In science there are two highly distinct fields, theoretical and practical science. Sometimes theory says something is possible and practice proves it's not... yet. That doesn't mean theory is necessarily wrong, it could mean practice hasn't caught up with it. Or that the theorist needs the feedback from the practitioner to adapt his theory to better fit the field reality.
Whitepapers, working projects and scalability
Sometimes on paper things look great. Until they need to be built. It has happened in the cryptosphere numerous times to have projects with great whitepapers but no working products.
To have a working product is already a small victory. But that's nothing compared to the real challenge: scalability.
One way or another, all working crypto projects that achieve some sort of success have to pass the challenge of scalability.
In our own ecosystem, we knew serious work has been done to make sure Hive is scalable. But that was never put to the test in real production environment, because Hive activity never dramatically increased to show the potential bottlenecks.
That happened for the first time when Splinterlands growth went parabolic, and that revealed some hiccups. Interestingly, after fixing them, various tested parameters on Hive showed the blockchain APIs and the dapps became practically a few times more responsive.
So, Hive passed the first real scalability test and is showing signs that it could scale quite a bit from where we are.
Resource Credits System and Growth
What else did we learn from this?
Actually, that's an old lesson. Something many have talked about since the introduction of the Resource Credits System (RCs).
And the lesson is: the more activity we have on Hive, the more valuable RCs become.
Anyone new to Hive who read thus far into the post might be saying... Ok, gotcha. How do I get my hand on some of these RCs?
Well, if you have Hive Power, you have RCs. And they regenerate just like the voting mana. So, if you want RCs, you need Hive which you need to power up.
Soon there will be the possibility to delegate RCs to other people, just like you delegate HP. Or to receive a RC delegation without receiving a HP delegation at the same time, which will be very helpful for big dapps.
RCs delegations will help, so will the work that is slated to fine tune the RC system, but in the end the problem remains: given a parabolic growth in activity and adoption, the true value of RCs will rise probably at an exponential rate. Therefore Hive will be harder to come by, because that's the way to more RCs, other than not-production-ready-yet RC delegations.
Migration of Hive from Exchanges to the Chain to Feed the Growing Need for RCs
I want to point you to a chart from @penguinpablo regarding the recent evolution of Hive stored on all the exchanges. Or rather the migration of Hive from exchanges to the blockchain, where it is powered up in many cases.
See that sharp decline? I believe that's when the FOMO for the still cheap RC-generating Hive (when powered up) started.
Splinterlands example made clear the growing need for more RCs.
They needed more RCs to be able to create 'free' Hive accounts for the massive numbers of new players joining daily.
So they powered up more Hive recently. Here's 100K Hive powered up by Splinterlands on August 10th through their main account, according to @penguinpablo's daily stats:
Source
Also, the @sps-funds sucked up a few hundred thousands of Hive liquidity from Binance exchange recently (from the same report of penguinpablo about Hive stored on exchanges, linked above):
To me the pattern is clear. Once a dapp grows, the need to accumulate Hive for more RCs increases.
And we have a perfect practical example above with Splinterlands and their need for more RCs.
That normally should generate a growing buy pressure for Hive, which will only intensify the more the ecosystem expands and grows.
SPK Network and its Different Approach to Burning Tokens
SPK Network will add another dynamic to the Hive market. By locking up Hive in their SIP to produce an yield, it will reduce the available Hive on the market.
The interesting fact we can note here is that unlike burning, the Hive locked in SIP preserves all its attributes. Not sure which of them will be exerted, but governance, RCs for claiming account tickets for example, voting etc. will all still be possible. When RC shortage is predictable as the ecosystem grows, not burning Hive and putting it to work seems a much better option.
Second Airdrop to Hive Holders Just Announced
And finally, there are airdrops incoming for Hive holders.
One is already known for some time, and will represent an airdrop of LARYNX miner tokens for the SPK Network.
But in the second part of his interview at the CryptoManiacs podcast, Blocktrades revealed he plans an airdrop as well, for the second layer smart contracts platform their team will be building. At the base of the airdrop also Hive.
Ending Words
It is only natural that Hive plays a central role in an ecosystem which bears its name. I hope nobody was caught by surprise by this. As a Hive holder and supporter throughout the good and especially the bad times, I can only be happy about how things seem to unfold.