This is the #71st edition of the "Week through Adrian's Lenses" weekly Hive and crypto news roundup.
Let's see what we have for this week. We cover:
Hive
- LeoDex
- Hive Rally
- AriaVPN
- Open Genie
- TravelFeed
- Splinterlands
- Rising Star
- Rise of the Pixels
- Meetup Aachen
- Art Students
- Hive Goes to School
Crypto
- ChainLink
- JPM, Wells Fargo
Week on Hive
15 of 25 tracked posts made it to this week's issue of the "Week on Hive" roundup.
In the Spotlight
LeoDex Listed HIVE, SPS, and DEC...
... and provided another bidirectional non-custodial route between the three tokens and native BTC, ETH, RUNE, and others, including indirect connections to many tokens listed from the supported ecosystems.
What is important to note is that transactions happen on-chain IN YOUR WALLET, not on a central ledger as on CEXes. LeoDex is nothing but an interface. It doesn't touch the funds. The "magic" (as @yabapmatt referred to these swaps a couple of times) happens on the Maya Protocol, which is kind of Thorchain's little brother.
Even if an error happens on the route from source to destination, funds under the form they reached when the error happened (let's say, LEO) are in your wallet, not in LeoDex's wallet. You can continue the transaction manually from the point of error after you see what the problem was, reverse back to the source, or leave them as they are, for example. If there is an error on the LeoDex interface that prevents you from completing your actions, you can use another interface to make the transactions (for example, the popular ThorSwap). And yes, by having the LEO-CACAO pool on Maya, LEO is now accessible on ThorSwap and any other interface that has support for the Maya Protocol.
I do suggest if you haven't used Leodex before, to check out the tutorials.
For Splinterlands investors and players, if you haven't seen it yet, I suggest listening for a bit to the joint X space with Matt, Khal, Clayboyn, and Eric.
Marketing / Awareness / Branding
Hive Rally Team Retired from WRC Rally Portugal 2024
After the gearbox failed, the Hive Rally team retired from the recently ended race from Portugal, even if they started with high hopes because gravel is the favorite surface of our driver.
AriaVPN Integrates HBD and HIVE Payments
Well, there are VPNs and VPNs. AriaVPN team says they have a "strict no-logs policy", they are more of a team than a company (sound familiar?), and AriaVPN "is a collective of independent privacy advocates on a journey to revolutionize online privacy and security worldwide".
Another important aspect: they integrated HBD and HIVE payments.
Governance / Development / Dapps
Open Genie Launched on Monday!
I see great potential in this open-source project! But it needs more users (who have wishes and genies who grant them) to tap into this potential. Remember, the platform takes no fees since development has been funded by the DHF, unlike something like Fiverr!
Here's a step-by-step guide for Open Genie.
TravelFeed Created an Import Tool for Pinmapple Pins
I don't believe the future of Pinmapple is clear yet (if it'll be taken over or not), but another travel-oriented project on Hive, TravelFeed, created an import tool for Pinmapple pins, in case the project closes as announced.
Games
Splinterlands Updates
Loot Chests Are Back! Sort Of.
Loot chests have been very popular. They are now back, but instead of being earned directly for reward points, they can be purchased from the Glint Shop, replacing the random draws that were offered until recently. Believe it or not, the news linked above is already old. In the meantime, they were retracted and brought back, with a 10x lower chance to hit the jackpot than initially.
Grain-DEC LP Has Officially Been Released Too!
Seems like this news was overshadowed by the one about the loot chests (see above). But for landowners, I believe it to be a significant step forward to have grain tradable for DEC on the official Trade Hub and to be able to earn LP rewards for providing liquidity. More information in the town hall I linked in the previous news report (use the "Previous Week" link at the top to go to the previous "Week through Adrian's Hub").
Transition of wallets to multisig ones, managed by DAO-voted Treasurers
The process of transitioning DAO wallets to the management of the voted treasurers is on the way, with the following plan.
Changes in the SPS LP Rewards
According to decisions from proposals that passed, the SPS LP rewards have been updated. It remains to be decided what to do with the LP rewards for SPS:WETH.
Rising Star Market Tool
A new 3rd party market tool for Rising Star has been created that allows bulk transactions. Could be very useful for mass purchases.
Rise of the Pixels Introduces Seasons & Gadgets
From their update, we learn that seasons are 10 days long, and Gadget Cases are special packs that contain accessories, consumables, as well as finite "reaction" objects.
I also noticed RotP created their own wish in Open Genie. Let's see if someone grants them their wish.
Meetings / Events / Communities
Meetup in Aachen at the end of June
@detlev proposes a two-day meetup in Aachen at the end of June (28-29), and expects some feedback (confirmation of participation) from previous participants. The ticket costs 5 HBD. He also mentioned potential points of attraction for the meetup.
Art Students Arriving on Hive
@nahupuku onboarded his art students to Hive. I know it's difficult to get their bearings right after one Hive class, but any of them would be interested in a small design project, so I wouldn't have to focus on that?
More Art Students, This Time Visited by "Hive Goes to School"
By reading through Daniel's post, I realized Hive has become quite popular (or at least a common presence) among art students in the capital of Venezuela.
Week in the Crypto World
Chainlink Completed Test with Top Banks and DTCC to Accerelate Tokenization
LINK jumped significantly in price after DTCC's announcement of the completion of their pilot program with ChainLink and top US banks aimed at accelerating the tokenization of traditional financial funds.
Not necessarily related to the news, it's important to note the discrepancy between noise and facts. On one end bash crypto in mainstream media, on the other end test integrations and make yourself indispensable or an integral part of future solutions.
Top Investment Banks in the US Reported Some Minuscule Holdings in Spot Bitcoin ETFs
When you hear JPM or Wells Fargo you automatically think about banking giants. It seems like there is quite a fuss made in various mainstream media articles that they reported holdings in spot Bitcoin ETFs.
That could have been a bigger deal until you check the amounts... JPM - less than 1m USD in total. Wells Fargo - something like 140k USD. Really? Are these amounts to even talk about when we deal with investments of banking giants? These guys throw millions or even tens of millions of USD weekly on 2nd lien loans and unsecured bonds in the junk markets (I reported daily for 4 years on these types of deals), and invest under 1m in a quarter in spot Bitcoin ETFs? They're just testing the water...
I would go further and say they are not investing directly. They are investing as custodial intermediaries for their clients for the spot Bitcoin ETFs, in which case it really seems we are talking about retail clients.
Full list of "Week through Adrian's Lenses" posts
Want to check out my collection of posts?
It's a good way to pick what interests you.
Posted Using InLeo Alpha
The Splinterlands loot chest fiasco was a nightmare. The team didn't account how much Glint the bot farms had and can create with the SB cards. The jackpot was supposed to last for months, but it was almost depleted in a day, BEFORE EOS.
Yeah, I saw that. The thing is, FARM networks (bot or human!!) are a threat to any game that can offer something extractable where there can be a net positive for the farms. That's why Matt keeps trying to push higher rewards for higher ratings because farm networks generally operate at lower ratings.
I think one positive thing came out of this. The team now probably has a better idea of many other accounts that are part of these farm networks of which they didn't know before.
That is a good way to look at it. Now if only the team has any plans of stopping their extraction any time soon, that would be great. But as long as they maintain their policy of "your cards, your decision", then knowing these accounts wouldn't do anything.
I don't know... The solution, if there is one (!), is not to mess with the ability to use owned assets, but to make it economically inviable for a farm to operate in a full extractive mode, but operate well in a growth mode. Looks like this is going to be VERY difficult to achieve.
I think the easiest solution is just to ban the bots similar to Modern haha.
I would stop playing Ranked, that's for sure if that happened. Maybe I'd sell cards, maybe I'd rent them out.
I don't have time to get frustrated every day.
That makes sense.
I believe we might be seeing changes every day on splinterlands as the Gwen shop still needs a lot of upgrades, and I think it will continue till they find the right blend. The changes only showed that chests aren't even supposed to be taken away in the first place.
I understand why they took away the loot chests. Because of the farm networks that extracted 100% and dumped on the market. Regular users who wanted to grow their accounts (regardless if they played their accounts in ranked or not), were innocent casualties in this... survival war.
I still think a permanent solution needs to be crafted for this bot problem. Every solution has failed so far, and I think a lot really needs to be done concerning the bot system.
What about the human farmers? Are they ok? There are/were places in the world where people found a way to farm a game and played all day long for something like 5$. No automated bots. They were the bots.
Splinterlands made quite a few changes and it's also nice to see the new tool for Rising Star. A lot of other things happened throughout the week, but maybe LeoDex could allow a retry option but that is probably just good for user experience.
I think this could be quite difficult to accomplish. It is not one operation that can fail for whatever reason, and then you retry it until it works. It is a series of operations that the user approves, and at some point, an error might occur that breaks the chain of transactions from source to destination. I don't think it's easy for them to create a "resume" option after you figure out what the error is and "remove" the obstacle. But if it is, that would be awesome for user experience!
What they can do, maybe, is try to check before launching the process for various potential scenarios where the swap might fail on the way, but they won't catch them all, for sure (they won't catch something like a node error, for example). But maybe they can check if the user has enough funds to pay all the fees on the way, for example. I'm not sure if they do that currently, since I do have funds to pay for fees (particularly, Arbitrum ETH - which one gets using the "Arbitrum Gas Faucet" button if they have at least 60 LEO on Hive-Engine).
My main man Gad. Is back with the awesome report... A wonderful week for Hive's cryptos... I can't wait to see how much progress we make... Thanks for always sharing buddy
Thanks, man! Appreciate the good vibes!
Absolutely, you can count on me for good vibes
Looks like Rise of Pixel is getting more interesting
I should give it a try
I don't know much details about it either, besides what I read in their updates...
The good news is that whenever there is a listing in place for this project, the chances of the prices going up are high.
Prices will do what they will do. But having new listings is always a good thing.
Yeah you are right.
#hive #posh