I've been having some conversations with people and noticing everything going on in the markets...
The one constant is that crypto devs continue to grind. This seems to be especially true on Hive. Every day a little more gets done. Even the lumbering Goliath of ETH slowly chugs forward.
It makes me regret that I've been slacking in this department for several years now. I do have a tendency to burn out on projects before I can finish them. I hit some insurmountable problem, decide I'm going to take a break, and wait far too long before I pick it back up again. Luckily the core HIVE API is still intact and many of my scripts from even 2018 still work perfectly. Impressive.
There are some advantages to waiting...
Infrastructure has improved on quite a few metrics. One-block-irreversibility is pretty clutch for anyone looking to sidestep the hassle of wondering whether or not blocks will be rolled back. Reducing lag time from 40 seconds to 4 seconds is something that many Hive users don't even notice on a day-to-day basis, but it makes a huge difference for anyone developing an app.
I also wonder if I should just wait for HAF to roll out and see how much leverage that would provide my project. At the same time, I'm seriously considering paying a monthly sub for AI just so it can help me learn to code better. AI is turning into the ultimate search engine and it would be foolish not to leverage it for something so complex. Intelligent data retrieval and organization is quite the upgrade.
Performance anxiety and imposter syndrome
I grinded out a good chunk of code for my project in summer 2021, but also I know that code was crap. I'm still a bit of a JavaScript novice. Same thing goes for MySQL and NODE.JS. It would actually be quite irresponsible to launch a product and then expect users on Hive to put their money into it and allocate risk to such a feeble house of cards. I've spend some time thinking about potential ways to airdrop or mitigate these risks, but the thought of putting my reputation on the line like that is daunting to be sure.
So what's this post about anyway?
Ultimately the goal is to build a successful business on Hive. I already see myself as locked into this network for life, and I'm doing pretty well if I do say so myself. I'm one of the top paid authors! Not too shabby... but I feel like I could be offering so much more than these words.
I am not alone
There are dozens of devs and other like-minded individuals on Hive who would gladly quit their day-job to come work here full time. That is simply not a feasible plan for most users at the moment, especially during the bear market when spot prices are low and the ability to trade crypto directly for goods and services is wanting.
Even if Hive happened to go x100 next week we would still be lacking critical infrastructure that puts users to work in a sustainable way. The network needs to train users how to become more valuable. We need more developers willing to stick their neck out and absorb the risk of their employees with steady paychecks. Things like that. All in good time.
So I wanna build a business on Hive
Calling it and the entire project and token: Magitek. You can see that post is dated May 2021 and I did a lot of work on the project that summer trying to figure all this stuff out. Then I hit a wall and got stuck for a while and burned out. Also when I realized how centralized the project was going to be that was pretty demoralizing. HAF may be able to help with this hurdle. We'll see.
The evolution of the idea:
At first I just wanted one token: the Magitek token (or more accurately MANA). Just one governance token. Seemed reasonable. NFTs would be created by burning 1 HBD to @null and that process would allocate some governance tokens to the account as well.
Then DEFI 2021 hit everything like a ton of bricks.
Before the DEFI narrative I was thinking I'd have to jump through all kinds of hoops to create liquidity pools and incentivize them. Then DEFI showed us AMM is the "perfect" solution. Exponentially large liquidity pools and high incentive for users to plop their value into them.
Of course the "perfect" solution became immediately corrupted by the greed-monsters who forked chain after chain with complete and utter trash ponzinomics that were basically guaranteed to bleed out to zero over time... so that's fun. I believe I've done enough research on the topic to stem the bleeding and keep most of the value within the system while the platform grows.
X * Y = K
The equation for AMM is deceptively simple and elegant. At first yields only existed as a small trading fee, but one rally later it didn't take long for liquidity providers to realize they would have made much more simply hodling mooning microcap assets. And so the "next gen" tokens allocated massive yields to the LPs to keep them incentivized, but they allocated yields to pools that didn't add any value to the ecosystem, and thus 99% of DEFI crashed to zero in a pretty predictable way.
What is ICE?
Good question as it seems like I don't even know at this point.
Magitek would be built directly on Hive using custom jsons, and with AMM being a more than viable solution for liquidity I realized I could create a derivative market (and a futures market based on those derivatives) using the tricks I've learned from DEFI over the years.
Everything is elemental/wizard/sorcerer/mage themed.
- MANA being the governance token.
- FIRE being the Hive derivative.
- LIGHTNING being the HBD derivative.
- ICE being the native derivative of the Magitek platform.
So at first I was thinking cool, ICE will be a stable coin like DAI. Users will lock collateral into a contract on the Magitek database and be able to draw() ICE from it... just like you can draw() DAI from a CDP on MakerDAO.
But then MakerDAO started doing some really foolish things... like allow USDC to be collateral even though it's inherently centralized. Why would they do this? To prevent the black swan events that occur when liquidated collateral lowers the price and liquidates more collateral in a domino effect.
I realized that the MAKER token is largely a VC asset... and they probably used their own bags secretly behind the scenes in an attempt to stabilize DAI. I bet some big players got burned hard and we were none the wiser.
I make this claim with very little evidence because it never made sense to me why the MakerDAO 'community' was annoyed at DAI always being 98 cents. A stable coin is a stable coin. If DAI is always 98 cents then it's doing its job perfectly. Why try to artificially manipulate interest rates +10% to close the 2 cent gap when all that accomplishes is pissing off CDP holders who now feel like they've been rug-pulled by variable interest rates they can't control?
But when you inject the context that MAKER VCs are secretly providing a backstop to 98 cents... suddenly it makes a lot more sense. Of course those VCs want their money back and are tired of holding the line as everyone who mints DAI simply dumps it into their buy wall.
It's a matter of incentives
Before DEFI, there was very little incentive to hold DAI and the peg broke below the peg. After DEFI users had a lot more reason to hold DAI because all LP pools paired to DAI required 50% of the LP to exist as this stablecoin. This created billions of dollars of demand for DAI during DEFI 2021. Even still, USDT and USDC were much more popular than the "decentralized" option.
Turns out I don't have VC money so perhaps that's not a good model to copy.
In addition, I want users to be able to use ICE as collateral for loans, which is something that is not allowed on MakerDAO because DAI is the only asset that can me minted on that protocol. I envision a collateralized futures market in which any of the 4 tokens can be minted as long as they have enough collateral backing them. Theoretically this is risky so the testing phase would have to be pretty thorough and the collateral requirements would have to be quite high (borderline ridiculous) to ensure that the system can be stabilized.
If ICE can be collateralized for loans (like minting it and dumping it for the Hive derivative to go long)... then it doesn't really make sense to give it an artificial value like a $1 peg. It's worth whatever it's worth at the time based on current market conditions... and it's difficult to see any other way around that fact.
This would have bothered me back in the day when I was theory crafting all this stuff, but Hive once again presented a solution unsolicited. HBD is a much more legitimate stable coin now than it was back then. This development is 3 pronged:
- Hive >> HBD conversions
- Increase debt ratio haircut from 10% to 30%
- Internal market stabilizer is working very well with good liquidity.
Because LIGHTNING would be the derivative of HBD... all these upgrades would make the derivative much better and more stable as well. This means the need for ICE to be a native stable coin isn't even on the table anymore... leaving me to wonder what this native derivative should actually do.
- MANA is versatile governance.
- FIRE is volatile and risky.
- LIGHTNING is stable energy.
- ICE is... ???
As you might be able to guess from the headline I'm thinking that ICE could be used by the network to steer the Magitek ship. I've done a lot of theory-crafting on why we need to create our own monetary policies that create stability. Reliance on USD is an obvious crutch. I've also theory crafted several ways in which we can make this happen... all of which will continue to sound like the ramblings of a madman until they are tested in the field and prove themselves one way or another. High inflation during the bear market and low inflation during the bull market? Nobody seems to believe it, yall aint buying what I'm selling, but I think it's a counterintuitive secret equation for stability and elasticity.
So rather than ICE being a stable-coin itself, it would instead be leveraged to make MANA more stable. The goal is for the price of the governance token to neither go up nor down, and for all potential gains to be captured by the yield provided by the network. We'd have price range targets in place so we'd know when it was too high or low and adjust accordingly.
Is it reasonable to assume that this system would work perfectly? Absolutely not. The smaller the market cap the harder it is to stabilize a currency. However I do believe it would do quite a bit better than every other coin on the market. No other coin on the market is even attempting to balance itself with elasticity. Rather than spiking x20 during a bull run we could limit that to something like x2. Rather than losing 90% during the bear market we could mitigate that loss to 50% and end up right back at the ideal price target.
More importantly: no one would complain because everyone would be expecting this exact outcome. This is a huge factor that most do not consider. Imagine if a token could remove the crippling demoralization associated with the year-long bear market of the 4-year cycle! Any token that is able to achieve this will lure in tons of new users during the bear market rather than bleeding out like everyone else. The retention rates would be massive and unparalleled. Something to think about.
Conclusion
Wow... 2000 words... I guess I need to conclude this rant posthaste.
Ultimately I've been thinking a lot more about my long-term future with Hive and building a business here to solidify this network as a full blown career. I hope that AI can bootstrap this process and get things going a bit quicker than they would otherwise. The next 4-year cycle will be a time for Hive layer-twos to shine bright.
I want to create the first cryptocurrency ever that actually stabilizes itself using its own sovereign monetary policy (without piggybacking off of USD). A tall order indeed, but I believe it to be within the realm of possibility. It's worth a shot.
I believe the ICE derivative that I've described could be a key element in being able to temporarily manipulate the price of the MANA governance token up or down depending on what needs to be done during the market cycle. I guess I've still yet to describe exactly how that would happen. All in good time.
Barring that my focus has always been on gaming and economic theory-crafting. I was hoping blockchain gaming would be a lot farther along now after so many years, but it seems we are still climbing that hill up to the fabled tipping point. Until then, the grind continues.