While perhaps a dull picture to the uninitiated what's shared in the above image is what is now rumbling under the hood of the Hive Smart Chain project. Managed to get decentralized P2P smart contracts to run here locally and with other clients on web servers I've got across the pond..
Within the next few weeks we'll be starting a live closed alpha test of the Hive Smart Chain and with it will come an absolutely incredible amount of future possibility for our blockchain and community as a whole given that we'll be able to run properly decentralized dApps and use the EVM machine living at the heart of the architecture of the project. While the first set of dApps on the new side chain will almost certainly be the business logic behind the Hive.Loans lending site I'll be encouraging fellow developers to test out various dApps of their own designs as well.
As the realization of true industry standard implementations of smart contracts running over a properly decentralized virtual machine computing cluster become a reality here for HIVE creeps closer, the absolute necessity of the whole situation and perhaps a glimpse into the way the crypto currency ecosystem is moving as a whole in these up coming years.. Things are evolving..!
Long gone are the days where you can have a slick solitary blockchain that serves a single or few purposes well and have that make up a solid hold on keeping your bread and butter fresh in this ecosystem. Things are changing and as more and more people begin to flock to crypto and the technology further matures we're going to see rapid paradigm shifts echo across the entire planet.
Cryptocurrency and it's supporting international ecosystem are onboarding at an incredible rate currently, no longer viewed as an asset class only used by hackers, drug dealers and techno nerds.
With the recent explosion of decentralized finance "DeFi" and a quite clear cut statement of the features and functionality the market is willing to pay for being blatantly obvious to anyone aware of the ecosystem it's up to us as a community (and developers) to meet these demands and ensure that, even though initially missing from our network, is something that is improved upon to meet demand. I needed Hive Smart Chain to make my Loans site have no central point of failure but in devising it's creation realized that it was EXACTLY what HIVE needed to be "future-proofed".
While a lot of what you see labeled "DeFi" these days is nothing more than a modernized reboot of the old HYIP or Ponzi schemes that were frequent and plentiful during all of the 20th century at it's core the "DeFi" movement stands to bring a massive shift in the ways people handle their banking and finance/ Decentralized finance in itself isn't about "yield farming" or "liquidity mining" but rather the ability to move across different financial or crypto networks without the need to check in with or even notify any authority on the matter.
When a blockchain lacks the ability to directly communicate with other blockchains and lacks the ability to perform operations involving the transfer of ownership or hosting blockchain, we would refer to this as a lack of interoperability. With a lack of interoperability between your blockchain and others you end up severely limiting yourself and your userbase as to how they can use their capital, making networks that allow these things seem like the obvious better choice over self-centric blockchains. While acceptable 5 years ago, it's no longer smart or even sustainable to operate a blockchain that for all intents purposes may as well be on it's own little island in the ocean.
The Hive Smart Chain project will be more than just some silly virtual machine that allows us to run smart contracts here on HIVE for HIVE.. The actual and somewhat even greater benefit to bringing the Hive Smart Chain online is that it will serve as a foundation for any developer on HIVE to build and create their own cross blockchain interoperability applications on.
By implementing as well as adhering to industry standards first set fourth by the Ethereum project in their "ERC" proposal system, our own sidechain network and allowing for the deposits, withdrawal, minting, staking, investing and trading of these popular asset architectures will not only greatly increase the versatility of HIVE itself but also allow us a gateway to and from other networks and their utilities and offerings. I very much view the addition of blockchain interoperability being added to HIVE through the Hive Smart Chain projects as us "stepping up to the table with the big boys".
While we've got like 6 different side chains currently being worked on for HIVE none if any look to tackle the chain interoperability problem like Hive Smart Chain seeks to while also delivering it in an intuitive user friendly manner. The other sidechains are certainly neat however their application development goals and client facing offerings more aligning with the needs of the hobbyist more so than professional. This is no means meant as a knock at the other developers building side chains here on HIVE but merely an unbiased look at the situation after a long period of observation.
Utilizing HIVE as the smart chain native base currency ensures that any success the HSC projects attracts goes on to enrich the entire ecosystem and this was one of my main design goals going into this. While on the flip side I do see a lot of potential in some of these other side chain projects I don't exactly see them shifting the paradigm nor larger crypto community view of HIVE as much as HSC.
Given that Hive Smart Chain will not only allow, but encourage, both our own side chains and other external blockchains to interface with us using any one number of popular cross chain interoperability methods. Personally I'll be writing chain bridges to our own side chains just a s a means of being inclusive and not displacing them from the community.
Hive-Engine, DLUX and all the other larger side chain projects will be supported on Hive Smart Chain with even the possibility of being able to use HSC to take existing HE style "NFTs" and "Tokens" and having the Smart Chain create properly implemented and decentralized ERC-20 and ERC-271 versions of them that could then be swapped onto networks like Ethereum / BnB in order to increase the functionality to all involved.
This isn't just "my" smart chain project.. Everyone from ours and other communities will be invited to come build on HSC and create bridges between ecosystems. We'll be cheaper, faster and better decentralized than other chains offering the same functions on top of our already existing community and it's suite of applications. I'm frigging excited to be able to bring the future possibility of Properly Decentralized dApps, HIVE based Decentralized Finance and ultimately a huge platform upgrade to not only our community but the entire cryptocurrency ecosystem.
