In case you do not know, the Hobo Fund and the HoboDAO are separate entities on Steem. The HoboDAO (@hobo.media) is a community account and while it remains fairly centralized, this is a temporary state while the Caster, Auditor and Senator groups are being populated. The @hobo.fund is a private account and its funds are separate of the HoboDAO.
The Hobo Fund created four programs:
- The Journalist Fund (3,000,000 HBO)
- The Journalist Hunter Fund (1,000,000 HBO)
- The Ambassador Program (6,000,000 HBO)
- The Delegation Referral Program (2,000,000 HBO)
HBO Delegation Referral Program
You might have been wondering what happened to the HBO delegation referral program. Round 1 went quite well, bringing in plenty of delegators of various SP amounts, but during Round 2 it all seemed to come to a halt. What happened?
Well, there really was only participants from round 1 seeking to refer the same people as they did previously for more rewards. Since the turnout was so low and it seemed that there were really no new referrals the Hobo Fund just let it end. This fund is officially closed and reclaimed.
The remaining amount of the 2,000,000 HBO fund will be reclaimed and go towards Caster subsidizes for their work in reviewing content.
The Ambassador Program
The Ambassador program is perhaps our more successful program and has been very useful. Still, the Hobo Fund is going to be shutting it down due to less beneficial results over time.
Since the Hobo Fund does not want to provide a set amount of HBO tokens for a fund and then take it away, we arranged to allow Ambassadors to earn as much of the remaining HBO in the fund within a limited amount of time, and then burn the rest.
The Journalist Hunter Fund
The Journalist Hunter Fund was fairly fruitless, with very few participants. For this reason, the Hobo Fund just phased it out. Due to the fact that it experienced hardly any active engagement, the Hobo Fund has no issue with reclaiming this fund without burning any tokens. So, this fund is officially closed and reclaimed.
The remaining amount of the 1,000,000 HBO fund will be reclaimed and go towards Caster subsidizes for their work in reviewing content.
The Journalist Fund
The Journalist Fund was a 3,000,000 HBO token program that originally gifted 500 HBO per month to skilled journalists and informative bloggers on Steem. The fund was also leveraged to assist hard working informative bloggers from Venezuela. Later, the amount was raised to 3,000 HBO per individual on our journalism and informative blogging list.
The main goal of this fund was to support quality journalists and informative bloggers on Steem by providing them a monthly amount of HBO that could provide them with free access to entry into the HoboDAO contest system. However, all or nearly all of these content producers have not used their free tokens to submit their work or another person's work for the contests.
Since the primary use of these gifted tokens by these users is to sell them on the SE market, which continues to depress the price and undermine our delegation incentive program, it makes little sense for us to continue this fund.
This fund is being reclaimed and closed. The remaining funds will be retained by the Hobo Fund for its own purposes.