Recap of Exclusive AMA: HIVE Blockchain x StealthEX

April 19, 2022

Crypto World

Ana Rojas

On April 15, 2022, we had StealthEX & HIVE Blockchain AMA Session in our Telegram Community Chat, and here is a recap. Just take a little time to read through and learn everything you need about HIVE cryptocurrency.

We thank everyone for joining us today! We are delighted to be joined by Reese (@murtherx), responsible for Global Outreach & Operations at HIVE 🙌

As usual, we will kick off the AMA with a series of questions from Twitter, with the chat being turned off. Once that is done, I will turn the chat back on for a few moments to allow you to ask your own questions.

Reese: Good to be here.

Ben Frost, StealthEX: It’s nice to see you here! Without further ado, are you ready to get started? The questions are in no particular order

Reese: Let’s do it.

Questions from Twitter

Q1: Taking into account the boom of splinterlands and assuming that another project, not the main one, has a similar boom, what would Hive offer to these new users of specific niches so that they know and take advantage of the rest of the platform?

Reese: Many users who first created their Hive accounts after getting their start with Splinterlands were a bit lost in the ecosystem, having not realized the magnitude of it and how many games and dapps there are. Everything to do with something as large as Hive is a learning process and we do have many helpful places to receive guidance, such as on our many Discord chats (there are well over 100), Telegram of course, documentation, and blogs.  We fully expect there to be numerous dapps like that which become a huge draw. There is one launching on Hive shortly (called Ragnarok) which has the potential to rival the draw of Splinterlands. Since Hive is scalable and fee-less, we can welcome all such projects and the users they attract.

Ben Frost, StealthEX: Oh, I’m already aware of Ragnarok, looking forward to it! Also looking forward to the explosion of dapps as a whole!

Q2: Being a fork, its code is based on the version of Steem available at the time of the division, could you mention any notable changes???

Reese: When the hostile takeover took place and we had no choice but to fork the original Steem chain in order to ensure there is a decentralized and public continuation of it (the original was privatized), our developers were surprised at the state of the code and how much had to be optimized and repaired. Since then, we’ve made improvements to governance and other critical functions as well as to functionalities relating to layered solutions and scaling. It is too much to list in here but the lists of changes are available on our blog in our HF (hardfork) posts or on our lead development team’s blog. In general, Hive is very different now from how it all started and is designed for ease of integration.

Ben Frost, StealthEX: Sometimes hardships make the final product even better than imagined, I think that you will continue honing Hive 💪

Q3: Is it true that Hive has testimonies of changing lives economically in countries in crisis such as Venezuela, Nigeria, Africa, etc? Why is this happening?

Reese: Yes it is true and it’s happening because Hive community members who live in those areas are harnessing the power of Hive to support their own lives and transform those of others. Just yesterday we put out an article about a local mechanic in Venezuela who started accepting HBD at his shop. The shop was on the verge of collapse prior to that, now it’s back open and running. Here is his story. There is also a suburb in Ghana which is having a well for water built and construction should be done later this week, also supported by a local community member from Hive who saw that people had to walk a mile to get potable water. Another person from Nigeria is fixing another well in a village after discovering it was broken for a year and people had no reasonable water access. These are just a few stories that are prominent this week, but many individuals from locations all over the planet are finding their opportunity to change their lives on Hive and to change the lives of their neighbors. The answer as to why is simple: Hive is welcoming and anyone can join in and achieve what they aim. There are no barriers and no ‘preferred users’ such as on some other platforms. Everyone is equally welcome on Hive.

Ben Frost, StealthEX: Wow, those are some really powerful stories. Makes you reappreciate the impact crypto is making on the world, especially on some communities that need help the most. 

Q4: My question is Hive is a great ecosystem that hasn’t finished growing, but one of its great attractions is that users can create content. Now, what do they have to offer a content creator, what is the attraction of HIVE BLOG to hunt talent?

Reese: We don’t hunt talent. We value the contributions of all individuals equally and it is up to the other community members as to whether the contribution is evaluated highly or moderately. Hive allows for the timed monetization of posted content with 7-day window. What that means is that you post a blog, people will curate it by voting up and down, and at the end of the 7 days the blog arrives at its final value. Content creators (any individual) receive 50% of the value of each blog post or comment and the other 50% gets split proportionally between curators. Hive does require people, naturally, because of its strong community, to engage with others on it. That means that someone who just crossposts to Hive while not really engaging, will do far worse than someone who genuinely comes to Hive and wants to get to know others and showcase their own writing, art, music, etc. What we offer is a strong community and network of support; something everyone can appreciate.

Ben Frost, StealthEX: I’ve visited the HiveBlog on numerous occasions, and I have to admit that it is a great product. The monetization is fair and transparent, I am 100% sure that the audience will grow organically.

Q5: I want to ask, what is the competitive advantage of #HIVE? What do you have over other competitors? About features such as security, scalability, community development, do you think you’ve finished or need to continue to develop?

Reese: We are stable in every regard. You don’t have to worry whether there will be a rug-pull or whether all investors will just decide to pump and dump HIVE and HBD. Or that one catastrophe will completely wipe out Hive. Due to our decentralization we have built-in stability that’s supported not only by the geographic spread of our key technologies and technical community members operating it but also by an established and reliable community. Right now we have approx 2.5 mil wallets on Hive. We are in friendly competition with others with growing ecosystems, such as Ethereum for instance, but we generally support all in the Web 3 space and hope that by promoting our unique solutions we can shape a better future. We are unique; we are highly scalable, our transactions are fee-less and rely on replenishable resource credits rather than hefty fees, our block times are 3 seconds and we have myriad features for easy access to information and integration such as the new HAF (Hive Application Framework). We’re definitely not finished with anything and we will continue to optimize and improve. The moment any blockchain stops continuous improvement it starts to fall behind and to stagnate. Hive does not play that game. We continuously re-evaluate what we’ve achieved and keep on with our evolution.

Ben Frost, StealthEX: Very well put! I think we all are collectively rooting for the collective success of crypto, and the advantages of hive blockchain are hard to gloss over.

Q6: Can you show me $HIVE token distribution? What are the additional benefits of holding $HIVE tokens over those that don’t hold $HIVE tokens and are there also any benefits for long-term holders?

Reese: Yes, we have numerous community members who publish regular updates in respect to the distribution. Here is one report from yesterday. Those who stake HIVE by powering it up (which converts it to Hive Power without affecting its integrity) are able to further grow their stake by participating in the curation of posted content. I mentioned earlier that curators split 50% of all post/comment rewards. Those who curate well and consistently, selecting valuable content which is of good quality and original, earn quite a bit through it. It can be a lucrative opportunity and it is also emotionally-satisfying as it is engaging. Our stablecoin HBD (pegged to the US Dollar) also has a savings account feature with a variable APR. The APR is decided by the community through its governance mechanism. It is currently set to 20%. What that means is that if you place $1,000 into your account today, a year from now you will have $1,200. The HBD has been kept stable and it can be seen as a reliable hands-off investment.

Here are some additional statistics from the same analyst. These are also current to yesterday.

Ben Frost, StealthEX: Wonderful, I admire the transparent and analytical approach. I’m sure the community will check out the data!

Q7: For both investors and users, the platform must be excellent Integrity necessitates openness and trustworthiness. Tell us more about your transparency (such as team members) and your security measures. Is your platform currently being audited?

Reese: Hive is fully transparent to a point where any individual or organization can independently audit it and verify everything on it without any barriers or special information. We have a number of block explorers where anyone can see the content of the blocks and transactions (take the main blog account for example). One does not need any special knowledge to discern the transactions. Our team members are simply community members. There are no official roles. With my roles, if you note, I did not label myself as a Director or C-something. I simply have a task that I engage in and take responsibility for. This is because Hive is not a company or organization and it does not have any employees. Anyone may join the team through their open source contribution and you can see many contributors if you look at our Gitlab for instance. In respect to our security measures, we have both on-chain governance related measures to prevent another 51% attack which lead to the creation of Hive. This is achieved through delays in governance and limits to deter malicious actors. There are also tiered keys with staggered permissions, recovery (roll-back) possibility for compromised accounts, change timers and so on. Many security features are simply built into the general functionality of the chain. In addition, we have developed a number of secure authentication services such as Hivesigner and Hive Keychain which are incorporated in all trusted Hive-based dapps to allow users full control and peace of mind over their wallets. We also have many frontend-focused solutions focused on mitigating the phishing attempts which are common in all of crypto. There are robust community-based initiatives towards that such as Hivewatchers and their role is to ensure that we can keep our ecosystem resilient towards exploitation and malicious parties. We regularly focus on personal security awareness for our community members. We do not know of any current audits by established organizations; that being said, we have continual audits by our own community as individuals see fit at their own discretion. That’s what transparency is all about.

Didn’t realize that was a long block of text! Much to say about security, which is very prominently focused on at Hive.

Ben Frost, StealthEX: No, that is great, exactly what people are looking forward when asking the questions about security! Very thorough 🙂 

Q8: Could you give us an overview of the tokenomics? Is the token designed to rise and fall with the success of the platform, and does it include any scarcity paths such as stake, store, or burn?

Reese: Hive has a decreasing inflation rate and is designed to decrease by 0.01% every 250,000 blocks. This is approximated at about 0.5% on an annual basis and goes until it reaches 0.95%. Out of the inflation itself, a portion is utilized to compose the reward pool from which all posting and curation rewards are drawn from (this is 65% of the inflation), and the remainder is used for other funds such as our DHF (Decentralized Hive Fund) and so on. HIVE has so far had ups and downs with the general trends of crypto in general but it has weathered the bear market and overcome challenges rather well, being seen as a stable investment even during volatile times. This is because, as I mentioned earlier, it is naturally resistant to pump and dumps and a rug-pull is impossible. We do not artificially organize a burn but many community members burn on their own. In addition, creating paid accounts on Hive leads to the account costs to be burned — here is just one article about the Splinterlands craze leading to a major burn over 2021.

Ben Frost, StealthEX: Once again, a straightforward and clear reply to the question from our community, wonderful 🙌

Q9: Can you share us Partnership of Hive you can describe so far? Do you have plan to form more strategic partnership in the future?

Reese: This is a hard one as we form a lot of partnerships. For example, we have established partnerships with fellow DPoS chains Telos, Scorum and Peerplays. For those interested, we actually covered many of them in our recent 2 year anniversary article.

Hive welcomes partnerships which are with like-minded projects or service providers that are focused on the ideals of Web 3, on transparency and decentralization, and which aim to build while placing the user first. We believe in building strong bridges with others. We also welcome any such integrations. Many dapps which started their life on other chains end up looking at Hive as we are a more welcoming real-estate to build on; we will see more announcements to that regard soon. In general, anyone who is looking to partner with Hive should reach out to myself and I will be happy to assist them.

Ben Frost, StealthEX: A wonderful conclusion to the very insightful round of Twitter questions! 

Now, I will turn the chat on for a few moments to let the questions from the chat accumulate, and then turn it back off. Just select a few questions you like the most and take your time to reply.

Live Questions

Q1: Are you a global project or local project? At present, which market are you focus on, or is it focused on building and growing to gain customers, users and partners?

Reese: We are a global project. Hive developers, users, node operators (called witnesses) and everyone else involved in Hive are spread out all over the world. If we just focus on node operators and developers, off the top of my head, they are in Canada, US, Turkey, Mexico, Germany, France, Australia, Nigeria, India, and so on. Hive is not based in any one jurisdiction or geographic area nor will it ever be or could be.

Q2: Can you share your social media links so we can keep ourselves updated?

Reese: These can be found at the bottom of hive.io

Q3: Is this your project only for elite investors,  How about others with small funds, is it open to everyone?

Reese: Hive is for everyone. You do not need to make any investment at all to joint he ecosystem; it is a gateway to crypto. One can simply create a free Hive account (donated by other community members) and grow their stake from nothing by posting and getting involved. Hive is composed of many types and sizes of investors and stakeholders; all are valuable and all are welcome

Q4: Do you have any big promotion going on Or any event? And what are your project roadmap plans for upcoming events??? Thanks.

Reese: There are many local events put together by community members. To keep up with them is virtually impossible except by diligently following others and reading HIVE BLOG, PEAKD or Ecency to that end.

Q5: Did you consider community feedback/requests during the creation of your product in order to expand on fresh ideas for your project? Many projects fail because the target audience and clients are not understood. So I’d like to know who your ideal consumer is for your product?

Reese: Our project was created by the community. We are all community members, 100%.

Q6: Is your project a community only for English speaking an countries? Or for users not of others languages?

Reese: We are not an English project. Most of our community members speak English as a second language actually. Content is welcome and is published in many languages from Tagalog to Urdu.

Q7: I am interested to invest in your project. When and where can I buy your tokens?? Is it already listed exchanges??

Reese: You can buy it right here at StealthEX!

Q8: The development of Hive and its ecosystem is sustained via the DHF; Decentralised Hive Fund, can you explain more about this FUND, how do you secure this fund and what’s your Business Model

Reese: Excellent question. The DHF is a proposal-based mechanism where through governance engagement a set of proposals get funded. The way it works is the individual proposal owner writes their overview and requests a specific amount of HBD (pegged to the USD) over a set timeframe at their own discretion. The community stakeholders vote to support the proposal. Once it reaches a certain threshold, it is approved. If it does not reach that threshold, it is unfunded and the proposal owner can simply try again after thinking on why their proposal was rejected. Community members are always happy to provide feedback. Here is a list of the current proposals, both funded and unfunded.

Ben Frost, StealthEX: And that was it! Huge thank you to @murtherx for taking the time of his day to enlighten us with everything going on with Hive. I think I speak on behalf of everyone saying that it was an insanely informative and insightful look into the inner workings of the project. 

I will definitely go and check out all the sources you have provided right after this!

Also, just as recently mentioned, you can swap $HIVE on StealthEX exchange platform.

And once again huge thanks to Reese for a lovely AMA and all the information 🙂

How to Buy HIVE Crypto Coin?

Just go to StealthEX and follow these easy steps:

1. Choose the pair and the amount for your exchange. For example, BTC to HIVE.
2. Press the “Start exchange” button.
3. Provide the recipient address to which the coins will be transferred.
4. Move your cryptocurrency for the exchange.
5. Receive your crypto coins!

If you have remaining questions about the StealthEX exchange service you can go to our FAQ section and find all the necessary information there.

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We are always ready to give you support if you have any issues with exchanging coins. Our team does our best to protect all members and answer their questions. For all requests message us via support@stealthex.io.

You are more than welcome to visit StealthEX exchange and see how fast and convenient it is.