Week through Adrian's Lenses (30 March-5 April 2024)

This is the #65th edition of the "Week through Adrian's Lenses" weekly Hive and crypto news roundup.

Let's see what we have for this week.

Week on Hive

21 of 40 tracked posts made it to this week's issue of the "Week on Hive" roundup.

In the Spotlight

New Hive API Stack Released. Hive Lite Accounts Planned at 2nd Layer.

This is the software that provides data to almost all Hive apps, therefore a major update affects all apps. It is not a hard fork, but as API node operators update to the new version, it is expected that all or most apps should be ready to use the updated software.

I'd rather offer some quotes from Blocktrades' post than try to extract a summary or highlight something this time...

This release is the biggest overhaul of the Hive software stack since Hive forked and represents 11 months work by the largest-yet team of core Hive developers (I didn’t calculate the man hours involved as the team has grown throughout that time, but it is a lot).

Long time readers of my blog are probably aware that one of the long term goals of our work has been to improve the scalability of the Hive software stack. This is because in many ways scalability is a key factor in the usefulness of blockchain software, because blockchains rely on the “network effect” for their usefulness, and when that network is limited in size by scalability, the potential usefulness of the blockchain itself is similarly limited. So it should probably come as no surprise that scalability was again a key goal of this release.

We also find extremely important details in the "What's next?" section. I can't do the same and quote as above, because that would mean quoting the whole section, basically.

I talked in my post from yesterday about Hive lite accounts, among other things. Looks like we'll have to add another Hive lite accounts solution to the mix, implemented via HAF by the Blocktrades team at the second layer. Dan said this application will be released "relatively quickly".

Then, they began the early discussions of potential implementations of a 2nd layer smart contract processor, but "that’s a much more complicated topic with many points to research, so it’ll be several weeks at least before we have a full scoping of the initial release". I recommend reading the full post for a detailed update.

Marketing / Awareness / Branding

Updates from our Hive Rally Team

The Rally in Croatia hasn't started yet, and the Hive Team has already signed up for the next one in Portugal.

Looks like they want to put the new car to work. 😀

Speaking of the new car, it's almost wrapped up with the Hive logo and design of @crimsonclad and ready to be tested in Italy, close to the team's base.

What is WrestleCon and why does it matter for Hive?

That's a great question, isn't it? Well, the WOO team did great explaining this to Hivers who may not have much to do with the wrestling world, if anything. These guys (and everyone they've been collaborating with) sure know how to do marketing, I believe. Check this out!

Governance / Development / Dapps

VSC - Hive Smart Contracts Are Now in Testnet!

VSC entered a new critical stage in its development, where a testnet is running. That also means VSC smart contracts can now be tested publicly.

@Vaultec mentioned they will have a dedicated front-end for VSC, but are encouraging all front-ends from Hive to start integrating it. I also understood better than yesterday how VSC Lite Accounts will work - at the L2, on VSC, without interacting with L1 (at this time). Interestingly, that's what Blocktrades wants to create, we will see what will be the differences between the two types of lite accounts.

He also answers in advance to a probable question "wen mainnet?". The answer is: there will be no mainnet. Just improvements to this existing net which now is called "testnet" until it becomes stable enough to be switched to production.

New Hive Keychain Versions

Hive Keychain had updates for both its browser extensions, on Chromium and Firefox, and mobile, for Android and iOS.

For the browser extensions, they added a portfolio view for Hive and Hive-Engine that includes all your accounts (strange, at first, after updating, it didn't work for me, but now it does). Here are more details.

For mobile, they updated the UX/UI and added a few other features. Here are the details.

INLEO - Between Sunsetting Projects, Drama, and Major Launches

Nothing is simple in the world of crypto. And INLEO certainly has a lot going around it lately.

First of all, as highlighted in the previous roundup, they are on the verge of a few major combined launches around the Maya Protocol. Here's a more recent update from the team.

At the same time, they are in the process of sunsetting Cub Finance and PolyCub. Here are the latest relevant links on the subject:

• INLEO AMA
• Must Read for CUB/pCUB Holders

If that wasn't enough, there was some drama surrounding the process they decided for unwrapping bHBD going forward (until sunsetting), following the depegging of the wrapped HBD on BSC. To be honest, I don't believe either "side" is 100% correct from what I've seen, so instead of sharing both positions and inflaming this more, I'd rather not share either. You can find both on-chain if you are interested.

Ecency Conversations

Ecency added a chat system to their website called Conversations. You need to create a Conversations-related key, to be able to access it. From what I've been able to understand without using it, this is a chat system developed by Ecency, and not using the solution created by Peak Open. It doesn't seem to be on-chain, unlike the chat from Peak Open.

PeakD Now Has Polls

Peak Open has worked on an Open Polls protocol for Hive for a while. On the front end side, it was first integrated into HiveHub.dev, but now PeakD partially supports polls too. For the time being, PeakD only supports proper formatting, voting, and viewing results of a poll. On HiveHub.dev, one can additionally create polls and see a list of polls already created.

They work on supporting polls based on staked HIVE, with other filters (such as reputation), and other voting styles (such as multiple choices).

Games

Splinterlands Launched Its Rewards Shop and Soulbound Glint Token

We had a full week on Hive, didn't we? Another thing that happened this week was the rollout of the new Rewards Shop and the associated Glint token, which is soulbound. A previous announcement talked about them, but now people could see and use them. No more loot chests! No more daily focuses! Just Glint and SPS. Some like them, some don't. It's probably an evolving thing, so we need to see it in perspective.

AMA with CEO of Double Coconut about SoulKeep

David Fox, CEO of Double Coconut was invited by @clayboyn at the SPS DAO Town Hall to talk about SoulKeep, and what to expect after they purchased the game from Splinterlands. He answered lots of questions, including when is the game expected to be launched (answer: Q2). Here's the AMA recording.

dCrops Getting Ready for 3rd Anniversary

This is not one of the games I play (although it looks like I chose wrong), but I couldn't help but notice the event they prepared for their 3rd anniversary. If you play or played the game, I hope you enjoy it.

Meetings / Events / Communities

First School-HIVE Orientation for 2024

I believe someone made some stats, and among the various onboarding methods on Hive, Hive Onboarding combined with the Orientation program has one of the best retention rates. Which means it works! It may not bring in millions of people, but those who come in, stick around more than others do. Here's the first orientation program from this year held at Daantabogon National High School in the Philippines.

Checking Out One of Hive Boreholes after 1 Year

@mcsamm and a few others involved in the Hive Boreholes project went to visit the borehole built last year for the Pentecost High School, with over 1000 students. He talked with the principal about what it meant for them.

Showcase of Touristic Integration with HBD in Cumaná

Integration of HBD payments in tourism sounds like a great idea. They started doing that in Cumaná and it's not the first time we talk about it.

Here you can see practically a showcasing of a tour guide of historical Cumaná, paid with HBD. They stopped for a coffee too, paid with HBD, again.

Speaking of payments with HBD in Cumaná, seems like they are back on an uptrend.

Philanthropy

Helping a School in Venezuela

I find it a great practice to document everything when you receive funding from the community. And this project does everything by the book, in my opinion, when it comes to showing as much evidence as possible about the work and materials being paid for. It is also fully funded now, as we found out from a later post.

Week in the Crypto World

Talks about the Ethereum Purge

So. what is a blockchain purge? A way to make a blockchain size smaller, by removing certain historical information from it. That makes a blockchain... incomplete, but does it matter when talking about historical financial transactions? Try asking a bank for your transactions from 5 years ago and see what response you receive. So, when there's nothing else to do to make your blockchain scalable, the solution is to start chopping it, preferably starting with old information. That may work for Ethereum (or not), but what happens when you try it on a platform that values resistance to censorship? I know it was talked about on st**m, and the decision at that time was against it.

Bitcoin Ordinals Out from Binance NFT Marketplace

Looks like Binance doesn't want Bitcoin ordinals on its platform anymore. As someone who never really liked them on Bitcoin in the first place, but without knowing what's behind this decision, I can't say I disagree with it.

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