Side note:
If you're reading this post, then most likely I've already shared a link with you personally and you're part of the Project.hope community. I would appreciate it if you could invest several minutes of your time to read through it carefully and share your feedback with me (comment below or private message via Discord).
INTRODUCTION
Several weeks ago, I contacted a number of our community members and I suggested running a small experiment: I asked everyone involved to increase their beneficiary to 30% (on HIVE blockchain only) and I invested some of my own savings into renting out (via dlease.io) roughly over 200k HIVE Power to be delegated to the account: ph-support.
So far, I consider this little experiment to be a full success - and if you're reading this post, then most likely you belong to that group of people.
BREAKING EVEN
The initial idea has been quite straightforward:
to achieve a point, where funds coming from beneficiary would allow to cover cost on dleasing those HP (cost of dleased delegations is higher than rewards coming from manual curation)
I won't bore you all to death with math and calculations, but it seems that we've indeed managed to reach that goal and we're breaking even. This is very reassuring and I'm glad to see that project.economy is already fully sustainable.
However, there are still some challenges ahead. Challenges I wanted to discuss today.
SOME CHALLENGES AHEAD
Please allow me to explain one particular problem and present a suggested solution. Allow me to underline that currently I'm only taking HIVE blockchain into consideration in our discussion (I'm not focusing on Steemit here).
Currently, our project.hope voting power does greatly depend on just few large stakeholders: gcalex (120k HP delegated) and curation trail depends mostly on TheRising (almost 400k HP).
If we ever lose any of those (or both) then we all would be impacted greatly. Which worries me a lot. Depending on just a few "whales" has been a reason for many projects to fail (the moment when they've lost that support).
SOLUTION: SECURING MORE DELEGATIONS:
So far, with help coming from @adityajainxds - we've managed to already dlease over 200k HP. It required investing over 6000 HIVE to rent out for a period of several upcoming weeks.
Like I've mentioned before - based on my current calculations - currently we're breaking even. Which is great. However, breaking even is simply not enough. That would only mean, that we will be stuck to 200k HP and growing this account will be very slow.
I came up with some suggestions, which may be a bit unpopular ;) (hopefully I'm wrong)
DETAILED SOLUTION - road to 1 MLN HIVE POWER
Dleasing 50k HP every month would require quite solid LIQUID funds (around 1600 HIVE on a monthly basis).
I'm willing to trade all my DASH and buy HIVE tokens. This shall allow me to get around 4-5k HIVE tokens, which I would use to dlease 50k HP every month (by the end of 2020 my goal would be to DOUBLE current ph-support voting power).
My ULTIMATE GOAL is to ensure that by the end of 2021 "ph-support would exceed over 1 mln HIVE POWER
However, I'm only willing to invest the remaining of my savings if I can ensure a stable growth of ph-support voting power. While 30% beneficiary does allow us to break even ... it is simply not possible to grow. At least - not as fast as I would like it (we would move forward like a snail).
SUMMARY: WHAT WOULD YOU SAY?
What would you say, if I were to invest those 4-5k HIVE and pursue mentioned 1 mln HP? Assuming that I would ask you to set up beneficiary split 50/50 between you and our community budget (50% beneficiary to ph-fund). ONLY on HIVE.
And I would invest all those funds coming from extra beneficiaries into dleasing more HP to ph-support.
Most importantly:
we wouldn't be depending so greatly on TheRising and gcalex voting power. And if one day they would decide to power down / stop supporting us -> then we still would be able to carry on without receiving HUGE BLOW.
Project.hope "STANDARD MEMBERSHIP"
Those of you, who are not happy to join this experiment and who would rather continue setting up 20-30% beneficiary, would still continue to receive support from crypto.piotr, project.hope and our curation trail. Following the suggested solution will not be obligatory.
At the same time we're going to use ph-support MAINLY to support content created by those of you, who will join our "elite program". Details still need to be thought through and discussed, however if I won't come up with any better solution -> this one will be the one I'm planning to pursue.
Hopefully with you on board :)
SHARE YOUR OPINION
I'm fully aware that I'm asking for a lot. Unfortunately, I cannot come up with any better way of SCALING our project's economy and ensuring that our future will not depend greatly on just 2-3 large stakeholders. I cannot come up with any better idea of our community account reaching 1mln HP.
Let me know what you think (and make sure that you're read "SUMMARY: WHAT WOULD YOU SAY?" part of this post).
Yours, Piotr