The use of acronyms on Hive (or anywhere else, for that matter) is part of what makes the learning curve steep at the beginning.
There hasn't been an initiative to make an overhaul of the guides new users on Hive are exposed to in ages (since the legacy chain and the "unique" interface, I believe - maybe I'm wrong and have missed some).
There is one now! Contributors are needed.
This is going to be a bigger project than the guides, from my understanding, so let's make sure different parts fit in well.
Let's look at the 3 acronyms I mentioned in the title.
Hive Power Up Day (HPUD)
This is a community-started event taking place on the 1st of each month, and dating back since the legacy chain time. I don't remember who started the event, but personally I now link it to HiveBuzz and its HPUD badges, which gamifies it.
During HPUD, participants power up some HIVE to symbolically show their support for the chain and participate to this event as a community.
Not everyone participates, and I haven't at first either, considering that it doesn't matter on which day you power up if you do it. After a while, I changed my mind, because that's a day when people may be looking for positive examples, knowingly or not. They probably don't notice that you power up on any other day, unless they look. But they may be inspired if they see you do it on HPUD.
For the HiveBuzz HPUD badges themselves, here are the ways to get them.
Power Up Month (PUM)
This is a challenge proposed by HiveBuzz every month. It's more difficult than powering up once, at the beginning of the month, because you need to do it every day of the month, no excuses, no passes. Without powering down during the month too. Alternatively, you can set your posts to 100% HP rewards instead of 50/50%, but if you don't post daily, on the days you don't post you need to power up the minimum amount. I prefer to power up and post daily with a 50/50% split of rewards myself. That gives me the option to choose what to do with the HBD I earn from author rewards every day.
Here are the rules, more precisely.
I've been doing this, as well as HPUD, for a good while:
Krampus Coefficient (KE Ratio)
This is a relatively new metric on Hive, introduced initially by Azircon, later integrated into PeakD.
If the name confuses you, here's who Krampus is. He punishes bad children while Saint Nicholas rewards the good ones, in certain cultures in Europe. In our culture, for example, Saint Nicholas himself brings the birch rod to children who haven't behaved well during the year.
But we are not children anymore, are we? 😀 That is true, but since we are most of us grown ups here, in a family we need to know where our money is going, especially if we spend more than we make. And what the Krampus coefficient (also known as KE ratio) is looking at is one facet of that, rewards authors and curators made overall and how much they still have powered up. It's a ratio between the two sides.
KE ratio as a metric is a tool, which may be useful to some people, but doesn't work well by itself. You also need to know how to use it, otherwise it can easily send false signals.
Tools are as good as how well the person using them knows to take advantage of them. And let's not forget some tools can be used to do harm or good, depending on the intention of their user.
KE ratio is a simple metric, which can point out some anomalies. That narrows down the search, if you are looking for something in particular. But without corroborating it to other information, using the KE ratio as a way to put verdicts is dangerous.
For example, I have put more funds into the Hive ecosystem (including Hive-Engine and Splinterlands) and the legacy chain than I have taken out. I'd say significantly more, but than we would debate what significant is. 😀
The KE ratio of my posting account (@gadrian) is currently 3.64. That sounds high, isn't it? Maybe it is. But... it's a deformed picture.
I have a staking account (@gadrian-sp). That's where I power up every day and on HPUD, by the way. And in the past (and probably in the future too), when I powered down my posting account, that's where the stake went (unless it is kept liquid or goes to HBD nowadays). That makes my KE on the posting account higher with each power down and keeps my KE at 0.0 on my staking account, no matter how much stake I add.
However, the KE of @gadrian + @gadrian-sp is: 0.62. Quite a difference, right?
The KE ratio also doesn't count the HIVE I have liquid (and I have some), my HBD in savings or liquid, my funds on Hive-Engine and in games on Hive. Many of them came initially from HIVE, one way or another.
So the real KE ratio is much lower than that. Trust me, if I count Splinterlands alone (where I used external funds too, it's true), that KE ratio would go much lower than that.
But that is my case alone. There are many different situations where a high KE ratio is justified.
There is also the argument that we do too much policing, and since these are our funds, we can do whatever we want with them. And I believe that's true. However, remember the example with the family I gave above? If you have a child that keeps spending without limit on stupid things (hmm, "stupid" might be debatable, depending on whom you ask 😀), would you try to fix that in some way? The complicated ways of decentralization...
I believe the KE ratio is okay for those who know how to use it. I am glad PeakD decided to "hide" it behind a click to avoid impulsive actions of some people who might not go further than that number itself.