VSC - Hive Smart Contracts Now In Testnet!
Greetings fellow Hive community! We are pleased to officially announce the launch of the VSC testnet and for the first time ever, the ability to create smart contracts on Hive. For the last several months, our team has been working tirelessly on building VSC: The next-generation smart contract system for Hive! Today, we are happy to announce this goal has come to fruition. VSC only started out with myself (@vaultec), and since then has grown to a team of five bringing this vision to reality. This would not have been possible without the amazing support and encouragement from the community. This accomplishment has not been met with huge challenges and setbacks, but we are now successful in breaking through and making VSC a real project!
There have not been any previous projects on Hive were able to build modular and open smart contracts on Hive, and much less L2 smart contracts with native FREE lite accounts. VSC opens Hive to many doors from onboarding to code in any language smart contracts. VSC will become a central force on Hive, bringing together many facets and filling many gaps we are lacking. Today, we will continue building and adapting to the needs of the community and developers!
We thank the SPK network team for their unwavering supporting, along with our friends at InLeo, WOO, and especially anodemadsoul and crimsonclad for help on Twitter Spaces. Lets not forget everyone who was involved in HiveFest, because without HiveFest, VSC would have never had a public platform to begin with. Another thanks to our over 50 node operators, supporters and community developers; without your support, this project would have never happened!
Next Steps
- 📄 Build Clear Documentation & Tutorials
- 🐜 Bug Fixes
- 🔧 Hackathons
- ⚒️ Continue Building
- 💲 Phase 2 DHF Proposal
The testnet launch is an exciting time for the VSC Project, but even more so an exciting time for Hive. Hive has never had smart contracts before. With this, there are still a quite bit of work ahead of us and there is still several bugs ahead of us to fix, including lots of documentation to write. Documentation is one of the most important front facing ends developers look at. Having great documentation is critical to attracting our first outside developers and involving them with building on Hive. If we are successful, any developers should be able to come in and begin working with VSC and Hive without a lot of direct involvement from the team.
Dedicated Frontend for VSC
As previously showcased, we have built a dedicated UI for handling VSC DeFi, such as swaps and wraps/unwraps. We will continue developing this frontend, and in the future, start trading the first Liquidity Pair on VSC (more on that in later blog posts). The frontend will become one of the first UI on Hive to support direct login with Metamask and most importantly, enable direct ownership of Hive using your Ethereum Wallet. We invite other frontends to integrate with VSC and would like to see @beeswap, peakd, and ecency integrate VSC into their respective frontends. The more UIs that integrate VSC, the better! VSC will also explore the possibility of building toolkits for integration of a platform.
How can I start using VSC?
While the VSC testnet has been online for a few weeks now, we are still in the process of enabling smart contract deployment for all and fixing bugs. Do not worry, smart contract deployment is online and working. Two contracts have been deployed by our team, and more continue to arrive. We are focused on streamlining and tutorializing smart contract dev and making it very easy to understand. Some of this work is already shown in our explainer videos on our 3Speak channel available here. Our first major release of documentation and tooling will happen within the next 1-2 weeks maximum. If you would like to gain early access to our documentation, tooling, and direct help from the VSC team, join our Discord and let us know!
VSC makes a strong effort in excellent tooling and developer documentation. We nearly completed the build out of a combination of a contract template and testing library for developer use. This contract template includes all of the basic boilerplate code, such as compiling, and deploying your contract plus testing your contract. This is the equivalent of hardhat for EVM chains. The most important part of our development suite is the ability to mock contract execution. Even top blockchains struggle to properly simulate the execution environment, making contract development difficult as a result. VSC comes with a ready to use execution environment for easy contract development and testing.
Another important topic includes the ability to use standardized smart contracts. VSC will work on a variety of standard contracts to cover Tokens, NFTs, DEX, liquidity pools, and more. We are currently working on building a basic DEX using VSC and we will continue to build out a variety of standardized easy-to-use contracts in the near future. The standard contracts being built will become the ERC equivalent of Hive! VSC also provides a SDK for smart contract development so you can create your own contracts and standards.
Aside from all the excellent work mentioned above, please keep in mind that VSC is new and may rightfully include some bugs. As per issues faced in the past, these bugs encountered will continue facing improvement and resolved to build the best smart contracts that Hive has to offer!
Multi language smart contracts is the future!
A little known secret about VSC is our smart contracts use Webassembly. To the average person, this does not mean anything. Though, what you need to know about this is that it enables development of smart contracts in any coding language. This is rather new in the smart contract ecosystem, with most smart contract blockchains being EVM based with little variety of language support. With VSC, you can develop in a variety of languages, starting with one similar to JavaScript, to Golang, and Rust in the future.
This single feature alone is incredibly important in both usability and making Hive standout from EVMs. Especially for Web2 developers that can leverage their already existing skills in traditional languages to write smart contracts without learning a whole new language, as for an example, solidity. This also allows us to leverage already existing libraries and tools from traditional programming languages, something EVM cannot do.
The exciting part is that this is available right now. This is not just a promise or a cool idea, but VSC has support for this from the very beginning. Our goal is to continue building on this and expand language support. We want to support many of the top languages with ready made smart contract SDKs and testing utilities.
Smart contracts will play an important role in many projects on Hive
Arguably, Hive smart contracts has been one of the most asked features from developers for many years; now, that day has finally came. We have already received a large amount of interest from developers and projects about integrating with VSC smart contracts. Many dapps will need smart contracts in some way or form. Whether that is NFTs, communities tokens, DEXs, DeFi, lite accounts, or many others, VSC will be involved in many projects on Hive in some way. For some, having smart contracts is not considered novel in todays world of crypto, and they are correct, as it is the bare minimum. We are just getting started with bringing smart contracts and more to Hive in the future!
VSC Lite Accounts fixes Hive onboarding and much more
VSC has support for native FREE lite accounts, which allow for access to VSC and Hive. VSC Lite Accounts do not cost anything to create and fully self custody. There are no centralized service in-between the user and L1 assets on chain. Lite accounts are not just entries in a database somewhere, as accounts are real self-sovereign identities. The amazing part about this technology is that it can be leveraged to allow Ethereum wallets to own L1 Hive; no wrapping or bridging. This enables a Hive user to easily send Hive/HBD to and from any Ethereum address.
As a side note, VSC Lite accounts must interact on the VSC L2, which does have some tradeoffs compared to using the Hive L1. In the future, with cooperation with @blocktrades, we plan on integrating VSC Lite Accounts to the L1.
The road to mainnet
The immediate question that arises from many of you reading this “wen mainnet”. For us, mainnet is an eventual transition from the testnet to a fully mature and stable network. There will be no mainnet; the testnet will slowly be upgraded to meet the standards of mainnet, but not an entirely separate network. Mainnet is more of a milestone than an entirely separate network. We will work on renaming the terminology to be more clear in the future.
With all of the above in mind, the testnet will deliver a minimum quality of service but like all technology it may have unexpected bugs. The VSC team will be steadfast in advancing the testnet and fixing any bugs encountered by users and developers. The testnet will also deliver minimum viable security for safe production use and over time will continue to improve.
Final Thoughts
It has been quite a journey over the last year of building VSC. From a very simple prototype, to a much larger vision within Hive. I never thought this project would become so important and such a large contribution to the Hive community. The future of VSC continues to look bright with support from the community and our efforts to continue building. This is no easy road, but it must be done for Hive to succeed in the modern crypto world. Keep an eye out for our next DHF proposal that will keep us building!
If you have any questions on the VSC testnet launch, please drop it down below!
Socials & Links
Website: https://vsc.eco
Docs: https://vsc-eco.github.io/
SDK: https://vsc-eco.github.io/sdk
Contract Template: https://github.com/vsc-eco/contract-template
VSC Node: https://github.com/vsc-eco/vsc-node
Explainer videos: https://3speak.tv/user/vsc.network
VSC Explorer: https://vsc.techcoderx.com
VSC Discord: https://discord.com/invite/yvGXZsQTU6
Congratulations on launching the testnet! This is a big milestone! Smart contracts on Hive are one huge step closer...
This is great news, I didn't know you planned to deliver general use lite accounts as part of this too. 😀
Since you mention template code for the creation of tokens, do you have any thoughts on the format and compatibility of these? Is there any chance that they will be incorporated into Hive Engine, for example? Or perhaps following Inleo's lead with Thorchain integration? Having this auto created for all new tokens would be a real game changer in so many ways.
Also interested as to whether you think these token templates could include rewards pools in the vein of Hive's L1 pool and Hive Engine's L2 pools?
I haven't seen any mention of fees anywhere - are there any? Do you know how that will work yet?
Due to contracts being WebASsembly. It's not possible to directly make them work with Hive engine. However, data standards could be aligned for interop. I have some limited plans for doing VSC -> EVM/Thorchain bridging and making it universal for all tokens, but nothing concrete. I will keep that in mind.
Yes, nothing stopping that from being developed.
No fees (yet), but VSC will eventually use staked HBD for lite account fee payments in a similar way to Hive RCs.
I am mainly thinking of how future breakaway communities will be presented to the world and be made tradable. Simplicity is always preferable and if we don't have pure 'SMTs' on L1 Hive - the simplest option - then it would be nice to avoid having more than one structure and format for L2 tokens on Hive. However, I appreciate that this may be unavoidable.
I guess that as long as there is a way for external services, such as coin tracker apps and exchanges, to be able to identify the protocol/service being used to run the L2 coin and they code their systems to denote that and treat them accordingly, then there's no real problem other than ensuring end users are aware of exactly what is going on when they use a community's L2 token on Hive.
That's great to hear! There is huge potential in this imo. Hive Engine tokens have never really been customisable enough to allow us to test different approaches to their functioning.. Being able to custom create contracts for L2 tokens on Hive could be the solution.
Also great! Thanks for explaining
I agree. I plan on building a single interface for token-like contracts that inherit the standard VSC Asset spec for tokens. Any other arbitrary logic can be added on the side of that such as custom mint function, supply cap, etc.
Congratulations for the testnet! Hive desserve an open smart contract layer.
Congratulations on this feat. Gret to see smart contracts come to Hive. InLeo had tried out using Metamask to login its UI some years back and that was to help users from the ETH side to port into Hive. However, after an attack, the option was suspended. I hope you can learn from the team or report on the fail of the tool.
looking forward to read more tutorials on how one can create smart contracts.
Cheers!
My understanding is login with Metamask would create a full Hive account. We are creating lite accounts using Metamask and thus no value can be gained from farming accounts.
Wow,what a great news
Great news. Congratulations. I'm already looking forward to trying it.
I am feeling fomo, great news!
This is what was missing in the hive blockchain: support for smart contracts. Congrats to the team and I hope it works as desired.
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Im digging this so much, ty for all you do for hive this is gonna be chaintastic😁
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This is very exciting. I cant wait to see what people start building on hive once all this is up and running!
This is great news, not just for the developers / programmers who will create amazing things, but for us users who will be able to enjoy these wonderful things they have created.
You should get a VSC statue on hive.io
I suppose that there will be some kind of consultancy on the subject? It is an excellent development that promotes the functionalism of the platform!
Oh that's nice. I don't have access to my Discord for a month [vacation], so I hope you don't mind me asking here. No rush on answering. I checked the peakd post, and maybe because I don't use Github, I don't think there's any documentation on the lite accounts yet.
I think this is a big deal, even more so with the no wrapping or bridging. Lite accounts are free, and maybe making one would be safer, but is it possible for this feature to extend to regular Hive accounts in the future? ETH has high fees, while Hive has no gas fees, so since half of the network is different how does that affect the fees; will we just follow the ETH gas fees since Hive's is free? Will the Lite accounts be able to stake Hive tokens, especially HBD savings? In the future, can it cater to other tokens from either Hive [SPS, DEC, STARBITS, etc] and ETH/Polygon/BNB chains? Additionally, will it be limited to just ETH? Do you plan on working to include other blockchains like WAX, Ronin, etc?
I feel like once you and blocktrades are able to integrate it to Hive L1, these accounts can replace metamask and regular Hive accounts; maybe even more wallets in the future.
Any extension to the standard Hive accounts would require extensive modifications which may or may not happen. I have plans that are much more focused and will require no L1 changes while still being part of the L1. The lite accounts have zero fees at the moment but will have an RC system similar to Hive using staked HBD. It will be possible to stake HBD via a lite account in the future. Hive staking won't be supported in the shortterm as it's much more complicated to deal with. As for other tokens like SPS, DEC, etc there is no plans to allow for staking. It would require extensive changes to VSC and/or coordination with Hive engine. If there is coordination on Hive Engine supporting lite accounts then it might be something we support. If users need to stake those tokens then they can upgrade to a Hive account.
Wow, thank you very much for the detailed answers. These are very exciting. When I mentioned the other tokens like SPS, DEC, etc, I wasn't really thinking about staking. I was wondering if the Lite accounts can interact with it, like transfer between other Lite and normal Hive accounts. Seeing that the Lite accounts can upgrade to Hive is nice.
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