I have been shocked and appalled at the responses of Valueplan administrators to accusations of theft by fraud of the DHF funds belonging to the Hive community and disbursed by Valueplan. Instead of responsibly providing proof fraud did not occur, defensive scheming, raging, insults, and attempts to handwave it all away were their responses. To date the Valueplan proposal has disbursed >$2M through a variety of initiatives to improve Hive's market share and position, gain investors, support token price, get listed on exchanges, and grow the user base. Two administrators, @guiltyparties and @lordbutterfly, that spend a lot of that money have flatly refused to provide receipts for expenditures. This is utterly unacceptable and is certainly not best practice for operations spending other people's money. It's an affront to the folks whose money is being spent, especially in view of credible allegations of theft by fraud of that money.
I have recently learned of a less well funded group and reviewed it's practices documenting it's expenditures, work, and achievement of, or failure to achieve it's goals. Cold Beet Root Soup is providing renovation and improvements to a school to enable kids to learn about Web3. With a limited budget and personnel they have carefully and thoroughly enabled folks to review their spending and work, as you can see from the link. CBRS exemplifies how that should be done.
In contrast @lordbutterfly continually obfuscates what funds he has received, what those funds are for, how they are spent, and what they have achieved. It is hard to imagine a worse example of preventing oversight of the massive disbursements of the Hive community's funds than the vile mistreatment anyone that has had the temerity to ask @lordbutterfly any questions about the tens of thousands of our HBD he has spent. He is deliberately misinforming people asking how their money is being spent and what it is achieving, making a mockery of professional business administration, and Valueplan itself. When I asked him "Then what happened to the money?" he replied "I bought stuff with it. Not that its your concern what I do with the money I earn."
While @guiltyparties has maintained professional standards of communication, he has been no more forthcoming, nor less obfuscatory, regarding his administration of the funds he is responsible for to the Hive community. Indeed, it is a program he has responsibility for, SWC (Street Workout Community) in Venezuela, that has been accused by participants of theft by fraud. He has continually claimed it was just a misunderstanding, making every effort to simply discourage any discussion or investigation into those allegations, and - just like @lordbutterfly - flatly refused to verifiably document those expenditures with receipts.
His most recent statement to me here
"Whatever you imagined isn't happening. LB paid a vendor last month. I have the agreement sitting in front of me right now.
"Receipts have to be so heavily redacted to be posted publicly that they would be almost useless, similar to the one linked here about the car sale..."
I spoke to someone on the ground in Venezuela who denied receipts present any kind of security risk there. Cold Beet Root Soup doesn't redact receipts in Venezuela. I've never redacted receipts when accounting for material purchases to my clients. None of the accountants I've ever worked with have redacted receipts. None of them has ever heard of anyone redacting receipts. Have you? There is no sound reason for that line of crap. No rational person will take the word of two guys refusing to show receipts and just claiming everything is fine, especially after the remarkable obfuscation, guilty conscience, and vile abuse that has been @lordbutterfly's response to everyone that has dared to ask him questions about how he has spent the money he received, and @guiltyparties valiant efforts to shoo away the allegations of theft by fraud.
I'm not imagining anything. I'm not speculating. I'm not making any accusations of anything other then their reprehensible behaviour towards me and others that have demanded they account for their expenditures of our money. There are credible eyewitness allegations of theft by fraud and all I am demanding is proof there is no fraud, the receipts. The claim that I am imagining anything is fake news, and mischaracterizes the problem that is: Valueplan is alleged to be allowing DHF funds to be stolen by fraud, and @guiltyparties and @lordbutterfly are refusing to provide any evidence beyond 'trust me bro' and 'OMG you're an insane person!'. The harder they weasel out of direct, factual answers, refuse to provide documentary evidence, and resort to abusive ad hominems the more guilty they look, and everyone that has ever had to deal with a thief knows this damn well. They are creating the problem and making Valueplan look like a scam.
Valueplan is currently seeking approval for more than $100k for the next month, having spent all the funds they had been approved by voters ahead of schedule. About the only communication Hive gets from Valueplan is requests for more funding or raging vituperation of those that ask where the money is going and gone. This contrasts sharply with Cold Beet Root Soup, whose linked report leaves no question whatsoever as to who did what with what money, makes it impossible to credibly allege fraud, and thoroughly documents what they have done, intend to do, and how they intend to do it. They did this for a budget of <$2k, and none of that money came from the DHF. Valueplan has spent >$2M dollars of the DHF that belongs to all members of the Hive community, and has heretofore only obfuscated and misinformed folks that asked how that money was spent. Instead of preparing thorough reports that make asking questions unnecessary, this abuse is how they prevent accounting for those expenditures of our money.
Looking at @blanchy's posts discussing Valueplan's funds and their use, almost every comment on those posts expresses dismay at the lack of accounting for these expenditures. I could link dozens of such comments here, but anyone that cares can and should go and carefully read those posts and the comments, in order to independently verify my statements here. I have run on enough to make my point: Valueplan is begging to be stolen from at best by undertaking no accounting whatsoever for the $M's of our money it is spending, and administrators of those funds are spending hours and days preventing disclosure of their expenditures rather than documenting and disclosing them as CBRS has done for less than 1% of Valueplan's funding.
The very least we should expect from Valueplan is a complete accounting of how they've spent and are spending our money, following the exemplary model CBRS has provided. I have spoken with other parties besides @guiltyparties and @lordbutterfly that have administered expenditures for Valueplan, and they also affected outrage at any questions or criticism, and accompanied their defensive protests with vitriol, not even acknowledging they were spending money that didn't belong to them and had a responsibility to report what they did with it. Valueplan has an endemic culture of arrogance, posturing as above having to account to mere Hive users whose money they are spending, and excoriating anyone that inquires what is happening with our money with generous heapings of scorn, derision, and insults more suitable to a middle school child than a professional marketing manager.
I'm sure there are good people that are doing their best for the Hive community in their work for Valueplan, but none of them have stood up to ride herd on their abysmal administrators, nor to provide any answers to the questions 'what is being done with our money?'. For whatever reason, they're not stepping up to resolve this execrable situation, and leave themselves open to being accused of flocking with birds of a feather. Given the theft by fraud being alleged, that appears unwise.
On a matter fundamental to the DHF itself, I suggest that each proposal have it's own return proposal, rather than the funds of the entire DHF be only protected from any one undesirable proposal by only one return proposal as they are now. This makes smaller, even very well managed proposals unable to be funded without overcoming a hurdle that may be necessary to prevent Valueplan from wasting money on rally cars and art shows. CBRS couldn't gain funding from the DHF for <$2k without surmounting a barrier necessary to restrain Valueplan's proposal to spend $M's the way the return proposal works now. Coupling each proposal with it's own return proposal enables each to be evaluated on it's merits, and painting a schoolroom won't be required to surmount barriers to funding a rally car.
A few dozen whales hold the absolute majority of Hive stake, and absolutely can vote themselves our money to spend as they wish. Prudent folks will not find this situation acceptable. Were the DHF stock in a corporation rather than a commonly held fund, they could withdraw their funds from being risked against their will by selling their stock. The vast majority of Hive users have equity in the DHF but cannot prevent others from spending their equity against their will because we can't sell our equity in the DHF. This is because of how the DHF is coded, and not a reflection of the actual interests or desires of the individual stakeholders that don't happen to be whales. Stop being poor isn't a rational or just argument for denying their right to determine how their equity is managed. Gangs with guns often take property that isn't theirs and spend it as they see fit, and it is no more just to take people's property through a flawed voting process than it is by force.
Great products market themselves, and social media that provides valuable content from authors happy about publishing that content on Hive is all the marketing Hive needs to gain users. A growing user base inherently solves most of the challenges that Valueplan is trying to solve by funding rally cars, art shows, and gymnastics exhibitions without substantial results. Valueplan can't solve the lack of interesting content published by happy authors with wristbands, hats, and pens.
Recommendations:
Defund Valueplan. It's misguided conceptually and can't market a social media platform without happy users. Make each marketing effort, such as recruiting investors, gaining users, and getting listings on exchanges, standalone proposals. Eliminate any 'dual use' proposals, such as funding a rally car and holding a hackathon. Make each plan separate and administer them separately.
Accompany every DHF proposal with it's own return proposal. Don't make the resistance to funding a rally car the level of resistance painting a schoolroom must overcome.
Enable each Hive user to protect their equity in the DHF, such that their proportional stake in DHF equity cannot be spent on a DHF proposal they do not vote for. This requires accurate accounting and calculation of proportion of user stake to the DHF, reflecting funding of successful proposals to the DHF, and proportion of that funding each user that votes for a proposal represents. As the DHF is spent down users that have not spent down their equity in the DHF become a proportionately larger percentage of the DHF remaining. Those that vote for proposals have their proportional equity in the DHF reduced as they expend it by funding proposals. This prevents anyone's equity from being spent against their will, and is necessary for DHF proposal funding to justly be based on the votes and will of equity holders in the DHF.
Require ongoing and complete documentation of successful proposals' expenditures, work done, and achievements completed. This is a bog standard business practice, as CBRS shows. Wherever any lapse in such standards is allowed, it facilitates fraud, as we observe is alleged to be occurring now.
Audit Valueplan's expenditures to date. There are credible allegations of criminal theft by fraud, and Valueplan owes the people whose money it spent forthright documentation of every Hive disbursed, and accurately assigning guilt for any crimes or malfeasance to the criminals involved.
Fire incompetent and mendacious administrators like @guiltyparties and @lordbutterfly. They have utterly failed to administer funds entrusted to them in a responsible manner, enabling credible allegations of theft by fraud, acting like schoolchildren picking on other kids rather than business professionals, and failing to manage their administration of these programs to prevent these questions from having to be asked to begin with, as CBRS shows is easily done. I'm sure there are 100 better qualified and more competent administrators willing to do what needs doing on Hive right now. Were these guys picked because of their incompetence? The question has to be asked if their real job was indeed facilitating fraud and enabling kickbacks to be paid to whales voting for this pig of a proposal. It's hard to look at what they did and not come to that conclusion, but I'm trying.
We should setup a real Hive marketing program that creates authors happy they published great content on Hive. The Stewards of Gondor program arranged for several curators to be delegated modest funds (5000 Hive IIRC) with which to upvote posts they found worthy. For $2M we could unleash 4k Stewards of Gondor. That's probably more actual users than there are on Hive, so I'd suggest a much lower number of Stewards, maybe starting with 20 and growing as experience is gained. This also wouldn't spend DHF funds at all, but would only provide delegations for curation purposes. It was necessary to require the Stewards to account for their curation, because some of them tried to profit from it, but that can be done. Authors happy they posted great content on Hive is the best and only marketing plan we need to gain users and keep them. That would require that no one flag their posts and comments and prevents them from receiving the value of the upvotes. Maybe the flaggots could restrain their greed and let Hive grow. But that's just, like, my opinion, man, based on reason and silly things like that. We could hardly do worse than Valueplan, and it wouldn't cost a single HBD from the DHF to do it.