By beggars on Skatehive
Hive is a delegated proof of stake blockchain. Stake determines governance weight. The more HIVE you power up, the more influence you have over witness elections, proposal funding, and reward distribution. That is how the system works by design and it is not inherently a problem. But there is a persistent attitude in parts of the community that stake is the prerequisite for having a valid opinion. That if you have not powered up enough HIVE, your perspective on the chain's direction is worth less. This needs to be examined because the data tells a very different story about what actually makes a blockchain succeed. What Stake Does Staking HIVE does four concrete things: It increases your governance vote weight on witnesses and DHF proposals. It increases the value of your content votes. It provides resource credits for on-chain transactions. And it locks your tokens for multiple weeks on power down, which signals commitment. These are mechanical functions. They are important for how th