Moving funds between Hive and Hive Engine doesn't have to be expensive or complicated.
HIVE <-> SWAP.HIVE Bridges
There may come a time in your life where you want to move some funds you've earned on Hive over to Hive Engine to get some tokens like LEO. For me, LEO is one of the most solid buys there is right now at about 8 cents. I was talking to someone in the Leo Discord earlier about different methods to move between the Hive and Hive Engine.
Someone mentioned that @deathwing has a service called Swaps, and I even remember reading about it. My normal route to get from HBD or HIVE to SWAP.HIVE has been via BeeSwap lately, but there is currently no liquidity between HIVE and SWAP.HIVE. I've been using BeeSwap for quite some time and have never had a liquidity issue between these tokens before...
I've always chosen BeeSwap because it's easy and the conversion fee is only 0.25%. I don't typically move large amounts of funds around so the fees are miniscule regardless of which route I take, but I still try to use the cheapest route because it adds up. When I saw that there was no liquidity there, I started thinking about other options.
Hive Engine Deposit
The first option I considered was just depositing straight into Hive Engine via the Wallet page. I've done it this way in the past, and it used to be about 1% fee. It has been lowered to 0.75%, which is the highest I've seen in terms of depositing funds into Hive Engine. The advantage here is that you can deposit a plethora of different assets, from different blockchains even.
Not the best route for HIVE <-> SWAP.HIVE though, because there's much cheaper options. I would only use this method as a last resort, or if I was trying to deposit assets like Bitcoin onto Hive Engine. Otherwise, I'm going to opt for the cheaper option just like anyone else would.
I'm not saying to not use this method to get your funds to Hive Engine, I'm just saying there's options that are literally 3 times cheaper in terms of fees. No one likes fees.
LeoDex
LeoDex works similarly to the way depositing on Hive Engine works, but the fee is only 0.25%. I've never used it to deposit HIVE, but I did check and there seems to be yet another lack of liquidity. You're not going to be able to move much funds through this deposit service.
LeoDex is an awesome platform, and I opt to use it for trading Hive Engine tokens when BeeSwap doesn't have liquidity for tokens I'm trading. I also use it when I want to place limit orders instead of just doing direct swaps. I'm lazy. Swaps are always my go to. I know, I'm not getting the best deal all the time but it's all about the simplicity for me.
HivePay
I had never used HivePay before today honestly. I knew the service existed, I just always used BeeSwap. HivePay not only has this swap service, but also provides tools for businesses to accept HIVE and Hive Engine tokens for commerce. I did discover that it seems to be the absolute cheapest way to convery HIVE <-> SWAP.HIVE though.
The interface is as simple as it gets too, which is great because you don't want to over-complicate this kind of thing people may be doing on a daily basis.. The only issue I can see with using HivePay for this is the lack of liquidity. Makes me wonder where all the HIVE is going from these services. Maybe they're in the pHIVE-POLYCUB pool on POLYCUB lol.
I highly recommend going to HivePay first when you're looking to do a conversion. If the liquidity is there to cover your needs, then you're going to pay the lowest possible fee at 0.2%.
Swaps by Deathwing
Swaps is yet another amazing service created by @deathwing. It allows for instant swaps between HIVE <-> SWAP.HIVE and acts as an aggregator. It checks prices on LeoDex and Beeswap to get you the best deal on your conversion. If Swaps has enough funds, it will execute the swap itself without checking other sources.
I have always been a huge fan of aggregators, so finding out about this service is really cool. I've used a number of services created by deathwing and never had an issue. I'm not sure what kind of fee there is for using the service, but I believe it's about 0.3%. There's also a couple new features coming according to the latest Swaps update which are very exciting.
It seems to have a decent amount of liquidity itself, and if not it uses other sources or instantly issues a refund. Great service, and you should absolutely vote for him as a Hive witness.
Conclusion
These are the easiest and cheapest ways from what I've found to bridge HIVE <-> Hive engine. If you know of a better one or something that should be on the list, please let me know. Which method do you use?