Just before the Hive HardFork happen I tried to look into the pro and cons of a possible HardFork, not knowing that an actual HardFork is being prepared.
Is a HardFork a Better Option Now | Pro and Cons.
The HardFork is a reality now and it is interesting to look into these pro and cons again after some real events unfolded.
Pros
In the pre HardFork scenario these were some of the pros:
- No more baggage of the Steemit Inc Stake
- Real decentralization
- Community driven decisions
- Maintaining a moral high ground in the story
- Possible support from outsiders
- Other
From today’s point of view, I think basically all of the bullets above are met.
We have no more Steemit Inc stake as a baggage, although that stake is now in the DAO, something that I wasn’t expecting. Having that stake in the DAO also has its pro and cons. It means that this can be an attractive fund for projects, developers, marketeers, user onboarding etc. On the other hand, a large stake like that can attract abusers as well and may cause some abuse of the funds. The stakeholders do control where the funds go, but there is always a danger for the system to be played.
Decentralization is much better now, no doubt about it.
HIVE HardFork effect on stake redistribution
The @freedom account is the largest stakeholder now with around 5% share, followed by @blocktrades with 2% share. Before Steemit Inc share was around 25% from all accounts.
Community driven decisions. This is yet to be seen in its full power. The first signs are here, and we are seeing that the community is working on many different fronts. But more time is needed for this to fully realized.
Maintaining a moral high ground. This is definitely the case, as we have seen a few prominent figures from the crypto community like Vitalik and Andreas are tweeting about it, also a lot of press from the top news crypto agencies. In this context is the possible support from outsiders, although the above is exposure only but still it’s a help. The ionomy exchange went all on HIVE, although a small one, but still nice to have more markets. Will see is something more coming down the road.
Not sure what to mention under the Other bullet at this point, but censoring content on Steem can be one of the things. Not sure is it in the pro category for HF, but surely it made a lot of people mad, and if they were thinking should they support the HF, this probably made it easier for them.
Cons
Here are the cons that were stated before the HF:
- Loose the brand
- Development support
- Exchange listings
- Further community divisions
- Other
Brand. Not sure what to think about this. First, I give it a lot of meaning, but now I’m not as sure. The habits about the name are there, at least for me, but the rebranding can be also a good thing. We are used to the Steem name and sometimes there is nostalgia, but HIVE is also cool, and I already see a ton of media kit created by the community members in the first week. The rebranding is in full swing, everyone in the crypto world has heard about HIVE now with all the media and twitter coverage. The narrative/identity for the HIVE platform is also build as a decentralized, censorship free platform. Maybe this is not as big deal and not a big con after all.
Development support. As I mentioned above, I wasn’t aware of the time of writing the cons, that the Steemit Inc stake will go into the DAO. Now having to large stake for development is a bit worrisome. Quite the opposite. We have already seen development proposals put in place and community members working on developing the chain from the DAO. The blocktrades team also seams to be working on it. This bullet point is also less a con that firs imagined. Although the risk of low HIVE prices impacting the development fund stays, but I think this is an overall risk for all crypto projects. The opposite is also a possibility, high token price with very lucrative DAO fund.
Exchange listings. This point was one of the most problematic one. Exchange listing can be expensive and hard to get. But as for the previous two points this one seems to be going better than expected as well. HIVE already have listings on 6 exchanges, Bittrex, Ionomy, Probit, Biteeu, Blocktrades and Steem Engine. Two of these are so called home made, but still. Exchanges that supported the HF and airdropped HIVE, or mentioned listing are Binance, Huobi, Bithumb, GOPAX and KuCoin. The volume is still low, listings on Binance and Huobi can help a lot on that.
Overall, not every exchange that STEEM was listed to support HIVE atm, but let’s not forget it’s been only 10 days after the HF. It’s a great start and if in a month there are few more of the big boys, that will provide more trading volume, than exchanges listings will not be an issue at all anymore. A 10k $ bounty is set for Coinbase listing as well.
Further community divisions. This is a point that has fully fulfilled and maybe even worse than was expected. This is mainly because of the exclusion list that didn’t airdropped HIVE tokens to the once that voted for JS witnesses. Things are quite bad on this one and there are some low hits from both sides. If more users are not onboarded this will mean making a small community even smaller. Under the Other point I will mention Steem Engine and Splinterlands. These two are a great addition and very important for the hive ecosystem. Their transition is not as smooth and that can bring down activity on the chain further. There is a clear plan for Hive Engine, but most likely the division in the community will mean that not the same userbase will be transferred, and it yet remains to be seen what will happen with Splinterlands.
From this follow up I can conclude that all the pros like more decentralization, no more STINC baggage, moral high ground and outside support are met and have went as imagined. That is great.
On the cons side the branding, the development and exchanges listings are doing better than expected and imagined. That is also great. The not so great is more community division even larger than imagined and the not as smooth transition from Steem Engine and Splinterlands.
What is your opinion?
All the best
@dalz