These last couple of weeks that we have been waiting for LEO to start trading on Maya Protocol have been a great time to invest in learning about Maya and Thorchain. I have learned a great deal about Thorchain mostly. As a result, I have become keenly aware of Maya's limitations. However, I recognize that it is still early in Maya's development and that more is on the way. Adding Arbitrum, for example, will be a great addition.
. . . what are we really getting?
Fees
Let me start with some realizations. In contrast to HIVE and HBD, transactions on Maya have fees. They aren't crazy fees. But they do require that we have some Arbitrum ETH and some CACAO available to pay for transactions. And if you plan on using native ETH, you'll need ETH too. Will you be dabbling with RUNE on Thorchain? You'll need some RUNE too. I've gone and seeded my wallet with some of these to pay for transaction fees when it all comes online.
Hive Engine benefits from this too as converting to and from HIVE or HBD and LEO is sure to generate swap fees or exchange fees.
Another Road
Speaking of Hive Engine, the ability to withdraw in BTC, ETH, DOGE, USDT, BNB, BSC, BCH, DAI, LTC, MATIC, and more already existed. Yes, you lose some value withdrawing from HE, but it won't be any different with MAYA. The biggest advantage is that Maya may have more overall liquidity in the long run. However, the important thing here is that we have another avenue for importing or exporting value from Hive.
To recap, we have:
- Hive Engine
- V4V.app
- VSC Network
- SimpleSwap
- Changelly
- StealthEx
- Binance
- and others
I think Binance has the largest volume. There is no telling which exchange Maya will cannibalize from the most.
What I'm saying is that we really aren't gaining any more functionality than we already had. So, why all the hype about Maya?
Control
When it comes down to it, by joining Maya, LEO gives us more control of our ingress and egress. By circumventing centralized exchanges, we have less worry about being cut off from the rest of the crypto market. And I think some of you are ardently interested in avoiding KYC. Maya allows for exchanging into native currencies without having to involve a CEX.
Investment
Maya opens up Hive to more investors who might park some of their assets in the LEO:CACAO pool or maybe create a wallet to invest in HBD Savings. It's not a one-way street. Hive and HBD can flow in and out.
Maya also gives us access to more liquidity pools to grow our HIVE or LEO bags.
Choke Point
There is only one choke point in all this, which is that we are highly reliant on Hive Engine. We have experienced some intermittent problems while HE was under attack. By flowing transactions through LEO, it means that we need Hive Engine to be bulletproof. And we need to keep Hive Engine happy. I have no reason to believe that the HE team would do anything to sabotage Hive. I just worry that LEO being a crucial bridge paints a target on HE's back when it comes to regulators and other unfriendlies.
Hive has been flying under the radar for all these years. Now that we are connecting to Maya, which doesn't discriminate or KYC, we might be popping up on the radar. Hopefully I am wrong about this. It could be years before anybody pays attention.
Overall, I'm excited because Maya Protocol is something shiny and new. However, my excitement is tempered by the realization that nothing significantly new has been added. When you think about it, we already had wrapped LEO going to Polygon, Ethereum, and BSC. We're just experiencing an upgrade to a better version of those. And I think that's the good news, that we have a new and improved bridge that connects us to native cryptos rather than wrapped versions. On the whole, this is a good thing for LEO and Hive.