The Influence of Proxy Accounts on Hive Governance

Since the Leofinance DHF proposal may have may stirred the interest of Hivers who don't normally get involved in the governance of Hive, I thought it is a good time for this kind of post, which discusses one aspect of Hive governance - proxies.

What Represents Governance on Hive?

By governance on Hive, we mean voting on base-layer witnesses and on DHF proposals.

The governance voting power each account has is based on its own HIVE Power (including the delegated out HP, excluding the delegated in HP), plus the HP proxied to it.

There is a different governance at the level of sidechains (Hive-Engine, DLUX, SPK Network, etc.), but we are not discussing them here.

What Are Governance Proxy Accounts on Hive?

On Hive, someone can set a different account to act as his or her proxy in governance. Like delegations work for curation or resource credits for access, the account with the proxied HP takes the governance decisions and the account that has set the proxy can at any time remove or change its proxy account.

If the proxy account is removed, then the owner account has once again control over its own governance votes.

Understanding How Governance Proxy Votes Work

When someone sets a proxy account, he or she delegates the governance voting power to the proxy account. If the owner account votes on governance (basically on a DHF proposal, because front ends don't allow him or her to vote on witnesses when he or she has a proxy set), the vote is ignored. What matters is the vote of the proxy account.

Someone cannot delegate the governance votes to the proxy account on some votes and not on others. Otherwise said, this is all or nothing. You either delegate your governance votes or you don't, and you manage it yourself.

Options When You Disagree with Your Proxy Account Choices

If you disagree with your proxy account choices, or its lack of action, you have three options:

• you contact your proxy account holder and discuss the matter with him/her - note that the proxy account holder isn't accountable to you (as a witness you voted for would be, to some extent), since normally he or she didn't ask you to proxy your HP to him or her nor promised you a certain level of governance implication or a certain line of voting if you do set it as a proxy; a proxy account just does his governance actions as he or she sees fit for his own account and everyone who proxy their HP to this account follows these actions pretty much like the delegated HP votes on the content the delegatee votes on
• you change your proxy account
• you remove the proxy and get involved in governance yourself (that means both voting for witnesses and DHF proposals)

My Stance on Proxy Accounts

Proxy accounts are useful on Hive. When we are talking about the same persons controlling multiple accounts - whether personal or for business purposes - setting one proxy helps control the Hive governance actions from one account. Less work than to vote from multiple accounts on the same thing. So, it's convenient, while also not impacting decentralization.

When we are talking about different people proxying their HP to one account, I don't have the same stance.

While it's convenient for the account holder, by proxying your HP to another account, you reduce the decentralization of Hive. Where more should be involved, centers of power are formed instead, with (much) higher influence.

I understand that not everyone wants to be involved in governance, and setting a proxy is a way to delegate their governance voting power to someone they trust.

But just like it is important to manually curate yourself as much as possible instead of delegating your HP to various projects for dividends paid from their own curation, delegating governance votes has the same effect: concentrates power.

Manually curating and voting on governance are two of the easiest ways YOU (and each of us) can contribute to Hive.

In Closing

Proxy accounts are useful. I use them myself to proxy my HP from all accounts to one account. Like every useful tool, depending on how it is used, it can start to have detrimental effects at some point.

I'm not sure if the last change brought to governance to make votes expire after a while of not doing any governance action also affects proxies. Are they reset if accounts who have set proxies are long inactive? Anyone knows?

Posted Using LeoFinance Alpha