Can We Please Stop Powering Down !

I get sad seeing people powering down, because it masks the great work everyone is doing in terms of posting, curation etc (including the people who power down !) It also indicates market cap being drained out of Hive.

It occurs to me that there are three basic reasons for people powering down;

1. They're cashing out and getting out of Hive.
2. They have an immediate emergency and no other sensible source of cash that doesn't involve borrowing from legacy financial sharks.
3. They're doing well enough on Hive that powering down a set amount each week, month or quarter has become part of their regular income.

https://pixabay.com/photos/macroperspective-feather-down-dew-6503070/

What This Post Doesn't Cover

Number 3 certainly applies to developers getting funds from the DHF, and maybe some of the top witnesses who have to cover server and electricity costs. There might even be a few people who are powering down a regular amount to crate a side-hustle income.

People cashing out and quitting Hive makes me hugely sad, but I appreciate it happens. That's something which comes down to user retention, and is something we need to be a lot better at. It's also not the subject of this post !

There are a few other reasons for people to power down while still keeping the funds within Hive; maybe they want to buy HBD or Tribe Tokens, or need some liquid HIVE to meet SBI purchase commitments. I suspect those are less common than the three I've listed above. They're also not the focus of this post.

Who This Post Covers

I'm primarily writing this post in relation to people who power down because they have an immediate crisis to deal with. Maybe they've got car repairs to pay for, an unexpected tax bill, or something in the home has broken and needs to be replaced urgently.

It's actually probably better for someone to free up cash by powering down HP than taking out credit card debt or a loan at ruinous interest from a legacy financial institution. So there should be no guilt about what is effectively a very sensible way to fund an unexpected expense.

By the time somoene is powering down HP the chances are that they've already drained HBD savings down to nothing. It's far quicker than powering down HP.

What Could A Solution Look Like ?

I'm sure we could deisng an alternative that allows people to raise emergency funds without powering down. That way, Hive gets a real world application while at the same time preserving it's market cap.

I am not a coder of any kind, so I'm trying to think this through from a business perspective. Any feedback would be welcome about whether what I'm suggesting would work, or what barriers might exist that would need to be solved.

What I think might work looks like this;

• A loan that is paid in HIVE, SWAP.HIVE or HBD, not HP.
• The loan would be secured on assets held within HIVE - HP, HBD savings or maybe a few of the top long-term stable Tribe tokens.
• The earnings from those secured assets would go to repay the loan, with the ability also for the borrower to "overpay" with HIVE or HBD to pay the loan off faster.
• A smart contract would lock the assets to prevent the owner selling them while they're still acting as security. It would also enable the earnings to be paid to the lender not the normal owner.

I think the key issue is that most of the assets being used as security have very low earnings, for example HP needs to be actively used for curation to earn anything. It might be possible for the smart contract to take over a percentage of curation for the borrower by using automated curation trails (so many Hivers don't curate efficiently anyway !) It might also be the case that repaid borrowings could be placed in an HBD savings account or used to hold EDSI tokens until the loan is repaid, with the interest also going towards repayment.

I'm sure that when I joined Hive I saw a couple of apps which enabled people to borrow Hive, but I haven't seen any of them mentioned for a couple of years. That suggests they either didn't have a good business model, or they just weren't widely enough known or marketed to be viable.

If something is coded that helps solve this problem, it'll need to be widely marketed, possibly even to non-Hive users if we can find a way to secure other non-Hive crypto assets.

I could see it being part of the @distriator ecosystem, and I'm sure utilities could be developed to identify people with poor KE ratios who have regularly powered down so they could be (very politely and discreetly) messaged to make them aware of the service.

So what do you think ? Is this a crazy idea, or a facility that could benefit Hive users and keep market cap in the system ? What have I missed out or not thought about ?

Posted using The BBH Project