1500 words a bit long winded
My last post ran a bit long and I still had quite a bit more to say so I guess we're gonna do a part two on the MAGI launch. First off I saw a couple weird things searching for it on Google.
Apparently there is already a token?
I know they want to make a token and have publicly stated as much, but there appears to already be one on... Solana? That's what I would assume anyway being tradable on Phantom. Of course this is meaningless with a market cap of $1.4k and could easily just be some scammer. Official details for a token might take a while to broadcast considering how they're trying to go about it.
Searching through the images tab...
Also not an official thing but the Dash community seems to have taken a slight interest in the Hive ecosystem already. I know they were messing about with LEO as well for a second. It certainly would be interesting to see a DASH/HBD pair on Altera... exciting even.
The interesting thing about MAGI from what I can tell from the docs is that it should be way more scalable than similar networks like Thorchain. On Thorchain you basically need permission to get a listing and it's a lot of work to integrate that into the network (plus increased overhead cost for all the thorchain nodes). It appears that the way MAGI works it should be much easier to get a pairing listed on the network. I'm not even sure if it requires permission to do so. I'll have to look more into that.
bug: the tooltip showing the APR% is not up to date
sHBD?
One of the first things I noticed when logging in to the Altera frontend is that you can stake HBD for yield without it being locked. How is that possible? Well I didn't look it up but I assume what's happening here is that the HBD actually is locked up on chain in the vault, but because these are technically wrapped tokens on a second layer they can still just as easily move about the network unhindered. I would venture a guess that it still takes 3 days to unlock the sHBD into HBD so that it can be transferred back to the main chain. However, it's still a very cool mechanic that also just lends more evidence to the idea that bonding HBD on Hive is not a good idea whatsoever. If anything we should be going the other way and just providing yield to liquid assets that are in a valuable place (IE AMM liquidity pools). Unfortunately this is a topic that requires a full 1000 word post even though it's something I've already blogged about over a dozen times. One might even argue that this mechanic shows just how easily a bonding system can be created to facilitate nested secondary markets... but I'm digressing hard right now and need to stop.
WTF is a "Hive Consensus" token?
If we search the docs it becomes a little more clear:
Basically if you want to run a MAGI node you're probably going to stake your consensus tokens as collateral to disincentivize bad actors. I'm sure it's very interesting and worth getting more into some other time.
HBD Resource Credits?
Yesterday I did a couple test operations:
- Deposited 1000 Hive and received 1000 wrapped Hive from the vault.
- Sold 500 Hive into Bitcoin and plopped it in a real BTC wallet.
- Sold 100 Hive into Bitcoin and left it as wrapped BTC.
This cost me about 6 resource credits which was more than half of what I had. I'll be honest it was a little annoying considering I have a quarter million Hive power and running out of RCs is just something I don't have to deal with ever. I'm still not 100% sure why RCs on MAGI are based on HBD, but it also makes sense considering HBD is the thing that all assets are paired to. It's an asset that many outsiders won't mind holding because it maintains a much more stable value than any of the other listings.
I'm still not clear if there's any hidden financial incentive here. Does sHBD give RCs as well? Does HBD get quietly powered up and yield given to the MAGI network? Are these RCs just to make sure the nodes don't get overloaded and there is no real financial incentive in play? No idea. Not really a big deal no matter how it's done to be honest.
In the wake of these questions I've done a couple more tests:
- Deposited 5 HBD and got 5 RCs on MAGI.
- Staked 5 HBD into sHBD and lost 5 RCs.
My guess here is that these HBD RCs exist simply to prevent the network from being DDoSed and exploited in obvious ways. If you want to perform a lot of actions over a short period you'll need more and more HBD to do it.
I've now unstaked the sHBD and it will indeed take 3 days to unlock which is expected.
Gotta say it is pretty cool that you can just move sHBD around without unstaking it. Of course there are no practical applications for this as of yet because there are no sHBD pools and nobody accepts sHBD for goods and services yet. However, it could be very powerful in the future; there's a lot of potential there. I might not think Hive bonds are a good idea but a feature like this easily facilitates the secondary market. Even just being able to satisfy the general population's insatiable desire for instant gratification (instant vs 3 day wait) is a significant feat in my opinion.
Biggest complaint!
When I go into my transactions tab it only tells me which asset I transferred from. The asset I transferred to and where that asset went is obfuscated and you have to dig through the block explorer to find it. Probably the most annoying thing about this experience so far... which I'll take as a good sign that it wasn't something more pressing.
Conclusion
Thus far this experience with the Altera frontend has been pretty clean. The frontend user experience seems very streamlined and should get even better as the network acquires more listings and allows new users to play around with this stuff without even having a Hive account (they will use their native token wallet instead). The most interesting feature so far is the fact that locked HBD earning yield can be moved about the ecosystem freely. I'm excited to see where the network goes from here.
Sounds a lot more complex than people are probably looking for at this point in the crypto game. I feel like a lot of this stuff should happen behind the scenes a bit more. I'll likely just keep using swapspace until I can't anymore.
That's a great point so maybe I should do another post approaching the website as a new user. I think you'd be surprised to see that it might be just as simple as everything else and then some.
A new user who has no idea what's going on can connect their wallet and make the trade without really knowing about all this other stuff I'm blabbing about. The only problem would be if they ran out of RCs... but by that time they've already made a trade or two. They don't have to create a Hive account to use this which is often the main hurdle for adoption.
That is a good point, swapspace isn't exactly straight forward now that I think of it. Those are some good points. I got thinking you were probably breaking it down a bit more than you needed to for the sake of being thorough in your post.
Its very simple really. You connect your Hive wallet, input swap amount and what you want, click swap. Thats it.
As far as I understand from their explanation, the HBD staking percentage is 12%, not 15%. This should be changed in the interface immediately to avoid misleading people.
There's no reason to stake at 12% right now.
It's actually 14% right now the deciding vote is on the fence and can change at any time.
It seems a bit weird to make the claim that there's no reason to stake at 12%.
Not staking is 0%.
Even when staked HBD gave 0% yield there were millions of HBD in circulation.
I'm seeing 12, and I thought they'd already lowered the interest rate -/
Everyone has their own reasons and their own rationale—I was only talking about myself in my post. Perhaps someone else might even see a point in staking at minus 5%.
Ah yep I'm seeing 12% again.
It's flip-flopping around quite a lot it would seem.
According to the internets 12% is still higher than the average rate of return vs the stock market.
Fair enough if that's where you draw the line personally but you gotta admit that's a crazy statistic.
You’re right.
But there’s another important point here — witnesses juggle the numbers like circus performers. That creates a lack of clarity and confidence for people considering investing in HBD.
I remember someone mentioning interest rates tied to a fixed term — that would be much fairer and more reasonable (in my opinion).
In financial matters, stability and predictability are key.
I understand the situation is complicated, but to me, constantly lowering the interest rate can only make things worse (just my non-professional opinion). Maybe someone can explain the opposite to me?
In my opinion the amount of yield offered should have never been static in the first place.
Static both in terms of the percentage and the fact that it's allocated to locked stake.
If this had just been a HIVE/HBD AMM the entire time with variable yield depending on how big the pool was we'd be way better off right now. Locking HBD in a 3 day contract doesn't have any value to Hive itself. It's only been allowed to exist because Hive users like it.
The free market really should be determining things like this.
Less people staking their money should result in higher yield.
More people staking should result in less yield.
In fact that's exactly how it works for Hive and the reward pool already.
Yeah, I get that this model works well for Hive itself — the reward pool is dynamic by design, and people accept that volatility.
But HBD feels like a different story.
If the rate drops as more people come in, you eventually hit a point where new investors just lose interest. The incentive disappears right when adoption starts growing. That’s a bit counterintuitive if the goal is to attract more capital.
For something positioned closer to a “stable” instrument, people expect clearer rules. Not necessarily fixed forever, but at least predictable enough to make decisions.
Otherwise, it starts to feel less like saving and more like guessing where the rate will go next.
That’s why I still think some form of term-based or locked rates could balance things out — let the system stay flexible, but give users a bit more confidence at the same time.
Although only now I noticed that the witnesses have already placed 12% on the network - and this is sad!
tremendo analisis tecnico, la verdad es que al principio puede parecer confuso pero si funciona asi de fluido se nota que tiene mucho potencial para nuevos usuarios.
tremendous technical analysis, the truth is at first it can seem confusing but if it works this smoothly u can tell it has a lot of potential for new users.