It's the reason I've never Vested particularly heavy in any one Hive-Engine token, demonstrated by an intentional attack by an account called @shagroedd...
That account managed to render Hive-Engine to a virtual halt by spamming masses of txs into a small amount of blocks....
Then the fix....
This basically involved sufficient witnesses getting together and running code in tandem to remove the bad transactions.
NB note how swift and easy this was, relatively speaking, within two days HE is back up and running again with those bad txs removed and a limit to the number of txs per block to prevent this happening again in the future.
The Pros...
I mean I've had a great time on Hive-Engine over the years, it's been profitable, it still is in some of those pools with nice percentage gains.
And it's nice to stack a few side-chain coins, and support new projects that intend to be more than just side-chains.
Basically Hive-Engine is a fun side of Hive!
The cons...
I mean need I spell it out.... if a dozen people (or thereabouts) can get together and cease a bunch of transactions within two days, that's how secure your HE funds are, right there.
They are as secure as what those dozen people think.
Or actually it's worse, I mean seriously, how many people could 'fork' Hive-Engine if the two or three (if that) people who really know how it works decided to just quit the whole thing altogether?
HE may give you the impression it's decentralised with hundreds of shit coins springing up all the time out of nowhere, but that's an illusion....
Just a few techies that know how it works choosing to stop it, for whatever reason, can bring the whole thing to its knees.
I mean that's any blockchain, although apparently I may be being kind to call HE a blockchain, it's more a load of spreadsheets I'm told, but whatever, they are only as secure as the main miners/ witnesses whatever they are called, but with HE, that's a precious few people, it's close enough with HIVE, with HE, even closer!
In short, there's no security in decentralisation.
Final thoughts...
It's why I never go too hard on HE tokens!
Could also explain why LEO is dumping so hard, people are finally realising what an extreme risk that is!
Having said that I'm trusting enough of the system for now, for now!