How the hive works

Hive Docs

A short, complete guide to staking, proposing, voting, and earning inside the Hive.

What is Hive

Hive is a decentralised, AI-driven venture studio. Token holders stake $HIVE to participate in governance, vote on startup ideas, and collectively build them through a milestone-based pipeline from concept to launch. Rewards land when projects ship.

The system has three on-chain artefacts: idea proposals (project pitches), community proposals (project-scoped suggestions), and multi-option tasks (A/B/C decisions for live projects — naming, design, copy). Anyone with stake can participate.

Stake to participate

Stake any amount of $HIVE. No locks, no minimum, no tiers.
Unstake any amount, any time. Exception: while you have an open governance vote, your stake is frozen until that vote closes — same wallet, same amount, just unmovable.
Voting weight = staked HIVE, 1:1.
Stake is your entry ticket. No stake → no voting, no proposing.

The minimum to submit a proposal/task is minProposeStake (default 100 HIVE, owner-tunable). Voting itself has no minimum — any positive stake counts.

Propose

Three kinds of proposals, all on-chain:

1. Idea proposals — pitch a new project

Submitted by either the AI scout (oracle) or any staker clearing minProposeStake. Carries a title, description, category, build-time estimate, and 1–10 complexity / market scores.

Vote rules: 60% YES of (yes + no) + quorum to pass. On pass, the project auto-registers on-chain with the submitter as initial owner — your project key is now real and tasks can target it.

The dapp distinguishes AI vs community provenance by comparing proposals(id).submitter to the live oracle address.

2. Community proposals — change a live project

Project-scoped yes/no/abstain proposal. "Buzz should support voice rooms in v1." Same submission gate (≥ minProposeStake), same vote rules. On pass, the proposal is auto-promoted to a task on the project (the action item is the description) so the lineage stays visible.

The target project must be registered on-chain. Submitting a proposal for an unknown project key reverts with UnknownProject.

3. Multi-option tasks — A/B/C decisions

For naming votes ("Buzz / Hum / Comb"), design direction, copy choices — anything multi-choice. 2–5 options, each with a short label and optional one-liner description.

Pass: the leading option clears 55% of all task votes (ties ⇒ no decision).

Vote

One vote per proposal/task; you can't change your mind.
Voting freezes your stake until the vote closes. The freeze is the only defence against "vote-and-walk-with-principal" now that there are no locks.
After the window closes, anyone calls finalize… to settle the result. Permissionless, gas paid by the caller.

Tasks & naming

Once a project is registered, anyone clearing minProposeStake can submit multi-option tasks for it. The canonical use case is naming — pitch 2–5 candidates, the swarm picks the leader.

Auto-promoted tasks (from passed community proposals) live in the same task map but carry no options — they're "decided" action items the team takes from there. Their submitter field preserves the original proposer, not the finaliser, so credit is end-to-end.

Rewards

Rewards are not streamed continuously. They arrive when projects launch.

Fees, tax, and treasury contributions accumulate inside the HiveRewards contract as a pending pool.
When a project hits LAUNCH, the multisig calls distributeLaunchPool(hiveAmt, ethAmt) to advance the per-staker accumulator by an explicit chunk.
Stakers' pending balances grow proportional to their stake. Claim anytime via claim().

Stakers who arrive after a launch don't back-claim past payouts — the MasterChef accumulator only credits stakes that were live at distribution time.

Roles

Stakers

Anyone holding $HIVE. Vote, propose, claim. That's it.

Oracle

The AI scout. Generates project ideas and posts them on-chain via createProposal. Can be rotated through a 24h-cooldown 2-step transfer for safety.

Multisig owner

Manages governance parameters (minProposeStake, pause/unpause), registers legacy projects, advances project stages, and triggers launch payouts. Cannot move user funds, cannot override votes, cannot mint tokens.

Security

The system is built around a few simple invariants and a handful of guarded operational actions. Highlights:

No admin override of votes. Once cast, votes are immutable; finalisation is permissionless.
No upgradeability. Contracts are immutable — migration would mean a redeploy.
One-shot wire setters. The protocol contracts wire each other once at deploy and can't be redirected.
Vote freeze. Stops a flash-borrow / vote-then-walk attack at the source — your stake is locked through every vote you cast.
Project registry. Tasks and community proposals can only target a real, registered project. Off-target grief is rejected at the contract level.

Full threat model + every audit finding lives in docs/SECURITY.md.

Known residual risk: launch-payout sandwich. With no minimum stake duration, an attacker can stake right before a payout and unstake right after, capturing pro-rata share. Mitigation is operational — multisig announces every payout 24h+ in advance so legitimate stakers join early and snake actors get noticed.

Glossary

HIVE

The protocol token. ERC-20.

Weight / voting power

Your staked amount, 1:1.

Vote freeze

Temporary unstake block while you have at least one open vote. Lifts the moment the latest open vote closes.

minProposeStake

Minimum stake to submit a proposal or task. Anti-spam. Owner-tunable.

Quorum / threshold

Minimum total weight needed for a vote to count toward a pass. Below it, the proposal REJECTS regardless of yes/no ratio.

Pass

60% YES of (yes+no) for proposals; 55% leader of all task votes for tasks (ties = no decision).

Launch payout

Explicit reward release triggered when a project ships. The only path through which stakers earn.

DEAD seed

A permanent, unclaimable stake registered to 0x…dEaD at deploy. Defeats the first-staker donation sandwich on the rewards accumulator.

Enter the Hive