrifices made, where some support decisions won't be agreed with by all, but will still get some percentage allocation.

A decent proposal

In a very simplified sense, this is what is happening on Hive, except it is happening on about 25,000 decisions a day, and the decision-making group is about 15,000 accounts daily and most of what is proposed, is not seen by the majority of accounts. While it might not be the intention, each piece of content whether post or comment is a proposal of sorts and has the potential to attract voting attention and value from the shared wallet. However, the discussion of content allocation is only open to those who have the ability to access the contents of the wallet, which on Hive is dictated and weighted by amount of stake - HIVE POWER.

For those without stake this can seem unfair, especially since the discussion is done economically, meaning that a "for" vote adds value and an "against" vote takes value away, dictated by how much draw an account has on the shared wallet. In general, this actually works pretty well as for example, if one large whale upvotes themselves a lot to maximize their gain, several smaller accounts can negate those votes and most likely, larger accounts will join in too. If that same whale retaliates, it is possible for the same group to counteract that downvote too, if they choose.

Gather your friends - if you have some.

What is interesting is that often the people who complain about getting downvoted by whales, don't have someone to come to their "rescue" because, they haven't built up the trust in the community or proven they are adding value to the community to warrant it. It is an uncomfortable conversation to have when people who have been here for years, being what the internet would call "toxic" personalities, are complaining about getting downvoted and no one speaking up for them - because, how have they been here so long and not managed to prove their value that someone would defend them?

I was handed a post today where someone who got a few downvotes on their posts likened their struggle to the civil rights movement headed by Dr. Martin Luthor King. The level of narcissism and delusions of grandeur are extraordinary in some people and groups. And, the people that were commenting on the post are more of the same types of people, those who believe what they have to say is valuable, even though the vast majority of both staked and unstaked users obviously disagree. However, this plays into their delusional narrative that what they have to say is "too intelligent and too honest" for the masses, the sheep.

Proof of something

Ah, but this is a proof-of-brain platform, meaning that those who are intelligent tend to do pretty well here, especially if they are honest and can remain so over time. People who can build trust tend to get support, but once that trust is broken, as we have seen a few times on some well-supported accounts, the support turns access to the wallet off very fast. It can be a hard road back into the greater community when people feel cheated - for example by someone claiming original, self-created content and then finding out it is not.

But, nothing stops a person posting what they like on Hive, it is just that stake decides what gets value and in some cases, what doesn't get value. An account can post all of the toxic content they want and they might even get some stake support on it, but all stake has access to join the discussion and that means, they are able to redirect *potential value away from it.

Just to clarify, the amount of "pending payout" on a post isn't owned by the account until it is moved from the reward pool (the stake shared wallet) and into a private wallet at payout. The pending payout is a dynamic representation of what the community has allocated to a proposal, but it is by no means secure and shouldn't be. If it was secure, it would mean that people would predominantly vote for themselves and other poor behaviors, as we have seen in the past before the 2.5 free downvotes were introduced in 2019.

Ohhh, the tyranny!

So, downvotes do not remove anyone's rewards, it removes their potential rewards as the discussion progresses for 7 days. Also, downvotes aren't censorship, because they do not stop anything being written to the blockchain and they do not stop it being found. An interface could quite easily be set up to only show content from accounts that have a negative reputation for example - what a joy that would be to read through. Also, what people forget is that Hive is an opt-in and opt-out platform, no one need be here, no one need "succumb themselves" to the current rules of the blockchain, there is no one forcing anyone to post, vote, comment or do anything here.

A sniff of attention

What is interesting is how many of the people who complain about various aspects of what I am mentioning here rage quit and how many of them have rage quit multiple times, only to keep opting back into Hive. As I have said about trust, integrity matters and these same kinds of people for years have shown that they have very little - yet still expect to be supported. As said, narcissists.

They don't actually care about the platform, and some might not even care about the possibility of money, what they do care about is the currency of attention and they will try to get their fill by any means possible, so they create drama to get eyes looking and when those eyes use their staked voice in the discussion to say that the content doesn't deserve value from the shared pool, they use that to play victim and create more drama in the hope for more attention. This gets attention from the same kinds of people as they are and they feel validated. This is cyclical in nature and also why these same people can't seem to opt-out of Hive, because they can't get attention anywhere else.

The dynamics in play here are very complex in many ways and the coded solutions to try to find a happy equilibrium are far from perfect, but it is to be expected that in an open space that allows anyone to opt-in and offers the potential for monetary and attentional reward, it is going to attract an assortment of people. Most of those people are going to try and add some value to the community through their various proposals in order to convince the staked decision-makers to throw some their way. And a few are going to do what trolls do on the internet and look for their fifteen minutes of fame, as often as they can - with the irony being that they get what serial attention seekers get - ignored.

Asked, received, Complained.

The governance on Hive is quite a unique structure and I enjoy being part of the blockchain a lot, because it mimics much of the real world activities, with different variables in play to see how they interact with each other. What is interesting is that in general, toxic and the normally found behaviors on the centralized platforms aren't seen here nearly as much, because the incentives are different. If people were incentivized here to post selfies, the platform would be full of selfies. If trolling and spam got a lot of support, that would flood the platform too. But, it doesn't, because those with stake don't support it.

The majority of users (not all) who get downvoted into oblivion are the people who actually aim for it through their behaviors and desire for attention. What they produce is often inflammatory and has personal attacks on users or user groups in the bid to attract attention from them and when that attention chooses to close taps, they complain about the way they are being treated. It is classical trolling behavior and it is up to you if you opt into it or not.

While imperfect, there are a great deal of positives to the platform and its changing ruleset, something we all have a voice in also and I think it has improved vastly over the last years. Not everyone agrees with me on a lot of what I say. But it is good to remember that on Hive, no one is going to like all decisions made all of the time, but we all have the choice in where we spend our time, energy and available resources. Every part of this platform is an investment opportunity of some kind, just as life is in general.

Some people invest what they've got wisely, some waste whatever they have.

Taraz [ Gen1: Hive ]

Posted Using LeoFinance Beta